JDPFu.com 2025

I love how software is very interconnected these days – NOT.

This morning I needed some information about yard tonics that I know is here and discovered that the sidebar for the blog wasn’t working correctly. There was an error message, so no RSS, search, topics, categories, etc… I haven’t changed anything in the setup for months. Normal fixing steps:

• restart typo – no joy.
• restart the VM – no joy.
• check the logs for an easy answer – nothing.
• log into the admin interface and play around with the sidebar a little – that simply showed that all but the “static” plugin was broken AND that the drag-n-drop interface to manage sidebars was broken too.
• switch to a different browser and see all the same issues.
  Ok, so I think it is some remote javascript library causing the problems. I open the source for a page and see that only local javascript is used – I remember now, I didn’t like that remote code would run on my site, so I made a local copy. That’s why the first time you visit here, the page loads slow. Regardless, that’s not the issue.

Google – nobody else is reporting this problem since 2006 under IE6. I am definitely not running IE6 here.

There is a newer version of the code. With all the local tweaks, installing a new version can be a hassle. I’ve been meaning to move this VM to a different 12.04 host anyway … now is as good a time as any – plus it rained today.

In a few hours, this blog should be running on a new physical box, under a different hypervisor, the first VM in my long planned migration. I’d hoped to switch from KVM to LXC for this VM to use fewer system resources, but I’m not prepared for that today.

Wish me luck!

I still need to find that tonic recipe too. Got it, thanks to google again.

Over the last few days we had an outage here. A UPS used by the network infrastructure failed and nobody could physically get to it until sometime yesterday. Actually, nobody could trouble shoot the problem to know what actually caused the lack of connectivity.

Around here, we don’t have many failures and certainly not many failures that impact public-facing services for more than a few minutes. Sometimes the blog software is a little flaky and crashes, but since we are running a few instances behind a load balancer, the service shouldn’t be completely unavailable and should auto-restart if all instances fail. Overnight when we take backups, it is just easier to take down all instances of the blog for a few minutes, do the backup, then bring them back up. It takes just a few minutes – not a big deal in the middle of the night. Yes, there are other ways to do this in a non-impacting way.

Remember, this is a non-income-generating blog – like a front door to a small business. It is expected, but doesn’t make any money.

Perhaps a few readers would like to know more details?

Every few days or weeks, I look at the logs for this blog. It is out of interest only, since there aren’t any ads here and I don’t get paid to run the site or make the content. At the beginning of a new month, the referrer list can be interesting. Often those links are from UbuntuForums or Lifehacker or other websites where I’ve left relevant links back here. A few friendly websites also link back like My Linux Rig and even Wikipedia and WikiBooks.

I try to avoid ranting here and post articles when I’ve found a solution, not just a place to complain.

Today I need a timer/alarm app. These are common on Maemo, Android and I suspect other portable devices. I need finer control than a minute, so a calendar or cron entry aren’t viable solutions.

This seems like a very common need for users – get my attention in 2 or 12 or 55.3 minutes. That’s what I need too. It needs to be second accurate and should be built-into the clock app in a dock.

• cooking timers
• phone call reminder – suppose you want to be exactly on-time for a job phone interview?
• switch task reminder

You get the idea.