Geeky Stuff

I never expected my little Slashdot submission to make front page. I was also surprised by how many people thought my submission was a review, when it was just a quick mention of a Sony gadget few have heard of before that runs Linux. But it happened.

Slashdotted!

Interestingly enough, the server held up pretty well. Some friends said it went down for a few seconds at a time with "Too many connections" SQL errors, but the fact that the little box survived is impressive.

I got lots of flames directed at me about how much my submission sucks. Oh well, you can't please everyone. }:)

So today, a coworker brought in a Sony NSP-1. I had never heard of this gadget before; it is supposedly a signage controller, which is supposed to drive a projector or plasma display to display changing signs, videos, and so on. It's tiny; about the size of a DSS satellite receiver, and... it's based on Red Hat Linux!

Trouble is, nobody had any idea what the passwords were to log into its web interface. I also didn't know what the root password was, so I couldn't log into it at first. There was also no way to access the boot loader so I could tell LILO or GRUB to boot into single user mode. The only removeable media was a PCMCIA slot, and there's no way to boot off those.

Arrgh. After some fiddling with some DIP-switches on the back, though, I found that it has a standard PC BIOS! It can also boot from USB! So we grabbed an external USB CD-ROM drive, put in a Knoppix CD, and booted it up.

I promptly mounted the various partitions to find out where the heck the /etc/passwd file was. Whoever partitioned this thing must really enjoy themselves in fdisk, as there were ten partitions, and the actual root was the third! I finally located it, and nulled the password. One more reboot, and I was in! I found the .htaccess that controls the web interface (it's all open-source! I love it!) and reset the passwords.

Overall, a fun hack. Now I want one of these NSP-1s for myself, as they look like they make good video jukeboxes, but the price is a bit disconcerting: $2 grand! ARRGH!

(I disabled comments on this post because it's receiving a lot of spam comments. I'm not sure why. -Z 9/27/06)

You should always have these items in your laptop bag. They are infinitely useful when you need them, and not very expensive:

• CAT5 RJ45 Ethernet cable (straight through)
• CAT5 RJ45 Ethernet cable (crossover)
• RJ11 phone cable
• Headphones
• Cable with a headphone plug on one end, and stereo RCA jacks on the other
• Pair of RCA female-female adapters (to join stereo RCA cables together)
• S-video to composite video adapter
• Long (12 foot or more) S-video cable and composite cable
• DVI to VGA adapter
• PCMCIA to CF adapter
• Extension cord for power
• Install CD(s) for your favorite OS
• Knoppix CD
• Small screwdriver set
• USB card reader

With this list of supplies, you will never, ever have any trouble tackling any network, power, audio, or video situation you may run across in your geeky travels. Of course, if you have any other suggestions, serious or amusing, feel free to make them. }:)

So I was looking at some old logs, and was reminded of an (in)famous MUF (TinyMUCK programming language) programmer named Mystique.

Now, TinyMUCK programming is something that is done completely for free, without any form of payment. This is basically code that is used to perform various simple and complex functions on TinyMUCK servers, like FurryMUCK.

You'd think that since all this code is written for free, that the authors would have no problem letting anyone use it, like GPL code. Not Mystique, though!

Mystique was a control-freak in the extreme. One time I ported a program of hers onto FluffMUCK, before she added the "Licensing Agreement" (more later), and she somehow found out about it. I practically got torn a new one by her barrage of "you are violating my intellectual property! You a pirate! Thief!"

In retrospect, I probably should have told her to f**k off, booted her from FluffMUCK, and banned her IP from the game. But I didn't, and @chowned the code to her. Later on she vanished without a trace, leaving her code behind. One of her programs is still on the MUCK, but mostly unused.

Anyway, here is the insane license agreement she attached to all her code. I don't know how someone can get this paranoid and possesive about free software; she really should apply for a job at Microsoft:

Hereafter:

1. Mystique will be referred to as the Author.
2. Control is ownership of said item, able to change, manipulate, replace
or remove without exterior assistance.
3. Authorities are those who maintain, operate and govern the usage of
the muck within and outside of the virtual environment. This includes
the title Wizard.

