FreeBSD LSI SAS9211-8i HBA firmware notes

I'll be using this post to store information about LSI HBA firmware, with a focus on FreeBSD (but also drawing upon Linux information). It may also be useful for users of FreeNAS, PC-BSD, unRAID, Nexenta, or ZFSguru.

Why - SATA port density on a budget

If you are using ZFS, you do not need RAID -- you just need lots of fast SATA ports. To maximize the features of ZFS, it needs to directly access attached drives in JBOD mode rather than as RAID. If you can afford them, you can buy the LSI 9211-8i HBA card. Alternatively, you can also buy a less expensive card, and then replace its stock "IR" (Initiator-RAID) firmware by "crossflashing" to an "IT" (Initiator-Target) version of LSI's general firmware for 9211-8i hardware. This option is useful for people building home NAS systems on a budget. Popular cards include the Dell PERC H200 and the IBM ServeRAID M1015. This ServeTheHome post introduces the topic well.

Here is the relevant dmesg for a Dell PERC H200 Internal (H200I) under FreeBSD 8.4-RELEASE. (Note that this particular card's LSI firmware (Phase 9) is out of sync with the FreeBSD driver (Phase 14), which may have unexpected side effects. The system was initially built as a FreeBSD 8.1-RELEASE system in 2010.)

$ uname -r
8.4-RELEASE-p19
$ egrep ^mps0 /var/run/dmesg.boot
mps0: <LSI SAS2008> port 0xc000-0xc0ff mem 0xfb3b0000-0xfb3bffff,0xfb3c0000-0xfb3fffff irq 16 at device 0.0 on pci3
mps0: Firmware: 09.00.00.00, Driver: 14.00.00.01-fbsd
mps0: IOCCapabilities: 1285c<ScsiTaskFull,DiagTrace,SnapBuf,EEDP,TransRetry,EventReplay,HostDisc>
mps0: [ITHREAD]

General flashing tips

Before flashing, and especially before erasing any flash, use the sas2flsh.exe -listall option to note the SAS ID of your device (usually beginning with "0x590"). If you accidentally erase the entire flash (sas2flsh.exe -o -e 6 will retain your SAS ID, but sas2flsh.exe -o -e 7 will wipe it), you will not be able to re-flash the device unless you have this ID. Write it down.

Some earlier versions of sas2flsh.exe allow cards to be flashed from IR firmware to IT firmware; others do not. I and others have had luck with the one that comes with LSI's Phase 7 (AKA P7 or P07) firmware. (Try this link, or search LSI.com for "9211_8i_Package_For_P7_Firmware_BIOS_Upgrade_on_MSDOS_and_Windows" to download the package that contains this version of sas2flsh.exe.

To flash the firmware on cards installed in non-UEFI motherboards, you can create a DOS-bootable USB key using a tool like Rufus. Rufus will make the device bootable with FreeDOS or MS-DOS (well, actually, Windows ME!). I and others have had better luck using the MS-DOS option. (According to that thread, LSI themselves recommend MS-DOS rather than FreeDOS).

Also note that when flashing using sas2flsh.exe there are two different components to be flashed: the firmware (contained in a filename sometimes ending with .fw, and usually named after the device in some way) and the BIOS (usually named something like MPTSAS2.ROM). The firmware component is what your OS driver communicates with. The BIOS component allows you to configure the firmware at boot time, and can enumerate the list of attached hard drives. For ZFS and JBOD purposes, the BIOS is not strictly necessary, and has even been reported to cause problems when present. Erasing the firmware areas sas2flsh.exe -o -e 6 and then just applying the firmware without the BIOS will also result in faster boot times.

A common error that people get when flashing is "Failed to Validate Mfg Page 2". This occurs when you try to flash to the LSI firmware without first erasing the firmware. The techmattr blog has some good information.

Phase 10 firmware or higher is needed for cards in this family (6GB/s HBSa) in order to support drives larger than 2GB. See this LSI KB article (old version cached at the Internet Archive)

FreeBSD flashing considerations

At this writing (2015-01), there have been reports of Phase 20 not playing well with FreeNAS and FreeBSD. Downgrading to Phase 16 (FreeBSD 9.3 and 10.0) or Phase 19 (FreeBSD 10.1) is reported to be more stable.

Under FreeBSD, PC-BSD, and FreeNAS, the desired end state is for the "Firmware" and "Driver" ports of the dmesg line to use identical firmware versions. For FreeBSD 10.1-RELEASE, this is the Phase 19 version. In the dmesg output, the Firmware item is what's on the card, and the Driver item is what the OS supplies.

mps0: Firmware: 19.00.00.00, Driver: 19.00.00.00-fbsd

In fact, FreeNAS will even complain if they are mismatched.

(I also list all of the firmware/OS pairings I know of towards the end of this post.)

Beware when upgrading a FreeBSD-based OS. Depending on the combination of firmware and driver, your drives may disappear from the OS' view until you reflash. This can be especially troublesome if your root filesystem is ZFS.

How to reflash the Dell Internal Tape Adapter 15MCV card as a 9211-8i

There is a card from Dell that looks almost identical to the H200I card, but is actually a Dell Internal Tape Adapter board (Dell part number 15MCV). This is identified in various levels of firmware and utilities as "Int Tape Adapter" or "IntTapeAdptr", and identified under Linux as:

 Vendor(0x1000), Device(0x0072), SSVID(0x1028), SSDID(0x1F22)

Cards labeled as "H200" on eBay are sometimes actually these cards instead. Unfortunately, the usual methods for flashing to generic LSI drivers do not work for the Tape Adapter boards. But as discovered by Hardforum user lamune in this post, if you start from the original Dell Internal Tape Adapter firmware, and then, without erasing the current firmware, flash using Supermicro HBA drivers (Phase 16 at this writing) as an intermediate step, you can then flash to the LSI firmware.

