Why Linux isn’t ready
There are plenty of people around who will happily slate Microsoft (sorry, that should be Micro$oft), Windoze, and Internet Exploder. The majority of these people will, unprompted, extoll the virtues of Linux.
I won’t lie, I like Microsoft. I think Windows is the best all-round family of operating systems available. And I use Internet Explorer as my default browser, even though I have Firefox and Chrome installed.
But I also run a Linux server. It is a modest beast. It has a Sempron processor, three hard disks around 200-500GB each, and about 1GB of RAM. It doesn’t need much, even though it acts as a mail server, a web server, and a DNS and network file server for my home LAN. It runs Fedora 11, which is actually quite nice.
I started using Linux with no experience, and with the help of some patience, a few good Internet resources, and good old intuition, I pretty much know what I’m doing.
About a week ago, my Internet connection started to die sporadically, at unpredictable intervals, for no apparent reason. I traced the lack of connectivity down to the DNS server not responding to requests, and this led me to realise that the Linux box would not respond to any kind of request at all: SSH, HTTP, or even ping.
So imagine my surprise, when after a lot of investigation (and I really do mean a LOT of investigation) it turned out to be Samba, the service which handles network file shares.
RAID 0: exit stage left
As soon as RAID controllers started being built into affordable motherboards, I decided using RAID for my home PC was a good idea. For the last 6-7 years, I have used RAID on every PC I have built.
There are several RAID configurations. RAID 0 (striping) utilises two or more identical hard drives, and splits each file equally across them, yielding much faster disk performance (limited by the throughput of the disk I/O controller) as the disks read and write at the same time. The total available storage is the sum of the individual drives’ capacity. RAID 1 (mirrored) could be considered the opposite of striping, in that each file is written to all disks. This effectively provides realtime backup since the content of all drives in the array is identical, with no performance cost.
I’ve only ever used RAID 0. For a home PC, RAID 1 doesn’t offer any real benefits that cannot be achieved with a half-decent backup policy, but effectively doubles the cost of disk space if you use two disks.
It says so on Wikipedia
My current pet hate is the use of the phrase “it says so on Wikipedia”, in a sarcastic manner. Usually it’s intended to make fun of people who don’t seem to ‘understand’ that anyone and everyone can edit or create Wikipedia articles on any subject (unless, of course, the IWF blocks Internet access to one particular image, and in doing so prevents the whole of your country from editing Wikipedia).
The implication is that, should you wish to, you can edit a Wikipedia article such that it corroborates your argument, no matter how ridiculous. A typical conversation which might seem to justify this belief is as follows.
Fred: What’s that you’re pouring into that saucepan?
Dave: Glue.
Fred: Glue? What are you making?
Dave: Spaghetti Bolognese.
Fred: That’s not made using glue!
Dave: Yes it is, it says so on Wikipedia.
There you go. Dave is the butt of the joke because he apparently doesn’t understand how Wikipedia works, and has foolishly taken its word as gospel. From now until forever, each time Dave makes a factual statement in Fred’s presence, Fred will ask “does it say that on Wikipedia?” in a sarcastic and derisory tone.
Happy Halloween!
Oliver in a dress
There is no point in having a dog if you can’t occassionally dress him or her up.
Ever since Oliver was a puppy, we’ve taken almost every opportunity to stick him in a t-shirt or dress him up as Santa. Seeing as he ‘enjoys’ it so much, we have taken to dressing him up for Halloween every year.
Last year he was Frankenstein’s monster, although no photos exist–probably because I was laughing too hard–and this year he was some kind of witch (or maybe a princess) in a very pretty purple dress and matching hat.
It took a minimal amount of modification with a pair of scissors, and he did keep getting his claws caught in it at first, but at £8 from Tesco you can’t go wrong.
Netgear DG834G and NAT loopback
Yesterday I made the decision (read: mistake) to update my Netgear DG834G router (hardware v4, firmware v5.01.09) to firmware v5.01.14 – and, as is the way with these things, it brought trouble. After the upgrade I couldn’t reach www.nikrivers.com from the LAN side of the router.
The problem is caused by the way the router handles traffic coming from an internal IP address and destined for the WAN (i.e. external) IP address. In this situation it requires that the router first transfers the traffic from the internal network to the external network, and then immediately passes it back whilst applying any firewall or routing rules that are relevant to incoming external traffic.
