fetchmail and ipv6

SixXS easynet pop regained life yesterday. Unfortunately my fetchmail daemon could not be persuaded to talk to our imap server over ipv6 again. Turns out, that the ipv6 implementation in fetchmail is flawed because it only works, if the dns name of your server has an a record in addition to the aaaa record. This behavior has been documented two years ago with some proposed fixes but it looks like no one had the interest to implement them.

MRTG

I’ve realized that it is probably a good idea to have some sort of healthcheck software for our servers. We have been using logcheck for months now and it is a nice tool for reporting abnormal system behavior. However, I wanted something graphical that keeps track of network and system related information for an extended period, like in- and outgoing traffic, cpu usage and so on.

MRTG does a nice job and wasn’t to complicated to install. You need an snmp server that is polling your data on a regular basis and a bit of mrtg config file voodoo. The gentoo wiki contains a usable HowTO.

I’ve also used the opportunity to install mailgraph which gathers statistics of the in- and outgoing smtp traffic. In case you are wondering, why the spam and virus counts do not work: you need to enable syslogging for amavisd-new.

hello planet.luusa.org

Als träger Mensch habe ich mich bisher rss feed kollektoren standhaft verweigert. Die Idee von akkumulierten Community
Blogseiten gefällt mir aber spätestens seit planet.debian.net sehr.
Nachdem der CCC auch seit ein paar Tagen ein planet.* anbietet und das Blogging Fieber unter #luusa inzwischen zu grassieren scheint, wird es höchste Zeit für ein neues Feature auf luusa.org, so hello: planet.luusa.org.

Die Installation von planet war erstaunlich einfach. Als besonderes Feature gibt es als dirty hack[tm] bei planet.luusa.org die Möglichkeit nur eine bestimmte Kategorie des Blogs auszuwählen.

Einrichtungs -und Änderungswünsche bitte an le at luusa.org.

Happy Blogging.

remote dialin via mobile phone

Since there is a pretty good chance, that my change of phone companies will occur while I am away, I’ve setup a remote dialin via my mobile phone.

Small HowTo (based on: Peter Bieringer’s isdn dialin howto):

Serverside

server: Debian Sarge Linux
hardware: AVM ISDN Fritz PCI card
software: mgetty package, working isdn environment (2.6.9 with fritz_pci module)

/etc/mgetty/mgetty.config
# Login over ISDN & V.110 (GSM)
port ttyI1
init-chat “” ddd+++dddATZ OK AT&E&R9600S19=0 OK
modem-type data

/etc/mgetty/login.config
replace this line:
/AutoPPP/ - a_ppp /usr/sbin/pppd auth -chap +pap login debug
with:
/AutoPPP/ - a_ppp /usr/sbin/pppd file /etc/ppp/handydialin

/etc/inittab:
T0:23:respawn:/sbin/mgetty -x 9 -s 9600 ttyI9

(don’t forget to restart with init q!)

/etc/ppp/handydialin:
auth
+chap
-pap
debug
name dialin
#kdebug 5
ms-dns 192.168.1.1
ms-wins 192.168.1.1
192.168.1.1:

/etc/ppp/chap-secrets:
joe dialin “password” 192.168.1.5

Clientside

client: Windows XP Pro
hardware: Sony Ericsson
software: default installation will do

Go to the device manager, and click on the properties of your modem.
Go to the Advanced tab and enter AT+CBST=71,0,1 in the initialization command field.

Create a new connection, enter the configured msn as destination and enter the username and password that you’ve used in chap-secrets (joe/password). Go to the network tab, click on the PPP properties button and select only the first item. (You can activate software compression later on, if everything else works.)

Start the connection, the mobile phone should dial and negotiate everything. That’s it.
In case something did not work, syslog should provide enough clues.