Here is the Linux dmesg for my Internal Tape Adapter board, prior to being cross-flashed. Note that capabilities include RAID, and the BIOS has a standard version (07.11.10.00):

$ dmesg | egrep -i 'lsi|mpt|mps|sas'
[    0.000000]   HighMem  empty
[    5.722377] mpt2sas version 16.100.00.00 loaded
[    5.731608] scsi4 : Fusion MPT SAS Host
[    5.739575] mpt2sas0: 32 BIT PCI BUS DMA ADDRESSING SUPPORTED, total mem (497212 kB)
[    5.739643] mpt2sas 0000:01:00.0: irq 43 for MSI/MSI-X
[    5.739682] mpt2sas0-msix0: PCI-MSI-X enabled: IRQ 43
[    5.739686] mpt2sas0: iomem(0x00000000dfcb0000), mapped(0xe0280000), size(65536)
[    5.739689] mpt2sas0: ioport(0x000000000000dc00), size(256)
[    6.028016] mpt2sas0: sending diag reset !!
[    7.268013] mpt2sas0: diag reset: SUCCESS
[    7.418064] mpt2sas0: Allocated physical memory: size(4134 kB)
[    7.418070] mpt2sas0: Current Controller Queue Depth(2748), Max Controller Queue Depth(2879)
[    7.418073] mpt2sas0: Scatter Gather Elements per IO(128)
[    7.648484] mpt2sas0: LSISAS2008: FWVersion(07.15.08.00), ChipRevision(0x03), BiosVersion(07.11.10.00)
[    7.648490] mpt2sas0: Dell 6Gbps SAS: Vendor(0x1000), Device(0x0072), SSVID(0x1028), SSDID(0x1F22)
[    7.648492] mpt2sas0: Protocol=(Initiator,Target), Capabilities=(Raid,TLR,EEDP,Snapshot Buffer,Diag Trace Buffer,Task Set Full,NCQ)
[    7.648577] mpt2sas0: sending port enable !!
[   10.168254] mpt2sas0: host_add: handle(0x0001), sas_addr(0x590bxxxxxxxxxxxx), phys(8)
[   15.296010] mpt2sas0: port enable: SUCCESS

Here is a Linux dmesg after successful crossflash of firmware, but skipping installing a BIOS. Note that capabilities no longer include RAID, and BIOS is empty (00.00.00.00)

$ dmesg | egrep -i 'lsi|mpt|mps|sas'
[    0.000000]   HighMem  empty
[    5.784639] mpt2sas version 16.100.00.00 loaded
[    5.789191] scsi4 : Fusion MPT SAS Host
[    5.793970] mpt2sas0: 32 BIT PCI BUS DMA ADDRESSING SUPPORTED, total mem (497212 kB)
[    5.794039] mpt2sas 0000:01:00.0: irq 43 for MSI/MSI-X
[    5.794081] mpt2sas0-msix0: PCI-MSI-X enabled: IRQ 43
[    5.794086] mpt2sas0: iomem(0x00000000dfcb0000), mapped(0xe0140000), size(65536)
[    5.794088] mpt2sas0: ioport(0x000000000000dc00), size(256)
[    6.235645] mpt2sas0: Allocated physical memory: size(4964 kB)
[    6.235652] mpt2sas0: Current Controller Queue Depth(3307), Max Controller Queue Depth(3432)
[    6.235654] mpt2sas0: Scatter Gather Elements per IO(128)
[    6.468421] mpt2sas0: LSISAS2008: FWVersion(19.00.00.00), ChipRevision(0x03), BiosVersion(00.00.00.00)
[    6.468429] mpt2sas0: Dell 6Gbps SAS: Vendor(0x1000), Device(0x0072), SSVID(0x1028), SSDID(0x1F22)
[    6.468432] mpt2sas0: Protocol=(Initiator,Target), Capabilities=(TLR,EEDP,Snapshot Buffer,Diag Trace Buffer,Task Set Full,NCQ)
[    6.468517] mpt2sas0: sending port enable !!
[    8.978905] mpt2sas0: host_add: handle(0x0001), sas_addr(0x590b11c017d2a400), phys(8)
[   14.116010] mpt2sas0: port enable: SUCCESS

