Checksum Arcanius

Multitasking is great: I’m chatting, administering SilverFir.net, watching a movie, and writing up the latest entry to the blog all at the same time. Well, I’m mostly watching the movie and chatting, which is why after an hour I’m only on my second sentence here. Two hours. Three� ok, maybe multitasking isn’t so great :-p.

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Well, The movie was good, and the problem with SilverFir.net was extremely obscure. Somehow, the loopback interface wasn’t up — so “localhost” and 127.0.0.1 would give different results, and I couldn’t ping myself. Thanks to a user (see http://moretti.silverfir.net) wanting to install Uberblog (see http://dris.dyndns.org:8080/) the problem started showing symptoms, and after hours of struggle, was figured out and (hopefully) resolved.

I’m thinking I need to get the next version of SilverFir up real soon, because the current one is going haywire pretty quickly. Gentoo is looking like a good option. Now I just need a way to upgrade with minimal downtime.

Since I am thinking about it now, I have thought of an ideas that I think should be considered for Linux distributions: instead of putting files all over the filesystem when installing things (as Debian and Gentoo do), why not put all the files for a particular program in a single directory (say, /usr/local/programname/ just like apache and mysql default to), then use simlinks for everything else — logs, config files, binaries — just put simlinks in the “regular” places – /usr/bin or /etc or /var/log, etc. That way, when a program is deinstalled, a cron job can go by and neatly clean up all the simlinks and there is no residual from the program. And deinstallation involves one rm command. Very clean, very simple. Maybe someday I’ll suggest this to someone who knows what to do about the idea.

Well today I made it to Larry’s about 10 — only Hilary and Eric were there. I stayed until around 5, by which time the mast of the arm was maybe complete. I wish I were better at doing the arm project myself, but there are so many things that I just don’t think about yet. It’ll just take time I guess. After leaving Larry’s I made my way to Sammamish — stopping by Amanda’s place. She was at work, so I stopped there and let her know about the test on Monday. We’ll be studying before class Monday. o.O

I recently shifted strategies on my usage of Gentoo Linux on my laptop. Before, I was more worried about the fact that Linux didn’t seem to support my PC cards for war driving, that the frame buffer wasn’t working properly due to the infamously unsupported ATI Radeon IGP series. Then I realized that I was missing the point. When I got my first laptop, an antique Pentium 90, from my dad a year ago, linux was the only modern operating system that would work. And on that computer, the framebuffer was impossible (although PC cards did work) — but it was an excellent computer for me. It got me so familiar with Debian that I was able setup what is now running silverfir.net in about an hour — plus some tweaks since then. What I am now using Gentoo on Kleinoscope for is to become as familiar with Gentoo as I became with Debian, so that I can feel comfortable switching over. Already, I am pretty happy with Gentoo�s system. It looks like I can easily get not only Apache, MySQL, and PHP up quickly, but that other things I had wanted to do for friends, such as Tomcat (for Clifton at www.InLag.com), are going to be incredibly easy. Now I’m itching to get sf2 back offline (ie, use wadi to serve again) so I can set up gentoo on the faster box. Sure, I’ll have to compile everything, but I did that with all the important stuff in Debian anyway, since everything tends to be so obsolete. With Gentoo, cutting edge stuff is available, but its also much easier — and the defaults seem to work well with me, so far at least, so I won’t have to move outside of the wonderful package system that Gentoo has. And it’s a Linux, so the things that bug me about the BSDs aren’t an issue — such as the behavior of arrow keys in vim. I’ll let you know how things progress.

I was feeling a bit down yesterday and forgot to blog. But with the length each entry has grown to, maybe you all (whoever you are) needed a break. As for today, math was uneventful, and in photography we covered what will be on the test on Monday. Since Amanda wasn’t there, I am considering a trip to Sammamish — might lift the spirits a bit. Once I got home I vacuumed the truck — it was badly needed — and I felt good. Then I came back and spent some time on the computer, and I starting feeling a little down again. I think I need a little bit of time off the computer (except for blogging, this makes me happy, remember?) So here I go to suck the marrow of life. Wish me luck. =D

Updated Photos! Updated Photos!
I�m sorry that they will take a little while to load; I am currently serving from my house and thus am limited to cable modem upload speeds. On the other hand, the computer is now much faster, so resizing to a size that isn�t cached should actually go faster. Now it is time to explain the last three photos�

