Chris Kelley: Sysadmin

Installing OnStream DI-30 ADR tape backup unit

Fri, 27 Dec 2002 12:33:53 GMT

I've had this tape drive kicking around for a while, but I haven't put it to good use...until now. Some notes I made during the install.

Start-up problem with Mozilla

Mon, 23 Dec 2002 13:52:09 GMT

This happened about a week ago, and again this morning. After I start Mozilla, the initial about screen displays, then the program freezes, and my memory is slowly sucked away into the cosmos. Solution found: shot down the Mozilla.exe process, and delete the file"XUL.mfl." It gets corrupted, and needs to go away from time to time...

PostNuke : Enhanced RSS feed

Tue, 03 Dec 2002 14:47:10 GMT

Wow - Navigating the PostNuke site is quite tough - I just wanted to see how to make an RSS feed from site postings. At last - a solution: "To avoid confusion that some of you are having, this feature is already included in PN .72x ... To enable it, open your backend.php. Near the top of the file, is a variable $show_content = 0. Change it to $show_content=1 to enable the feature."[from Enhanced RSS feed :: pnModules :: PostNuke Modules]

XCS: XML-RPC Class Server

Tue, 03 Dec 2002 13:57:37 GMT

XML-RPC Class Server XCS stands short for XML-RPC Class Server. It can make any existing PHP class available for access via XML-RPC (without any modifications). You only need to put the file "xcs.php" in the same directory with your class files. [from WebKreator - XML-RPC Class Server]

ph-pxmlrpc - "A PHP implementation of the XML-RPC web RPC protocol."
Zend: XML-RPC client - "This tutorial teaches you, step-by-step, how to build an XML-RPC client in PHP using the XML-RPC library written by Edd Dumbill. It covers each of the PHP classes you will be using, and how they fit together to form the final client."
PHP Implementation of the Blogger/MoveableType XML-RPC APIs

Spanning Tree Algorithm

Tue, 03 Dec 2002 10:54:53 GMT

I have noticed alot of activity on my network card; therefore, I downloaded Ethereal to check out the packets. Every second there is data sent to "Spanning-tree-(for-bridges)" from eth1 MAC address. I am using LEAF Bering firewall - I wonder if there is a problem with my bridge configuration? Or is this normal STP (Spanning Tree Protocol) behavior? Anyway, I found a nice primer from Bay Networks on Spanning Tree Algorithm.

Hospital Brought Down by Networking Glitch

Wed, 27 Nov 2002 17:14:18 GMT

Fascinating discussion on Slashdot about this network failure at a Boston hospital. Lessons learned: When I think about building redundant systems, I usually don't plan to build a redundant *network*. Something new to consider.

Calendaring Integration

Sun, 24 Nov 2002 15:39:09 GMT

I installed pHp iCalendar on my webserver - it was remarkably easy. When I post my public calendar file using Mozilla calendar, it is instantly readable from a web browser. Cool! pHp iCalendar even provides an RSS feed. I have created a small primer for using Mozilla calendar. Alarms do not work very well in Mozilla calendar. Ideally, I should receive alarms for events even when Mozilla is not open, perhaps provided by a cron job that runs whenever my calendar file changes. This job would look for any changes and add/delete items from the crontab. When an event comes due in cron, it would trigger a small system beep or biff-like notifier.

Self-healing documentation: Installing SpamAssassin

Sun, 24 Nov 2002 11:53:31 GMT

Installing SpamAssassin. - [Russell Beattie Notebook] - This is an example of why I think blogging is so great! By using weblogs and Google, documentation on the web can become self-healing after a while - people issue their own revisions and caveats to how-to's that are already available. One thing I would like to see is a "documentation mode" for Google - making sure that I see the most recent version of a how-to, as well as ranking and comments/edits by users. A "stale" indicator on pages returned by Google showing that there is an updated version of a particular how-to would also be helpful.