Author Archives: Chris Samuel

DECnet Now Orphaned in the Linux Kernel for 2.6.33

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For those computer history buffs it is sad to learn that the Linux kernels DECnet code is going to be orphaned in 2.6.33, the git commit by Christine Caulfield says:

Due to lack of time, space, motivation, hardware and probably expertise, I have reluctantly decided to orphan the DECnet code in the kernel.

Judging by the deafening silence on the linux-decnet mailing list I suspect it’s either not being used anyway, or the few people that are using it are happy with their older kernels.

To be honest I’m surprised it’s lasted this long, the last time I used DECnet in anger was around 1997 I think..

UK Academic Network JANET to Close Usenet News Service (Updated)

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This is a great shame, though probably not that surprising these days, but the UK Joint Academic Network (JANET) is going to pull its Usenet News service on the 31st July 2010. Basically I suspect the ever declining SNR has put people off, and these days everyone knows the web and the closest they get to knowing what Usenet is (or maybe was) Google Groups. JANET says:

There are now few active registered News Feed users and News Read users and the current infrastructure is nearing its end of life. JANET(UK) have therefore decided that it is no longer economically viable to run the service, especially in the current financial climate. We therefore will cease to offer the service when the existing contract expires on July 31st 2010.

Especially sad for me as I cut part of my first real sysadmin job at the University of Wales, Aberystwyth, was working on the Usenet news system that had been set up originally by Alec Muffett and I was for quite a while the maintainer of the UK.telecom newsgroup FAQ and the alt.config guidelines.

Update: I’ve been digging through some old email – here’s one from 4th August 1993 giving an idea of what we had to struggle with:

OK, I deleted all binaries under alt.binaries, all of junk and all of control. That, coupled with the AEM_TIDY got us about 27 meg back. I then ran a doexpire, whch took a long while but we’re now up to about 53 Meg free, or about 85% of the 400 Meg partition.

Yup, the entire university news spool at that time was a whopping great 400MB. 😉 We were using nntplink with CNews for the time (this was before we knew about INN).

The Sun Has Gone Down

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It’s hard to believe that Sun Microsystems, on whose workstations in the Computer Science lab at the University of Wales, Aberystwyth I first really learnt to hack^W play with UNIX systems (and no, I wasn’t studying CompSci!), is passing into the annals of history to become just another brand in the Oracle monolith. They’ve even delisted there SUNW^W JAVA symbol from NASDAQ (hat tip to Arjen for the link).

As Alec’s wonderful filk said:

We had Joy, We had fun,
We were fork()ing on a Sun,
but the joy is all gone,
’til the processes are Done [1].

shutdown -r now

Great Filesystem Quote

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From Valerie Aurora on POSIX semantics:

It may not be POSIX, but the programmer’s intent is clear – no one ever, ever wrote “creat(); write(); close(); rename();” and hoped they would get an empty file if the system crashed during the next 5 minutes. That’s what truncate() is for.

🙂

Australia/Survival Day

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Today is the public holiday commonly called Australia Day but really it’s only a good day for those of us who arrived since last 1787, for those who came before it’s been a bit crap. OK, a lot crap. 🙁 So today instead of participating in the usual ritual of barbie and beer Donna and I went up to the Belgrave Survival Day event, celebrating the fact that we still have people from the oldest continual culture in the world around!

Belgrave Surival Day 2010

A nice day, we were a bit late in getting there so we missed the earlier talks and dances but we did get to hear some good indigenous bands play and had a wander around to look at the displays and talk to people. If you want to know a little more about why these things are important have a browse of the ANTAR website.

Joining the Australian Internet Blackout

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Along with folks like the Samba project I’ve joined the Great Australian Internet Blackout, so the first time (and only the first time) you visit the site you’ll get the notice about the protest. Here’s why the proposed mandatory filtering is a bad idea from the Great Australian Internet Blackout website:

  • It won’t protect children: The filter isn’t a “cyber safety” measure to stop kids seeing inappropriate content such as R and X rated websites. It is not even designed to prevent the spread of illegal material where it is most often found (chat rooms, peer-to-peer file sharing).
  • We will all pay for this ineffective solution: Under this policy, ISPs will be forced to charge more for consumer and business broadband. Several hundred thousand dollars has already been spent to test the filter – without considering high-speed services such as the National Broadband Network!
  • A dangerous precedent: We stand to join a small club of countries which impose centralised Internet censorship such as China, Iran and Saudi Arabia. The secret blacklist may be limited to “Refused Classification” content for now, but what might a future Australian Government choose to block?

If you’re using WordPress with a theme that supports widgets then participating is as easy as adding a text widget (or using one you already have) and add the single line of HTML to activate the blackout.

To paraphrase Kryten from Red Dwarf, it has just two minor flaws. One, it won’t work, and two, it won’t work. Now I realise that, technically speaking, that’s only one flaw but I thought it was such a big one it was worth mentioning twice.