theconsultant.net

OK, so it’s really not VOIP’s fault.. here’s my clueless CSR story of the day:

My mom called to let me know that everything was fine, and that they would be offline until they come back from their home-away-from-home in Florida. What happened? Well, it turns out that when your phone is VOIP and you call Comcast (their local cableco) and tell them to disable the internet in a week, they just hear “disconnect”. The call dropped about 15 seconds later.

After a day of calling on their cell phone and trying to get the service reinstated *for just one week*, and not getting anywhere they gave up.

fun, eh?

Thanks to JC over at Mac Geekery I just learned that there is a way to force the Finder to use a different default width for columns in column view!

It turns out to be super easy to apply too..

Close all your finder windows.
Open a new one
Resize a column, while holding the option key down
Close the window
Open a new window… voila!

Thanks again JC!

dynamips is an emulator of various Cisco platforms, that is licensed under GNU GPL, and runs under Windows, Linux, Solaris, MacOS, etc.

Dynamips started off as a MIPS emulator for Cisco 7200, and gradually ended up capable of emulating Cisco 7200 family, Cisco 3600 family, 2600 family (with some exceptions), and Cisco 3725 and 3745. Since it is a hardware emulator, it is bug for bug compatible with the real iron, and IOS on it would have the same bugs as on the physical hardware. Since it supports hypervisor mode, it is possible to run more then one router emulation on a single system, all connected through virtual network. Latest release candidates support packet capture on the virtual interfaces between the routers.

Performance of the emulator is not that great (1 or 2K packers per second, compared to 100s of kpps that actual hardware supports), but it is useful in testing configurations, preparing for Cisco certifications, debugging IOS, etc. I found it while reading up on IOS security, but there are people in both Cisco TAC and preparing/passing CCIE exams, that indicated in 7200emu formus that they use dynamips.

Current PC with a Gig or two of RAM can support a dozen or so router instances.

Based on the information from the developer, we should not expect switch emulation support in the forseeable future, since switches use custom ASICs, so while the main CPUs (MIPS or PPC) that the switches use, are supported, it is very tricky to emulate the power on self-tests of the ASICs (sending packets over loopback, etc), that switches attempt before declaring themselves functional. However 7200 is a bitchin’ platform for pretty much anything, capable of running latest and greatest IOS.

Blog of the author, where newest release candidates of the software are announced. Best place to check to see what bugs got fixed, and what line cards got supported in the latest release.

Forums/Discussion Board for c7200emu, that is moderated by the software’s author.

c7200emu - dynamips project page, detailing more or less up to date list of supported platforms.

Dynagen a dynamips configuration front-end, that allows one easily configure and manage dynamips instances. Currently considered a must have companion to dynamips.

dynamips TODO list, that allowes you to see what the developer is thinking about improving.

P.S. If you lack elf.h, try libelf. In order to build it, you might need GNU sed

MSI P4N SLI motherboard has a build in nVidea nForce 04 NIC. OpenSolaris doesn’t have driver for it, however a driver can be downloaded from Masayuki Murayama’s Free NIC drivers for Solaris page (Drivers there are SPARC/x86 capable, one might need a functional 64 bit compiler to recompile them for their platform).

His driver will work out of the box, as long as the PCI device ID matches the ones in adddrv.sh script. To verify that, one might need to run /usr/X11/bin/scanpci -v and verify that the PCI id matches. In my case, PCI ID was pci10d3,38, which was not in the adddrv.sh script, however is in fact an nForce4 ethernet controller.
After I’ve added the ID in the script, driver worked right away.

root@dara:/[07:49 PM]# cd ; /usr/X11/bin/scanpci -v
[...]
pci bus 0x0000 cardnum 0x0e function 0x00: vendor 0x10de device 0x0038
 nVidia Corporation MCP04 Ethernet Controller
 CardVendor 0x3462 card 0x7160 (Card unknown)
  STATUS    0x00a0  COMMAND 0x0007
  CLASS     0x06 0x80 0x00  REVISION 0xa2
  BIST      0x00  HEADER 0x00  LATENCY 0x00  CACHE 0x00
  BASE0     0xfe9fc000  addr 0xfe9fc000  MEM
  BASE1     0x0000c481  addr 0x0000c480  I/O
  MAX_LAT   0x14  MIN_GNT 0x01  INT_PIN 0x01  INT_LINE 0x05
  BYTE_0    0x62  BYTE_1  0x34  BYTE_2  0x60  BYTE_3  0x71

