Setting Up a Time Server

March 22, 2006 by Eric Richardson

Reading through some local blogs this morning I noticed ask's post from a few weeks ago talking about the ntp pool. That got me inspired to set up ntp on the new Cartifact server. I knew of a couple good local time hosts (particularly chronometer.usc.edu), and going through the list of stratum two servers I found one in the very same colo building. Judging by the whois on the IP space, I think that box is in CalPop's space, which is right across the hall from our box with Cyberverse. If I'm reading the stats right, though, that box is actually the peer with the most delay.

Our server, ortelius.cartifactmaps.com, is now registered with the NTP Pool, though it'll take a little bit before the pool decides it's reliable enough to give it out to people.

Mmmm... View

March 18, 2006 by Eric Richardson

Since I got my new job, I've spent a lot of time here in the office. Some of it may be the work, but I think just as big is this view:

I love cityscapes.

Never Quite as Planned

March 15, 2006 by Eric Richardson

The replacement drive for my laptop came in today. I installed Windows from my restore cd, used a Knoppix cd to run qtparted and free up some space and then went to install Linux via a Debian net-install cd I had lying handy (current as of a month or two ago).

The Debian install got through the cd part, but then things turned a little ugly when it came to installing packages. locale and base-config (I think... something like that) conflicted, and it wouldn't move forward. I flipped over to a terminal and tried to resolve the conflict manually, but only succeeded in making the setup process start respawning.

Handily, by this stage there's a pretty full-featured base Debian installed. I probably could have hand massaged package installation, but instead I used apt-get to install cdrecord, grabbed a new netinstall via wget and burned myself a new cd. That one's now happily installing.

There was a day when I used to think that sort of thing was fun. I think that day may have passed.

If Only I Had the Money for SCSI

March 12, 2006 by Eric Richardson

I went for a long time before I had my first hard drive die on me. Now, though, it happens with far too much regularity.

I got a new drive for my laptop in November of 2004. Now, just 16 months later, I'm watching Seagate's pretty cool SeaTools spit bad sectors at me. Seagate has a very handy 5-year warranty, so I'm covered there, but it's still just a pain to have to go through the replacement process.

Sitting on my desk I have a dead 60gig IBM Deskstar and a dead Maxtor that I can't find a size on (I think it might have been Kathy's). Both were manufactured in 2001. On the other hand I've got a drive sitting in the server that's from 1997. Heck, I've got a Seagate sitting right here that's old enough their system chokes on the serial number. Specs I found online are dated 1990. That drive still works. Why can't modern drives make it two years?

Woo Hoo for Motivation

March 04, 2006 by Eric Richardson

So I got back from the first bit of BarCamp LA four hours ago. Mack Reed has better coverage over at LA Voice, so I'll just leave my first day report at saying I enjoyed it.

But earlier today I was mentioning that I had a demo I wanted to get ready. Definitely wasn't ready to go at 4pm, but that's no big deal since I'm not presenting until 4pm tomorrow (err... today). And I'm proud to say it's ready. And if I do say so myself, it's cool.

I wish I had time between now and then to put together a cool presentation to go along with the demo. I may just hack something together in the time right beforehand tomorrow. Now, though, I need sleep.