Terms of Usage:

1. Use of this program is by permission of the Author ONLY.
2. NO editing or cross-muck transfers [known as porting] of this program are
allowed. Those who do so, are committing the act of Piracy, punishable
under local laws.
3. The Author must be of verifiable, connectable presence and in Control of
this program during ALL usage. If this program is removed from the
Author's Control, all of it's operation WILL be terminated immediately.
4. NO muck shall operate this program without the consent of the Author.
Doing so, circumvents all muck policies, AUP or legislation [on any media]
regarding restriction of legal obligations and places all muck Authorities
in the act of Theft, punishable by local laws.
5. This program does NOT apply to any policies which require replacements
found prior to shutdown. If this program is to be replaced, it remains
in Control OF the Author, until a replacement IS found. The Author
retains the right to shutdown this program at any time.
6. Muck Authorities must adhere to all of the above policies or the Author
maintains the rights to remove this program at any time, without warning.
7. The Author requires that the characters Slipstream or Lynx [or variants
there of], are *NOT* of official embodiment [known as Wizard or
Authorities]. If said become such, this program's operation will be
TERMINATED and removed, until such time when they are not.
8. The Author retains the right to maintain, change or replace this program
at any time without restrictions.

You know you're an internet oldbie/veteran if:

• ...you remember when "High speed dialup" actually was
• ...you had a Netcom FTP account
• ...you've used Trumpet Winsock
• ...you thought Pointcast was kind of neat
• ...you've ever read netnews on a VT100 terminal
• .....and you enjoyed it since it was so much faster than the dialups
• ...you remember when TCP/IP had to be installed as an option under Windows '95
• ...you had one of the first ICQ accounts and thought it was silly and would "never catch on"
• ...you mourned the day AOL users were let loose on the then-virgin Internet
• ...you've used a SLIP connection
• .....and you thought it was the best thing in the universe. A real IP address, holy crap!
• ...you remember when ISPs supplied a UNIX shell as standard with all accounts
• ...you remember when ISPs ONLY supplied a UNIX shell with the basic account; SLIP/PPP was extra!
• ...you tried to run a MUD under such an account and were yelled at by your ISP's sysadmin
• ...you made extensive use of SLiRP or TIA at one point
• .....and it was banned at your ISP/school so you renamed it "pine" or "emacs"
• ...you remember when you could post your E-mail address everywhere and receive no spam

So lately, at work, I've been fiddling with CentOS 4. CentOS is a group of developers who took the sources of RedHat Enterprise Linux (which Redhat is required to distribute freely, by the GPL), and recompiled them into a distribution that's completely binary compatible with RHEL.

This is nice, because you can't even get the real RHEL without paying a fortune to Red Hat in support costs, and RHEL has a nice long development cycle, so CentOS is good for servers and other systems that you don't want to have to upgrade constantly.

Both CentOS and Fedora Core 3 use the new yum package update software, which is greatly improved. They seem like solid systems, even if the out-of-the-box experience isn't as nice as SuSE. The nice thing about Linux is you can customize the system infinitely; try that with closed-source Windows and you'll have a hard time!

The semester break will be busy, upgrading our multitude of user workstations from FC2 to FC3. Server upgrades will probably happen in the break before next Fall; that is not going to be pleasant...

Feeling much better, so I went to Sawgrass today. I got to hear La La the parrot sing with Leah, which was quite hilarious. Junior was in a grumpy mood pretty much the whole time, and didn't really want me to get too close, but I managed to get a few pets in when he was sleepy and cheered up some.

I got some neat photos of some dragonflies on the back fence. They're tricky to photograph because they can sense your movement and fly off unless you approach veeeeeery slowly. Dragonflies have huge compound eyes, with hundreds of thousands of facets that let them see in every direction, pretty much; you can see them clearly in the photos.

Yesterday I saw the director's cut of the movie "The Butterfly Effect" on DVD. This movie is absolutely enthralling and thrilling; I highly recommend it to anyone into suspenseful movies. It really keeps you on your toes for most of the film!

Alas, back to work tomorrow. Hopefully the new tape system arrives soon so I can build our new backup server; I'm looking forward to discovering the world of Ultrium LTO2.

Today's Photos

Well, I've been sick for the past week or so, with an irritating cough and sore throat. Finally went to see the doc, and he said it was bacterial and prescribed antibiotics. On the second pill and already feeling better!