Known FreeBSD versions and their equivalent target mps driver versions

• 8.2-RELEASE: Phase 12? - not sure, but likely 12.00.00.00-fbsd - did not ship with, but it can be backported
• 8.3-RELEASE: Phase 13 - mps0: Firmware: xx.xx.xx.xx, Driver: 13.00.00.00-fbsd
• 8.4-RELEASE: Phase 14 - mps0: Firmware: xx.xx.xx.xx, Driver: 14.00.00.01-fbsd - LSI P14 firmware
• 9.1-RELEASE: Phase 14 - mps0: Firmware: xx.xx.xx.xx, Driver: 14.00.00.01-fbsd
• 9.2-RELEASE: Phase 14 - mps0: Firmware: xx.xx.xx.xx, Driver: 14.00.00.01-fbsd
• FreeNAS v ?? Phase 15 - mps0: Firmware: xx.xx.xx.xx, Driver: 15.00.00.00-fbsd - LSI P15 firmware (ref)
• 9.3-RELEASE: Phase 16 - mps0: Firmware: xx.xx.xx.xx, Driver: 16.00.00.00-fbsd - LSI P16 firmware
• 10.0-RELEASE: Phase 16 - mps0: Firmware: xx.xx.xx.xx, Driver: 16.00.00.00-fbsd
• Phase 18 was committed but not in a release that I can tell.
• 10.1-RELEASE: Phase 19 - mps0: Firmware: xx.xx.xx.xx, Driver: 19.00.00.00-fbsd - LSI P19 firmware
• 10.2-BETA2: Phase 20 - mps0: Firmware: xx.xx.xx.xx, Driver: 20.00.00.00-fbsd - LSI P20 firmware (reported by Dan Langille)
• 10.3-RELEASE: Phase 20 - mps0: Firmware: xx.xx.xx.xx, Driver: 20.00.00.00-fbsd - LSI P20 firmware
• 11.0-RELEASE: Phase 20? - mps0: Firmware: 20.00.07.00, Driver: 21.01.00.00-fbsd - (The FreeBSD driver is version 21, but the latest Avago firmware download (from 2016-04) still shows Phase 20 as the most recent).

Note:After Avago bought LSI, their new download system sometimes makes direct linking more difficult. This search may help.

FreeBSD firmware installers

I haven't had good luck with these, because they often can only perform a small subset of the actions necessary to upgrade firmware. But if you need them, here they are.

• LSI P14 FreeBSD installer
• LSI P15 FreeBSD installer
• LSI P16 FreeBSD installer
• LSI P19 FreeBSD installer
• LSI P20 FreeBSD installer

(For all firmware and installers, see LSI's archive)

Useful command-line snippets

sas2flsh -listall
sas2flsh -c 0 -o -testssid 1028:%SSID% > SSID.out
sas2flsh -c %num% -f fwname.fw > flash.out
sas2flsh -c %num% -b mptsas2.rom >> flash.out
sas2flsh -c %num% -b x64sas2.rom >> flash.out
sas2flsh -c %num% -o -reset > reset.out

References

• The LSI SAS2IRCU utility can show basic information about your card.
• Bryan Vyhmeister's blog post about flashing IT firmware
• mycusthelp.info comprehensive guide to many kinds of reflashing scenarios
• LaptopVideo2Go forums post listing all cards in the hardware families that may support cross-flashing.
• This FreeBSD Forums post has good discussion about the process generally, and how to work with UEFI motherboards while flashing.
• FreeNAS thread about mismatching firmwmare and FreeBSD driver versions, and cautioning against P20
• PC-BSD bug report asking for driver version to be updated. PC-BSD stated that they will stick with P16 and skip P18.
• Dan Langille's blog about flashing IT firmware from UEFI on FreeBSD
• FreeNAS thread - general overview of the issues
• LSI driver download list for SAS 9211-8i
• Zorinaq blog post about port counts, hardware compatibility, and overall great overview
• eracks blog post about backporting the mps driver to FreeBSD 8.2
• Handy eBay search: "dell" (ucs-71,h200,h200i,u039m,47mcv,65f44,15mcv,015mcv,00RR9J,0U039M) -h200e

APC Masterswitch errors: heap corrupted : non-matching sizes

Sometimes, an APC Masterswitch will start spewing errors like this on its console:

heap corrupted : non-matching sizes :-22904..13041

This sometimes happens when some revisions of the APC Masterswitch OS have too much uptime.

The issue can be temporarily resolved by rebooting the management card. Even though your terminal is filling up with these errors, you can still actually log in and reboot the card - you just have to do it semi-blind.

For some revisions of OS, the key sequence is:

[username]
[password]
3 (the 'System' menu)
5 (the 'Tools' menu)
1 (the 'Reboot' option)
YES (all in caps, to confirm that you want to reboot)

This will clear the error without power-cycling any devices. I suspect that an OS upgrade would address the issue permanently.

Using vi key bindings in Perl's debugger on FreeBSD

Even after verifying that Term::ReadKey and Term::ReadLine were part of my perl distribution:

royce@heffalump$ perl -e 'use Term::ReadKey;'
royce@heffalump$ perl -e 'use Term::ReadLine;'
royce@heffalump$

... and making sure that vi key bindings were listed in my .inputrc:

royce@heffalump$ grep editing-mode ~/.inputrc
set editing-mode vi

... I still couldn't use 'em, as demonstrated by what happened when I tried to use movement keys:

  DB<1> testtesttest^[[A

In my research, I discovered that Ubuntu folks were installing a different ReadLine. I eventually found the devel/p5-ReadLine-Perl port, which has this pkg-descr:

Perl 5 ships with a module called Term::ReadLine which is an interface
to command line editing and recall.  The version that ships with Perl
is only a stub, and offers little functionality.

This module supplants the Term::ReadLine stubs with real command line
editing and recall facilities, written entirely in Perl.  Applications
that use Term::ReadLine do not need to be modified to gain the benefits
of this package; it will happen transparently upon installation.

After installing p5-ReadLine-Perl, I'm up and running.

