Marc's Public Blog - Linux Hacking


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This page has a few of my blog entries about linux, but my main linux page is here
Picture of Linus

Here is a list of older linux event reports I made before my blog was started, then the rest are below
1996/11/18-21:Linux Pavillion Comdex Fall 1996 (photos only). I've been going since then to help at the linux pavillion.
1997/11/18-21: Linux Pavillion Comdex Fall 1997 (photos only)
1998/05/28-30: Linuxexpo 1998 (photos only)
1998/11/16-20: Linux Pavillion Comdex Fall 1998 (full report)
1998/11/11: Silicon Valley Tea Party (report with pictures)
1999/02/15: Windows Refund Day (report with pictures)
1999/03/20: SVLUG KTEH night (photos only)
1999/03/01-04: LinuxWorld Expo Winter 99 (complete report with many pictures)
1999/03/31: Mozilla Party one year anniversary (photos only)
1999/05/18-22: Linuxexpo 1999 (complete report with many pictures)
1999/06/07: June 99 Balug meeting with Linus
1999/08/09-12: LinuxWorld Expo Summer 99 (complete report with many pictures)
1999/11/15-19: Linux Business Show at Comdex Fall 1999 (full report with pictures)
2000/08/14-17: LinuxWorld Expo Summer 2000 (complete report with many pictures)
2001/01/17-20: Linux.conf.au/LCA 2001 (complete report with pictures)
2001/07/25-28: OLS 2001 (photos only)
2001/08/25: Linux 10th Anniversary (report with pictures)
2001/09/27-30: LinuxWorld Expo Summer 2001 report with pictures)
2001/11/05-10: ALS 2001 (photos only)
2002/06/26-29: OLS 2002 (photos only)
2003/01/20-25: LCA 2003 (photos only)
2003/07/23-26: OLS 2003 (photos only)
2004/01/12-17: LCA 2004 (photos only)
2004/07/21-24: OLS 2004 (photos only)
2005/04/18-23: LCA 2005 (photos only)
2006/01/24-28: LCA 2006 (photos only)
2007/01/17-21: LCA 2007 (photos only)

Here is a list of all the talks I've given:

And below are my blog posts:

Table of Content for linux:

More pages: July 2002 February 2004 March 2004 November 2004 April 2005 August 2005 January 2006 July 2006 August 2007 November 2007 January 2008 October 2008 November 2008 December 2008 January 2009 May 2009 July 2009 August 2009 September 2009 November 2009 December 2009 January 2010 March 2010 April 2010 June 2010 August 2010 October 2010 January 2011 July 2011 August 2011 December 2011 January 2012 March 2012 May 2012 August 2012 December 2012 January 2013 March 2013 May 2013 September 2013 November 2013 January 2014 March 2014 April 2014 May 2014 October 2014 January 2015 March 2015 May 2015 January 2016 February 2016 June 2016 July 2016 August 2016 October 2016 January 2017 September 2017 January 2018 March 2018 December 2018 January 2019 January 2020 May 2020 January 2021 September 2021 March 2023 April 2023 December 2023 June 2024



2009/07/19 Upgraded to Jaunty: Network Manager Still Sucks Balls, 2.6.30.1 not that stable, and Comcast Business Exceeding Expectations
π 2009-07-19 01:01 in Linux
I had been running a half upgraded Jaunty for a while now and it was time to upgrade to full Jaunty to 2.6.30.1 (including the recent security fix).

The upgrade was relatively eventless after I realized that pulseaudio had broken my sound and some X server problem broke mythfrontend (alias mythfrontend='XLIB_SKIP_ARGB_VISUALS="1" \mythfrontend made it all better).

And then, I figured I'd try network manager again, just to be fair.
Well, after close to an hour, I could not get it to manage any of my interfaces, even after commenting them out in /etc/network/interfaces and playing with its sparse badly documented config files.
I searched a net for a howto or something that would explain how to beat that piece of shit into submission, but it would not manage either my wired or wireless interfaces, and output bullshit messages in syslog like
NetworkManager: <info> Unmanaged Device found; state CONNECTED forced. (see http://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/191889)

Its /usr/share/doc still had no useful documentation, so I got fed up quickly and just removed the piece of crap, and re-installed wicd which was up and running 20mn later.

Network Manager probably only works for wipe-reinstalls, which I'm not about to do, and is otherwise the most unintuitive, badly documented, and still buggy piece of software I've had the displeasure of working with. Seriously, how many years will it be before it doesn't suck balls for people who try to upgrade and may have their own network configuration already?

In other news, I upgraded both my laptop and server magic to 2.6.30.1, but it proved to be slightly unstable on my laptop and majorly unstable on my server, which forced me to drive to the colo twice to power cycle it (BUG spinlock lockup on CPU#1 nicely prevents serial console sysrq), and in the end I just drove the server home in the weekend to make sure it was still stable on the old kernel (it was), and then racked it back 2 days later. So far, so good, so the good news is that my hardware is likely still good and that the problem is triggered by 2.6.30.1 (vs 2.6.27.8) and/or some changed config options.

Another small but interesting fact: I got comcast business to actually do reverse DNS delegation for my block of static IPs from them. I did have to walk the guy through replacing the PTR records with CNAMEs pointing to my name server, but in the end, it was done 10mn later on a sunday morning at 07:00. Honestly, I'm impressed.


More pages: July 2002 February 2004 March 2004 November 2004 April 2005 August 2005 January 2006 July 2006 August 2007 November 2007 January 2008 October 2008 November 2008 December 2008 January 2009 May 2009 July 2009 August 2009 September 2009 November 2009 December 2009 January 2010 March 2010 April 2010 June 2010 August 2010 October 2010 January 2011 July 2011 August 2011 December 2011 January 2012 March 2012 May 2012 August 2012 December 2012 January 2013 March 2013 May 2013 September 2013 November 2013 January 2014 March 2014 April 2014 May 2014 October 2014 January 2015 March 2015 May 2015 January 2016 February 2016 June 2016 July 2016 August 2016 October 2016 January 2017 September 2017 January 2018 March 2018 December 2018 January 2019 January 2020 May 2020 January 2021 September 2021 March 2023 April 2023 December 2023 June 2024

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