Justin's Blog

May 28, 2004

Chapter 7 - Logging

Well, just uploaded the chapter on logging. Took a lot longer than I thought as I had to disect logging in as much as an easy fashion as I could. For someone who has never used syslog, syslog-ng etc before, it is not the easiest thing to just pick up, so I had to find a ahppy medium between good content and easy understanding. Not easy. Roger and I decided yesterday that we are both aiming for the same book, so it looks like the book will be coherant in its message. Phew. And all of that on top of paying for our honeymoon to St Lucia and sorting out my degree. All work and no play makes Justin a rich boy :o)

Bastard comments

Starting to get really annoyed with people posting shite comments about penis enlargment pills in MT. So I have started to block IP addresses for every muppet that thinks my site is an advertising billboard. Idiots!

May 24, 2004

Busy Busy Busy

Well, I have submitted two chapters for the SUSE Bible, and a third is on the way in the form of Boot concepts and loaders. The book is going very well, if a few days behind schedule, but Roger and me are making up for lost time as we speak. It is shaping up quite nicely and it should be a good book as far as I can see. I have had to endure Linux books before, and they have never told me anything I do not already know. We are trying to get away from that and give people a book on SUSE that is actually useful, as well as being informative for newer users. On another note, I am still doing my degree with the Open University, and that is taking up a lot of my time (about as much as the book). Thankfully the book will be finished before the wedding, so that will give me more time (hopefully!).

May 11, 2004

NY

Well, I arrived at JFK on Sunday night, and we got a limo to take us to Poughkeepsie. IBM are being really good hosts, and we have met a lot of very senior zSeries and Linux people at IBM. We had lunch with the VP responsible for the Capacity on Demand, and IBM is really commited to the idea, which is good. Their long term strategy is solid for the entire eServer range, and Linux as a whole. The recent musings about Lotus Workplace were shown to us, and it got a lot of people interested. Tomorrow is the last day, and we will be getting a limo and also what can only be classed as a pimp bus (neon lights inside etc.) to Manhattan, where I can go and do what I want. I will be meeting up with Debra from Wiley on Thursday for lunch to discuss the book. I am just going through screenshots at the moment for the installation chapter. IT is chaping up well, at 30 pages so far.

May 07, 2004

Hacking

Noticed Pete's blog entry on the stupidity of some crackers out there. I have a similar story, although tracking the guy down took 5 minutes. I had some cgi code that was buggy and this guy decided he would add a new index.html file to my root. Anyway, he left an alias, and I did a google for it. Turns out he is part of a [cr|h]acker group, and they have an IRC channel. I join, and oh look the guy is online. Nice! I start a dialog with him, asking about cgi vulnerabilities. I feel him getting nervous. I ask him politely if he hacked my site, and he then apologised profusely. If people want to get away with cracking, they really need to get a grip on how easy it is to trace anyone who leaves any sign of a trace of where they are. And as for the buggy cgi code, yes I did write it, and yes it ws my own fault I was defaced, but it was the guy's fault he got caught.

SUSE 9.1 Centrino and shit!

I have had 9.1 now for about 3 weeks and it is very nice. The inclusion of 2.6 is lovely, and I am just getting to grips with the way new things work. The T41 Centrino stuff works a bit, but the ipw2100 is either buggy, or the Intel firmware ain't loving my laptop. I keep on getting firmware restart errors every now and again, so the network dies, and may not come up. Rebooting won't fix the problem, so I am not sure what the issue is; hardware, driver or firmware?

When it does work, it works very well, so I am not complaining, but of course on OSX it all just works!!

New York

I am off to New York on Sunday to babysit some customers at IBM Poughkeepsie. Should be fun, a lot of it is around IBM's Linux strategy on the entire eServer range (apart from iSeries, it is dying anyway!). Will have a spare day around Manhatten, so I will take load of pictures, and hopefully it will be a little bit warmer than last time. Will probably meet up with Debra from Wiley to discuss the book while we are out there, and seeing as Roger and I signed the contracts last week, we are rolling.