Anarchy != Chaos

Learning by doing: Compiling your own custom kernel for fun and profit

2013-04-28T23:21:00.001-04:00

You know that Linux kernel thing, that has thousands of developers from all over the world, some of which do it professionally, most of which do it for the love of solving problems (or something)?

I look at it as a great chance for learning.

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Governance vs. Government

2012-12-11T21:47:00.002-05:00

Get yours at
http://DailyAnarchist.com/store

A fundamental disagreement between the Statist and the Anarchist is whether or not a system can be self-organizing. Bear with me, this will take a moment to frame.

To get the definition out of the way up front, by "state" I am not talking about any particular political subdivision. The "state" is the institution with the monopoly on legitimate coercion. When a soldier kills, for example, it is not "murder" because he is acting as an agent of the state. What is robbery if I do it is "tax collection" when performed by an agent of the state. And so on. The act that is otherwise criminal is declared to be legitimate specifically because an agent of the state is doing it. They are "only following orders".

Updated 20121214

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The Linux Live CD

2012-11-05T14:07:00.004-05:00

It's been 12 years since Mark Knopper first created Knoppix, ushering in an amazing way to try running Linux: directly from a CD.

No installation hassles, no worries about losing data during an upgrade. No getting stuck in the middle of an install and not having a machine to use to track down documentation.

Just a running machine. Easily, quickly, and best of all temporarily.
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Morality and Ethical Behavior

2012-05-23T23:13:00.001-04:00

Morals. Ethics.

These are two words that are generally not taught to students, and certainly not in the government schools, until they have to deal with the generalized concepts in places like law school, or college accounting classes, where it's pointed out that knowing the law, and not following it, is "unethical" or "immoral".

Usually, people first encounter the idea in the context that someone can be prosecuted for "unethical behavior" while in office, while politicians who do not keep campaign promises are considered perfectly normal. This is hypocrisy, and deserves to be addressed.

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Software Patents and "Rent Seeking"

2012-04-26T19:02:00.000-04:00

"Rent Seeking" is a term in economics used to denote the effort of those with "political" power, that is, the ability to leverage the violence of the state, to use that leverage for personal gain.

Inspired by the recent Mises.org article on the subject, I'd like to give my own perspective on the issue.

While most of us think of "rent" only as paying one's landlord for the use of their property, this common use of the term is not as far from the more technical "economic" term as it seems at first. Let it stew for a while, see if it doesn't make sense.

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Go fsck yourself, part duh

2012-03-11T01:00:00.001-05:00

You remember last time, when I said, "I'm writing this blog entry on the same disk image that was giving me nightmares just 7 hours ago"? Hahaha, well, that was then, and this is now.

It's four hours later, and this time, I'm writing from the laptop.

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Go fsck yourself

2012-03-10T17:44:00.005-05:00

Interesting experience today.

My daily use machine has a SATA disk drive, and it would not boot this morning. GRUB would begin, and then fail saying it could not find any initrd or kernel.

I was able to boot using a Live CD, but several of the ones I have didn't work. Time to purge my "rescue disk" collection, download the latest Trinity Rescue and Knoppix, etc.

The one that did work would not recognize that the HD even existed. So no fdisk, no mounting the partitions for backup, nothing. Doomed, I thought. Fried disk. Right.
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VoIP and some agonies of E.164 or, Forward Into The Past!

2011-09-12T22:20:00.000-04:00

Does anyone else remember CompuServe accounts, which were all numbers? Mine was 72125,1424. Or ICQ, which was fun to guess just when the other person signed up by the numeric value of their ICQ account. I'm glad to see ICQ is still operating, which maybe I should have noticed before. I wonder if my old number still works?

Now people use names for their email, in a standard and well understood form that works seamlessly between different service providers. Me@example.com is far more understandable than 72125,1424 ever was.
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Abandon Skype all ye who enter here

2011-08-17T19:33:00.004-04:00

With the purchase of Skype by Microsoft, there's a question that has been bugging me for quite a while.

Why Skype?

What properties made Skype the 800lbs gorilla of software phones?

