June 2015 - 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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Replacement batteries for APC, CyberPower, etc.
by Hartmut W Sager 28 Jun '15

28 Jun '15

Yikes! My 3 dead APC UPS's (dead batteries, that is) have battery replacement costs of $120 each (plus exhorbitant shipping charge on heavy lead-acid). Is there anywhere in Winnipeg where I can get replacement batteries (original or compatible) for a reasonable price, and without individual shipping charge? Also, do any other brands, like CyberPower, have any better policies/arrangements for replacement batteries? Hartmut W Sager - Tel +1-204-339-8331, +1-204-515-1701

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Replacement batteries for APC, CyberPower, etc.
by jd 25 Jun '15

25 Jun '15

Hey, Hartmut & Bill & MUUG The Battery Man does carry a surprisingly (remarkably) thorough stock, and, for that, deserves our custom. Alexander Battery in Mississauga is no longer go-to, for odd batteries. However, if budget is constrained, consider: Prairie Battery 1280 Border St - 633-3500 PB's Brandon office has served me well, through a couple of marquee changes over almost 3 decades, for everything from ancient Israeli Tadiran 3.6v blocks for 486 & earlyP1 mbrds (at less than half wholesale, in the day), to the ubiquitous cr2032 (mbrd cmos) buttons (at ok price 5-per card), and, yes, onward to the gel-cel bricks, at comfortable pricing. These latter are likely the ones you seek, and they usually stock standard-industry rated and medical-app rated versions of the much-more-common gel-bricks. If indeed you are needing messy (liquid) lead-acid .. PB's still good. But I will bet you a cruller you may only need sealed gel cel units. It should go without saying, but some UPS battery layouts are worth a photo at EVERY step of dis-assembly, for the short&long jumpers, to NOTE POLARITY. Ask for a PB "trade account" and get [even] better pricing, if you expect to do ongoing (volume of) battery business. PB may not always have the APC (or other Mfg's) cross-reference "in their system" .. but JUST HAUL IN ANY SPECIMEN, and you will be directed to stock on-the-shelf, for at least one candidate to match. If you believe your model to be (spillable) lead-acid, CdnTire sells acid-tolerant trays for not-so-much$, to show PB the model. Due to friendly pricing, I've been able to quote 1yr or 2yr proactive switch-out contracts, at reasonable prices. Those (not necessarily expired, in this schedule) retired gel-cels, taken out, may be kept onsite (no acid-gas off the SEALED gel-types). Lead-acid should be taken off-site immediately, to appropriate disposal. Even though most common (<1500va) UPS replacement batteries are (non-spill caution) gel-types, surcharges may STILL apply for ANY shipping, so I would vote you just pick them up from the storefront on Border. No special tray needed for transporting gels. In any case, pack them forward in the trunk, for the inevitable gotta-brake in traffic. smiles, John D On 15-06-24 12:00 PM, roundtable-request(a)muug.mb.ca wrote: > Send Roundtable mailing list submissions to > roundtable(a)muug.mb.ca > > To subscribe or unsubscribe via the World Wide Web, visit > http://www.muug.mb.ca/mailman/listinfo/roundtable > or, via email, send a message with subject or body 'help' to > roundtable-request(a)muug.mb.ca > > You can reach the person managing the list at > roundtable-owner(a)muug.mb.ca > > When replying, please edit your Subject line so it is more specific > than "Re: Contents of Roundtable digest..." > > > Today's Topics: > > 1. Re: Replacement batteries for APC, CyberPower, etc. (Bill Reid) > > > _______________________________________________ > Roundtable mailing list > Roundtable(a)muug.mb.ca > http://www.muug.mb.ca/mailman/listinfo/roundtable

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Finally, a use for "sudo su -" !
by Adam Thompson 23 Jun '15

23 Jun '15

I finally found a legitimate use for "sudo su -", which is otherwise a redundant construct (juse use "sudo -i" instead). http://askubuntu.com/questions/161924/how-do-i-set-persistent-environment-v… Sudo cleans the environment, but fails to re-read /etc/environment. Su(8) does, when invoked with "-", read /etc/environment. AFAIK, this is only a problem on Ubuntu (and possibly Debian etc., I haven't checked). [image: Avant logo] *Adam Thompson* Senior Systems Administrator *voice:* 204.789.9596 x24 | *email:* athompson(a)avant.ca | *web:* avant.ca

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If you like losing sleep over storage arrays...
by Adam Thompson 18 Jun '15

18 Jun '15

Wow... the numbers in this paper are surprising, to me, at least. https://www.usenix.org/conference/fast-08/analysis-data-corruption-storage-… Note that this research was presented at FAST '08, seven (7) years ago. Anecdotal evidence suggests the situation hasn't gotten much better - BERs have stayed pretty steady over that time AFAIK, but the size of disks has gone up. That means the likelihood of problems on any given disk has gone *up*. Ouch. -- -Adam Thompson athompso(a)athompso.net

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Browser not receiving entire certificate chain?
by Wyatt Zacharias 13 Jun '15

13 Jun '15

So we recently upgraded our SSL certificate to SHA256 to meet Google's new security policies, and now we're getting very isolated incidents where browsers do not trust the new certificate because the don't trust the CA that issued them. It first started from on a couple of our internal workstations but we now have a customer with the same issue. From what I can see, it looks like the browser is not seeing the first certificate in the chain, which is the Verisign root certificate, and then it doesn't trust the rest of the chain. Here's what our correct chain looks like: [image: Inline image 1] And here's what I see on the clients with the error: [image: Inline image 2] Could it be an issue on the Apache end, or maybe an obscure issue with Internet explorer? It's odd that I don't even see the first certificate in the chain marked as invalid, I just don't see a certificate at all. If anyone cares to give it try for themselves, https://www.mb.bluecross.ca let me know if you get an error. -- Wyatt Zacharias

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Screen
by Kevin McGregor 12 Jun '15

12 Jun '15

I've been using 'screen' (yay!). Mostly fine, getting used to it. But then this happened: # screen -r There are screens on: 20900.pts-13.server (Dead ???) 29291.pts-1.server (Dead ???) Remove dead screens with 'screen -wipe'. There is no screen to be resumed. What sort of things cause this? I'm guessing it means both screen sessions are completely toast, and the list above is just due to some leftover lock files or something.

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RoundTable URL on MUUG Website
by Hartmut W Sager 12 Jun '15

12 Jun '15

Say, what is the URL for the whole RoundTable messagebase on the MUUG Website? The MUUG main page doesn't seem to have a link to it. Hartmut W Sager - Tel +1-204-339-8331, +1-204-515-1701

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leasing storage on-site
by Grigory Shamov 11 Jun '15

11 Jun '15

Hi All, Do you know if it is possible to short-term lease storage on-site, in Winnipeg? Like having someone to bring in an appliance (about 100TB capacity) with a decent connection (10GigE at least) to attach directly to a system, for a short time. -- Grigory Shamov Westgrid/ComputeCanada Site Lead University of Manitoba E2-588 EITC Building, (204) 474-9625

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