[...]
root@dara:/[07:50 PM]# modinfo | grep nfo
 Id Loadaddr   Size Info Rev Module Name
 44 feabbbc4   1e50  15   1  mntfs (mount information file system)
141 febc78d4   4768  88   1  devinfo (DEVINFO Driver 1.73)
219 f946c000   fc40 207   1  nfo (nVIDIA nForce nic driver v1.1.2)
root@dara:/[07:50 PM]# dmesg | grep -v UltraDMA

Sat Nov 25 19:50:28 EST 2006
Nov 25 19:38:58 dara.NotBSD.org nfo: [ID 306776 kern.info] nfo0: doesn't have pci power management capability
Nov 25 19:38:58 dara.NotBSD.org nfo: [ID 130221 kern.info] nfo0: nForce mac type 11 (MCP04) (vid: 0x10de, did: 0x0038, revid: 0xa2)
Nov 25 19:38:58 dara.NotBSD.org nfo: [ID 451511 kern.info] nfo0: MII PHY (0x01410cc2) found at 1
Nov 25 19:38:58 dara.NotBSD.org nfo: [ID 426109 kern.info] nfo0: PHY control:0, status:7949<100_BASEX_FD,100_BASEX,10_BASE_FD,10_BASE,XSTATUS,MFPRMBLSUPR,CANAUTONEG,EXTENDED>, advert:de1, lpar:0
Nov 25 19:38:58 dara.NotBSD.org nfo: [ID 119377 kern.info] nfo0: xstatus:3000<1000BASET_FD,1000BASET>
Nov 25 19:38:58 dara.NotBSD.org nfo: [ID 716252 kern.info] nfo0: resetting PHY
Nov 25 19:38:58 dara.NotBSD.org gld: [ID 944156 kern.info] nfo0: nVIDIA nForce nic driver v1.1.2: type “ether” mac address 00:13:d3:5f:53:2f
Nov 25 19:38:58 dara.NotBSD.org npe: [ID 236367 kern.notice] PCI Express-device: pci1462,7160@e, nfo0
Nov 25 19:38:58 dara.NotBSD.org genunix: [ID 936769 kern.notice] nfo0 is /pci@0,0/pci1462,7160@e
Nov 25 19:38:58 dara.NotBSD.org unix: [ID 954099 kern.info] NOTICE: IRQ21 is being shared by drivers with different interrupt levels.
Nov 25 19:38:58 dara.NotBSD.org This may result in reduced system performance.
Nov 25 19:38:58 dara.NotBSD.org last message repeated 1 time
Nov 25 19:38:58 dara.NotBSD.org last message repeated 1 time
Nov 25 19:38:59 dara.NotBSD.org nfo: [ID 831844 kern.info] nfo0: auto-negotiation started
Nov 25 19:39:04 dara.NotBSD.org nfo: [ID 503627 kern.warning] WARNING: nfo0: auto-negotiation failed: timeout
root@dara:/[07:50 PM]#

Some numbers about power consumption of hard drives….

Maxtor DiamondMax 10 6L300R0, 7200 RPM, 300 gig (279.48GB formatted) ATA hard drive has the following power consumption: +5V 740 mA, +12V 1500 mA.

Seagate Barracuda ST3300831A, 7200 RPM, 300 gig (279.45GB formatted) ATA hard drive has the following power consumption: +5V 460 mA, +12V 560 mA.

Seagate tech spec sheet claims that their ‘cudas also take 2.8 amps of +12V to spin up. Maxtor doesn’t have a useful spec sheet for their product.

Observations: Seagate has a 5 year warranty on their drives. Lower power consumption means lower power dissipation, and thus cooler system. Lower power consumption means that you can get away with smaller power supply (or more drives in a system), and thus reduce your power consumption costs (that are more of an issue in a 24/7 environment) and air conditioning/cooling costs.

