As some of my long-term visitors may have noticed (or not if you read the RSS feed :), I have once again changed the site design here. I am using a slightly modified version of the MistyLooks Wordpress theme. The image at the top is from my backpacking trip last August. It was taken near the dam on Lonesome Lake, west of Franconia Notch, NH. This where the AMC Lonesome Lake Hut is.

In the photo we are looking beyond the lake, across Franconia Notch. Behind you can see the far ridge of the Notch rising up to a green knob. Slightly farther up is the AMC Greenleaf Hut. The high rocky peak is Mt. Lafayette. The next night we stayed at the Greenleaf Hut, after hiking up Cannon Mtn (west side of Franconia Notch), down into the notch, and up to the hut.

When I returned from travel during Christmas, I found my old workstation vindaloo was not responding and would not boot. I believe either the board or the power supply died. Since I replaced vindaloo with tuna for workstation duties, vindaloo has been serving as a “media box” hooked up to the TV and serving files. To replace vindaloo, I bought some drives from Newegg which would add a new RAID-5 to tuna and then an Asus Vintage barebones and Intel Celeron to replace vindaloo’s TV display duties. I was able to reuse existing parts for everything else.

The new system is called mackerel, and I’ve named tuna’s new RAID array “albacore”. Shortly after getting this working, I decided to replace the very loud drive in kipper with one of the old drives taken from vindaloo. This didn’t go so well. It seems the old drive in kipper (and perhaps other things as well) was in worse shape than I thought. Instead, I took an old dual Celeron system I was given some time ago and turned that into a replacement for kipper (router and other duties). This new system is called “anchovy”. Now the network looks like this:

• anchovy.isomerica.net
  Role: router, server
  Network: Gigabit Ethernet
  CPU: Dual Celeron 450MHz
  Memory: 256MB
• mackerel.isomerica.net
  Role: set top box, server
  Network: Gigabit Ethernet
  CPU: Intel Celeron D
  Memory: 512MB
• tuna.isomerica.net
  Role: Dan’s workstation
  Network: Gigabit Ethernet
  CPU: AMD Athlon 64 X2 Dual Core
  Memory: 2.5GB
• juniper.isomerica.net
  Role: Abby’s Workstation
  Network: Gigabit Ethernet
  CPU: AMD Athlon XP
  Memory: 1GB
• crow.isomerica.net
  Role: Dan’s Laptop
  Network: Fast Ethernet
  CPU: Intel Pentium M
  Memory: 512MB
• mayflower.isomerica.net
  Role: Abby’s laptop
  Network: Fast Ethernet
  CPU: Intel Pentium M
  Memory: 512MB
• wap.isomerica.net
  Role: Wireless Access Point
  Network: Fast Ethernet
  CPU: Broadcom BCM947XX
  Memory: 32MB

I have some other machines which are currently out of order, such as vindaloo, an SGI, vega (Sun SparcStation), and a PIII/Celeron someone gave me. A full network!

One of the two Western Digital Raptor drives in colobus failed tonight. I was sitting at my desk when my phone indicated an incoming SMS. It turned out to be from the mdadm monitoring utility telling me that one of the drives had failed and the RAID was running in degraded mode. The main filesystem is on a RAID 1 array, which means two identical drives in a mirrored configuration. Since one has now failed, it is running in a non-redundant configuration until the drive can be replaced.

Fortunately I was able to find a replacement drive at the local Best Buy for an entirely reasonable price and I’ll be heading down to Boston to replace the drive tomorrow. Amazingly, the failed drive was less than a year old. The drive is under warranty (5 year warranty terms) so it’ll be replaced free, but in order to rush in an immediate replacement I need to get a new drive. The failed drive will be RMA’d later and then I’ll have a spare on hand.

We’ll need to reboot to perform the drive replacement. The latest version of the Linux kernel fully supports hotplugging of SATA drives, but unfortunately that was not out 160 days ago when colobus was last rebooted. It’ll received a shiny new kernel tomorrow as well.