Years ago my dad gave me a strobe light kit. A few days ago, I finally decided to put it together. I blame this decision on my choice to avoid counterstrike until I do well on a Math test. I have a lot of time to do good things that I should have been doing for a long time now. So, I started soldering the parts to the board. I am not an expert at soldering, but I did quite well. But then I got overconfident, and didn�t read all of the instructions, and ended up soldering one part of the wrong side of the board. So I unsoldered it – a tedious task – and ended up breaking one of the leads to the transformer I had misplaced. Well, I jammed the pin back in, but once the entire thing was soldered together, I got sporadic flashes at best, and no flashes at worst. It turns out that the particular component I had screwed up was the transformer that initiated the ionization of the Xenon gas in the flash tube. I explained the situation to my dad, and he thought of an old, broken Vivatar camera flash he had lying around. He found the flash and dissected it, then I removed the corresponding part from the flash and soldered it into the kit. I turned it on and � voila! The strobe light kit came alive. The final picture has the transformer from the flash circled. The strobe light isn’t actually all that impressive, because the rate of strobe is only several times per second at best, and the flash is never particularly bright. But the point of the project really was to practice to the mini-sumo kit I have had sitting around for about two and a half years. Maybe this year I will actually compete in an individual robotics competition� I’ll explain some day, but for now, I will move on.

As mentioned above, I have vowed not to play Counterstrike until I do well on a Math test. I still long to play – I�ll look at server stats and wish I were playing and load up HLSW to see which members of my clan are showing others what’s up– and almost click to join. But so far, I have been truthful to my vow. I hope I do well on the next test, though � I want to play again! But not playing has given me some time to study math. I actually did some problems out of the packet today; this is a first for me in this class. I plan at doubling up sections until I am up to date, hopefully with enough time to study as well before the test. So, strangely, avoiding counterstrike has helped me gain some work ethic and more life structure. Well, maybe that’s not so strange.

In order to compile modern versions of PHP for silverfir.net, I have to have the GCC compiler version three or above. However, Debian’s “Stable” distribution includes gcc-2.95 � and adding on 3.0 isn�t fun. So I tend up upgrade to the “unstable” version which isn’t really that unstable, just the packages don’t always work perfectly. So while I am generally very happy with Debian, and I understand it well enough to work with it well, I think things can get better. Some day, I hope I will find the OS that clicks with me. Until then, I will keep trying Gentoo, FreeBSD, and whatever else gets suggested until one of them starts to make sense to me.

Well, tomorrow is an early class and a long day — so that’s all for now.

Linux kernels before version 2.4.23 had a security hole that would allow a non-privileged user to gain administrative privileges on any Linux system. Version 2.4.23 was released on November 28, 2003. Silverfir.net had been running with no significant changes to its setup since May, 2003. The kernel hole, along with a security hole in the gallery software I use on this site, PHPix, allowed attackers to gain privileged access to the silverfir.net machine. Apparently, one succeeded. But whoever it was, the attacker must have been disappointed at the level of machine he or she gained access to. A Pentium Pro 180 with a nice but unremarkable Internet uplink isn’t exactly a conquest worth bragging about. Furthermore, nothing even remotely commercial happens on the machine, and all of my email is boring. Besides, something seems to have gone wrong: with the privileged status, the attacker seems to have replaced my INIT — the program that starts up before all other programs and guides the system though its startup routine — a common first step once a root kit (the tools used to crack open a system once administrator privileges have been gained) has been installed. However, this seems to have made my system quite unstable, and with several convenient power outages (thanks Amy, and Puget Power), the problem soon manifest itself with silverfir.net becoming unstable and generating all sorts of errors. In due time, after I got around to reading the logs, and reading security news bulletins, I was able to piece the story together. Of course, I am dumb, and I haven’t updated my (extremely changed by me) version of PHPix yet, but I figure as long as users can’t gain root with a kernel exploit, I�ll let them run strange commands on my system until I get around to getting the real replacement server working (probally FreeBSD or OpenBSD on the dual Pentium II). But at this point, that is a ways off.