It is done…

Yeah, I managed to setup a digital vcr in my server.
Check it out: http://www.hong.h42.net:8001
Username: gast / Password: gast

traveling for a burner

Since my LG burner refuses to even read discs now, I’ve decided to invest this week into further upgrading components. I cannot concentrate anyhow, since my mom and her boyfriend are still busy renovating and “upgrading” our kitchen and bathroom.
At first I wanted to buy a Plextor burner since my old CD Plextor burner still functions properly (after 3 years, is this too much to ask for, btw?). Unfortunately their new model is not available, yet and moreover it is quite pricy.
Last time I wanted to buy a Benq but went for the LG one instead since of LG’s reputation. I found encouraging user comments about the Benq DW1620 and looked for the best prices. Found a local dealer who had this model in stock and a good price as well. Called him and took a longer bus ride to pick it up. Learned about new villages that exists in this region as a bonus and cursed about the information system of the Deutsche Bahn.

Got the last one, some software and a pair of screws and returned home.

Well, so far the burner is great. It burned every media I had availabe, managed to read even scratched discs. It is also really quiet, not like the lg burner which made a noise like a jumbo jet when you inserted a disc. So, I love it… For now!

SuSe Enterprise

Got a call in the morning for a future job which involves Suse Enterprise. Decided to try an evaluation version since I have not been using it for 3 years. I had to jump through various Novell registration loops to get the urls and when I clicked on them, I got various server errors, like a tomcat runtime error. Got really fed up and wrote an angry email to novell tech support. This is just unprofessional. Googled a bit and found out that the university of michigan provides iso images as well. Unfortunately you need to register for that. Fortunately they are offering guest accounts and I managed to download the iso images with decent speed. I am not sure, if guest users are really allowed to d/l the isos, but anyhow.

The installation process did not work, of course. The installation system crashed with a segfault while scanning the partitions. Apparently the installer got confused with the lvm paritions or something. Grabbed another harddrive, unplugged the old one and did an installation. There has not been a lot of change. You still do the configuration via Yast2 - and there is still the console support.

My 8 month old lg burner seems to misbehave more and more. I think I need to replace it.

digital tv card, part two.

Great, after three weeks my new graphic card and the digital cable arrived from cyberport. Perfect timing, one day after I got rid of my TFT. At least I got the promised refund.

I’ve continued to play with the digital tv card, this time under linux. It took some time to get correct information about the necessary steps to get the newer hauppauge nova-t cards to run. Short recipe: You need kernel 2.6.9, and the dvb-t patch from bytesex.org. You don’t need a firmware image or anything else. Compile the kernel with the following options:

# Video Adapters
#
CONFIG_VIDEO_CX88=m
CONFIG_VIDEO_CX88_DVB=m

# DVB-T (terrestrial) frontends
#
CONFIG_DVB_CX22702=m

Configuring the card is a pure nightmare. You need to run the scan utility with a provided channel configuration file. I’ve spent hours figuring out, why the utility could not find the channels. Two things: the utiltiy is not very reliable (or the driver is not yet finished) and the channels file which I found was incorrect.

This file works:

# DVB-T NRW/Bonn
# T freq bw fec_hi fec_lo mod transmission-mode guard-interval hierarchy
T 514000000 8MHz 2/3 NONE QAM16 8k 1/4 NONE
T 538000000 8MHz 2/3 NONE QAM16 8k 1/4 NONE
T 650000000 8MHz 2/3 NONE QAM16 8k 1/4 NONE
T 698000000 8MHz 2/3 NONE QAM16 8k 1/4 NONE
T 826000000 8MHz 2/3 NONE QAM16 8k 1/4 NONE
T 834000000 8MHz 2/3 NONE QAM16 8k 1/4 NONE

If you use this file, you are able to create a tzap channels.conf file, which you can use with tzap or xine.

