Bushfire

June 28, 2010

Sweated my arse off in Darmstadt’s Golden Krone to take a few shots of these guys playing at the ‘Nonstock’ warm-up.  Click on the small ones below to enlarge, or check out the full set on my Flickr account over here.

DSC_3895-Edit-2

DSC_3887 DSC_3939 DSC_3964-Edit DSC_3929-Edit DSC_3869-Edit DSC_3901 DSC_3959 DSC_3835 DSC_3819

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Adios, freebsd.cx

May 18, 2010

I’ve owned the domain ‘freebsd.cx’ for a number of years and it’s got a certain amount of history behind it that a few of you may remember.  However, given CoCCA’s recent price hikes (50 USD a year!) and the fact that it’s now only used by a couple of people for email mean that I’m disinclined to fork out for the renewal fee.

If you’re still using an @freebsd.cx address I can offer you @xen.cx instead, otherwise consider it dead.  RIP!

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Itchy feet?

April 23, 2010

I can’t believe how quickly the last year has gone, but we (me and Rox) have made a decision to move back to the UK towards the end of summer and this week I handed my notice in at work.

Pedestrians in Cologne

To be fair, the motivation wasn’t really the passing of time, instead there’s been a number of personal / family related stuff going on which when they’re all factored together means that somewhere closer to home is the best place to be for us both, for now.

We’ve had an amazing time out here in Darmstadt,  it’s a cool place and we’ve made some great friends.  But if we don’t start making plans now then before we know it another year will have passed and well, you know how that goes.

I have a three month notice period to work, so it’ll be mid to late July before I start seriously job hunting.  If you hear of anything that would suit, let me know!

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Following on from Dan’s how-to regarding the configuration of SunCluster 3.2 within VMware Fusion, here’s my additional notes on doing this from a minimal install (i.e core software group) so as to keep the size of the VMs down.

First thing you’ll want to do is install some packages to make your life a bit less painful.  Connect the DVD device with the Solaris 10 ISO and mount it within your VM:

# mount -F hsfs -o ro /dev/dsk/c0d0t0s0 /mnt/cdrom

Then we can install some packages from /mnt/cdrom/Solaris_10/Product. Let’s start off with some basic utilities, bash, and online documentation (man pages):

# yes | pkgadd -d . SUNWxcu4
# yes | pkgadd -d . SUNWadmfr SUNWadmfw
# yes | pkgadd -d . SUNWbash
# yes | pkgadd -d . SUNWdoc SUNWman

SSH is also quite useful:

# yes | pkgadd -d . SUNWsshr SUNWsshu SUNWsshdr SUNWsshdu SUNWsshcu
# /lib/svc/method/sshd -c
# svcadm enable ssh

The second command will create your RSA and DSA host keys, without this you won’t be able to connect.

Then there’s a bunch of additional prerequisite packages you need to install before SunCluster itself. These are as follows:

SUNWtcatu
SUNWj3rt
SUNWj3dev
SUNWmfrun
SUNWxwrtl
SUNWxwice
SUNWxwplt
SUNWctpls
SUNWxwfnt
SUNWxwplr

You also need some Solaris Zones related gubbins otherwise you’ll see various errors pertaining to missing libraries such as libzonecfg.so.1:

SUNWzoneu
SUNWzoner
SUNWpool
SUNWluu
SUNWluzone
SUNWlur
SUNWpoolr
SUNWlucfg

Finally, the core / reduced networking group installation also disables some RPC related services that are necessary for cluster node communication. You’ll find that installation hangs, for example, when the primary node is waiting for the secondary to reboot. To remedy this, do the following:

# svccfg -s rpc/bind setprop config/local_only = false
# svccfg -s rpc/bind setprop config/enable_tcpwrappers = false
# svccfg -s rpc/bind listprop
# svcadm refresh rpc/bind

One other oddity I noticed was that I was seeing a bunch of RPC timeouts when looking at anything IPMP related. This turned out to be some DNS resolution going on as a result of the IP addresses assigned to the cluster interconnects and my ISP returning bullshit records. It’s easily fixed by editing /etc/nsswitch.conf and amending the ipnodes line as follows:

ipnodes: files

You should then be ready to kick off the install of SunCluster, and everything else is exactly as per Dan’s guide.

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Married to the Sea

March 16, 2010

My good friend Greg and his cohorts, known collectively as ‘Married to the Sea‘, rolled into Darmstadt late yesterday to play an acoustic set at a locally (in)famous and unusual venue known as the Gute Stube.  It offered an ideal opportunity to bust out the camera and test out some low-light shooting of which I’ve [...]

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Immergrün

February 27, 2010

I dusted off the D700 last night to take some shots of Rox’s friend’s band, Immergrün, at the Schlosskeller here in Darmstadt.  It’s a pretty cool little venue but awkward to take photos, as while it’s fairly intimate there’s huge columns in the way (well, it is a cellar…) that kind of limit your options. [...]

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It’s about time – The Birth of Big Air

February 18, 2010

Finally – Mat Hoffman is being honoured by a documentary that covers his legendary status and contributions not just in BMX Freestyle but for extreme sports in general.  I kind of feel like although he’s revered by most people who know about bike riding, he doesn’t always receive the wider recognition that he so badly [...]

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FUCK SKATEBOARDERS

February 11, 2010

Naa, not really.  But most people are only too aware of this whole “skateboarding vs. BMX” bullshit that’s been going on for some time now, brought to a head more recently by both sport’s popularity in the wake of the X-Games as well as irresponsible articles by the likes of Thrasher Magazine.  As a direct [...]

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My Hackintosh, one week on.

February 10, 2010

Hackintoshes have always seemed like way more effort than they’re worth to me.  Custom kernels, problematic updates, random crashes, it all flies in the face of why you use an Apple operating system (and computer) in the first place.  While I can appreciate the hacker aesthetic, I’ve never really had the inclination or patience to [...]

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Excellent Italian Greyhound

February 9, 2010

Unless you’re a real dog lover (or you’re ultra bored), you’ll probably want to skip to about 2:50 for the appearance of the one and only Todd Trainer, Uffizi, and the rest of Shellac. : This video was embedded using the YouTuber plugin by Roy Tanck. Adobe Flash Player is required to view the video.

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