The Caffeinated Penguin

Posted By matt on February 20, 2004

This has been an interesting week. I met some folks from the other branches parts of the company They said that they got more cooperation in the couple days that they were visiting us than they do when they're back at their home offices. It's just stupid. No one at this company talks to each other. I wonder if all big companies are like this? Probably. Everyone defending their own little areas, not talking to anyone else.

Anyhow, I'm watching Crime and Punishment and Suburbia. So far, it's one of the better movies I've seen in awhile. Perhaps because I identify with the narrator so much. I'm also drinking some “Cream Earl Grey” which is a tea that Liz got me for valentine's day. It's quite good.

Re: http://www.livejournal.com/users/mattcaron/27656.html?thread=73224
ESR, Brude, and Linus probably have less of a problem with proprietary software than I do. After all, they're all pragmatists. ESR wrote that, for some people, proprietary software makes sense, especially if boxed software is your only product. I think that such a business model is stupid, and so I refuse to work for a software company. This is why I work for a company that makes printers. We sell hardware, and do anything we can to sell printers. This means drivers. Drivers will be written in the most economical way possible, and on whatever platforms are desired by customers. If customers come to us demanding GPL-ed Linux drivers, and that means that they will buy 400 printers + 5 million dollars worth of media over 5 years, then we will probably write them. ESR understands that. Linus uses BitKeeper for kernel RCS. Why? Because no free software tool stacks up. RMS got all over him for it, and he said “fine, write me a better one and I'll use it”. Bruce worked for HP and Pixar, both of which sell proprietary software.

That is the way of businesses. They are slow to respond, and even then only to market pressures. They do not care about zealots or morals or duty or honor. They care about money. If you can make a case for free software that makes sense, they'll use it. (For example, when it was time to upgrade, we switched all our core servers to Debian boxes and with the money we saved on Windows 2003 server + Client Access Licenses were able to pay for the servers). This is reality. Anything else is fantasy. So, get your head our of your fucking ass.

Re: http://www.livejournal.com/users/mattcaron/27656.html?thread=73480
Well, thank you Joe, but I thought I was doing rather well.

Re: everyone who said I should delete posts to stop the trolls

I regard this as a public forum, otherwise it wouldn't be posted on the net; it would be a mailing list or something. Therefore, anyone can post to it, and I will let them. The one exception is, of course, spam. While I do not have a problem with people sending me spam, I do delete it as soon as I get it. Spam on the LJ will be the same. However, anyone who says anything else, including trolls or things deemed offensive, will be allowed.

I got 2.6 working! To recap, the problems were:
1.) YT couldn't compile the 3w-xxxx into the kernel; when compiled as a module, it didn't load the module with stopped booting.
2.) Case's networking didn't work
More detail is here

1 was resolved by compiling it as a module, and then adding code into rc.sysinit to load the module before the fsck's go off – therefore the module is loaded and the drives can be accessed, and all is happy. Now, if I wanted to boot from the RAID array, this probably wouldn't work, since it needs to load the driver before it can play with stuff. However, it's okay – I am a firm believer that your boot disk should not be part of any type of array, unless that array can be bootstrapped properly, 100% of the time. Keeping the boot drive out of the array makes this easier. Of course, this means that the boot disk isn't redundant, but that's okay. Just make sure to back it up, and you're good.

2 was my fault. I still had FreeS/WAN startup code in my rc5.d, and apparently it doesn't behave gracefully with a 2.6 kernel without the right modules installed. Instead, it borks your networking configuration.

Now all I have to do is:
1.) Put 2.6.2 on my laptop and get my wireless card working (probably just have to recompile pcmcia-cs)
2.) Get IPSEC working on all the fixed machines (all my NIS domain members tunnel all access to each other through IPSEC)
3.) Migrate NIS master from Case to YT

Once that's done, it's back to buying hardware for more projects (no buying hardware until previous projects are complete; them's the rules)
- Buy DVD burner + Canopus ADVC-100 for conversion of VHS home movies to DVD
- Possibly Buy new Athlon MP's for Case if the above takes too long
- Recycle the CD-RW from Case into the Humidor PC test machine
- Fiddle with OpenDarwin and *BSD on Humidor PC (Should I post pics of the Humidor PC?)
- Buy a gigabit switch for YT – Case interconnect
- Buy a WRT54G router and play with firmware to make it super cool
- Build a dead silent high end speed machine for a media center PC, preferably in an attractive media center PC case and/or decent rackmount case (suggestions welcome).

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