FreeBSD apr1 upgrade error: Configure: 9904: Syntax error: word unexpected (expecting ")")

I was having trouble with apr1 on a FreeBSD web server. apr1 is used by Apache. The configure script for apr1 was dying with this error:

Performing libtool configuration ... 
. / configure: line 9904: syntax error near unexpected token `lt_decl_varnames, ' 

... which boiled down to:

. / configure: line 9904: `lt_if_append_uniq (lt_decl_varnames, SHELL,,, '

Fortunately, this thread was eventually resolved by someone finding out that they had some libtoo115 files left over, even though it had been deinstalled. I manually removed the extraneous files with:

# pkg_delete libtool-1.5.24 
# rm -rf /usr/local/share/libtool15 
# rm -f /usr/local/bin/libtool15 /usr/local/bin/libtoolize15

I am now back up and running!

Thanks to Vladislav Staroselskiy for a very helpful post about the FreeBSD apr1 libtool15 problem.

The Bill Paul clause to the BSD license

One of the lesser-known variants. I use "clause" here loosely; it's really in the disclaimer.

THIS SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED BY Bill Paul AND CONTRIBUTORS ``AS IS'' AND
ANY EXPRESS OR IMPLIED WARRANTIES, INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED TO, THE
IMPLIED WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY AND FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE
ARE DISCLAIMED.  IN NO EVENT SHALL Bill Paul OR THE VOICES IN HIS HEAD
BE LIABLE FOR ANY DIRECT, INDIRECT, INCIDENTAL, SPECIAL, EXEMPLARY, OR
CONSEQUENTIAL DAMAGES (INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED TO, PROCUREMENT OF
SUBSTITUTE GOODS OR SERVICES; LOSS OF USE, DATA, OR PROFITS; OR BUSINESS
INTERRUPTION) HOWEVER CAUSED AND ON ANY THEORY OF LIABILITY, WHETHER IN
CONTRACT, STRICT LIABILITY, OR TORT (INCLUDING NEGLIGENCE OR OTHERWISE)
ARISING IN ANY WAY OUT OF THE USE OF THIS SOFTWARE, EVEN IF ADVISED OF
THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH DAMAGE.

I'm attributing this to Bill Paul based solely on the frequency count in the FreeBSD source tree, though there are others. This sample is from 7.2-RELEASE:

 147 ENT SHALL Bill Paul OR THE
  28 ENT SHALL THE AUTHOR OR THE
  10 ENT SHALL NICK HIBMA OR THE
   9 ENT SHALL ICHIRO FUKUHARA OR THE
   1 ENT SHALL Ivan Sharov OR THE
   1 ENT SHALL David Hulton OR THE

The "THE AUTHOR OR THE VOICES IN HIS HEAD" instances are mostly in some ACL-related code, primarily by Chris Faulhaber. Hard to say which of these are cut-and-paste, and which are deliberate.

Either way, I'm using it from now on. :-)

Colin Percival's scrypt: a new chapter in the history of encryption

Today at the 2009 BSDCan conference, Colin Percival (of FreeBSD and Tarsnap) announced a new key derivation function called scrypt. I am not a math person by any means - and the slides from the presentation explain it pretty well - but what Percival has done here is phenomenal. I feel lucky to have been there in person for the presentation.

The basic concept is that sequential memory-hard algorithms make dedicated encryption ASICs significantly more costly because they are sequential (difficult to run in parallel) and memory-hard (require a significant amount of RAM relative to the size of the input.)

In other words, making the math hard and difficult to run on ten thousand cores increases the time required, and making the math need a lot of room to be worked on increases the money required to crack the password. This is because it's relatively cheap to put 10,000 encryption-specific CPU mini-cores on a single die, but it's expensive to feed them piles of fast RAM in a small space.

This is nothing short of historic.

Brute-force attacks against encrypted passwords will change overnight - for passwords created after scrypt becomes available, that is. What was once a trivial password to crack becomes decidedly less trivial - literally by an order of magnitude. By Percival's back-of-the-slide-rule math, an 8-character password with good entropy (pretty random-looking) encrypted in .1 seconds (good enough for authentication speeds) will take on the rough order of CAD$4.8M to crack. By contrast, the previous best method (bcrypt) would cost $130K.

Longer strings (source text longer than passwords) become decidedly stronger by much greater factors because the function can spend more time on them, as the user has less of an interactive expectation for file encryption. If allowed to chew on the data for 5 seconds or less, a relatively short English text string encrypted using scrypt would take CAD$210B (vs $47M for bcrypt(!))

This table from the presentation shows the rough cost estimates to crack a string in 1 year (click to enlarge):


The last column may look odd because I've taken this slide out of context. Because the 40-character string is English text, it has decidedly less entropy, and is therefore easier to crack.

This isn't just theory; Percival has published version 1.0 of working FreeBSD demonstration code.

I decided to check it out in its early state. Out of the box, the demo code makes some quick checks of your system to see how much RAM you have, and tries to sanely limit how much it uses - because it can use a lot of RAM, very very quickly. There are also limits on how large a passphrase it will currently accept, as well as other parameters automatically sized based your system's memory size.

On a quick check of the code, the options are:

• m - maximum memory fraction (default: .5, or 50% of RAM as reported by the hw.usermem sysctl for decryption; .128 for encryption)


• M - maximum memory in bytes (default: 0)


• t - maximum time in seconds (default: 5 for encryption; 300 for decryption)

In my testing on a 512M system, I couldn't immediately get it to eat more than 128M of RAM; not sure if this is fully by design, or if I'm passing the parameters incorrectly.

royce@heffalump$ time ./scrypt enc -m 1 -t 20 rand.in rand-scrypt.out
Please enter passphrase:
Please confirm passphrase:

real    0m25.090s
user    0m17.017s
sys     0m0.143s

The resulting file's header may not survive in future versions ... but for now, you can tell where it came from in the first six bytes:

royce@heffalump$ cut -b1-6 rand-scrypt.out | head -1
scrypt

At the presentation, FreeBSD Core Team member Brooks Davis asked a good question about the impact of large volumes of users trying to authenticate simultaneously on a system without huge amounts of RAM. Percival replied that the memory and other options could be tuned to fit the profile of a particular system. These parameters would be stored in the shadow password field, much as the salt and rounds are stored there today.