UPDATE: The drive replacement was completed in about 20 minutes with the array reconstruction taking an additional hour (while the system was up). I am very pleased with how things worked and how easily the my Tyan Rackmount’s hotswap bays worked. I wasn’t able to actually hotswap the drives this time because the old Linux kernel version didn’t support it, but when the machine was rebooted the kernel was upgraded and any future drive replacements can be done with the machine online.

I have finally upgraded the kernel on my laptop and enabled a dual stack IPv4/IPv6 setup. Now all of the currently active machines on the Newmarket subnet except for mayflower (aelscha’s laptop) support IPv6. There are some currently inactive machines which don’t (vega, bloodymary, the SGI), but I don’t know if I’ll ever end up setting those up.

isomerica.net is now offering two new services over IPv4 and IPv6. The first is a public access stratum 2 NTP server. You can use ntp.isomerica.net to get to this. The second is a public access Jabber server. You can use any Jabber client to create an account. My jabber ID is spinfire@isomerica.net.

This is posted from the new machine. Users should be able to use this if their DNS server is no longer caching the old address (this should not take more than an hour). Enjoy the new high speed. If you have problems or concerns please do not hesitate to contact me.

The new server, colobus.isomerica.net, is now fully assembled and being configured for mail and web and other services. The machine is very loud. It has five fans of variable speed, which can reach 15 thousand rpm. With a bit more configuring she will be ready to move to Switch and Data in Waltham, MA, which will become her new home. From then there will be more configuring and testing and finally a switchover. Check out some more pictures.

This winter isomerica.net will enter a new era. I have made plans to build a new server, with generously donated hardware, and colocate the server in the Boston metropolitan area. My primary reasons for doing this are stability, bandwidth, and peace of mind.

• Increased Stability
  • The new server will feature true server class stability features, such as ECC memory and redundant storage.
  • The colocation facility will have clean UPS power backed by a generator. Power loss is extremely unlikely.
  • The server will now have redundant, low latency connections to the outside world.
• Better Bandwidth
  • 1Mbps continuous bandwidth will be available, bursting to 100Mbps. This will speed up page loads, especially in the gallery.
  • Lower latency, even during heavy outgoing traffic, will improve the usability of shell sessions and IRC.
• Peace of Mind
  • Should there be problems, such as failed hardware, the server will now be only one hour from me and there will be 24/7 access to the facility.

The planned timeframe is to move services over in early January, 2006. Threepwood will become a workstation only system, gnat will likely be decommissioned. If you currently have DNS services hosted on gnat, these will be moved to the new server which will become NS1.isomerica.net. Secondary DNS can be provided by the bandwidth provider or a third party.

If you currently have an account on threepwood, please let me know any concerns you may have. I would appreciate your comments on the process. During the actual services move there will be a few hours of downtime as final versions of home directory files and email are synced over. If you do not wish to have your data moved, please let me know.

Lastly, I created the isomerica-user mailing list a while back but I haven’t used it for much. Please subscribe to this if you would like to hear further information. Some users may have been subscribed automatically. If you try to sign up and it complains, you’re probably already on the list. Most announcements regarding isomerica.net will be restricted to the mailing list from now on.

We had a bit of downtime over the weekend. It looks like the switch between gnat and threepwood gave up the ghost and is no longer functioning correctly. It flaked out earlier, then gave up entirely on Sunday. The switch has been replaced with a hub. Hopefully it will remain stable.

nchanter suggested that I set up Livejournal syndication for this site and offered to set it up (a paid account is required), so our feed is now listed on livejournal. If you are Livejournal inclined, you can add this to your friends list and use your friends list to read the blog.

Of course, you could also use a real RSS reader to read your livejournal friends, blogs, and news sites.

For people who SSH to threepwood.isomerica.net and use SSH’s public key authentication, support for the ~/.ssh/authorized_keys2 has apparently been completely dropped. The file has been deprecated since 2001, but personal experience shows that as of recently sshd no longer considers the deprecated file. The solution is simple: All of your authorized public keys now go into one file, ~/.ssh/authorized_keys.

I have upgraded the website to Wordpress 1.5. A few additional changes have been made. The CAPTCHA for commenting is gone (huzzah!) replaced by the WP-Hashcash plugin. This plugin requires the commenter’s browser to compute an MD5 hash of a random value and return it along with the form. It is transparent to the commenter, but it does require JavaScript. I still think this will be a better solution, if it works. I’d like to set it up so users can register, which will enable them to bypass all the hurdles, but this is a secondary goal.