I think I have a few ideas.

1) Video. Even though it took a while to get video working on Linux, it does work and works pretty well.

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Looking up old friends.

2011-08-03T02:22:00.001-04:00

Recently, I have thought about looking up old friends. Like from highschool. Or early girlfriends. People like that.

What has been very hard to keep in mind is that I have made no secret of my identity on the "interwebs". My existence on the 'Net has been rather obvious, from early posts on NANOG and Rec.Motorcycles to the present.

This creates a conflict of interest, of sorts.
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Microsoft devours Skype

2011-05-11T13:16:00.000-04:00

Skype has been purchased by Microsoft, for $8.5 Billion.

I have used Skype for years on Linux, even though Skype treated their Linux client as something like a red-headed step-child. Features like video chat were always included in the Linux client long after they were in the Windows version, bug fixes were slow, stuff like that.

But, and here's the biggest thing: It worked.
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Windows Is Not Free

2011-03-30T15:38:00.002-04:00

Three years ago, I read one of the finest articles on the issues concerning the difficulties faced by the advocates of Free and Open Source Software (F/OSS or FOSS), and the endless efforts to get people to give F/OSS an opportunity to work for them.

The article is "Windows Is Free: The Impact of Pirated Software on Free Software", along with the follow up article by the same author, "No Really - Windows Is Free."

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I am now a Linux Kernel Developer

2011-03-24T10:10:00.002-04:00

No joke.

On Sunday, March 20th, I submitted a patch to the Linux Kernel Mailing List, to fix a compile problem that began when the "binutils" package, that handles programs written in assembly, was updated such that something that was never a problem before became a problem.

The file linux-2.6.38/arch/x86/kernel/entry_32.S had two places where the "END(foo)" did not match the "foo" in its "ENTRY(foo)". The file dates back to 1992, so this problem has been there the whole time and no one noticed because it didn't cause an error until now.

I have no idea if the patch will be accepted, or even noticed, but I've done it and now anyone who gets the compile error...

arch/x86/kernel/entry_32.S: Assembler messages:
arch/x86/kernel/entry_32.S:1422: Error: .size expression does not evaluate to a constant make[3]: *** [arch/x86/kernel/entry_32.o] Error 1

...will know what it is about and how to fix it if my patch doesn't make it into the kernel.
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"Dum vivimus, vivamus! -- 'While we live, let us live!' "

2011-03-15T20:46:00.000-04:00

A friend just pointed me to this video:

This reminds me of why I keep my motorcycle, even though it's spent year after year in various garages while I traveled or did more "important" things.

Robert Heinlein explained why in his book _Glory Road_:

"Dum vivimus, vivamus! -- 'While we live, let us live!' "

When the hero was asked by a very pretty woman what the inscription on his sword meant, the hero said,

"Touch life. Touch life twice!"

Bodhi Linux 0.1.7 and the Enlightenment Desktop

2011-03-14T11:35:00.000-04:00

Bodhi has released 0.1.7, a further development release of the Bodhi Enlightenment desktop Linux distribution. As I've mentioned before, Bodhi is focusing on providing usability with a minimal footprint.

By using the Enlightenment graphics environment, Bodhi creates highly configurable, and aesthetically pleasing, visual effects without loading the system down with bloat.

As Bodhi is a tributary of Ubuntu, and so it's no surprise that Bodhi works as a liveCD and not just an install disk. As an old Debian hack myself, I'm so used to install disks doing nothing but installing that it's still a bit of a pleasant surprise.

The installation is fundamentally the same as before, so I don't see a need to go into that again. Well, I will say that the final screen now correctly points out that it is Bodhi Linux, I'm glad that the Bodhi developers took my previous poke in the humorous spirit it was intended.
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Hero Of The Day!

2011-03-12T15:41:00.001-05:00

Today, March 12th, 2011, saw this man, a Mr. D.H. of somewhere in Los Angeles, become a true Hero in the ancient tradition.

Even with plans for his own birthday to be spent at 6 Flags Amusement Park, Mr. D.H. abandoned those plans the night before simply because a friend needed help moving.

