December 2014 - Roundtable

IBM "clicky" keyboards
by Adam Thompson 13 Oct '16

13 Oct '16

Enough people have wondered/asked/complained to me about this that I'm posting this now as a public service. IBM Model "M" keyboards are still available, *NEW*, today. They are expensive, but they are the original design that you can use as a melee weapon. The catch is that they don't say "IBM" or even "Lexmark" on them. They are available for purchase from the manufacturer, Unicomp, who can be found online at http://www.pckeyboard.com/. You can also find some vintage NIB units from time to time at http://www.clickykeyboards.com/. There are also a number of other manufacturers now making similar, but not quite as good, keyboards. - CVT Inc., the maker of the Avant Stellar (I own two of them), which is the direct descendant of the Northgate Omnikey, seems to have restructured and no trace of their keyboard manufacturing operation can be found online. However, Northgate keyboards are still available new-in-box from (this is a horrible site, beware) http://www.northgate-keyboard-repair.com/. - The Happy Hacking keyboard (now owned by Fujitsu, apparently) is equally comforting to some people despite having a totally different feel. They, and many others, can be had from http://www.elitekeyboards.com/ - Das Keyboard - Anything using Cherry MX Green, Blue, or White keyswitches. The "green" switches apparently are the closest anyone's come yet to emulating the IBM/Lexmark/Unicomp switches... and they can be had in MUCH cheaper keyboards, like the Rosewill RK-9000 (http://www.newegg.ca/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16823201040 and http://techreport.com/review/23405/rosewill-rk-9000-series-mechanical-ke yboards-reviewed). - And there are an increasing number (yes, again, after the big die-off ca. 2009) of speciality manufacturers of "ergonomic" keyboards that are making clicky keyswitches available as an option. One of the better ones is a tiny shop in Ontario, but I can't find the name right now. References: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Model_M_keyboard http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unicomp http://deskthority.net/wiki/Cherry_MX -Adam Thompson athompso(a)athompso.net

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SpamAssassin false positives on DATE_IN_FUTURE_96_Q?
by Gilbert E. Detillieux 23 Feb '16

23 Feb '16

I mentioned this problem at the last round-table session, but didn't get a solution, so I thought I'd post it here, just in case anyone has any suggestions to offer. I'm still seeing a whole bunch of false positives in SpamAssassin, since an update was installed in mid-September on a CentOS 5.7 system, for a rule called DATE_IN_FUTURE_96_Q, which is only supposed to be triggered when the "Date:" header has a date that is 4 days to 4 month ahead of the date in the "Received" header that has the _smallest_ difference in date. Here are the headers from the latest e-mail I've received with this false-positive. (I've stripped out irrelevant headers, for the sake of clarity and simplicity.) From topfivestories(a)messagent.itworldcanada.com Mon Nov 14 07:50:13 2011 Received: from mail.messagent.itworldcanada.com (mail.messagent.itworldcanada.com [207.112.10.80]) by palladium.cs.umanitoba.ca (8.13.8/8.13.8) with SMTP id pAEDoAxV028594 for <gedetil(a)cs.umanitoba.ca>; Mon, 14 Nov 2011 07:50:12 -0600 Date: Mon, 14 Nov 2011 08:50:13 -0500 X-Spam-Status: No, score=-0.3 required=5.0 tests=BAYES_00,DATE_IN_FUTURE_96_Q, HTML_MESSAGE,RP_MATCHES_RCVD autolearn=no version=3.3.1 X-Spam-Checker-Version: SpamAssassin 3.3.1 (2010-03-16) on palladium.cs.umanitoba.ca Note that I'm calling spamd via the spamass-milter on a system running sendmail. Note also, that in the above example, the only "Received" header was the one generated by my own server. (I've had other false positives, however, with multiple "Received" headers, all of which were within seconds of the time in the "Date" header.) Any ideas? -- Gilbert E. Detillieux E-mail: <gedetil(a)muug.mb.ca> Manitoba UNIX User Group Web: http://www.muug.mb.ca/ PO Box 130 St-Boniface Phone: (204)474-8161 Winnipeg MB CANADA R2H 3B4 Fax: (204)474-7609

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big scanner
by Trevor Cordes 27 May '15

27 May '15

Does anyone have big (like tabloid or bigger) scanner they want to sell? Even an ancient SCSI or parallel one might be ok. I just want *big*. Do they even make scanners bigger than legal or tabloid?

