Tag: sysadmin

Where most of my time seems to go

Testing wordpress 2.1

I’m having some issues with the widgets — especially in widget configuration.Dsc04890

I’m really looking forward to the spell-checker, however!

Will inserting photos still work?

Yes, it will!

Using javascript to balance the 3-column css

In the wordpress theme I prefer (link here to original), I hacked in lots of purple.

Then I wanted to change the right column width. Eww — it was using background images of a fixed size to color the left and right columns!

Pulled out those background images, and replaced them with color strings ala #666 and #ccc.

Then, the columns on the left and right didn’t go all the way down, and were never balanced with each other nor the center column.

Finally, I found some javascript (which can be loaded in a separate file) — Balanced Columns and from there, this page.

The really good news is that it locks up IE. Yay! OK, disable that for ie, and add a “get firefox” link to the links.

Some throwaway work while reading documentation…

Not too much here:

  • Got the west-wing bluetooth working for my palm pilot, includes updating routing at home.
  • Moved my palm links to https://j.snyder.name/palm
  • Using PHP, I can now make sure only I can access the X10 remote-control of lamps. Now, I can do it from my palm pilot anywhere in the house! Without using up GPRS data limits!
  • Yeah, I don’t really care, either.
  • But now I can add SASL and PHP to my resume. Hell, that PHP knowledge might even mean something now.
  • Am I the only one who stopped using PHP when they had 16 security problems in a week? Looks like they’ve had time to mature, at least in internet time.
  • It seems that whenever a programming language gets object-oriented, the security drops for about 3 years, then it gets really tight for another 3. Remember the problems with java at first?
  • Remember java?
  • Hell, remember logo?
  • Hell, I still believe, deep down in my cockles (don’t ask) that the reason every programming language ends statements with a semicolon is because of PASCAL (remember “Turbo Pascal”? “Turbo Prolog”? Remember Borland?), not because of C.

SASL (and therefore port 587) is now running on the colo box (you all know it as dselwyn)

For quite some time I’ve been dinking around trying to get SASL to work on my colo box. It took

The most helpful part was the bit to add

PARAMS="-m /var/spool/postfix/var/run/saslauthd"

although I added it to /etc/default/saslauthd rather than edit /etc/init.d/saslauthd (better for future debian upgrades).
Another point to make is that sasltestwhatever of testsaslwhatever doesn’t work so configured unless you also either

  • Link each file in /var/spool/postfix/var/run/saslauthd to an identical name in /var/run/saslauthd or
  • Link /var/run/saslauthd directly to /var/spool/postfix/var/run/saslauthd (better answer, works through reboots)

WordPress 1.5 has been released

Upgraded to wordpress 1.5. It was a no-brainer (or, as I originally typed it, a no-vrainer, because everyone knows how much I’m trying to get all traces of vrainage out of the house, now that Grace is here).

WordPress 1.5 now directly supports themes. I’m rather fond of Cup-o-Joe (as you can probably tell), but I want to have the sidebar headers generated in text, but I can’t figure out how to download fonts in Firefox.

Today has been all about the new laptop

So, Cy gets a new laptop. It’s the last one they have, so it was the demo unit. Heavily discounted, good. Tested and solidly burnt-in, good.

Fsck only knows what’s installed on it, bad. Very bad.

So,

  1. Reinstall XP.
  2. OK, first find that damn 25-character code. Where the hell is it? Don’t throw out that receipt — it’s not in any of the paperwork.
  3. Oh. Here it is, on the bottom of the machine. OK.
  4. OK, now reinstall XP
  5. Oh, we need a network connection now?
  6. Merde, wireless isn’t working.
  7. Dig out an ethernet cable.
  8. Good, that works.
  9. Now, reinstall XP.
  10. Wait. Every 5 minutes, the screen will change, but leave it alone, and it will prompt you for an answer to an inane question.
  11. OK, we still have to do that windows update crap.
  12. Install all the drivers. At least it’s only one DVD-ROM worth.
  13. At least now wireless works.
  14. Install firefox, his copy of office, anti-virus, anti-spyware, set up privileged and unprivileged users (to keep things safe), RealVNC for remote access, Putty SSH and cygwin for me to be able to use it as well.
  15. Defrag the disk (to speed things up, since speed is the major gripe I hear about)

Oh, and let’s not foget after:

  1. Turn away for 30 seconds, and turn back to find weatherbug installed.
  2. Endure 2 hours of constant bitching, as I install gaim instead of aim.
  3. Hope for death to end the bitching. No such luck.
  4. Oh, but every other system is slow because of my anti-spyware activities. Forget the fact that there are > 200 useless and unused programs installed on the system in question.
  5. Oh, and I’ve never recommended a cd-ripper that works, despite the fact I’ve never used anything except cdex on windows, and it’s the only program that has ever worked. That’s my fault, you see.
  6. That also explains about 50 of the useless and unused programs that don’t slow down the system.
  7. Tabbed browsing? Keyword search on google, ebay and amazon? OK, maybe this isn’t so awful.
  8. Sure, if gaim and firefox aren’t so bad, let’s try Thunderbird.

Busy day…

and hardly any paying work is getting done…

So far, I’ve

  1. Fixed some DNS issues
  2. Fixed some firewall/proxy server issues
  3. Got a new catalog site configured and running
  4. Fixed some issues with the old catalog site
  5. Created two ssl certificates to resolve the two items above
  6. Dealt with one expired domain under my opensrs account
  7. Scheduled photos for Grace and her cousins (and me)
  8. Picked out clothes for the photo shoot
  9. Labeled and carried two boxes of christmas crap out to the garage
  10. Removed about half the staples from stuff I have to scan
  11. Started scanning ~1000 pages, front and back (at least there’s an ADF)
  12. Vacumned the upstairs (at least there’s Roomba)

And it’s not even noon…

Update 8pm — Grace came home, and I got nothing else done, except for baking cookies, 2 loaves of bread, fixing dinner, cleaning up, getting her washed and into bed. Nothing!

Is it any wonder I’m insisting on good passwords now?

Just a hint of part of the problem

Feb  6 04:08:18  sshd: Failed password for illegal user test from 212.94.223.99 port 59096 ssh2
Feb  6 04:08:18  sshd: Failed password for illegal user test from 212.94.223.99 port 59105 ssh2
Feb  6 04:08:18  sshd: Failed password for illegal user test from 212.94.223.99 port 59094 ssh2
Feb  6 04:08:27  sshd: Failed password for illegal user guest from 212.94.223.99 port 59499 ssh2
Feb  6 04:08:27  sshd: Failed password for illegal user guest from 212.94.223.99 port 59513 ssh2

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