If you're bored, or in a meeting, or something else:

emerge ccze
ssh somerouter|ccze -A

Happy beast day!

Or, happy IPv6 day!  I guess these prefixes will be going away, soon:

doodoo.opentransit.net>s ipv6 r | i 3FFE
B   3FFE:3::/48 [200/100]
B   3FFE:1F20::/32 [200/100]
B   3FFE:1F80::/32 [200/100]
B   3FFE:2000::/24 [200/100]
B   3FFE:2100::/24 [200/100]
B   3FFE:2807::/32 [200/3118]
B   3FFE:2900:305::/48 [200/100]
B   3FFE:2B00::/24 [200/100]
B   3FFE:2C00::/24 [200/100]
B   3FFE:400D::/32 [200/100]
B   3FFE:8010::/28 [200/100]
B   3FFE:80D0::/28 [200/100]
B   3FFE:8110::/28 [200/100]
B   3FFE:8200::/28 [200/100]
B   3FFE:8270::/28 [200/100]

Here's an odd one:

NFS access from my workstation has been sluggish, lately.  Large reads, such as file copies, are fine, but short reads, like pulling ID3 tags from a ton of MP3's, are terribly slow.  Directory listings, like find /mountpoint -print, hang up for seconds at a time.

I've tried all of the obvious:

• Checked speed/duplex settings on both client and server (both 1000/full/auto)
• Checked DMA settings on server
• Rebooted both client and server (windoze knee-jerk reaction)
• Installed Debian's nfs-user-server instead of nfs-kernel-server
• Switched to TCP NFS, and tried a pletora of other options
• Checked dmesg for *anything* out of the ordinary
• Verified MTU on both stations

... all to no avail.

The only thing that makes a difference is network usage on the client.  Yes, *any* kind of moderate utilization makes NFS speed up.  A simple "ssh anyotherhost cat /dev/zero" makes NFS run at normal speed.  The instant I ^C that process, it slows down to a crawl.

I'm confused!

FYI, server is a dual P3/800 running 2.6.15-1-686-smp (Debian), and client is a single Athlon64 3200+ running 2.6.15-gentoo-r7.  Hosts are connected via Gigabit Ethernet over copper.

On Saturday, I helped a friend move his stuff across town, and I think my muscles are still aching from it.  Stuff wasn't that heavy, but there was lots of it.  Took about five hours, with seven people working.  Not too bad, I suppose.

Saw the Da Vinci Code that evening, too.  I had finished the book about a week ago, and I think they could have done a better job turning it into a motion picture.  It was a little boring at times, where the book was anything but.

In other news, this past week I found out that I'll be attending SANSFIRE next month.  Looks like my kind of fun ...

Ok, silly stupid drivers need to start obeying some fundamental rules of the road, or toss their keys and ride the bus.  I've had to screech to a halt and blow my horn at least three times in the last two days for people trying to 1) run me off the highway 2) dart out in front of me as I'm making (protected) left turns 3) be generally oblivious to other vehicles (me) on the road.

To make things worse, I don't have to be moving or even in the car for bad drivers to irritate me.  I noticed a fresh gouge on the side of my Camry, the other day.. no doubt caused by some moron blabbing on their cellphone while clumsily opening their car door.

I'm guessing this is just general Carolinian ineptitude, and it's probably been around for awhile.  I Hate to say it, but while I've observed high tensions and anger on the roads back in NJ, but never this much obliviousness for rules and other drivers on the road.  Whatever.

Looks like ThePirateBay.org got seized, literally.  Anyone have some UUNET, AT&T, or Sprint MRTG graphs handy?  There's got to be at least a small decrease in bandwidth utilization.

Also, there are weird people in #RPI today.

Yay long weekend!  Unsurprisingly, I've been doing a lot of nothing.  Well, not literally nothing, just nothing consequencial.  Weather has been nice, and I've luckily been remembering to apply gobs of SPF 30 when outside...

As a side note, the topic of network neutrality has been recently brought up in the news.  What do you think?  Take the live vote. (/me points to the poll to the right of this text).

Ever upgrade your Linux kernel only to find that the two network cards in your NAT/router box swapped names?  Yeah, it's annoying, but there's a couple ways of fixing this on Debian-ish Linux distributions, that enable you to assign interface names via MAC addresses.

The Ubuntu Way

Ubuntu's Dapper release uses /etc/iftab along with udev by default.  You'll find the contents of your /etc/iftab populated upon install, which might look something like this:

# This file assigns persistent names to network interfaces.
# See iftab(5) for syntax.
eth0 mac 00:11:95:29:f1:0a arp 1

This is interpreted by udev by a rule found in /etc/udev/rules.d/25-iftab.rules.  Just edit that file, adding and removing interfaces and their corresponding MAC addresses, and you're good to go.

The Debian ifrename(8) Way

First, apt-get install ifrename.  This will add an /etc/init.d/ifrename script, which runs upon system initialization, reads /etc/iftab.  Just like Ubuntu, you can add interfaces and MAC addresses there.

The Debian udev(8) Way

If you want udev to assign the names on the fly, you don't necessarily need ifrename or an /etc/iftab file, just an addition of a udev rule.  Create the file /etc/udev/rules.d/net.local.rules, and populate it with the following:

KERNEL=="eth*", SYSFS{address}=="00:01:80:50:dc:f2", NAME="wired"
KERNEL=="eth*", SYSFS{address}=="00:0d:61:a1:20:15", NAME="wireless"

Change the MAC addresses and NAME's accordingly, and udev should take care of interface names for you.  Thanks to flamingcow for this information.