- Roundtable - muug.ca

Re: [RndTbl] Shaw & dhclient
by Sean Cody 27 Nov '06

27 Nov '06

> From: Trevor Cordes <trevor(a)tecnopolis.ca> > Date: November 27, 2006 12:43:54 PM CST (CA) > To: roundtable(a)muug.mb.ca > Subject: [RndTbl] Shaw & dhclient > > For a few weeks I've been seeing strange behaviour with dhclient/ > dhcp and > Shaw. Wondering if anyone else has seen this: > > Once a week or so, usually on Sun or Mon, my FC5 box firewall/ > router will > lose its connection to Shaw. ifconfing will show eth0 up with an IP > address, but no traffic will come in or out. Normally, that's a > "Shaw is > down" symptom. But if I ifdown eth0; ifup eth0, then instantly > everything > is ok again. And my IP address stays the same. > > It's almost like dhclient isn't keeping Shaw's DHCP server happy and > they're cutting me off until I say, "hey, I'm still here" with a ifup > kick. I've been seeing this for MONTHS. Tried calling support a few times on this with only response of 'that's weird'. There was/is signal issues to my apartment complex but that has nothing to do with this issue. There are other people in my office with the exact same issue to which the only non-annoying fix was to renew the DHCP lease. To me it looks like the DHCP lease expires before the expiry date and the timing is random though proportional to use. Mild use, the link drops once every few hours. Heavy use in an interval and it can drop every 5 - 15 minutes. Either a heartbeat isn't working or the DHCP server is not expiring leases properly. I know (well as much as someone outside the black box can know) it is DHCP as once you renew the leases, TCP sessions restore without hang up or close states (ie. ssh sessions, ftp transfers). I see no other corruption other than the recently 'standard' latency being inversely proportional to upstream throughput. Since shaw is using 'semi-static' ip leasing this seems the simplest and most logical explanation. You can override in /etc/dhclient.conf but I have no clue if that will work. interface sis0 { send dhcp-lease-time 300; } What has annoyed me the least was backgrounding the following: #!/bin/sh while true; do dhclient sis0; sleep 300; done You shouldn't have to do either but it has 'fixed' the issue for me. -- Sean P.S. My kingdom for a decent low latency 5Mb full-duplex line at home without the telco line premiums.

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RBuilder
by John Lange 27 Nov '06

27 Nov '06

Someone with some time on their hands might be interested in playing with this: http://www.rpath.com/rbuilder/ Perhaps it could even be the subject of a MUUG meeting demo? My understanding is the tool lets you build your own custom Linux distro (called a project) which you can then distribute as a complete appliance or whatever you like. If my assumptions are correct then it seems like a really cool idea. I stumbled on it because it appears to be what Digium is using to build their new Asterisk appliance. I didn't have time to look into it beyond that. John

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Hiring
by Shawn Wallbridge 24 Nov '06

24 Nov '06

Frantic is hiring people for both Systems and Helpdesk type jobs. If anyone is interested or knows someone that is, please have them send their resume to shawn(a)franticfilms.com We run Windows on the desktop (with the odd Mac) and FreeBSD/OpenBSD/ Solaris/Linux on the back-end. thanks shawn

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Network Neutrality
by Bill Reid 23 Nov '06

23 Nov '06

A very good video on Network Neutrality: http://isen.com/blog/archives/2006_11_01_archive.html

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MYSQL DB uploaded via PHP
by Montana Quiring 22 Nov '06

22 Nov '06

Hello, My wife has been working on a Drupal website offline using MAMP. I would like to upload the website and import the MYSQL database. Uploading the data is no biggie but the godaddy phpmyadmin interface does not support importing (only supports exporting) mysql files. I've googled a bit but can't find a decent PHP tool that will let me upload an exported MYSQL DB file to a MYSQL server. Any suggestions or links to some code? (and before someone says it, yes godaddy is not perfect) ;)

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RE: Roundtable Digest, Vol 23, Issue 14
by Kevin D Scott 21 Nov '06

21 Nov '06

My upload speed being restricted so much is what annoys me the most from internet providers. Fiber lines are symmetric, so why aren't our internet connections? What is Shaw/MTS doing with all of the un-allotted upload speeds? MTS I kind of understand, their DSL modems, max out at 8Mbps down, 800Kbps up, Shaw's max out at 38Mbps down, 30Mbps up. And yes, I know the newest modems MTS is giving out are ADSL2, so they're faster... Their new "Nitro" plan, 25Mbps down, but the same speed upload as the Extreme. Anybody thinking of it, should consider 2 Extreme account instead, a little cheaper, combined you would get 2Mbps and 4 IP addresses, and pretty close to the same download speed... A dual-wan router would divide your traffic evenly, and a download manager would enable full speed... for anybody considering it... Does anybody know what the Internet providers are 'saving' this leftover bandwidth for? Thanks for your time, Kevin

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Grey-listing in effect on MUUG server
by gedetil＠cs.umanitoba.ca 21 Nov '06