My channels.conf looks like this: (One line per channel)
RTL Television:538000000:INVERSION_AUTO:BANDWIDTH_8_MHZ:FEC_2_3:FEC_2_3:QAM_16:TRANSMISSION_MODE_8K:GUARD_INTE
RVAL_1_4:HIERARCHY_NONE:337:338:16405
RTL2:538000000:INVERSION_AUTO:BANDWIDTH_8_MHZ:FEC_2_3:FEC_2_3:QAM_16:TRANSMISSION_MODE_8K:GUARD_INTERVAL_1_4:H
IERARCHY_NONE:353:354:16406
Super RTL:538000000:INVERSION_AUTO:BANDWIDTH_8_MHZ:FEC_2_3:FEC_2_3:QAM_16:TRANSMISSION_MODE_8K:GUARD_INTERVAL_
1_4:HIERARCHY_NONE:433:434:16411
VOX:538000000:INVERSION_AUTO:BANDWIDTH_8_MHZ:FEC_2_3:FEC_2_3:QAM_16:TRANSMISSION_MODE_8K:GUARD_INTERVAL_1_4:HI
ERARCHY_NONE:545:546:16418
ZDF:514000000:INVERSION_AUTO:BANDWIDTH_8_MHZ:FEC_2_3:FEC_2_3:QAM_16:TRANSMISSION_MODE_8K:GUARD_INTERVAL_1_4:HI
ERARCHY_NONE:545:546:514
Info/3sat:514000000:INVERSION_AUTO:BANDWIDTH_8_MHZ:FEC_2_3:FEC_2_3:QAM_16:TRANSMISSION_MODE_8K:GUARD_INTERVAL_
1_4:HIERARCHY_NONE:561:562:515
Doku/KiKa:514000000:INVERSION_AUTO:BANDWIDTH_8_MHZ:FEC_2_3:FEC_2_3:QAM_16:TRANSMISSION_MODE_8K:GUARD_INTERVAL_
1_4:HIERARCHY_NONE:593:594:517
MDR Fernsehen:698000000:INVERSION_AUTO:BANDWIDTH_8_MHZ:FEC_2_3:FEC_2_3:QAM_16:TRANSMISSION_MODE_8K:GUARD_INTER
VAL_1_4:HIERARCHY_NONE:4657:4658:100
NDR FS NDS:698000000:INVERSION_AUTO:BANDWIDTH_8_MHZ:FEC_2_3:FEC_2_3:QAM_16:TRANSMISSION_MODE_8K:GUARD_INTERVAL
_1_4:HIERARCHY_NONE:4641:4642:129
SÜDWEST RP:698000000:INVERSION_AUTO:BANDWIDTH_8_MHZ:FEC_2_3:FEC_2_3:QAM_16:TRANSMISSION_MODE_8K:GUARD_INTERVAL
_1_4:HIERARCHY_NONE:4673:4674:226
WDR Köln:698000000:INVERSION_AUTO:BANDWIDTH_8_MHZ:FEC_2_3:FEC_2_3:QAM_16:TRANSMISSION_MODE_8K:GUARD_INTERVAL_1
_4:HIERARCHY_NONE:4625:4626:262
arte:826000000:INVERSION_AUTO:BANDWIDTH_8_MHZ:FEC_2_3:FEC_2_3:QAM_16:TRANSMISSION_MODE_8K:GUARD_INTERVAL_1_4:H
IERARCHY_NONE:4385:4386:2
Phoenix:826000000:INVERSION_AUTO:BANDWIDTH_8_MHZ:FEC_2_3:FEC_2_3:QAM_16:TRANSMISSION_MODE_8K:GUARD_INTERVAL_1_
4:HIERARCHY_NONE:4401:4402:3
EinsMuXx:826000000:INVERSION_AUTO:BANDWIDTH_8_MHZ:FEC_2_3:FEC_2_3:QAM_16:TRANSMISSION_MODE_8K:GUARD_INTERVAL_1
_4:HIERARCHY_NONE:4417:4418:6
Das Erste:826000000:INVERSION_AUTO:BANDWIDTH_8_MHZ:FEC_2_3:FEC_2_3:QAM_16:TRANSMISSION_MODE_8K:GUARD_INTERVAL_
1_4:HIERARCHY_NONE:4369:4370:256

If you use a recent version of xine, you can use this file to watch tv. Just click on the DVB button. You can switch channels with the playlist.

To be fair: Under linux, you are able to use an anlague card and the digital card simultaneously. If you use tvtime to watch tv, you can specify the video device with the -d option, e.g.: tvtime -d /dev/video1

there it goes again…

I’ve decided to return the Iiyama TFT and get an EIZO L768 instead. Amazingly the post office was not crowded with people that tried to send early christmas packages. I am really curious, if I’ll get all my money back, though, which I should according to the law.

I found a local dealer whose online system stated that they have the TFT on stock. Wrote a short email to ask them, if I could inspect the TFT before buying and they replied with no problem.