I look forward to seeing a full-fledged scrypt(3) show up in FreeBSD and OpenSSL ... and I'm sure that the Three Letter Agencies do not.

Contributing more to FreeBSD

Next week, I am headed to BSDCan. I hope to meet people involved in the BSD family of projects, to learn about what people are working on, to talk about interesting problems ... and to stretch my CS brain that has been occupied by operational issues in the years since college.

But the truth is that I have a larger goal.

(deep breath)

To substantially improve my contributions to FreeBSD.

There. I said it.

I've read that public commitment to a goal increases the odds of success, and this seems pretty public. :-)

So the question is, how? I could use some advice or suggestions, especially from people who have traveled this road. (And if you're in the same boat with me and will be at BSDCan, let me know - I'd love to compare notes!)

So far, my plans for BSDCan are:

• Spend some time with the FAQs for the topics covered, so that I'm not asking well-known questions.


• Play with unfamiliar technologies in advance, to have questions ready.


• At the Getting Started in FOSS session, find some buddies with similar goals - both for the conference and for contributing.


• Strive to not be too much of a fanboy. :-)

My plans for ramping up in my contributions:

• Tackling small outstanding problem reports, submitting patches, testing existing patches that are waiting for feedback, and contributing to bug busting.


• Watching the FreeBSD mailing lists in more depth, looking for problems and practicing figuring out the solutions (and if I can't, find the solution posted and strive to understand it). It's also an opportunity to get a better feel for the culture.


• Learning SGML so that I can contribute to the docs project.


• Working through the Deitel & Deitel C book.


• Use the source, Luke. :-)


• Find a project that interests me and use it to fuel my C learning.


• Study the FreeBSD Committer's Guide - I won't need to know most of it any time soon, but it should provide me with a framework to start understand the philosophy of the project in more detail.


• Ponder the advice from Michael Lucas on becoming a committer (also long term planning).


• Studying Design and Implementation and Modern Operating Systems.

What other tips or advice do you have?

Update: I'll keep a running list of other suggestions I've gotten below:

• Read the FreeBSD style(9) manpage.


• Learn and use vim's formatting and indenting settings (smartindent, cindent, tabstop, expandtab, etc.)


• Read the FreeBSD Architecture Handbook and the more recent Kernel Interfaces Manual.


• Watch videos posted in the YouTube bsdconferences channel.

Ada Lovelace Day: Remembering Grace Hopper

I've always been a fan of Grace Hopper, the US Navy programmer who wrote the first compiler(!), popularized the term 'bug' for computer programming problems, pioneered software validation, and deeply influenced the early design and standardization of COBOL.

Hopper believed that programming in a human-readable language would unlock the potential of computing. She worked hard towards this end, and CS continues to benefit from that effort today.

March 24th, 2009 is Ada Lovelace Day - an international day of blogging to draw attention to women excelling in technology. Maybe you know someone who might have a knack for CS and is looking for a direction to go. Maybe you know a woman in CS, and haven't told her lately how much you appreciate her work.

Female perspectives can enhance many traditionally male disciplines. How can women make CS better?

A ship in a harbor is safe, but that is not what a ship is built for. - Grace Hopper

(More quotes from Grace Hopper)

Pidgin episode #8726

... in which I argue that frecency, while good for digging into a list of URLs, is not a good metaphor for presenting IM status.

Pidgin Trac #8726 (new enhancement): User selection of saved statuses for the quick/popular list

In a nutshell: having a predictable, configurable list of saved IM statuses is better than an algorithm that tries to guess based on what your most-often-and-recently-used ones are.

I also am insufferably pleased with myself for coining the phrase power user limbo: a state in which a user has graduated from novice in a particular portion of the interface, but is held back from transitioning to full power usage by a mismatch between the presented and implied interface design metaphors.

Populating the list using frecency data without allowing the power user to control the content leaves them in a kind of 'power user limbo': the user wants to use saved statuses for the purpose that they were designed for (ease of changing statuses), but they are subtly constrained in a way that contradicts that purpose.

Given how rare original thoughts are ("Failure, Mr. Jones, is hardly original!" - Bloom County), there's probably a much better phrase for this concept. But I like the visual that accompanies power user limbo, so I'm stickin' with it.

You can go back to whatever you were doing now.

Automatic calorie counting for the digital diet

Have you ever gone to the computer to look up something "just really quickly", and then looked up to realize that it's 3am?

"Wow, where did the time go?" you ask yourself. And you feel sorta sad inside, because you've broken an implicit promise to yourself - the promise to not do that ... or at least, to not do it as often. If you've ever struggled with your weight, this sad feeling inside might seem familiar - like the moment when you realize you've just eaten an entire pint of ice cream.

These feelings are similar because they are both moments of reality. In an ad-hoc way, you've suddenly become aware of the difference between what you are doing and what you want to be doing.

The key to turning this from a moment of despair into a simple moment of data collection along the long arc of progress towards your goal is simple ... treat it as a data point. A data point to be measured, along with the others. A data point in a cast of thousands. A data point to be collected and judged in the larger context. In a word: science.