Of course, due to that it hasn't been too eventful. I celebrated my tenth anniversary on FurryMUCK yesterday (4/7/1995 - 4/7/2005), and that was fun. I morphed back into the original squirrel character I had when I started on the MUCK, and visited the park and reminisced about old times with other players. Of course, those of you not on TinyMUCKs probably have no clue what I'm talking about. It's a text-based interactive social environment, kind of like IRC but with actual rooms, describable objects, programmability, and more. If you're interested, click here.

On the photography front, I rediscovered a photo I took nearly a year ago, and have posted it on my photography page. It's amazing how beautiful the white whiskers look against the dark fur. I can't believe I let this gem be buried in my private archives for so long! I need to dig through them and see if there's any other photos yearning for the world to see... I also need to reorganize that page and move it to sarabi. Alas, I shall get to it some day...

I was bored a couple nights ago and slapped together this image. You'll only get it if you're a UNIX geek, but it shows how good standards can stick with us for a long time. The VT100 terminal is emulated by pretty much every platform out there, and is still the basis for modern access to UNIX systems today!

Anyway, hopefully I'll feel better enough to hit Sawgrass this weekend. I miss the kitties, and I also want to work at the property and chuff with the tigers some. It's been way too long...

Well, right around now is my ten year getting-on-the-net anniversary. Wow, it feels like it was only yesterday, piggy-backing on the FIU-FAU LAT net and jacking into cybernet.cse.fau.edu, an open-access Internet BBS that existed at the time.

Some Internet related things that I dealt with back in the early days (1994-1996)...

• alt.tv.animaniacs (Hellooooooo Usenet!)
• alt.fan.lion-king (Hakuna Ma-what-a?)
• cybernet.cse.fau.edu, Cybernet BBS (Anyone got a WAFFLE-iron?)
• CyberGate, AIX (first UNIX system I ever use), that larry@gate.net account
• (305)348-1196 (old FIU 9600 baud dialin to a DECserver)
• TIN (who needs a GUI to read news???)
• Trying to convince my high school to get Internet access because it was "educational" (though I just wanted it so I could goof off on the net during lunch)
• wakko.gil.net (Jeff, thanks for the free access!)
• sarabi.gil.net (I had a real hostname when most people didn't even have real access!)
• FurryMUCK (still there! 10 years as of 4/7/2005!)
• Zorin the Squirrel
• CU-SeeMe (Hi Milva!)
• PointCast (How utterly useless. But I still had fun with it!)
• FurToonia (Hello Kaja, Selane, Shakeera, if you're still out there!)
• FluffMUCK (Hello Inkypaws, Rieshal, Paws, and others.. StH TinyPlot, Mban, Town Hall meetings, speaking staff, flying phonebooths, etc. etc. etc.)
• Windows 3.1 and Trumpet Winsock (shudder)
• EWAN (a telnet client for Windows... the only decent one at the time)
• Netscape 1.1N (Holy crap! HTML is COOL!)
• Linux (kernel 1.2.8 was the first I ever booted! Yeah I came in a bit late, SO WHAT? }:) )
• As a Linux newbie, figuring out how to get PPP to work under Linux (pulled an all-nighter, success was the greatest feeling in the world!)
• ICQ (5327238 -- nice small UIN!)
• My First Router (386DX/33 running Linux in 5MB of RAM off a 20MB MFM disk, fun!)
• Doing all of this at 14.4kbps
• solix.fiu.edu, serss0.fiu.edu, xlab1.fiu.edu, (305)348-3282, those darn SPARCClassics in PC-415, the cheap VT220 clones in the terminal lab, SERVAX...
• Running Linux on a Floppy on open student lab 486s so I could telnet out
• Getting a job at FIU, vixen.cs.fiu.edu, SCS, getting paid to be a geek, learning how this Internet stuff actually WORKS...
• Getting banned from the EIC lab (Engineering) at FIU for swiping an IP address so I could get on the Internet. The irony is I was hired for the SCS department only months later and ended up dismantling that lab since we took over the building. :)
• ...

Well, that's enough for now. I'll add more as I think of it over the next few days. It's been a good run, and here's hoping for another ten years of cool stuff!

Pictures of my office at work!

I just decided to post these so folks can see my work environment. Not bad, eh? I find photos of peoples' offices to be interesting; you can sometimes learn a lot about someone by how they decorate their office.