Went to the store in the afternoon and got told that they don’t have any in stock at the moment and that it would cost 15 Euros to inspect them. Was greatly disappointed and decided to order online since it was cheaper and I could return it without a problem again. Since I did not want to leave empty handed, I decided to get a digital tv card. I really did not want to buy another card from Hauppauge since their drivers just sucks. But the salesman persuaded me somehow. It is still not really common to bargain for a cheaper price in Germany, but I decided to try anyhow. After some persistent discussion, I got a 3 Euro discount. Not much, but better than nothing.

Turned out, that I was right with the driver mess. I still have an analogue tv card from Hauppauge and it seems that the tv application only supports one card at a time. It is not a big deal, since my ultimate plan is to put the digital card into my server and setup a digital vcr but it reassured my dislike of hauppauge drivers. Their newest driver from early December still crash and I don’t get any sound, so the situation is not improving. I did not buy an antenna with the card and decided to try the cheaper method: using an old aerial cable. I got a decent signal but I’ll buy a better antenna within the next days. Picture quality is really great, but switching between channels takes around 5 seconds which is too long, if your just flipping through channels.

silence

The new noisemagic cpu cooler arrived today. It is worth the 55 euros - I had to double check that the fan is really running since the fan hardly makes a noise. The downside is that the mainboard gets really hot. According to BIOS somewhere around 45 degrees.
Should have bought it a lot earlier. I’ve also ordered a noisevibe harddisk mounting frame with a cooler to reduce the temperature of the server’s harddrives.

TFT arrived

My new TFT arrived. The overall picture quality and sharpness is really amazing. What is even better is that I have regained lots of space on my computer desk. Unfortunately the TFT has a couple of subpixel errors, they are only visible on a black background, though. What is more disturbing is that the brightness is not regular. Maybe I’ll return it and get an Eizo L768.

Had chinese food for the first time since ages.

Nipple replacement

I’ve decided that it was time to replace the nipple - or in ibm product part terms speaking: the TrackPoint pointing stick. So, here we go with a new clean and rock-hard nipple.

money is there to spent

I’ve been pondering about buying a new flatscreen for a while now. My old LG Flatron 795 has worked quite reliable for the last years but it has the major disadvantage that it takes up a lot of space on my desk. After hours of googling, review reading and price comparison I decided to get a Iiyama E481S. It always scores around good to average in reviews and I found a dealer with a really good offer, so I could not resist. And if it is crap, I can send it back anyhow. The Samsung 213T also looks quite sexy, if I had the money, I’d probably get this one.

I’ve also decided that it is time to replace the loud p4 cpu cooler with a less noisier one.

So, now I am broke.

new billing interface

Since I got tired with the way of creating our aurisp invoices, I’ve been hacking on a new system for the whole week. It’s not complete and rather hackish at the moment but it limits the necessary steps for creating the invoices to a tolerable amount.
The free pdf class from http://fpdf.org is really great and the site provides some valuable extra information.

someone is going to be hurting

Which OS are You?

600 emails

Finally caught up with the backlog of 600 messages in my linux highavailability folder. I definitely need to create a testsetup with drdb.

Upgrade

Just like the database said, my dsl account was upgraded to a 1024kbit downstream today. Downtime was minimal and the difference is barely noticeable.

pkg_add and cvs co -rOPENBSD_3_5 src

Ordered more network equipment. If this keeps on I can open up an ISP at home myself.

Spent quite a lot of time messing around with openbsds package management system and even recompiled a kernel. There’s lots of information on the web, but quite a lot seems to be outdated as well. Good ressources are the faqs from openbsd.org and the articles on onlamp.com.

dns

Spent way too much time changing my dns setup - anyway, I now have a multiview bind setup which is kind of cool. Depending on the source ip address you get a different dns view. This url was quite valuable: http://www.zytrax.com/books/dns/.

getting connected

Since I’ll be internetless for the next 4 days, I’ve done some research on how to connect to the net with my sony ericsson t300 through the laptop. Found out that I have to install some windows drivers and a special application from the sony ericsson site. Well, couple of hours later and some calls with the clueless t-mobile customer hotline I got it to work. There is a great connectivity guide available which describes the different possibilities. Apparently this is quite pricy because if you don’t have a special deal you have to pay for the transmitted volume.