Problem: After an installation/update of an Adobe product, the Windows 7 desktop loses connecting to off the network. After doing an ipconfig, there was an additional default gateway of 0.0.0.0 set so that the user can’t access any computer off their subnet. Settings the configurations from dhcp to static doesn’t solve the problem for very long.

The “solution” was find on this microsoft forum and basically boils down to running cmd with Administrative privs and running the following:

"C:\Program Files\Bonjour\mDNSResponder.exe" -remove

The simple solution is to find the keepalive packet option and enable it on your ssh client.

On Windows using Putty:
I found the following configurations in the “Connection” section:
Seconds between keepalives (0 to turn off)
Enable TCP keepalives
Try setting it to 180 seconds and enabling the TCP keepalives.

On OSX:
Edit the /etc/ssh/ssh_config:
ServerAliveInterval 180

linux probably works the same as the OSX, but I’ve never actually ran into the problem on any of my connections.

def eliteSpeak(word):
  leetWord = word.replace("e","3")
  leetWord = leetWord.replace("E","3")
  leetWord = leetWord.replace("l","1")
  leetWord = leetWord.replace("L","1")
  leetWord = leetWord.replace("o","0")
  leetWord = leetWord.replace("O","0")
  return leetWord

Granted I realized that I don’t know the 1337 speak conventions so I just did some simple replaces. Something like “Oh no, look out for the Listerine spillage.”

eliteSpeak("Oh no, look out for the Listerine spillage.")
'0h n0, 100k 0ut f0r th3 1ist3rin3 spi11ag3.'

If there’s a better way to do it, let me know. Oh btw, I used 2 spaces for formatting instead of tabs.

ftp://ftp.server.com/pub/centos/mirror/%24releasever/os/x86_64/repodata/repomd.xml:
[Errno 14] FTP Error 550 : ftp://ftp.server.com/pub/centos/mirror/%24releasever/os/x86_64/repodata/repomd.xml

Couple of the trouble shooting steps I did was that I first straced it:

yum clean all
strace -f -o /tmp/yumoutput yum info gcc

I looked inside the /tmp/yumoutput and found that when yum would ftp to the mirror, it didn’t expand out the $releasever to be 6, but actually releasever:

20209 sendto(7, "CWD $releasever\r\n", 17, MSG_NOSIGNAL, NULL, 0) = 17

I got a ftp 505 error as a result and the fact is that /mirror/$releasever was not a valid path to the mirror. This path is defined in a /etc/yum.repos.d/local-mirror file and we are using the builtin variable $releasever so that we don’t have to update it every time the release changes.

My coworker found a page that includes a simple python script to run to get the releasever also:

python -c 'import yum, pprint; yb = yum.YumBase(); pprint.pprint(yb.conf.yumvar, width=1)'

Which resulted in:

Loaded plugins: fastestmirror
{'arch': 'amd64',
 'basearch': 'x86_64',
 'releasever': '$releasever',
 'uuid': 'a9aaaaa-6aa4-4aa0-a9aa-e2aaaaaaaa59'}

but really should result to:

Loaded plugins: fastestmirror
{'arch': 'amd64',
 'basearch': 'x86_64',
 'releasever': '6',
 'uuid': 'a9aaaaa-6aa4-4aa0-a9aa-e2aaaaaaaa59'}

There’s also the /var/cache/yum/arch folder and there was a $releasever folder in there.  Another indication that the $releasever was not expanding out.

We have set our Centos 5 servers to have the yum.conf setting for distroverpkg=centos-release-notes so that we don’t upgrade to the next minor point release on accident when yum updating. When we are good and ready to update, we change it to distroverpkg=centos-release and then do an update to the next point release. When we changed the distropkgver=centos-release in /etc/yum.conf, the yum just started to magically work. The python code translated the $releasever to be 6 instead of the text “$releasever” and I felt a sigh of relief at finding the problem.

The quest to find out why was next. Looking at the man yum.conf, I discovered this handy quote:

distroverpkg The package used by yum to determine the “version” of the distribution. This can be any installed package. Default
is redhat-release. You can see what provides this manually by using: “yum whatprovides redhat-release”.

Unfortunately, yum doesn’t work so I can’t use the command above. The following is the equivalent but using rpm query and using centos-release instead of redhat-release (which also works):

rpm -q --whatprovides centos-release

So here’s the result for my CentOS 5 box:

rpm -q --whatprovides centos-release
centos-release-5-7.el5.centos

rpm -q --whatprovides centos-release-notes
centos-release-notes-5.7-0

When doing it on the CentOS 6 server, I see the error:

rpm -q --whatprovides centos-release
centos-release-6-0.el6.centos.5.x86_64

rpm -q --whatprovides centos-release-notes
no package provides centos-release-notes

I checked the mirror, but wasn’t able to find any centos-release-notes for CentOS 6 so I may be out of luck until 6.1 comes out and the CR is removed or something else.

