JDPFu.com 2025

After a recent kernel update to 2.6.32-24-server, X11 refused to restart. Recall that I’d modified my system to support dual monitors as described in this prior post. Since a new kernel was installed, rebuilding any non-standard kernel modules is expected. That’s probably all we need to do. These instructions should work for anyone using nVidia graphics cards purchased in the last 4 (?) years and running a 2.6.xx kernel. Mine is a Ge-Force 7600-GS, so nothing too fancy.

The symptoms for this new issue were that the console refused to stay on the tty that I’d used – basically, every 10-20 seconds, the dmesg log was displayed on the console and my tty was changed to console regardless of how many times that I manually selected console 1, 2, 3, 4 …. It really sucked. The error displayed was something like “no screens available”, but I don’t have the exact error message anymore.

Anyway, time to follow my prior instructions for dual monitors, perhaps updating them.

We’re on Port 80 Now

Most of you probably don’t care, but this website underwent some big changes today. We are running on port 80 now. For the last 3 years, this blog has run on port 82, which caused some problems for some corporate access where the network admin was too lazy to proxy based on protocol and only proxied based on port. Those people couldn’t access the site.

Going forward, please use http://blog.jdpfu.com/ to access the site. Nothing under that should change, in theory.

We added port 80 as a way to allow access to the blog. We didn’t stop port 82 access so that old links from external locations will continue to work, but slowly, over time, access via port 82 should go away. Initially, port 82 will only have 1 server listening with port 80 getting 4 servers. For faster performance go to port 80.

What should you do?

1. You should update your RSS reader from jdpfu.com:82/articles.rss to http://blog.jdpfu.com/articles.rss
2. Anytime you see :82 in a URL, don’t worry, provided it works. If it doesn’t work, try removing the :82 part. That shouldn’t be necessary, but you never know. http://blog.jdpfu.com/ should be the subdomain that http://jdpfu.com/ redirects to from now on, at least from the top page request.

When you have lots of servers, things can get complicated.

If you see problems, please drop a comment to us.

We run lots of internal only web servers that also listen on port 80, so some of these services could be confused at the reverse proxy server and redirect to the wrong place. Hopefully, it doesn’t become a big issue for the public users. You guys should have priority.

In a few months, we may setup an apache server for port 82 that handles the rewrites automatically and provides a permanently moved error as part of the redirect. Perhaps next week. Perhaps.

In May 2010, I decided to lose a little weight for an Aug 1 occasion. Ok, perhaps not really a little. Anyway, I’ve made some progress since then.

Monthly   Total Lost
05/20/10  0
06/20/10  7.5
07/20/10  11
08/20/10  27
09/20/10  32.5

What’s that saying? Some days you eat the bear and other days the bear eats you.
Or perhaps Stupid is as stupid does fits.

Ooops is something you never want to hear your system/network admin say. I’ve heard it said elsewhere and then watched as 200+ NASA servers all started rebooting. No time to save your work. No time to do anything before the screen flickers and a bios screen is displayed.

Today, I said, “ooops.”

The story is a little old, but it was new to me and I figured many people here would also be interested.

The presentation is by Mr. Rutan, famous aviator and aerospace engineer. Here’s an overview. The full PPT presentation isn’t without flaws, but using longer term temperature and CO2 data, it shows how the presentation that Vice President Gore and other we’re all gonna die people has been selected for effect.

Today the roofers are here putting up a new roof. I had a leak, but only when it rained REALLY hard – perhaps once a year. The old roof was 16+ yrs old, so it was about time. About half the neighborhood homes already have new roofs.

The guys were all here before 7:30a and ready to go. The weather today is going to be a perfect day for this – clear, sunny, highs in the lower 80s. No rain expected until after midnight. Perfect.

I’ll try to take a few photos during the day to capture some of the progress. As the day goes on, I’m learning about more leaks and bad design than I already knew. The leader is explaining how and why they happened. I trust him. I’ll explain below.

Over the years, I’ve been using this blog to help myself remember how to do things and to share some great tools and techniques with you. I figure it is time to recap some of those articles whether they are computer, financial/retirement, or just interesting things.

Today I was migrating a few core services from one server to another as part of the new server build project. Basically, I need to wipe the 1st physical server and reload it with a new, different OS as part of this project. Before that can be accomplished, there are a number of services that I need to migrate to a new VM running on a different server.

Today, I was doing a little online shopping using my Nokia N800. Ikea has a few price cuts on bookcases and they looked interesting, so I wanted more information.

I visited ikea.com and clicked United States – crash. Not just a browser crash, but a forced reboot of the entire device. SWEET! The N800 uses a modified Mozilla browser running a version of Linux, BTW. This isn’t a normal cell phone or otherwise limited browser. I’m not running with any special permissions either. Crashes shouldn’t be possible.

Good job Ikea. My N800 is 3 yrs old and this is the first time it has crashed to a reboot. Impressive. May I suggest you review your web site for errors?

Nothing really to report this week. Doing RMA stuff on an old Antec 550W PSU and getting an estimate to fix the Dell laptop.