Author Archives: ward

rails, mongrel and mysterious gpgme errors

Posted on December 8, 2008 by ward

Mongrel changes its user and group id to the user you specify when started as another user (say, root). However, it does not change the environment variables from the user it was started as. In particular, ENV["USER"] and ENV["HOME"] remain … Continue reading →

Posted in Rails | Leave a comment

remote install of a PE2900

Posted on December 3, 2008 by ward

I got a new Dell PowerEdge 2900 delivered at a customer site thousands of miles away. I installed it remotely after instructing the people onsite to plug in the network interfaces and power. That worked, but it would have been … Continue reading →

Posted in Everything else | Leave a comment

page 56

Posted on November 24, 2008 by ward

“” Sorry, that was the nearest book – page 56 is a blank page. Second nearest then. “The variable’s name must be a valid identifier” Rules: * Grab the book nearest you. Right now. * Turn to page 56. * … Continue reading →

Posted in Personal | Leave a comment

we might actually get real telecom policy

Posted on November 15, 2008 by ward

Via the wired blog: Net Neutrality Advocates In Charge Of Obama Team Review of FCC. The two people appointed are Susan Crawford and Kevin Werbach. They ‘get it’ – they understand that the US is a broadband backwater, that the … Continue reading →

Posted in Broadband, Politics | Leave a comment

Dell’s GNU/Linux support leaves to be desired

Posted on October 27, 2008 by ward

So I have a poweredge 2800 with some hardware issues (voltage sensors on the riser card seeing things they should not…). The Dell support folks wanted me to run a DSET report with this tool http://support.euro.dell.com/support/downloads/download.aspx?c=uk&l=en&s=gen&releaseid=R155882&formatcnt=2&libid=0&fileid=208066 Man – what a … Continue reading →

Posted in Free Software/Open Source, Hardware | 1 Comment

hotmail’s smtp welcome message

Posted on October 25, 2008 by ward

I came across this rather nonsensical message from one of Hotmail’s MX servers: $ telnet mx1.hotmail.com 25 Trying 65.54.245.8… Connected to mx1.hotmail.com. Escape character is ‘^]’. 220 bay0-mc9-f11.bay0.hotmail.com Sending unsolicited commercial or bulk e-mail to Microsoft’s computer network is prohibited. … Continue reading →

Posted in Completely clueless | 2 Comments

43% == 50% according to Metro

Posted on October 16, 2008 by ward

From today’s Metro, Boston edition: I’m thinking someone at the Metro needs a crash course in elementary math.

Posted in Completely clueless | Leave a comment

city of Monticello, MN can proceed with its fiber rollout

Posted on October 10, 2008 by ward

TDS Telecom lost its lawsuit against the city of Monticello, MN. Some background: citizens of Monticello approved in a referendum a plan to roll out a city-owned fiber network to provide cheap and fast internet access. Immediately after the referendum … Continue reading →

Posted in Broadband | Leave a comment

lessons learned from a colo migration

Posted on October 2, 2008 by ward

I moved a bunch of servers from one colocation facility to another last night. I had been preparing this move for a few weeks. While everything went well in the end, things took much longer than anticipated. Here are a … Continue reading →

Posted in Sysadmin | Leave a comment

25 years of GNU

Posted on September 2, 2008 by ward

The FSF has put out a 5 minute anniversary video celebrating 25 years of GNU. It’s a pleasant, concise explanation of what free software is all about, why it’s important, and how the GNU project fits in to all this. … Continue reading →

Posted in Free Software/Open Source | Leave a comment