== Update 2012.04.22 ==

I forgot to up this post, but I found out awhile ago reading the centos release notes, that they removed the redhat-release-notes package and didn’t replace it with a centos-release-notes one.

For now, we’ll just download it on a laptop, upload it to google docs, and then get at the presentation from there.

My favorite APAR you ask?

IC69003 IC69003 5698ISMSV 62W LACK OF DOCUMENTATION REGARDING SERVER UPGRADE TO 6.X IN A CLUSTERED ENVIRONMENT.

I would say that it’s just hard to find and read the documentation in general.

Nonetheless, hopefully I will get it installed this week and check out if I notice anything different.

I’m not sure how I missed this, but Microsfoft released an update to the remote desktop client called Remote Desktop Connection 7.0 for Windows XP, Windows Vista SP1, and Windows Vista SP2. It basically allows for these clients to remote desktop  into Windows 7 and Window Server 2008.

This is great because I’ve lowered the security settings on Windows 7 in order to allow for my old XP boxes to remote in. Now I can just update this client and I’m good to go with the higher security settings that come default in Windows 7.

Also keyboard ninjas, just type ‘mstsc’ to load up the remote desktop client from Run or the Search Box.

Proof of identi.ca on android seesmic. A bit fuzzy though

I did some searches and found that I can add my identi.ca account to my seesmic android app. Here are two blog posts I found about it:

http://status.net/2010/03/25/using-seesmic-for-android-with-statusnet

http://blog.seesmic.com/using-seesmic-for-android-to-add-other-web-applications-like-tumblr-identica-wordpress.html#more-197

On version of Seesmic 1.7 for android, I did the following

1. Add account.
2. Twitter proxy
3. Filled out my username and password.
4. Use secure connection
5. REST API server: https://identi.ca/api/
6. Unchecked “Use XAuth”.

I’ve been reading Greening Through IT by Bill Tomlinson and has been a pretty good read so far. I’m halfway through so I can’t give a big review, but I can say that I found it very interesting and gives me new outlook on nature in life in general.

Although I haven’t reached specific ways of greening in my situation via the book, I’d thought I would at least list some ways that we do it at work.

1. Lab computers are turned off soon after the lab closes and automatically turn back on in the morning before labs start.
2. Servers are set in the BIOS to have power settings controlled by the O/S so when there’s no load on the server, the cpu’s are running at a slower clock speed. The newer r610s that we have I haven’t played with comparing it with O/S mode and some other mode that I’ve forgotten what’s it’s called.
3. A/C aren’t set to be super cold: we’ve raised them to be in the 70s so they don’t need to be wasting a ton of energy trying to cool everything down a lot.
4. Warm and cold aisles of racks. We have raised floors with air vents that are only in the cold aisles and then have the backs of other racks face each other for the warm aisles with cool vents in the floor. This keeps our cooling more efficient and “should” be more “green.”
5. Monthly maintenance of the A/C units. I try to make sure the A/C units are running with solid belts so that they are running optimally all the time. Broken belts cause some low air flow wastes much energy.
6. Virtualization. Everyone always talks about consolidation, but it’s really easy to dump a few vm’s on newer servers and just assign a core to each of them. We removed an old sun server recently and replaced it with a vm and it barely takes any load on the server. We use xen on centos as our vm technology of choice.

So there’s a few that I can think of at the top of my head. Stay green!

After each make clean I had to rerun the python patch script, that was something wasn’t so clear and made my compiling not fun when figuring it out.

1. amber 11 with bugfix13 and ambertools bugfix 4
2. Installing it at /pkg/amber/11-1.5.0
3. Get Amber11.tar.gz and get bugfix all for amber 11 at http://ambermd.org/bugfixes11.html
4. get ambertools 1.5 at http://ambermd.org/AmberTools-get.html
5. Get bugfix for ambertools at http://ambermd.org/bugfixesat.html
6. cd /pkg/amber
7. tar -xvpf Amber11.tar.gz which puts it in amber11 folder
8. tar -xvpf AmberTools.1.5.tar.bz2 which puts it in amber11 folder
9. mv amber11 11-1.5.0
10. export AMBERHOME=/pkg/amber/11-1.5.0
11. cd /pkg/amber/11-1.5.0
12. patch -p0 -N < bugfix.all
13. mv bugfix.all bugfix.all.ambertools.up.to.4 so we know how many bugfixes it does
14. download bugfix.all for amber
15. download apply_bugfix.x
16. chmod 700 apply_bugfix.x
17. ./apply_bugfix.x bugfix.all
18. mv bugfix.all bugfix.all.amber.up.to.13