Conclusions: One should spec hard drives not only from the point of view of costs (WD is cheap but in my experience dies like a butterfly under a cold spell), but from the point of view of warranty and power consumption. Sadly vendors do not provide power consumtion information in their spec sheets, so the only way to find it out is by going to a computer store, asking to look at an OEM drive, and reading off the numbers.

Does anyone know how to merge multiple Keychains in Mac OS X?

I know I can copy items from one keychain to another, but that involves authenticating twice.

I tried going in and adding those other keychains to be part of my list, but they don’t stay. Frustrating.

Why am I doing this? I replaced my computer, and was not able to transfer my account at setup time, so I ended up with some old keychains that got copied over.

Suggestions, comments, rants?

All are welcome!

Dave

Platform independent endinanness check:

#include <stdio.h>
union foo
{
  char p[4];
  int k;
};

int main()
{
  int j;
  union foo bar;
  printf("$Id: endianness.c,v 1.1 2006/07/09 17:48:14 stany Exp stany $nChecks endianness of your platformn");
  printf("Bigendian platform (ie Mac OS X PPC) would return \"abcd\"n");
  printf("Littleendian platform (ie Linux x86) would return \"dcba\"n");
  printf("Your platform returned ");
  bar.k = 0x61626364;
  for(j=0; j<4 ; j++)
  {
  printf("%c",bar.p[j]);
  }

  printf("n");
  return 0;

}

Platform dependent tell me everything check:

/*
 * $Id: cpuid.c,v 1.2 2002/08/03 23:38:39 stany Exp stany $
 */

#include <mach-o/arch.h>
#include <stdio.h>

const char *byte_order_strings[]  = {
        "Unknown",
        "Little Endian",
        "Big Endian",
};

int main() {

  const NXArchInfo *p=NXGetLocalArchInfo();
  printf("$Id: cpuid.c,v 1.2 2002/08/03 23:38:39 stany Exp stany $ n");
  printf("Identifies Darwin CPU typen");
  printf("Name: %sn", p->name);
  printf("Description: %sn", p->description);
  printf("ByteOrder: %sn", byte_order_strings[p->byteorder]);
  printf("CPUtype: %dn", p->cputype);
  printf("CPUSubtype: %dnn", p->cpusubtype);
  printf("nFor scary explanation of what CPUSubtype and CPUtype stand for, nlook into /usr/include/mach/machine.hnn
ppc750t-tG3nppc7400t-tslower G4nppc7450t-tfaster G4nppc970t-tG5n");

return 0;

If you did a clean install of MacOS X 10.4, part of out of box experience is filling out a bunch of things about what your name and address is, where you work, what your e-mail is, etc.

CMD-Q bypasses that screen, and continues as normal without asking for irrelevant information.

Thanks to Jon Rentzsch for the hint.

Comments have been disabled until such a time as this install of WordPress gets upgraded to version 2.0-whatever-is-the-latest.

If you wish to comment on an article please do so by emailing me: dave at theconsultant dot net

A while ago I ranted about automated spam filtering.

Here is yet another example of utter idiocy of some people.

Spamcop report for 64.233.182.188, aka nproxy.gmail.com currently states:

64.233.182.188 listed in bl.spamcop.net (127.0.0.2)

If there are no reports of ongoing objectionable email from this system it will be delisted automatically in approximately 2 hours.

Same thing for 64.233.182.184, 64.233.182.185, 64.233.182.186, 64.233.182.187, 64.233.182.189, 64.233.182.190, 64.233.182.191 (all resolve to nproxy.gmail.com, and all are addresses in gmail.com used to send email as listed by Ironport). I am sure rest of gmail is also reported as source of spam by SpamCop, I just can’t be arsed to keep on checking.

*sigh* Anyone needs any more convinient arguments for not using SpamCop? I am really really tempted to write a log parser that would automatically submit IP addresses of folks who use SpamCop back to SpamCop.

Oh, and at this point, when I talk about “utter idiocy of some people”, I am not even sure who I am refering to - SpamCop folks for listening to anyone reporting gmail (or hotmail, or yahoo mail, or any other “free” mail server) as source of spam instead of just whitelisting them, idiots who get a spam through a free gmail account, and report it to SpamCop as spam, or idiots who configure spamcop checks as default reject reason in their MTA.