August 5th, 2009
It all started as an ordinary Wednesday morning, I booted my Jaunty Jackalope box and once past the grub menu, all I got was a corrupted display on my ATI Radeon 1600. I know it’s a working video card, (liveCDs work just fine) so I tried using recovery mode but whenever I started the xserver, I’d get the same corrupted video and I couldn’t switch terminals, keyboard input was ignored. My initial reaction was that I had to reconfigure xserver-xorg (#dpkg-reconfigure xserver-xorg) but it made absolutely no difference.
I hunted around Google and found various Ubuntu forums and bug reports about the ATI proprietary fglrx driver but none of the suggested solutions worked for me. (This thread has a number of useful suggestions for others encountering this issue.) For me, I could not “sudo apt-get autoremove xorg-driver-fglr” because I got an error that the package wasn’t installed and “sudo aticonfig –initial” gave an error saying that it couldn’t find any supported hardware.
My solution in the end was to run the following from the recovery root shell (with network support):
#apt-get remove xorg-driver-fglrx
I then rebooted and used the graphics fix option in the recovery menu and then booted normally et voila! Hope that helps someone out there on teh intrawebs.
Tags: fglrx, linux, sysadmin, ubuntu, xserver
Posted in tech-talk | No Comments »
June 5th, 2009
I have been running CS4 for a little while now on my Win XP workstation (normally the one I use to play games but it’s a beast so I figured it’d run CS4 well and it’s cheaper than the fancy iMac of my dreams) but I had pretty much none of the fonts install properly during the initial installation.
I thought that perhaps the font problem had to do with my virus protection but I noticed even with virus protection disabled that installing some new fonts would fail, giving me an error that said that the file was corrupted or invalid and that I should contact the font vendor for a new file:
Cannot activate font "$font_name". Font may be invalid or damaged. Please contact the vendor for a new file.
After some experimentation I found that TrueType fonts installed for me just fine and the problem was only with OpenType (OTF) fonts. I did a lot of searching around on the internet, most of the advice was completely useless or stupid so I figured I should document this in case someone else has the same issue.
The problem was caused by the video driver. I found in my internet travels that some people running Windows Vista and XP had a similar issue with an NVidia driver (I use an ATI Radeon) so I thought updating my driver was worth trying. I downloaded the latest driver for my video card from AMD’s website and restarted (after all, it’s a PC). I then tried to install the OpenType font I recently purchased from Veer and it worked! I then copied the fonts over from CS4’s goodies folder and I now have my fonts available in my CS4 applications and life is sweet once more! Huzzah!
Tags: adobe, cs4, fonts
Posted in design, tech-talk | No Comments »
May 19th, 2009
I’m using Exchange with Backup Exec 11d for Windows (on Windows Server 2003) and backing up our Exchange server to it.We are running extremely low on tape drive storage space and we can’t afford a new tape drive (thanks Great Recession) and so I’m doing a MacGuyver and using an external 500GB USB hard drive that we had around to run a nightly backup of our Exchange server. This setup had been working great, that is until the drive ran out of space.
When I noticed the low disk space warning, the first thing I tried was to recycle the media by putting it into scratch media but the backup didn’t seem to grab it when running, it would just sit there and ignore it. I tried to just delete the files and then ran an inventory to see if it would detect that the space is available but this just led to having a failed inventory run.
The next thing I tried was to create a new media set with a one hour retention cycle (as a test) and still Backup Exec wouldn’t overwrite the data. I even tried rebooting but the media still said it was available in the Backup Exec management console. Argh!
At last I figured it out and the way to get rid of the media files was to move the Backup Exec media that needed deletion to the “retired media” media set and then deleting it from there. I then paused the backup to disk folder from the devices tab in the Backup Exec manager, and then unpaused it. Space is now available again and crisis averted.
Tags: backup exec, exchange, USB
Posted in geekery, tech-talk | No Comments »
May 15th, 2009
Seriously, I think I heart him more than the original, he’s a younger, sexier and slightly less (but forgivably so) cheesy version of Shatner. Be still my beating heart.
I saw the new trek film last night (at last)! Sweet electric jesus, it was awesome – I laughed, I cried, I was relieved that it was actually good – I loved it so much that desired a sequel! (I hear one is in the works, squee!)
