Category Archives: Uncategorized

On the way

I’m in the Bluegrass Airport, starting the first leg of my trip to Amsterdam.

They’ve added a new hurdle to check-in. I had to scan my passport in the automatic check-in machine. Of course, it wouldn’t scan, because it’s been through the wash and the cover isn’t rigid enough to force through the scanner. The folks at immigration at JFK (or wherever it was last time) assured me that I didn’t need to get a new passport, so I didn’t. The guy at the counter didn’t give me a hard time, though, so it’s all good. Hopefully the next half-dozen people to check it will be equally forgiving.

As expected, there’s a 15-30 minute delay in Detroit for storms. I have been delayed on every single flight I’ve taken this year, without exception. However, none of them have been as minor as 15-30 minutes, so I suppose I should be grateful. The first itinerary I was given had a 45-minute layover in Detroit, and I rejected that, knowing that I’d need more than that to compensate for delays. So now I’ve got about 3 hours. Ugh. Detroit.

In ApacheCon-related news, I’ve been working on my lightning talk. I don’t reckon it will be quite as much fun as “why I hate Apache” that I did in Stuttgart, but I think it’s pretty good. Anyways, I’ll enjoy doing it, and that’s what really matters, right?

Leaving for ApacheCon

As usual, the moment has arrived, and still doesn’t feel particularly real. Until I get on the plane, I guess.

In the morning, I will leave for Amsterdam. Yes, it’s very early. Something to do with Queen’s Day making tickets hard to come by.

And, no, I’m not ready yet. I’m not packed. I haven’t put the finishing touches on my presentations yet. And I haven’t even begun to get my in the conference frame of mind. This is all rather odd, given that I’ve been thinking about the conference pretty steadily for the last 2 or 3 months. But, it always seems to sneak up on me.

So, I’ll see you there, if you’re going to be there. And I’ll miss you if you’re not.

Oh, and if you’re going to be there, and want to be interviewed for FeatherCast, please try to track me down early on in the conference, so that I’m not rushing around like a maniac the last day or two. I’m sure I’ll be doing that quite enough without any help.

Blacklisting

For years, I’ve been opposed to email black lists. I think that they unfairly penalize folks who happen to be on the same ISP as soulless spammers. However, this morning, I finally broke down and put blacklist restrictions on my mail servers.

Today I have received perhaps a dozen spam messages, as compared to the 500-600 on a normal day, while at the same time still receiving the normal volume of valid email.

So, I guess consider me a reluctant convert to DNS BLs.

Block expired

It appears that whatever block there was between my secondary and primary MXes has expired, and they can talk to each other now. This seems to support my theory that it was all a temporary firewall block. But, in the long run, I don’t much care, since it’s fixed now. One less thing to figure out. 🙂

AC US proposals

It seems to be The Thing To Do to blog about what proposals I submitted to AC US. So here goes.

I submitted several tutorials this time, in the hopes that I get to do one of them. Tutorials are exhausting, both to prepare, and to teach, but they are very rewarding (for me, that is – not sure about the students!) and so I do like to do one now and then.

I submitted:

Apache Cookbook – This is an extended version of my “20 Things You Didn’t Know You Could Do With Your Apache Web Server” talk, and I’m doing it in Amsterdam. (Que Skippy: “You wanna know what you can do with your Apache server? I’ll *TELL* you what you can do with your Apache server!”) It’s new, and I’ve put a huge amount of time into it, so I hope it’s a success.

mod_rewrite Cookbook – I’ve never given this one, but I think it would be fun to do. It would be a tutorial version of the mod_rewrite cookbook. However, simply practically speaking, I’m not sure I want this one accepted, because it’s not written yet, and I expect to be rather busy between now and November. I expect November to come mighty fast.

Intro to Apache – Yes, I submitted three tutorials. Yes, I’m a glutton for punishment. This is my standard tutorial that I’ve been giving since 1999 or thereabouts. Getting a little tired of it, but it tends to draw a crowd, so I keep submitting it.

And I submitted just two talks this time.

Intro to mod_rewrite – This tends to get a good crowd, and it’s kind of fun to give.