21 Nov '06

Howdy folks! I mentioned this at Tuesday's meeting, but for the benefit of those of you who weren't there, but are active on the MUUG roundtable mailing list, I thought I should repeat it here. As of Tuesday afternoon (November 14th), I've installed a package called milter-greylist (http://hcpnet.free.fr/milter-greylist/) on the MUUG server, to help in our ongoing battle against spam. So far, it's been remarkably effective (in combination with SpamAssassin and spamass-milter, which had been previously installed) at reducing our incoming spam. Since we've configured it to greylist all external addresses by default, this may impact some of you when you post to the list via e-mail. The first time it comes across the combination of your (or your ISP's) SMTP server IP address, your return e-mail address, and the destination e-mail address, it will temporarily reject the message, asking the SMTP server to retry again after some time (I've set that delay to 14 minutes). After that, that combination stays cached in the greylist for some amount of time (which is set by default to 5 days), during which time the same combination of addresses will be accepted without delay. The net result of this is that you may occasionally see a delay between when you send e-mail to the list and when it actually gets received, especially if you post infrequently. Rest assured, however, that your message should get through without too much extra delay. If for some reason you find yourself unable to send at all, you can contact me at me e-mail address below (and not the muug.mb.ca address). We're also running the same milter-greylist software on that server, but with a less aggressive policy, which does default white-listing in most cases. Preferably, contact me from exactly the same address you try to use for posting to the mailing list, so I can check e-mail headers to determine SMTP server address information, etc. I will then, if necessary, add the appropriate whitelist override for your address on the MUUG server. For those of you running your own sendmail servers on the Internet, I highly recommend milter-greylist. It's very small, doesn't use up much CPU or memory (much, much less than SpamAssassin in both cases), and seems to work very well. (Make sure you put it first in your InputMailFilters list, so the other milters don't have to do as much work.) If you're not running sendmail, but some other SMTP server, you should look for a similar grey-listing solution for your mail server. -- Gilbert E. Detillieux E-mail: <gedetil(a)cs.umanitoba.ca> Dept. of Computer Science Web: http://www.cs.umanitoba.ca/~gedetil/ University of Manitoba Phone: (204)474-8161 Winnipeg MB CANADA R3T 2N2 Fax: (204)474-7609

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Anyone else getting a kernel panic in the new Ubuntu?
by Mike Pfaiffer 20 Nov '06

20 Nov '06

It panics when I try to boot the CD. The old one wasn't a problem although two versions earlier it did the same thing. Same thing happens on a second machine (Proliant 1500). Later Mike

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Blocklist info (CBL)
by Tim Lavoie 19 Nov '06

19 Nov '06

I realize we've pretty much beaten the topic into submission, but thought that some info on a specific list might be a good example of reasonable policies. The CBL (Composite Block List) at http://cbl.abuseat.org/ is completely automated, and bases its list on addresses which have tried to send spam, malware, worms and so on to servers they monitor. - Listings have a time limit, so will age off automatically. - Only single IPs are listed, not ranges. - While they won't tell you the specific reason for listing (see exception below), there is a no-questions-asked de-listing available. If still infected though, you will be re-listed. - (quoting) The CBL operates in an entirely automated way designed to avoid listings of spamtrap hits due to bounces of forged spam, virus bounces, and "real" mail servers emitting the occasional spam. It tries very hard to avoid listing legitimate mail sources. It does not attempt to list every possible spam source. This list is a subset of the Spamhaus XBL list, and happens to be what catches most of the spam sent my way. I've checked quite a few of the IPs blocked on their web form, and it does happen to mention that blockage was due to a specific worm/virus infection. Cheers, Tim -- "Besides a mathematical inclination, an exceptionally good mastery of one's native tongue is the most vital asset of a competent programmer." - E. J. Dijkstra

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Query your CRT Monitor EDID using ddc-control - but not yer LCD
by John D 19 Nov '06

19 Nov '06

Hello Further to a question at MUUG Nov. RoundTable, about the nature of the data exchanged when we (or xorgconfig does a) "probe for type of monitor" VESA-compliant video cards (post'94) have a function to ask an attached monitor its EDID info. This handy VESA function is nicely explained by: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extended_display_identification_data Unfortunately, modern flat displays and TVs are not well represented under EDID paradigms. EDID data for a monitor is programmed into a serial (usu.i2c friendly) PROM at manufacture. This self-descriptor keeps enough data to be capable of being "verbose" when queried; e.g: Mfg ID, Prod ID, SerNum, WkMfg, YrMfg, HSync, VSync, Resolution (EDID "thinks" this geometry must be multiple-of-8) However, the recent Linux version of _ddc-control_ includes a separate XML-formatted db, which has been updated as recently as 2006-10. Haven't read inside latest _ddc-control_: http://sourceforge.net/project/showfiles.php?group_id=117933 -but I suspect its useage is de-volving (at least for LCD and 'wide' displays) to a terse query from monitor, getting just the Maker, Model, and then using those to do a lookup in the XML-db. Another Linux tool _read-edid_ also reads info from monitor: http://freshmeat.net/projects/read-edid/ Assembler and x86 machine language fans will enjoy this 2003-04 kernel snippet- http://lwn.net/Articles/27597/ smiles, John D

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