Archive for July, 2007

Portugal says “Yes with comments” to OOXML

Published on July 31, 2007 in lobby. 0 Comments

What a bad day…

About my machine running FreeBSD

Published on July 30, 2007 in FreeBSD. 0 Comments

On my previous post about moving my blog I said I would talk more about the FreeBSD box.

It’s one of 3 machines I have running FreeBSD, the only one running 6.2 RELEASE, the other two are running CURRENT.
This machine is only currently hosting this blog but will soon replace my Linksys WRT54GL as a router.
Because of heat, power and space savings I’ve been using the Linksys WRT54GL as a router and switch. It was a bad decision for two reasons:
I bought a Mac which has a Gigabit interface as well as my storage machine. I bought a SMC SMCGS8 8 port Gigabit Switch to remedy that.
The other problem is that the WRT54GL can’t handle lots of traffic on my 11~12 mbit downstream ADSL because the router is the PPPoE client, not the modem.

I still wanted a low power, low noise but more powerfull machine and happened to get just that from a friend: it’s a 800MHz Via C3 Ezra with 256MB RAM and a 10GB Seagate. The cpu is fanless, only the low wattage power supply has a fan that is most quiet.
It has a RealTek 8139 10/100BaseTX builtin and I added an Intel 82550 Pro/100 Ethernet.

Here’s the dmesg:

Copyright (c) 1992-2007 The FreeBSD Project.
Copyright (c) 1979, 1980, 1983, 1986, 1988, 1989, 1991, 1992, 1993, 1994
The Regents of the University of California. All rights reserved.
FreeBSD is a registered trademark of The FreeBSD Foundation.
FreeBSD 6.2-RELEASE-p4 #0: Thu Apr 26 17:40:53 UTC 2007
root@i386-builder.daemonology.net:/usr/obj/usr/src/sys/GENERIC
Timecounter "i8254" frequency 1193182 Hz quality 0
CPU: VIA C3 Ezra (797.97-MHz 686-class CPU)
Origin = "CentaurHauls" Id = 0x678 Stepping = 8
Features=0x803035
real memory = 268369920 (255 MB)
avail memory = 253091840 (241 MB)
kbd1 at kbdmux0
ath_hal: 0.9.17.2 (AR5210, AR5211, AR5212, RF5111, RF5112, RF2413, RF5413)
acpi0: on motherboard
acpi0: Power Button (fixed)
Timecounter “ACPI-safe” frequency 3579545 Hz quality 1000
acpi_timer0: <24-bit timer at 3.579545MHz> port 0×4008-0×400b on acpi0
cpu0: on acpi0
acpi_throttle0: on cpu0
acpi_button0: on acpi0
pcib0: port 0xcf8-0xcff,0×4000-0×407f,0×4080-0×40ff,0×5000-0×500f,0×6000-0×607f on acpi0
pci0: on pcib0
agp0: mem 0xe0000000-0xe3ffffff at device 0.0 on pci0
pcib1: at device 1.0 on pci0
pci1: on pcib1
isab0: at device 7.0 on pci0
isa0: on isab0
atapci0: port 0×1f0-0×1f7,0×3f6,0×170-0×177,0×376,0xd000-0xd00f at device 7.1 on pci0
ata0: on atapci0
ata1: on atapci0
uhci0: port 0xd400-0xd41f irq 5 at device 7.2 on pci0
uhci0: [GIANT-LOCKED]
usb0: on uhci0
usb0: USB revision 1.0
uhub0: VIA UHCI root hub, class 9/0, rev 1.00/1.00, addr 1
uhub0: 2 ports with 2 removable, self powered
uhci1: port 0xd800-0xd81f irq 5 at device 7.3 on pci0
uhci1: [GIANT-LOCKED]
usb1: on uhci1
usb1: USB revision 1.0
uhub1: VIA UHCI root hub, class 9/0, rev 1.00/1.00, addr 1
uhub1: 2 ports with 2 removable, self powered
pci0: at device 7.4 (no driver attached)
fxp0: port 0xdc00-0xdc3f mem 0xe6931000-0xe6931fff,0xe6900000-0xe691ffff irq 10 at device 8.0 on pci0
miibus0: on fxp0
inphy0: on miibus0
inphy0: 10baseT, 10baseT-FDX, 100baseTX, 100baseTX-FDX, auto
fxp0: Ethernet address: 00:02:b3:xx:xx:xx
rl0: port 0xe000-0xe0ff mem 0xe6930000-0xe69300ff irq 11 at device 10.0 on pci0
miibus1: on rl0
rlphy0: on miibus1
rlphy0: 10baseT, 10baseT-FDX, 100baseTX, 100baseTX-FDX, auto
rl0: Ethernet address: 00:30:00:xx:xx:xx
pci0: at device 11.0 (no driver attached)
pci0: at device 13.0 (no driver attached)
sio0: <16550A-compatible COM port> port 0×3f8-0×3ff irq 4 flags 0×10 on acpi0
sio0: type 16550A
atkbdc0: port 0×60,0×64 irq 1 on acpi0
atkbd0: irq 1 on atkbdc0
kbd0 at atkbd0
atkbd0: [GIANT-LOCKED]
pmtimer0 on isa0
orm0: at iomem 0xc0000-0xc7fff,0xc8000-0xcbfff on isa0
ppc0: parallel port not found.
sc0: at flags 0×100 on isa0
sc0: VGA <16 virtual consoles, flags=0x300>
sio1: configured irq 3 not in bitmap of probed irqs 0
sio1: port may not be enabled
vga0: at port 0×3c0-0×3df iomem 0xa0000-0xbffff on isa0
ukbd0: vendor 0×0430 product 0×0005, rev 1.00/1.01, addr 2, iclass 3/1
kbd2 at ukbd0
Timecounter “TSC” frequency 797969267 Hz quality 800
Timecounters tick every 1.000 msec
ad0: 9768MB at ata0-master UDMA100