I have improved upon the previous process for updating DNS zonefile information on ns1.isomerica.net. If NS1 (gnat) is hosting your zonefile, please ask me how to update the information. You’ll need an account on threepwood, which I can create easily if you don’t already have one.

If you have no idea what this means, please disregard this message!

After 230 days of uptime an extended power outage brought both threepwood and gnat down. Gnat, with a non-ATX power supply, came up without trouble. Threepwood, on the other hand, doesn’t seem to be listening to the “on power loss” flag set in the bios and won’t come up without a finger poke if there has been a hard power loss.

Although both machines are on a UPS, it is a very cheap one and is old, overloaded, and not capable of automatic shutdown. Once again, I apologize for the outage.

UPDATE: I was wrong. Apparently the machine powered up fine, as it should have, but my father had left a floppy disk in the disk drive, leaving it hanging as it tried to boot off the floppy. The machine shouldn’t have been set to even try booting off the floppy, but at least I now know it wasn’t a hardware issue with the BIOS power up settings.

Davean suggests that this may have been the culprint. However, I don’t even think my parents use ATM cards, so it seems unlikely :)

Earlier today I had some issues following an upgrade of the Courier IMAP mail server. Unfortunately some of the ways authentication is done have changed and some files were moved around the system. It should be working now. If you use IMAP or POP3 on threepwood.isomerica.net and encounter problems, however, don’t hesitate to contact me.

*sigh* Comment spam is a serious problem. Previously I was using Spaminator and Spam Karma to help stem the tide of obnoxious spam. But this morning I discovered these tools had made false positives, and there was no way for me to flag them as such and undelete them. This is unacceptable. Numerous comments were also slipping through. As a result, we have a new strategy. I am running Bot Check which adds a small CAPTCHA above the comment form. I think it is fairly easy to read, but if you have problems email me and I can adjust the font.

The second prong of our new strategy is to auto moderate inactive comment threads. The plugin will turn on moderation for threads which have been inactive for more than 15 days. These are the posts most targetted by spammers, because they don’t want blog owners to notice the comment spam and delete it. A notice will be printed in the comment area if moderation is turned on. You can still comment, but it will take up to a few hours for the comment to appear. Feedback is always appreciated. I apologize if you commented earlier and the previous automated moderation “ate” your comment. Hopefully this will work better.

SpamAssassin on threepwood.isomerica.net has been upgraded to version 3.0.2. The upgrade should be seamless, but if you use SpamAssassin and encounter strange behavior, please let me know via email. You may also want to check your user preferences if you have customized settings. Some options may have changed.

Threepwood.isomerica.net’s version of the venerable Mutt email client has been upgraded to support header caching. This means Mutt will keep its own fast copy of message headers to avoid reading in large maildir or IMAP mailboxes. My current mailbox has around 2900 messages in it, so this patch really helps with mutt startup times.

To enable add set header_cache="~/.headercache" to your .muttrc. A copy of my entire Muttrc (minus sensitive information) is also available for interested persons.

As of last night threepwood.isomerica.net has lost its 256MB of RAM and gained 2 512MB sticks, for a total of 1GB RAM. Additionally, the kernel and several software packages have been upgraded. If I get a chance and manage to obtain some thermal goo, I may also try to upgrade the CPU to a 1.1GHz Athlon. Speed and usability should already be improved, however. Enjoy.

UPDATE: The CPU is now a 1.1GHz Athlon. Everything seems to be working well so far.

Well, the new Wordpress based blog is up. For now, some of the existing content will load using the old look until I get everything set up. Sit tight for now and it’ll probably all be working by the end of the weekend. In the meantime, feel free to explore the new site, switch your feed URLs, and comment on the design. The design is mainly based on the default, but I’ve changed the colors and a few layout things. The color scheme is borrowed from nature, using colors picked from a photograph. The current colors are not “web safe.” I’m not sure if I want to change that. I may tweak them slightly over the next few days.