After watching the movie last night, I stayed up even later to, among other things, update this site. The result is that I slept in until 1:00pm today, just long enough to completely miss church. That wasn’t planned, mind you. I had breakfast, read some, and then watched the New England Patriots narrowly defeat the Carolina Panthers in Superbowl XXXVIII. I was cheering for the Panthers simply because they were the underdogs; things looked grim in the first quarter for them, but both teams picked up the offensive pace towards halftime…

Another aside: At BYU, I took an introduction to economics course that covered basic micro- and macroeconomic theory. One of the books I read for the class was called “Hard Heads, Soft Hearts.” Written by Alan Blinder, a liberal economist from the Clinton administration, the book is about how liberal fiscal policies could also be economically grounded. I hope that all politicians in this country, both “conservative” and “liberal” (although the differences these days are slight) would read the book and follow the advice. The reason I think of this now is that in the introduction to the book, Blinder declares that you can tell if someone is liberal if they root for the underdog team in a sports contest when they have no personal loyalties to either team. But he is wrong. I am one of the least liberal people I know (not necessarily to be confused with classic conservatism), and I enthusiastically root for the underdogs, as long as the one projected to win is not the UW, BYU, or a Seattle team. Take that, Mr. Blinder! But seriously, especially if you are liberal, read the book, then we can have a decent conversation about our politics.

And back to the main story: despite the slow start, the game turned out to be quite good, except for the fact that we had the same ending that we had two years ago (although I did not watch that game, to be honest) and the fact that the Panther’s should have tried something really wild on that last play. Getting tackled should�ve been the last thing they let happened � I mean, seriously, who cares if you let the Patriots score again, you still loose, but try some laterals and pull your entire team back for some voodoo magic and at least make the final moments an exciting bang instead of a lackluster whimper. Oh well, I guess that’s what we have college football for.

Check out the page of Bernie Zimmermann at http://www.pleasureunit.com/bernie/. He is the writer of the only comment (so far at least) on my last post. Seeing websites that are pretty like his gets me to thinking about making my website pretty. In fact, it reminds me of a story about my early days with the Internet. And since I am in the mood, I will share the story with you�

My first website ever was titled “The Realm of Arcanius.” The name remains to this day — check out the title of this page. My brother was becoming interested in graphic design at the time (he was doing his senior project on computer aided graphic design, in fact) and he made me the logo, which really was the prettiest part of the site. And prettiness mattered, since I was locked in a battle for votes with my friend Dan�s “Lagomorph’s Lair” and he always seemed to be winning. I had decidedly more content in the form of stories, poetry, pictures, photos, and jokes, for what that was worth. But he had style. I have similar problems today. I am able to update this site fairly regularly (although I admit the pictures are getting stale), but I still have trouble making my sites all that pretty. I can make what I think are good looking logos and designs using Photoshop and freehand, but putting them together to make a good website had never been my strong point. My most successful websites have always been very simple, come-for-the-content websites. Of course, Mr. Zimmermann is a professional web developer — so I shouldn’t feel too bad that my site isn;t as good-looking as his.

So the story part of that (I know it wasn’t too clear) was that I made a website when I was in the eighth grade and I lost a competition to my friend. And I;ve kept the name ever since. So now, I might as well talk about how I picked up the name “Arcanius” anyway. Actually, I think I already talked about this (if you go to the first posts in the archives). But here it is again for those of you too lazy to go back (I would be too, so don’t feel bad). There was a game I played back in sixth grade called “Master of Magic.” It was fun, and it had two worlds — one called “Arcanus” and the other called “Myrror.” I took the former name, added the ‘i’ (because I’m cool like that) and adopted it as my online name.

And I might as well keep on going; it is good to remember. Well, the Lagomorph who always beat me in website design now attends the University of Washington — where I will probally be going by the end of the year. It is somewhat sad that we have drifted apart. We still get along, but we really don�t see each other much anymore — no real reason to, I guess. The same thing happened to Alex, another friend from high school, and countless others as well. But some people I have continued to hang out with regularly — Scott, Maneesh, Amy. The difference is that the ones I have drifted away from don’t tend to find the time to do things with me, while the ones still in my life seem to always be willing to do things still. So it leads to a very simply but very important conclusion: continued close friendship takes continued inputs of time. There is simply no way around it. I will always be cordial with Alex and Dan, but already, I have nothing to talk to them about — they come online and I don’t message them, because I don’t have anything to say.