There is a saying older than history itself that while an acquaintance will help you move, a friend will help you move bodies. Mr. D.H. has demonstrated in the heroic tradition that it doesn't require actual bodies to make a friend, only someone who will step up when the need is great, and do what must be done regardless of the personal inconvenience.

So a big Hazah! to Mr. D.H., whomever he may be, from everyone who may at one time or another have the opportunity to be his true friend.

And Happy Birthday!

Curt-

The joys of multi-card reading

2011-03-11T15:32:00.004-05:00

As mentioned at the bottom of my prior posting, because of a surprising number of errors being received when I tried to use my venerable external card reader, I had ordered an internal multi-card reader. Well, it arrived in good order, and now the front of my PC has one more blue LED than it had.

I guess this is the way that streetlights have destroyed the night for so many of us, one bulb at a time.

They nicely include both grey and black faceplates, for the utterly pointless aesthetics of having the machine match. It must be important to someone, and I did indeed use the matching faceplate. It was already in place. My server has a silver DVD drive in a black case, and I can't say that anyone has complained.
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Recovering from motherboard failures, and clean computing

2011-03-07T16:26:00.006-05:00

When last we left the scene, one server was dead, the desktop dieing. However, ordering two new motherboards was successful. They arrived from Magic Micro quickly and in good order, and it was time to clean things up and make two working machines.

First, a note on cleaning. I am sick (and tired) of computer hardware that cannot be cleaned. Laptops that require being sent back to the manufacturers in order to be cleaned, things like that. I remember one call to Circuit City for a Sony Vaio laptop I owned, where the person who answered the phone simply did not understand what I meant when I said the fan needed to be cleaned.

I had to let her go to her script and answer the question "Is the machine overheating and shutting down?" with "Yes", because if I didn't say "yes" she didn't have any option for having me send it in for cleaning at all. So they did the cleaning, and wiped Linux, but I've learned always to do a full backup before letting anyone else even touch my machines.
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SSH, X11, and You

2011-03-03T08:44:00.000-05:00

SSH Encrypted Network Connections

Recently I read an article where the author went through great pains to launch an application on a remote system and display it locally, over an encrypted session.

Doing this is actually far, far easier to do than ggarron makes it out to be. It's no more difficult than a single option in SSH. But first, what is SSH to you?

Right off the bat, please, don't fear the command line. If you're new to UNIX style systems, like Linux, the command line can seem daunting. It just sits there waiting for you to type something. Don't let it bother you, as long as you're not root you can't do much harm.

The logo of OpenSSH

Secure Shell is a command line application that allows you to replace telnet, ftp and xhost with a secure link to a remote system with serious protection of the data you transfer.

SSH uses passwords, or can be configured to use Public Key encryption, like GunPG or PGP do. Passwords can work into a system the first time, Public Key authentication has to be set up ahead of time.

For a good SSH primer, if you don't have a "Unix Power Utilities" volume sitting around, this article on WikiHow.com seems quite straight forward. There are lots of results if you use Google to look for "ssh howto", and I've noticed that the Ubuntu forums tend to cater well to "first time users". The OpenSSH.com Frequently Asked Questions list gets rather technical.
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On Linux, Software Patents, Shakespeare and the Web

2011-02-28T17:18:00.002-05:00

A user by the name of "Upinvermont" has posted an excellent article, On Linux, Software Patents, Shakespeare & the Web.

I wonder if he's written any SPAM haiku?

"A SPAM, by any other aspic, would smell as sweet?"

But anyway, what I find most interesting about this article is how it brings the raging copying and building upon other's work of Elizabethan England into equation, or at least comparison, with the Open Source software ecosystem the literati often refer to simply as "Linux."

I have often compared the Open Source software environment to music. My favorite example being "Variations on a Theme by Paganini" by Johannes Brahms. A beautiful work of music which in no way detracts from the original, but does inspire someone who loves it to look up the original guitar work, like I did. It is also very much in doubt if such a work could have been produced under the present regime, considering what happened to George Harrison with My Sweet Lord.