As a geek, I found the idea of turning self-flagellation into science to be transformative. I did the research, started counting calories (all of them), and it worked. I lost 35 pounds, about 2 pounds a week, like clockwork. All it took was scientific rigor: being fiercely honest with myself about the thing I was trying to change, recording all of the data - no discarding outliers.

Unfortunately, this data collection required energy -- physical, emotional, and motivational -- and it took a long time for me to start. If I could have found a way to automatically measure all of the calories I was taking in, I could have started along the path to reaching my goal much sooner.

It turns out that there is a calorie counter for your digital diet: Manictime (Windows).

Recently covered by Lifehacker, it's a simple system tray app that sits in the background, noting what applications you're using. By tracking the title of each window and exactly how long you spent on it, you can tell exactly where your time went - what web pages you looked at, which emails you composed, how long you spent on that document, etc.)

A key feature is Manictime's 100% customizable tagging. You can easily mark chunks of time by activity (socializing, working, paying bills, etc.), by project, by client, or any other way that makes sense to you.

The tagging is well-implemented. The same period of time can have overlapping tags. The tagging interface snaps to the closest change in activity when you get close to it, making it easy to start and end tagging at activity boundaries. And the realtime summary graphs total up the time spent at a per-application or per-tag level, depending on which bar you hover over with your mouse.

Best of all, the data is yours - locally stored, and easily exported as CSV. I never engaged with RescueTime (a similar application that uploads your data to a centralized server) precisely because I wasn't comfortable with uploading so much personal data.

The screenshots may look a little daunting, but let's face it: the myriad of things that people -- especially knowledge workers -- do with their silicon every day are complex.

If you look up and it's 3am, you know there's a problem. But the next morning over breakfast, it's easy to pretend that there's no problem, that the curve that best fits the points is OK with you.

But if -- in those flashing moments of realization -- you can be aware of all of the data, then you can see the pattern - and you can start changing it, and you can tell if your attempts to change are working or not.

Use your laptop to detect earthquakes

Wow!

The Quake-Catcher Network lets you tap into the accelerometer in your laptop to detect and report earthquakes. (Note that not all laptops have accelerometers in them yet).

Apparently, the Quake Catcher Network detected the recent Los Angeles 5.4 earthquake in 7 seconds.

Brilliant!

Update: The only downloadable clients available now are for Macs. They're working hard on a Windows version.

New portupgrade features: portversion origin and fullname flags, pkgdu

portupgrade's portversion command is handy tool for tracking which third-party packages on your FreeBSD system have newer versions available.

portversion has some new flags and features in version 2.4.6 (committed just yesterday), and a new utility called pkgdu.

First, here's a quick summary of the changes to portversion. (This is just a simplified diff between the previous manpage and the current one):

<    portversion [-hrOqRv] [-l limit_chars] [-L inv_limit_chars]
>    portversion [-hFOoQqRrv] [-l limit_chars] [-L inv_limit_chars]

>         -F
>         --fullname           Display a package full name.
>
>         -o
>         --origin             Display package origin instead of package name.
>
>         -Q
>         --quiet              Do not display status chars.
>

Now, for some usage examples. In these examples, I'm using -L = to leave out all lines of output that indicate that the installed version and the version available in the ports tree are equal).

portversion now defaults to not showing the version on the left-hand side.

[royce@heffalump ~]$ portversion -v -L =
lsof                        <  needs updating (port has 4.81A,2)
mytop                       <  needs updating (port has 1.6_4)
net-snmp                    <  needs updating (port has 5.4.1.2)
p5-Pod-Parser               <  needs updating (port has 1.35_2)
p5-Sub-Uplevel              <  needs updating (port has 0.1901_1)
p5-Test-ClassAPI            <  needs updating (port has 1.05)
p5-Test-Harness             <  needs updating (port has 3.12)
p5-version                  <  needs updating (port has 0.75.01)
rsync                       <  needs updating (port has 3.0.3)
sudo                        <  needs updating (port has 1.6.9.17)
vim                         <  needs updating (port has 7.1.330)

The new default behavior looks cleaner, but if you're used to the old output, it does make it hard to tell just how out of date you are. You can use -F to get the old behavior (with the version number of the currently installed software is displayed):

[royce@heffalump ~]$ portversion -vF -L =
lsof-4.80,2                 <  needs updating (port has 4.81A,2)
mytop-1.6_3                 <  needs updating (port has 1.6_4)
net-snmp-5.4.1_5            <  needs updating (port has 5.4.1.2)
p5-Pod-Parser-1.35_1        <  needs updating (port has 1.35_2)
p5-Sub-Uplevel-0.1901       <  needs updating (port has 0.1901_1)
p5-Test-ClassAPI-1.04       <  needs updating (port has 1.05)
p5-Test-Harness-3.11        <  needs updating (port has 3.12)
p5-version-0.75             <  needs updating (port has 0.75.01)
rsync-3.0.2_1               <  needs updating (port has 3.0.3)
sudo-1.6.9.15_1             <  needs updating (port has 1.6.9.17)
vim-7.1.315                 <  needs updating (port has 7.1.330)

You can display the ports' origins instead with -o. If you're not sure what a particular port is, you can get a good idea by knowing what subdirectory it's in:

[royce@heffalump ~]$ portversion -o -v -L =
sysutils/lsof               <  needs updating (port has 4.81A,2)
databases/mytop             <  needs updating (port has 1.6_4)
net-mgmt/net-snmp           <  needs updating (port has 5.4.1.2)
textproc/p5-Pod-Parser      <  needs updating (port has 1.35_2)
devel/p5-Sub-Uplevel        <  needs updating (port has 0.1901_1)
devel/p5-Test-ClassAPI      <  needs updating (port has 1.05)
devel/p5-Test-Harness       <  needs updating (port has 3.12)
devel/p5-version            <  needs updating (port has 0.75.01)
net/rsync                   <  needs updating (port has 3.0.3)
security/sudo               <  needs updating (port has 1.6.9.17)
editors/vim                 <  needs updating (port has 7.1.330)

What I'd love to see is an option that leaves the fullname data, but
puts whitespace between ... so that I can still see versions, but
have easy one-click highlighting of the package name:

lsof 4.80,2                 <  needs updating (port has 4.81A,2)
mytop 1.6_3                 <  needs updating (port has 1.6_4)
net-snmp 5.4.1_5            <  needs updating (port has 5.4.1.2)
p5-Pod-Parser 1.35_1        <  needs updating (port has 1.35_2)
p5-Sub-Uplevel 0.1901       <  needs updating (port has 0.1901_1)
p5-Test-ClassAPI 1.04       <  needs updating (port has 1.05)
p5-Test-Harness 3.11        <  needs updating (port has 3.12)
p5-version 0.75             <  needs updating (port has 0.75.01)
rsync 3.0.2_1               <  needs updating (port has 3.0.3)
sudo 1.6.9.15_1             <  needs updating (port has 1.6.9.17)
vim 7.1.315                 <  needs updating (port has 7.1.330)

... or even:

lsof                        <  needs update (inst: 4.80,2     port: 4.81A,2)
mytop                       <  needs update (inst: 1.6_3      port: 1.6_4)
net-snmp                    <  needs update (inst: 5.4.1_5    port: 5.4.1.2)
p5-Pod-Parser               <  needs update (inst: 1.35_1     port: 1.35_2)
p5-Sub-Uplevel              <  needs update (inst: 0.1901     port: 0.1901_1)
p5-Test-ClassAPI            <  needs update (inst: 1.04       port: 1.05)
p5-Test-Harness             <  needs update (inst: 3.11       port: 3.12)
p5-version                  <  needs update (inst: 0.75       port: 0.75.01)
rsync                       <  needs update (inst: 3.0.2_1    port: 3.0.3)
sudo                        <  needs update (inst: 1.6.9.15_1 port: 1.6.9.17)
vim                         <  needs update (inst: 7.1.315    port: 7.1.330)

Finally, here's the new pkgdu command, which shows disk space used by the
port and pretty much speaks for itself:

[royce@heffalump ~]$ pkgdu | sort -n | tail -20
970     ruby18-bdb-0.6.4
1151    perltidy-20071205
1332    gmake-3.81_3
1512    p5-Perl-Critic-1.08.5
1740    p5-DBI-1.60.4
1853    pcre-7.7
2235    bash-3.2.39_1
2255    autoconf-2.61_2
2385    joe-3.5_1,1
2492    libtool-1.5.26
3147    libiconv-1.11_1
3453    mysql-client-5.0.51a
7548    net-snmp-5.4.1_5
8946    ruby-1.8.6.111_4,1
9322    db41-4.1.25_4
9561    aspell-0.60.6_2
10182   gettext-0.17_1
12822   coreutils-6.9_3
28953   perl-5.8.8_1
30434   vim-7.1.315

Don't change your password while running freebsd-update

I found out the hard way today that freebsd-update doesn't like it when you change certain files while it's running. In retrospect, this makes sense; initially, I was a bit startled.

$ sudo sh freebsd-update.sh -f freebsd-update.conf -r 6.3-RELEASE upgrade
Looking up update.FreeBSD.org mirrors... 1 mirrors found.
Fetching metadata signature for 5.5-RELEASE from update1.FreeBSD.org... done.
Fetching metadata index... done.
Fetching 2 metadata patches.. done.
Applying metadata patches... done.
Inspecting system... done.

The following components of FreeBSD seem to be installed:
src/base src/bin src/contrib src/crypto src/etc src/games src/gnu
src/include src/krb5 src/lib src/libexec src/release src/rescue src/sbin
src/secure src/share src/sys src/tools src/ubin src/usbin world/base
world/compat20 world/compat21 world/dict world/doc world/manpages

The following components of FreeBSD do not seem to be installed:
world/catpages world/compat1x world/compat22 world/compat3x
world/compat4x world/games world/info world/proflibs

Does this look reasonable (y/n)? y

Fetching metadata signature for 6.3-RELEASE from update1.FreeBSD.org... done.
Fetching metadata index... done.
Fetching 1 metadata patches. done.
Applying metadata patches... done.
Fetching 1 metadata files... done.
Inspecting system... done.
Fetching files from 5.5-RELEASE for merging... done.
Preparing to download files...
File changed while FreeBSD Update running: /etc/master.passwd$

Whoops. Had to start all over again.

The Alphabet According to Google

If you start typing search terms into Firefox's Google search field, or if you use Google Suggest, Google taps into its knowledge of all searches and tries to guess what you're going to search for.

And if you type in just a single letter, you can really see an interesting slice of our searchable world: the most popular Google searches that start with that letter of the alphabet. Under the most popular one, you will see the others, in order by popularity:



If you don't recognize some of these sites, check them out. Lots of people appear to think that they're worth searching for.