Avoiding mod_rewrite – Once folks encounter mod_rewrite, they seem to think that they need to use it for EVERYTHING. This talk shows the right way to do things that folks seem to frequently mistakenly do with mod_rewrite.

Back on the air

The saga so far:

Cooling fan started to go out in server (Riesling), and CPU overheating caused the machine to power off. So, I rigged up several additional fans, including a large floor fan, and tried to limp by for a bit. Meanwhile, purchased replacement machine (Cabernet) and started to migrate.

Email was, as usually, the most complicated part of the process. I moved the cyrus mailbox files over, but cyrus didn’t pick up on them. I eventually had to manually createfolder and reconstruct each of the 250+ folders. Fortunately, a little scripting took most of the pain out of this step, once I figured out what I needed to do.

Last night, the server finally gave up the ghost, and the CPU melted.

For reasons not yet ascertained, my secondary MX (Brunello), which has been receiving email when it couldn’t be delivered here, can no longer make connections to my new server. IP address hasn’t changed. Other mail servers out there can connect to me, and the secondary MX server can connect on other ports. The way I figure it, while things were broken, some automated security thingy at $ISP triggered, and blocked port 25 from that source. However, the tech support folks at $ISP are trained to speak to normal people, rather than geeks like myself, so everything that he suggested was not only unhelpful, but completely irrelevant.

So, Brunello can connect to Cabernet on any port *except* 25. Any other machine in the world can connect to Cabernet on port 25. Neither Cabernet, nor my router, see the inbound connection (tcpdump and friends), indicating that it’s getting blocked a hop upstream.

Today, I stayed home because I have, I believe, the Vesuvian Death Flu, or some variant thereof, and am coughing up a lung every 2 minutes or so. I’ve put Riesling’s hard drive in Shiraz, and have been copying files over much of the morning. Very exciting to watch, no doubt. So far, I have my website back up, but very little else.

Migrating Cyrus

I foolishly thought that I could just scp the 1.3GB of /var/spool/imap from the old machine to the new machine, restart cyrus, and everything would Just Work. Well, it seems that it’s not that simple. Surely there’s a way to import this stuff to the new server without actually moving it via imap, isn’t there?

*sigh*

This server migration is proving to be as complicated as possible at every possible step.

Call for Papers Opens for ApacheCon US 2007

The Call for Papers is now open for ApacheCon US, to be held November 12-16 at the Peachtree Westin, Atlanta. The conference will consist of two day of tutorials (November 12-13) and three days of regular conference sessions (November 14-16).

Please log in to the website at http://apachecon.com/html/login.html to submit your proposal. Further details about fees and are avaialable on the CFP form.

Topics appropriate for submission to this conference are manifold, and may include but are not restricted to:

* ASF projects
* ASF-Incubated projects
* Scripting languages and dynamic content such as Java, Perl, Python, Ruby, XSL, and PHP
* New technologies and broader initiatives such as Web Services and Web 2.0
* Security and e-commerce, performance tuning, load balancing, and high availability
* Business and community issues surrounding the ASF and Open Source

The paper submission deadline is Monday, 30 April 2007, Midnight GMT.

Thanks, and we hope to hear from you, and to see you in Atlanta.

Overheating

My server (ie, the one on which this site runs) is having some kind of hardware failure. I presume the fan is going out, but it might be more serious than that. Periodically the kernel tells me that the CPU is overheating, and then powers down the system. At the moment, I have a large room fan pointing into the side of the open case, but that is obviously only a short-term solution.

I have a secondary server, which runs my DNS and database, but it’s a Pentium III 600, and I’m not certain, yet, whether it can take the additional load. I guess I’m about to find out. Unfortunately, it’s running Slackware, which I have distinctly fallen out of love with in the last 5 years or so. And so moving a bunch of services from this machine to that one may end up being rather painful.

Then there’s the alternate plan, of purchasing a new server, and combining the two into the one. Unfortunately, that involves spending money.

So, at the moment, I’m not sure what I’ll be doing. But if this site is down, it’s probably because the overheating problem got worse.