Prolixium dot com: News >> Blog

It doesn't work on SMP systems without CONFIG_HOTPLUG_CPU enabled in the kernel, period.

After enabling it on my Lenovo T60, suspending to memory worked out of the box, even with ATI's evil^Wbinary drivers. The kernel output leads me to believe that before suspending, it virtually removes the 2nd core and then proceeds to disable SMP. When it wakes up, it initializes SMP, and brings the 2nd core back online.

Freezing cpus ...
CPU 1 is now offline
SMP alternatives: switching to UP code
CPU1 is down
Stopping tasks: ====================[...]=================|

And waking up ...

Thawing cpus ...
SMP alternatives: switching to SMP code
Booting processor 1/1 eip 3000
Initializing CPU#1
Calibrating delay using timer specific routine.. 3657.49 BogoMIPS (lpj=1828745)
CPU: After generic identify, caps: bfe9fbff 00100000 00000000 00000000 0000c1a9 00000000 00000000
CPU: After vendor identify, caps: bfe9fbff 00100000 00000000 00000000 0000c1a9 00000000 00000000
monitor/mwait feature present.
CPU: L1 I cache: 32K, L1 D cache: 32K
CPU: L2 cache: 2048K
CPU: Physical Processor ID: 0
CPU: Processor Core ID: 1
CPU: After all inits, caps: bfe9fbff 00100000 00000000 00000140 0000c1a9 00000000 00000000
Intel machine check architecture supported.
Intel machine check reporting enabled on CPU#1.
CPU1: Intel Genuine Intel(R) CPU T2400 @ 1.83GHz stepping 08
APIC error on CPU1: 00(40)
CPU1 is up

Neat. Well, whatever it's doing, suspending to memory is the first thing that worked "out of the box on the T60.

Using:

ati-drivers-8.26.18-r1
gentoo-sources-2.6.17-r2
xorg-x11-7.0-r1
acpid-1.0.4-r3

I have a dream ... that all licenses will be compatible, and all software will be free (as in speech).

Apparently mod_security can't be distributed in major distributions since it's licensed under the GPL, which is incompatible with the Apache License. Of course, there are some distributions that don't care and package it anyway.

See some bugs about previous Debian packages for more information.

</twitch>

So, Gentoo decided to add the x86 and amd64 keywords to x11-base/xorg-x11-7.0-r1. The upgrade was smooth, once I defined VIDEO_CARDS and INPUT_DEVICES in /etc/make.conf. However, stuff like this just annoys me:

!!! All ebuilds that could satisfy "xcalc" have been masked.
!!! One of the following masked packages is required to complete your request:
- x11-apps/xcalc-1.0.1 (masked by: ~x86 keyword)

Seriously guys, what gives? For xorg-x11 to be stable, all of the previously bundled components should be marked as stable. I had to unmask x11-apps/xload, too. Pathetic.

I'm not this disgruntled, though.

... are they flying? It's cloudy today, so I might be missing them.

Oh, yeah, I suppose I should include these links.

FUSE rocks:

mkdir dax
sshfs dax:share dax
mplayer dax/video/*mpg

That fired up a couple MPEG2 files, which streamed flawlessly over my standard RR connection. So simple =)

Q: Why does Road Runner kick me off every few weeks, and give me a new IP?

A: Because you're blocking all RFC1918 at your firewall.

Unlike other cable companies, Road Runner's DHCP servers use 10/8 addresses (or their relay-agents perform some sort of NAT). So, if you're blocking all RFC1918 addresses at your firewall, at least allow the 10/8 space to communicate with your box via udp/67-68. Annoying. Here's a typical RR lease [dhclient/FreeBSD]:

lease {
  interface "rl0";
  fixed-address 71.75.172.132;
  filename "default.bin";
  option subnet-mask 255.255.240.0;
  option routers 71.75.160.1;
  option domain-name-servers 24.25.5.150,24.25.5.149;
  option domain-name "carolina.rr.com";
  option broadcast-address 255.255.255.255;
  option dhcp-lease-time 86305;
  option dhcp-message-type 5; 
  option dhcp-server-identifier 10.66.32.1;
  renew 1 2006/6/19 10:26:04;
  rebind 1 2006/6/19 19:25:28;
  expire 1 2006/6/19 22:25:17;
}

... compared to a typical CableVision lease [dhclient/Linux]:

lease {
  interface "eth1";
  fixed-address 67.85.206.67;
  option subnet-mask 255.255.224.0;
  option routers 67.85.192.1;
  option dhcp-lease-time 302400;
  option dhcp-message-type 5;
  option domain-name-servers 167.206.245.68,167.206.245.4,167.206.3.241;
  option dhcp-server-identifier 167.206.245.68;
  option broadcast-address 255.255.255.255;
  renew 1 2006/6/19 08:45:11;
  rebind 2 2006/6/20 19:59:14;
  expire 3 2006/6/21 06:29:14;
}

Whatever, figured I'd share that tidbit of information, since I've heard people whine about it before.

Whoo, Google Earth for Linux

Finally found out the reason for lag on some of my VPN connections, yesterday. Fiber cuts kill.

On an unrelated note, I just realized my [encrypted] password list has grown to over 300 lines of text. Most of these passwords are apparently to random online stores, forums, blogs, and other places where I've had to enter a small amount of personal information. How do people deal with all of these?

I'm not one to re-use any passwords, but it's getting to the point where I'm going to either 1) abuse the forget password feature for every site, and not bother recording any passwords 2) start re-using passwords for inconsequential sites, like blogs and forums 3) avoiding the use of sites that require a username and password for access.

I suppose the real solution would be some sort of centralized ID system. OpenID... Microsoft Passport, why haven't these taken off? Thoughts?