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Merry Christmas
by Bill Reid 25 Dec '14

25 Dec '14

Not seen this before. Cute traceroute xmas.futile.net

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fire alarms
by Trevor Cordes 17 Dec '14

17 Dec '14

OK, completely 100% off-topic, not even remotely unix related. But where else can I get the ear of a bunch of Winnipeggers? Where the @#%^@ do I recycle fire alarms? E-waste won't take it because it contains hazardous material. Nothing on the City of Winnipeg site mentions fire alarms, even in their search function. Google doesn't know. The normal liquid-hazardous-waste place doesn't list them as acceptable. So what does one do with these things that contain radioactive material? Next step: garbage, as I'm sure 99.9% of Winnipeggers do.

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Help with pv?
by Kevin McGregor 16 Dec '14

16 Dec '14

I have two identical Unix servers (Oracle T5-2, Solaris 11.2) and I want to do some testing of the network redundancy/failover I've configured (which I hope I've done right). Each server has four network ports. Two ports on server 1 and two ports on server 2 are connected to switch 1. Two ports on server 1 and two ports on server 2 are connected to switch 2. I want to do something like this: root@srv1:~# pv </dev/zero | ssh root@srv2 'cat >/dev/null' and get a running throughput rate while I unplug and replug cables, BUT I'd like to have four simultaneous streams and four running totals. I don't know how to do this. I'd rather not have four separate sessions open to see this. I just want to have one session that looks like 448MB 0:00:09 [ 112MB/s] [ <=> ] 448MB 0:00:09 [ 112MB/s] [ <=> ] 448MB 0:00:09 [ 112MB/s] [ <=> ] 448MB 0:00:09 [ 112MB/s] [ <=> ] Or similar. Any suggestions?

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Another Solaris configuration issue - xterm
by Kevin McGregor 16 Dec '14

16 Dec '14

I'm using Solaris 11.2 on a T5-2 SPARC server, and when I log in on the console (via ILOM, using PuTTY), the terminal type gets set to "sun", which is really annoying. I've tried svccfg -s system/console-login setprop ttymon/terminal_type=xterm (followed by a reboot) and editing the /etc/profile line from TERM=sun to TERM=xterm and still the TERM variable is "sun" when I log in. What else can I try?

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tock.umanitoba.ca NTP over IPv6 broken?
by Theodore Baschak 15 Dec '14

15 Dec '14

Hi Guys: Wondering if tock.umanitoba.ca works for anyone via IPv6? I'm able to ping the system, but NTP gets stuck in INIT state. (3rd line, they don't have revdns setup either for IPv6 I guess) theodore@dev:~$ ntpq -p; ping -c4 tock.umanitoba.ca; ping6 -c4 tock.umanitoba.ca remote refid st t when poll reach delay offset jitter ============================================================================== *time1.mbix.ca .PCS0. 1 u 7 128 377 1.205 0.026 0.201 -2620:10a:800f:: .PPS. 1 u 68 128 377 26.991 0.129 11.834 2620:0:bd0:4001 .INIT. 16 u - 1024 0 0.000 0.000 0.000 +zero.gotroot.ca 30.114.5.31 2 u 73 128 377 26.632 0.023 0.118 +ntp3.torix.ca .PPS. 1 u 1 128 377 24.842 -0.128 11.029 PING tock.umanitoba.ca (192.139.114.77) 56(84) bytes of data. 64 bytes from tock.umanitoba.ca (192.139.114.77): icmp_req=1 ttl=56 time=2.25 ms 64 bytes from tock.umanitoba.ca (192.139.114.77): icmp_req=2 ttl=56 time=1.97 ms 64 bytes from tock.umanitoba.ca (192.139.114.77): icmp_req=3 ttl=56 time=2.22 ms 64 bytes from tock.umanitoba.ca (192.139.114.77): icmp_req=4 ttl=56 time=2.37 ms --- tock.umanitoba.ca ping statistics --- 4 packets transmitted, 4 received, 0% packet loss, time 3004ms rtt min/avg/max/mdev = 1.975/2.207/2.373/0.152 ms PING tock.umanitoba.ca(2620:0:bd0:4001::77) 56 data bytes 64 bytes from 2620:0:bd0:4001::77: icmp_seq=1 ttl=56 time=32.0 ms 64 bytes from 2620:0:bd0:4001::77: icmp_seq=2 ttl=56 time=32.7 ms 64 bytes from 2620:0:bd0:4001::77: icmp_seq=3 ttl=56 time=31.7 ms 64 bytes from 2620:0:bd0:4001::77: icmp_seq=4 ttl=56 time=31.7 ms --- tock.umanitoba.ca ping statistics --- 4 packets transmitted, 4 received, 0% packet loss, time 3004ms rtt min/avg/max/mdev = 31.718/32.067/32.738/0.448 ms -- Theo Baschak BOFH excuse #133: It's not plugged in.