There’s a couple of things I need to rant about (warning – spoilers ahead): Read the rest of this entry »
Tags: scifi, star trek
Posted in geekery, movies, reviews | No Comments »
May 12th, 2009
I recently decommissioned a Windows 2000 DC that was still in production but had the beginnings of death throes, a power failure had made it an unhappy little camper and it was retro-vintage at best, plus it was a loud tower perched on a phone book in the server room (stupid short KVM) so its days were numbered. It got to the point where it was no longer accessible through an interactive console session so I turned the thing off without running dcpromo. Turns out that even though it was a clunker, everyone in the office had been using Office templates that had hardcoded servername links within them pointing to this server for the graphic for the letterhead. To get around this I redirected all the shares and updated the login scripts, and entered a CNAME entry for local DNS redirection for the missing server to solve the template issue and badda-bing, badda-boom off went the server (and the phone book went back on the shelf).
However, a little while later I noticed a rather inelegant problem:
The kerberos client received a KRB_AP_ERR_MODIFIED error from the server host/servername.domain.local. The target name used was DOMAIN\SERVERNAME$. This indicates that the password used to encrypt the kerberos service ticket is different than that on the target server. Commonly, this is due to identically named machine accounts in the target realm (DOMAIN.LOCAL), and the client realm. Please contact your system administrator.
Whoops, Kerberos is trying to use my DNS redirection and getting rather confused. Luckily our AD infrastructure is only a three server affair so removing it from the command line with a manual metadata edit wasn’t too big a deal but the command line is rather counter-intuitive for we linux types so here is the procedure I used:
I did a hunt on Google but didn’t really come up with much so I figured I would put the solution out there in case someone else needed it.
Tags: kerberos
Posted in geekery | No Comments »
May 6th, 2009
I saw on the news last night that eBay is closing their Canadian call centre, but it’s not to cut costs, oh no, it’s to capture efficiencies and enhance the customer experience. Of course!
I felt a bit guilty for not shopping on eBay enough recently so I decided to shop around for stuff that wasn’t complete crap to give them a hand. I found a lovely Vivienne Westwood ring, for ten bucks. Bargain! (A gen-u-wine one I’m sure.) I put in my bid and was going to win it until I got outbid this morning. I rushed back to check eventually and the person who’d outbid me had 247 feedback, all positive, but these days there is a privacy measure so that people can’t see all the crap you bid on. I looked at their profile, regardless, and at the sellers they’d been bidding on, of their total bidding, 22% was with this seller! Um, what? That seems like a lot of cut-price designer jewellery for one person. Son-of-a…. that stinks, man.
I know I was bidding on some stuff that’s probably not as genuine as it should be, but usually stuff starts out cheap and goes up, that is the nature of ebay and the reason I like it, you pay fair market value for the goods, and it’s up to the sellers to make sure that their pictures and description are good enough to give you the confidence to bid. If you’re unfamiliar with the term, a shill bidder is a bidder who is just there to artificially inflate the price by placing bids which then (in theory) get bid over again by the real buyer. It’s totally not tolerated on eBay but seems to go on anyway. I’ve won and lost my share of bidding wars, but who is going to try to win a bidding war with an opponent who is just trying to squeeze you and has no desire to actually win the thing. No thanks, there’s no sport in it.
I’ve moved on, now I’m going to stick to buying sensible things on eBay… you can never have enough hats, shoes and gloves.
Postscript
They sent me a second-chance offer on the item. I have an urge to send them an “aww, your shill bidder didn’t come through? Bummer” e-mail but I’m trying to restrain myself.
Tags: ebay, fashion, powersellers
Posted in ebay | No Comments »
May 4th, 2009
I feel a little guilty admitting this, but I’m feeling a little posessive about Star Trek.
I’ve been avoiding the ads for the new Star Trek movie, I haven’t really been reading about it either. All I’ve heard is that it’s awesome, and this from a respected fan-since-TNG friend of mine from high school. Tonight, I was watching Family Guy and I saw an ad for Star Trek limited-edition glasses at Burger King (if I got the burger chain right). I wanted them immediately, of course. Then I saw an e-surance (insurance) ad promoting the star trek movie. Hrm. I then watched the ad. Uhura is gorgeous and everyone is slick in a very typical hollywood style.
Part of me feels that the strength of Star Trek was using a compelling blend of likable characters in an ongoing saga style in a very open-ended setting. It was a soap opera, in a setting that was captivating, for people who liked science at least. I never really got why anyone wouldn’t like it. It kind of just got a bad wrap because nerds liked it. It was fun, I used to watch it with my Dad when I was a kid so I guess I never really knew it was nerdy until it was too late.