# now that all the bugfixes done let’s compile ambertools

1. cd /pkg/amber/11-1.5.0/AmberTools/src
2. ./configure gnu
3. NOTE: after installing AmberTools, if you want to compile       Amber11 using AmberTools 1.5, you must run the        AT15_Amber11.py script first, e.g.:       cd /pkg/amber/11-1.5.0; ./AT15_Amber11.py; make serial       (See the Amber11 Users’ Manual for full instructions,       and be sure to have a backup, since the AT15_Amber11.py       script will modify your Amber11 files.)
4. make install
5. cd /pkg/amber/11-1.5.0
6. ./AT15_Amber11.py
7. cd src
8. make serial
9. cd ../test
10. make test

359 file comparisons passed

21 file comparisons failed

0 tests experienced errors

== mpi time parallel ==

1. yum install mpich2.x86_64 mpich2-devel.x86_64
2. cd /pkg/amber/11-1.5.0/AmberTools/src
3. make clean
4. ./configure -mpi gnu
5. cd ../../src
6. make clean
7. cd /pkg/amber/11-1.5.0./AT15_Amber11.py
8. cd src
9. make parallel
10. cd ../testexport
11. DO_PARALLEL=’mpirun -np 2′
12. Create a ~/.mpdconf
13. mpd &
14. make test.parallel

Some tests require 4 threads to run, while some will notrun with more than 2.  Please run further parallel tests with theappropriate number of processors. See README for details.
make[1]: Leaving directory `/pkg/amber/11-1.5.0/test’

361 file comparisons passed

9 file comparisons failed

0 tests experienced errors

1. export DO_PARALLEL=’mpirun -np 4′
2. make test.parallel

make[1]: Leaving directory `/pkg/amber/11-1.5.0/test’

282 file comparisons passed

16 file comparisons failed

0 tests experienced errors

== let’s try cuda now ==

1. install the cuda developer nvidia driver
2. install cuda stuff into /usr/local/cuda-3.2
3. run deviceQueryDrv as root once after compiling it from the sdk toolkit
4. export CUDA_HOME=/usr/local/cuda-3.2/cuda
5. export PATH=/usr/local/cuda-3.2/cuda/bin:$PATH
6. unset DO_PARALLEL
7. cd /pkg/amber/11-1.5.0/AmberTools/src
8. make clean
9. ./configure -cuda gnu
10. cd ../../
11. ./AT15_Amber11.py
12. cd src
13. make clean
14. make cuda
15. cd ../test
16. export LD_LIBRARY_PATH=/usr/local/cuda-3.2/cuda/lib64:/usr/local/cuda-3.2/cuda/lib
17. ./test_amber_cuda.sh

56 file comparisons passed

0 file comparisons failed

0 tests experienced errors
== cuda mpi ==

1. cd ../AmberTools/src
2. make clean
3. ./configure -cuda -mpi gnu
4. cd ../..
5. ./AT15_Amber11.py
6. cd src
7. make clean
8. export C_INCLUDE_PATH=/usr/include/mpich2-x86_64:/usr/include/mpich2-i386
9. export CPLUS_INCLUDE_PATH=/usr/include/mpich2-x86_64:/usr/include/mpich2-i386
10. make cuda_parallel
11. cd ../test
12. export DO_PARALLEL=’mpirun -np 2′
13. ./test_amber_cuda_parallel.sh

29 file comparisons passed

0 file comparisons failed

0 tests experienced errors

== now cuda dpdp ==

(Still using above environmental settings)

1. cd /pkg/amber/11-1.5.0/AmberTools/src
2. make clean
3. ./configure -cuda_DPDP gnu
4. cd ../..
5. ./AT15_Amber11.py
6. cd src
7. make clean
8. make cuda
9. cd ../test
10. ./test_amber_cuda.sh -1 DPDP

55 file comparisons passed

1 file comparison failed

0 tests experienced errors

=== now cuda dpdp mpi ===

1. cd /pkg/amber/11-1.5.0/AmberTools/src
2. make clean
3. ./configure -cuda_DPDP -mpi gnu
4. cd ../…/AT15_Amber11.py
5. cd src
6. make clean
7. make cuda_parallel
8. cd ../test
9. ./test_amber_cuda_parallel.sh -1 DPDP