Would Shakespeare's works have reached the audience they do today? Who can say. What I can say is that what happens outside of copyright and patent is very different than what happens under Intellectual Property: Imitation becomes not a crime, but the sincerest form of flattery.

If music be the food of love, play on. Play on, McDuff!

Ubuntu 11.04 Natty Narwhal and the Unity Desktop, for real this time!

2011-02-28T15:33:00.003-05:00

If you're interested in "what has gone before", my previous article is for you. This entry will pick up where that one left off, with the actual successful loading and launching of Canonical's Unity Desktop.

The Ubuntu development community is racing ahead with Unity, including creating a 2-D Unity variant which will work under VirtualBox, which I must use since I don't have a spare system upon which to install Ubuntu Natty Narwhal for testing.

For installation and a run-down of default Ubuntu, you can see my prior article on Natty Narwhal, which begins "at the beginning."

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You know the universe is out to get you when....

2011-02-27T11:26:00.012-05:00

Update: Part 2 has been posted.

Prior to Friday, I had exactly one problem with a motherboard, the clock battery leaked and damaged the traces. That system had been running for 5 years in a friend's garage, slowly rusting while running DNS, WWW, SMTP, my "blog" before the word blog was invented, and whatever else I needed in a server, but time did work its inexorable will.

Friday, my server was purring along just fine, and then it stopped. I thought it was a power supply problem, but as I was trying to determine if the power supply was still working, I saw a small orange flash.

The next power cycle attempt also got a bit of orange, but it was not small, and the smoke and cracking sound was more than clear as to exactly what had gone wrong. ~~I have a picture of the offending surface-mount component, but it will be hard for me to post the picture due to the other problem.~~ Note to self, always keep a working laptop for just such emergencies.

"Other problem? You mean this gets worse?"

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When The Net Was Young

2011-02-24T22:18:00.006-05:00

Originally written Saturday, July 17th, 2004, 17:08:08 EDT

I would like to wax philosophic on a subject for a moment. My apologies to anyone who doesn't care.

I started working at NASA Ames Research Center in July, 1992. Prior to this I had worked as a computer operator then network engineer for a large multinational, and I'd been using network services starting with Compu$erve in 1983, then Fido-net, I-link, many BBS's, etc.

Being about as close to the heart of things as one could get, and working the graveyard and evening shifts, gave me a wonderful ring-side seat to watch as a Liberty occurred.

A response to DistroWatch "Introducing Debian GNU/Linux 6.0"

2011-02-23T16:14:00.008-05:00

The 8th DistroWatch Weekly of 2011 feature article, "Introducing Debian GNU/Linux 6.0", comes in as a qualified success for Debian.

The author, Jesse Smith, seems to have had trouble with Debian in the past, even while the various tributary distributions like Ubuntu and KNOPPIX would run on his hardware just fine. Hardware wouldn't be recognized, the installer would crash, and so on. But in the words of Michael Palin, "This one stayed up!"

All well and good, let's explore some of Mr. Smith's comments in light of my own rather long history of using Debian.

A note on installation disks. Debian provides 4 different install disk styles in addition to the Debian Live image. These ISO images are Bootable Business Card (under 46MB), Net Install (189MB), CD#1 (642MB) and DVD#1 (4.4GB). Every image except the Bootable Business Card will install a base Debian system without a network link.

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Why is Linux security so much better than Windows? Part 2

2011-02-22T14:47:00.000-05:00

A recent article came across my radar,

Black ops: how HBGary wrote backdoors for the government, by Nate Anderson

One particular paragraph in this article anyone interested in computer security really ought to read sprang out at me, on page 5:

"This is ideal because it’s trivial to remotely seed C&C messages into any networked Windows host," noted Hoglund, "even if the host in question has full Windows firewalling enabled."

This comment really isn't a "why is Linux security so much better", but just one example of that principle. The entire article deserves reading if for nothing else than to realize just how confident these people are that they can write such cracking software at will.

Friends don't let friends use Windows.