Now for an update on more current history: today. First, I did the Robotics thing, picking up a breakfast burrito as Casa D’s Tacqueria on Bellevue Way on the way to Larry�s house. Once there, Bobby and I worked on the design of the arm (we think it is pretty much finished now), participated somewhat in the betterment of the ball scooper-upper, and generally had ourselves a good time, before returning to 8, the eight-restaurant cafeteria in the basement of McMahon Hall. We seem to be eating there a lot, but Bobby does have 900-some dollars he needs to burn through before the end of the term, and I’m willing to help him as long as its not taking anything away from him. While eating and finalizing details on the arm, we watched the UW men’s basketball team put the spank on the Arizona State Sun Devils. Then we watched the Montlake parking area’s black of asphalt turn into glowing red of brake lights as thousands of fans exited the arena only to sit in their cars waiting to get out. Once the traffic had subsided, I returned home before running out to apply for employment at the low-risk, low-stress local Blockbuster, and to grab a movie and some groceries. I highly recommend the movie “Antwone Fisher.” I can’t say I cried, but my eyes did get damp. Of course, I’m pretty emotionally detached, so that’s a pretty good effect.

I’ll work on new pictures, and probably fix the error in PHPix which has hackers still attempting to compromise my system. Of course, I’m not sure if the hackers were directly related to Wadi’s crash, or if both events just happened to occur at the same time. In the meantime, I’ve thought of many ways that OS’s could be made more secure by default: some of these ideas are already implemented by Immunix, Inc. (www.immunix.com / www.immunix.org), although they use older technology. I’m too cutting edge (not quite beta, but everything up until thing pretty much) to deal with gcc < 3.0 or Apache < 2.0. so while maybe its flawed in security, I get to learn and it�ll make me a better sysadmin in the meantime.

The captions on the pictures pretty much describe my day after church. I thought i might be getting sick, but rest and fluids seem to have made me feel much better.

I have isntalled FreeBSD 5.0 on sf2, and I am working on learning it so I can do a decent job of installing it on the Prosignia (if I get it working) to eventually replace the wadi, the PPro-180 now chugging away behind the scenes.

You may have noticed that I always seem to be in a good mood when posting these entries. Well, I have noticed too, and it clearly means I should post more often since reflecting on my life, in general, tends to make me happy.

Early this morning, before going to sleep, I got closer to finishing Timeline. After waking up, which was hard, I made it to Calculus and then dropped by Dan’s place where I took a look at his darkroom setup. He has converted his laundry room to have everything needed to make prints. While the school has bigger, sturdier, and more specialized equipment, this laundry-room darkroom will be indispensable when the school�s darkroom is crowded with students. Also, the hours are more convenient. We went to class together. The teacher repeated his lecture on f-stops and shutter speeds. As exciting as it is (which it is not), I knew all the content before the first lecture, and the third time didn�t make it any more endearing. Dan is convinced that our teacher is paid by the word. After the lecture, we went into the darkroom to learn how to make contact prints and test strips. Useful information, if we had had any time left to use it.

After a small lunch, Dan and I returned to the darkroom. He had only set up 5×7 developing bins, so I made a few 5×7 prints displaying the effects of different apertures. I still need to finish off my last roll and develop it. I also want to use the BCC darkroom for some full-page contact prints and some 8×10 work.

Windows is installed on Kleinoscope — It will still be until the weekend at least until it is fully functional with all the programs on Mobius here. After I get the cord on Mobius repaired, I have to figure out what to do with it. One thought that has crossed my mind is to sell both laptops and with the resulting funds buy a very nice Dell laptop with swappable battery packs, a real video card, higher resolution, and so on. The two computers combined should go for over $2000. That�s quite a laptop. Nevertheless, the original idea behind Mobius is that it would be a long-term investment � a productivity laptop that would last years. That�s why I got a protection plan for it – a decision that in hindsight I would reconsider, but it still has a year and a half to make itself worthwhile. If I want a high-power machine, then I think I should get a new desktop. But these are all hard decisions. It�s interesting how winning a laptop can lead to so many more questions.

I am writing this in MS Word, so that spelling gets corrected. I hope it makes things easier to read. Leave a comment (like anybody does that) to let me know what you think. Tennis at 8:30 tomorrow, so I had better begin getting ready for bed.