links for 2007-07-29

Published on July 29, 2007 in del.icio.us. 0 Comments

Blog moved to my FreeBSD box!

Published on July 27, 2007 in blog. 1 Comment

I had my blog hosted on a free hosting service but after some service unavailability periods, .htaccess being ignored which caused breakage to the permalink structure (tags, categories, feeds, etc) and lastly by receiving a mail stating that MySQL support was being disabled….well you get what you pay for…
It was time to move the blog so I decided to use a machine @home running my precious FreeBSD :)
More on this machine on some later posts.

hosting issues…

Published on July 20, 2007 in FreeBSD. 0 Comments

I’m having some hosting issues, so I’m installing a FreeBSD at home and will move this blog afterwards.Maybe I’ll write up some FreeBSD howtos in the process :) 

Not enough seats for Sun and IBM to discuss OOXML

Published on July 17, 2007 in lobby. 0 Comments

Just read Paulo Vilela’s post about how a request by Sun and IBM to become part of the Portuguese Technical Committee established to discuss document standards in Portugal was denied. Why? There are no seats. And I do mean CHAIRS!!!

I’m ashamed of my country, again.

Note: Paulo Vilela is a Sun employe in Portugal and his post is in Portuguese, so here is the page translated to English, via Google.

Bloppy - Track blog comments!

Published on July 9, 2007 in blog. 0 Comments

Mário is this month’s hero on productivity. Well, at least mine ;)How do you track comments you’ve made on someone else’s blog? Keep the pages open and check them once in a while? Bookmark them for future checking?Well, Mário solved that problem when he launched Bloppy:  bloppy.pngThere’s even a Mac OS X widget :)Kudos to Mário, nicelly done :D 

Slackware 12 is out!

Published on July 3, 2007 in Linux. 0 Comments

Slackware Logo

Patrick Volkerding announced the release of Slackware 12.0 .

This release is the first to use a 2.6 series Linux kernel as default and with it brings some important features:

  • HAL (the Hardware Abstraction Layer) which allows the system administrator to add users to the cdrom and plugdev groups. Then they will be able to use items such as USB flash sticks, USB cameras that appear like USB storage, portable hard drives, CD and DVD media, MP3 players, and more, all without requiring sudo, the mount or umount command. Just plug and play.
  • Kernel support for X DRI (the Direct Rendering Interface) brings high-speed hardware accelerated 3D graphics to Linux.
  • The udev dynamic device management system for Linux 2.6.x. This locates and configures most hardware automatically as it is added (or removed) from the system, and creates the access nodes in /dev. It also loads the kernel modules required by sound cards and other hardware at boot time
  • PCMCIA, CardBus, USB, IEE1394 (FireWire) and ACPI support. This makes Slackware a great operating system for your laptop.

The new modular X11 7.2.0 from the X.Org Foundation is also the new supported X Window System along with updated xfce and KDE Window Managers.

On a personnal note Slackware will always have a special place in my heart as it was my first contact with Linux some 12 years ago, release 3.0 back then :D

I still have the box to prove it:

Slackware 3.0 Box