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Fix for yum "Error: database disk image is malformed"
by Gilbert E. Detillieux 11 Dec '14

11 Dec '14

On one of my RHEL 6 compatible systems, I ran out of space on /var, and after clearing space, yum kept throwing the above error message. After doing a Google search on the error, various suggestions were tried... 1. "yum clean all" (and variations on that to clear certain parts of the cache) didn't fix the problem. 2. "yum history new" also didn't help. 3. "rpm --rebuilddb" also didn't help. Finally, after finding this posting... http://linux.upubuntu.com/2012/04/yum-error-database-disk-image-is.html ... and looking at the bottom of the comment section, I found this command... 4. "yum makecache" did the trick! Here I thought that running a "yum update" after "yum clean dbcache" or "yum clean all" would rebuild everything it needed, but apparently not. So, it's good to know that "yum makecache" will do a more thorough rebuild of the metadata. Hope this is useful to any of you running yum/rpm-based distros! -- Gilbert E. Detillieux E-mail: <gedetil(a)muug.mb.ca> Manitoba UNIX User Group Web: http://www.muug.mb.ca/ PO Box 130 St-Boniface Phone: (204)474-8161 Winnipeg MB CANADA R2H 3B4 Fax: (204)474-7609

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MUUG Meeting, Dec 9, 7:30pm -- Real-Time Mapping with *ouchDB
by Gilbert E. Detillieux 02 Dec '14

02 Dec '14

The Manitoba UNIX User Group (MUUG) will be holding its next monthly meeting on Tuesday, November 18. The meeting topic for this month is as follows: Mingling and Pot Luck As 2014 draws to a close, MUUG has decided to continue our new tradition of turning the December meeting into more of a social event. This will be a totally pot-luck event. Cookies and pop will be provided by MUUG, but members are encouraged to bring their own food to sample and share. Feel free to bring your own drink as well if you want something particular - just remember that we don't have a liquor license! Real-Time Mapping with *ouchDB (CouchDB/PouchDB) After the mingling and munching, Robert Keizer will be presenting how he set up a very simple real-time map using an Android phone and some JavaScript. The talk will focus on separating the data layers and some of the nice features in *ouchDB. Winnipeg Harvest Food Drive Also as in previous years, we are combining our pot luck with a food drive for Winnipeg Harvest. We would love it if each member would bring at least 1 non-perishable food item for donation to the food bank! Winnipeg Harvest has apparently been running a shortfall all year, and needs your donations, particularly at this time of year! They have information about what they're looking for on their website: http://winnipegharvest.org/donate-food/ The group holds its general meetings at 7:30pm on the second Tuesday of every month from September to June. (There are no meetings in July and August.) Meetings are open to the general public; you don't have to be a MUUG member to attend. ***************************************************************** Please note our *NEW* meeting location for this month: Room 1L08, Lockhart Hall, University of Winnipeg, entrance on Ellice Ave. between Spence St. and Balmoral St. Parking is available on the surrounding streets and in the lots on nearby streets. Look for signage once you're at the building, or ask a security guard. ***************************************************************** For more information about MUUG, and its monthly meetings, check out their Web server: http://www.muug.mb.ca/ Help us promote this month's meeting, by putting this poster up on your workplace bulletin board or other suitable public message board: http://www.muug.mb.ca/meetings/MUUGmeeting.pdf -- Gilbert E. Detillieux E-mail: <gedetil(a)muug.mb.ca> Manitoba UNIX User Group Web: http://www.muug.mb.ca/ PO Box 130 St-Boniface Phone: (204)474-8161 Winnipeg MB CANADA R2H 3B4 Fax: (204)474-7609

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