Inert Ramblings

Blog

  • Linux Process Accounting

    When installing a fresh copy of Fedora, make sure to select the psacct and sysstat packages and run chkconfig psacct on to enable process accounting. Always a good thing to have snapshots of activity to show which processes and users are sucking up the most system time and bandwidth.

    Process accounting was invaluable over the past few days while diagnosing problems with Tomcat4. One of our servers kept spiking up to a load average of well over 100, kernel panicing, and going unresponsive to pings. After various Web searches, we found that other people were experiencing similar problems with Tomcat4 where a server that had been operating normally for months (or years) suddenly started randomly crashing and burning.

    After seeing recommendations to upgrade to Jetty or Tomcat5, we chose Tomcat5 for simplicity of configuration and that solved our problem. Hopefully, it won’t happen again.

  • Trunkmonkey.com in the top 100,000!

    According to Alexa Traffic Rank, Trunkmonkey.com has shoved its way into the top 100,000 sites on the Web! We debuted on the list today at 71,071. Sure, Alexa’s demographic is Windows users running Alexa Toolbar, but whatever. It still makes me (and my Google AdSense account) feel all warm and fuzzy.

  • Aw, nuts!

    The neighbor’s $300 as-is POS Buick lost its brakes yesterday so, being the good Samaritan, I helped them out with replacing the brake lines and rotors, and supplied a few bottles of street grade brake fluid that have been collecting dust for a few years and did a full bleed for them. But that’s neither here nor there.

    When I went into the garage to grab my tools, I found it rather odd that a peanut was sitting atop my tool chest. A large Ziploc bag of peanuts was on the top shelf of the rack, but it was sealed. I opened up one of the drawers, and peanut shells were littered everywhere. I opened another drawer. Same thing. Another. Same. Except the last drawer I opened also had a little nest, lots of mouse poo, and scraps of fur. Joy.

    I still don’t know where the peanuts came from. The Ziploc was sealed tight, and there were no holes in the bag. And there was probably a handful or two worth of shelled and eaten peanuts scattered among my tools. I guess it will remain a mystery.

  • I need a Trailmonkey…

    I hopped on the mountain bike last night and did a leisurely 8 miles in Winnekenni Park around Kenoza Lake. It was the first time I’d actually ridden up to the castle and, instead of just bombing back down the access road, I took Castle Trail back down to Dudley Porter Trail. There was quite a bit of washout and a few fallen logs on Castle Trail which turned it into a mildly technical run.

    Instead of tackling the hill on Shore Trail, I dropped down to Plug Pond Trail which has quite a few rocks and exposed roots. I was caught out a few times because my tire pressures were too high, I lost traction on the larger uphill obstacles, and dropped my chain due to a poorly-adjusted front derailleur. Other than the few times my feet were forced to touch the ground, the trail was in great condition. Even the mudpit where the trail meets the lake was almost dry and easily navigable.

    Merrill Trail, however, was much different than I remember from last year. Extremely tight and twisty, the trail had become an extremely overgrown singletrack with lots of blind corners. Bushes and branches hung into the trail from all sides giving a tunnelvision effect. It was also extremely dry hardpack, which led to some very high speeds weaving between trees and bushes. I came up on the bridge so fast I didn’t even have time to hop onto it; I just dove into the (luckily) dry stream bed and popped out the other side. A few fallen trees right at helmet level made the last 1/4 mile quite interesting.

    Now that I know the conditions are dry, I’ll definitely load my pack up with my Digital Rebel and document the trail.

  • Where the heck did CafePress go?

    So CafePress has been down for the past 24 hours. Great. No idea if they just went under and disappeared, or if this is a temporary glitch. I found out this morning when I started getting e-mails from a few people asking me if Trunk Monkey gear was still available because the link to the store was dead. Anyone else have any additional info?

  • Homestar Runner RPG

    Paul Slocum is in the process of developing an RPG based on the characters of Homestar Runner! Get out your Atari 2600, burn yourself a ROM, and get stupid!

    Although the cast of characters is currently limited, I’m sure that more maps and options will be added later. Well, as many characters and maps that can be added to a miniscule Atari 2600 ROM.

  • Trading CPU for bandwidth?

    Which is more important? Massive amounts of bandwidth or lots of CPU? In my case bandwidth definitely wins since I’m passing between 5 GB and 25 GB per day. My dedicated server is an Intel Celeron 2.0 GHz box with 512 MB RAM running Fedora Core 1. My personal Web server sitting on my SDSL line is an AMD Athlon XP 2400+ with equivalent memory and the same OS.

    Although the Celeron is lightning quick when serving up static and light dynamic content, it’s extremely sluggish when rebuilding Movable Type pages. It’s perfectly adequate for a single Movable Type installation and a few authors, but I’d hate to see what would happen if I started hosting a lot of blogs for friends. Either way, the Athlon definitely blows away the Celeron, but I guess I’ll just have to live with the CPU downgrade.

  • Gmail

    If anyone has a Gmail invite, I don’t suppose you’d be so kind as to toss it my way? I’d like to see what all the fuss is about.

  • Hi-Touch 640 PS

    Hi-Touch 640 PSSince Kelly and I are going to start on-location shooting, we’re going to need a portable unit for proofs and sales. I just ordered a Hi-Touch 640 PS 4×6 photo printer along with a bunch of media refills. It’s a continuous tone 403 DPI (6400 DPI inkjet equivalent) dye sublimation printer that spits out prints in about 75 seconds.

    My Father picked one up last year, and he absolutely loves it! Although it didn’t support direct printing from Mac OS X when he let me play with it a while ago, there are supposedly beta drivers available now. Doesn’t matter anyway, since it prints directly from flash media. Also, with a $0.40/sheet consumable price, the price can’t be beat!

  • Ensim – I don’t get it.

    If you want a guaranteed way to hose your Web server, install Ensim. In a nutshell, Ensim is a control panel application that completely takes over your Web server and turns it into an appliance that any neophyte can manage themselves. The base operating system more or less gets pushed into the background, Ensim installs its own customized set of applications, and you never have to touch the command line again.

    That’s all well and good for someone who wants Web Server in a Box functionality, but no good for a geek who wants full control over their system. If you ever want Ensim to die a horrible death, simply install some vendor security patches. Everything breaks horribly.