They’re hip, they’re beautiful and young and they’re all my favourite pals, I’m hoping it’s going to blow me away and not make me mad at it for “selling out” but I guess it’s always been sold out in a way. I have a Star Trek TNG poster in my office (it has retro chic, honest). I have Star Trek drinking cups, one for the Federation, one Borg and one Klingon. I used to have more but I think they got stolen. A lot of people appreciate fine decor like mine (and covet it).
I’m hoping I’m going to love, love, love it just like I loved Superman. I have a date with my boyfriend to see it on Sunday and I can’t wait!
P.S. The Mark Wahlberg on Antiques Roadshow keeps saying his name, and making me look.
Posted in Uncategorized | No Comments »
May 3rd, 2009
It’s a bit rough around the edges, but it’s better than the no-theme look I was rockin’ earlier today.
Posted in design, webdesign | No Comments »
April 24th, 2009
On and off, since moving the users to the new Exchange server, some e-mail messages have bounced with a failure message that says:
You do not have permission to send to this recipient. For assistance, contact your system administrator.
< server.domain.local #5.7.1 SMTP; 550 5.7.1 Requested action not taken: message refused>
First things first, I wanted to ensure that we aren’t blacklisted so I used some online DNS tools to check. The first one I used (on advice from an internet forum) was the DNS Report on DNSStuff.com which (using the quick check without a user account) told me that I was on spam blacklists. Yikes! I don’t like to sign up for things that try to scare me into using their free trials so I Googled around a little to find a spam blacklist lookup to verify that the info was correct (and found that it wasn’t true).
I dug around a little more on dnsstuff.com because I remember when it wasn’t pushing for memberships so hard it was quite useful, it has a few neat tools on there if you click on “Free Tools”. I feel a little guilty not signing up when it’s useful but I don’t like a hard-sell. I don’t answer the door for random doorknockers either. Get off’a my lawn!
Here are a few that I liked for this task:
- Spam DB lookup on iptools.com didn’t show that the domain was on any blacklist. Lots of very handy tools on this site.
- http://www.dnsbl.info- Shows your status on a number of spam databases, none of which we were listed on.
- CheckDNS is a nice analysis tool, it tests your mail server’s HELO/EHLO and checks your name servers for problems.
- http://www.zonecheck.fr – Does a bunch of tests and the warnings at the bottom are quite human-friendly yet thorough.
- IntoDNS.com – This site is probably my favourite, it’s user interface is great, nice and clear, and the green or red indicators on the results page make it nice and easy to read.
We appear to have a problem at our ISP, the SOA is different to the NS records but that should only be a problem if the nameserver is unavailable so shouldn’t be denying mail. I’ve entered a reverse DNS PTR record so the IP should resolve. Therefore, I am pretty sure that the reason it’s bouncing is that we’re advertising domain.local instead of domain.tld.
To remedy this:
1. Open up Exchange System Manager and expand “Administrative Groups” -> First Administrative Group -> Servers -> [servername] -> Protocols -> SMTP
2. In the right-hand pane, you should see “Default SMTP Server”, right-click it and select “Properties” from the menu.
3. In the “Default SMTP Virtual Server Properties” dialog box, select the Delivery tab and click the Advanced button. In the field “Fully Qualified Domain Name”, type the FQDN of the server that is sending out SMTP mail and then press OK (twice).
I think that ought to do the trick, but if not my next blog entry will likely be about using SMTPDiag. 
Tags: exchange, smtp, sysadmin
Posted in geekery | No Comments »
April 17th, 2009
Welcome to the CRTC’s online consultation on Internet traffic management practices in Canada. We’re looking for your thoughts on these practices. The comments and discussion resulting from this consultation will help shape the upcoming CRTC hearing on Internet traffic management practices, as well as form part of the public record. We welcome your participation and thank you for sharing your opinions on the various topics.
Net neutrality is a cornerstone of the internet. We don’t want corporate control over what we can see and do on the internet, it’s up to us to ensure that we continue to have the freedom we now enjoy. I urge all Canadians to stand up and show their support for net neutrality. Tell the CRTC that you support net neutrality. Public consultation is only open until April 30 so there’s no time to waste.
Tags: copyright, net-neutrality
Posted in Uncategorized | No Comments »