Amazon
Bebo
Craigslist
"dictionary"
eBay
Facebook
Google
Hotmail
IMDb
"jobs"
"Kelly Blue Book" [actually "Kelley"]
"lyrics"
MySpace
"next" [could be the movie, not sure]
Orkut
Photobucket
"quotes"
RuneScape
Sears
Target
"U Tube" [see YouTube]
Verizon
Wikipedia
X Tube [WARNING: Adult content, NSFW]
YouTube
"zip codes"

Some of these suggested searches aren't for a particular site. They're just a search that many people make, and there's no particular site that is more popular than that search. In other words, there's no "killer" site or application that starts with that letter ... yet.

Binary Upgrade to FreeBSD 6.2

After the release of FreeBSD 6.2 was announced today, I decided to try Colin Percival's experimental binary OS upgrade method to upgrade a 6.1-RC2 system to 6.2-RELEASE.

The underlying approach of this method -- the freebsd-update utility -- is included in the FreeBSD base system as of this release. Between OS releases, freebsd-update can be used to keep the OS patched for security vulnerabilities. This makes it much easier to maintain continuity of a system while keeping its operating system current and secure. I love to tinker as much as the next guy ... but when it comes to stability, I love freebsd-update.

The system that I upgraded (heffalump) was originally built as a 6.0 system. Using similar upgrade scripts, I subsequently upgraded to 6.1 and 6.2-RC2 without incident.

For my upgrade to 6.2-RELEASE, I followed the steps outlined here, changing 6.1-RC1 to 6.2-RELEASE where appropriate.

[root@heffalump ~]# date
Mon Jan 15 08:38:32 AKST 2007

[root@heffalump ~]# mkdir /usr/upgrade

[root@heffalump ~]# cd /usr/upgrade
[root@heffalump /usr/upgrade]# fetch http://www.daemonology.net/freebsd-update/upgrade-to-6.2.tgz
upgrade-to-6.2.tgz                            100% of   18 kB   20 kBps

[root@heffalump /usr/upgrade]# fetch http://www.daemonology.net/freebsd-update/upgrade-to-6.2.tgz.asc
upgrade-to-6.2.tgz.asc                        100% of  187  B  878 kBps

[root@heffalump /usr/upgrade]# gpg --verify upgrade-to-6.2.tgz.asc upgrade-to-6.2.tgz
gpg: directory `/root/.gnupg' created
gpg: new configuration file `/root/.gnupg/gpg.conf' created
gpg: WARNING: options in `/root/.gnupg/gpg.conf' are not yet active during this run
gpg: keyring `/root/.gnupg/pubring.gpg' created
gpg: Signature made Sun Jan 14 11:21:59 2007 AKST using DSA key ID CA6CDFB2
gpg: Can't check signature: No public key

[root@heffalump /usr/upgrade]# tar -xzf upgrade-to-6.2.tgz

[root@heffalump /usr/upgrade]# cd upgrade-to-6.2

[root@heffalump /usr/upgrade/upgrade-to-6.2]# sh freebsd-update.sh -f freebsd-update.conf -d /usr/upgrade -r 6.2-RELEASE upgrade
Looking up update.FreeBSD.org mirrors... 1 mirrors found.
Fetching public key from update1.FreeBSD.org... done.
Fetching metadata signature for 6.1-RELEASE from update1.FreeBSD.org... done.
Fetching metadata index... done.
Fetching 2 metadata files... done.
Inspecting system... done.

The following components of FreeBSD seem to be installed:
kernel/generic src/sys world/base world/dict world/doc world/info
world/manpages world/proflibs

The following components of FreeBSD do not seem to be installed:
kernel/smp src/base src/bin src/contrib src/crypto src/etc src/games
src/gnu src/include src/krb5 src/lib src/libexec src/release src/rescue
src/sbin src/secure src/share src/tools src/ubin src/usbin
world/catpages world/games

Does this look reasonable (y/n)? y

Fetching metadata signature for 6.2-RELEASE from update1.FreeBSD.org... done.
Fetching metadata index... done.
Fetching 1 metadata patches. done.
Applying metadata patches... done.
Fetching 1 metadata files... done.
Inspecting system... done.
Preparing to download files... done.
Fetching 3734 patches.....10....20....30....40....50....60....70....80....90....100....110....120....130....140....150....160....170....180....190....200....210....220....230....240....250....260....270....280....290....300....310....320....330....340....350....360....370....380....390....400....410....420....430....440....450....460....470....480....490....500....510....520....530....540....550....560....570....580....590....600....610....620....630....640....650....660....670....680....690....700....710....720....730....740....750....760....770....780....790....800....810....820....830....840....850....860....870....880....890....900....910....920....930....940....950....960....970....980....990....1000....1010....1020....1030....1040....1050....1060....1070....1080....1090....1100....1110....1120....1130....1140....1150....1160....1170....1180....1190....1200....1210....1220....1230....1240....1250....1260....1270....1280....1290....1300....1310....1320....1330....1340....1350....1360....1370....1380....1390....1400....1410....1420....1430....1440....1450....1460....1470....1480....1490....1500....1510....1520....1530....1540....1550....1560....1570....1580....1590....1600....1610....1620....1630....1640....1650....1660....1670....1680....1690....1700....1710....1720....1730....1740....1750....1760....1770....1780....1790....1800....1810....1820....1830....1840....1850....1860....1870....1880....1890....1900....1910....1920....1930....1940....1950....1960....1970....1980....1990....2000....2010....2020....2030....2040....2050....2060....2070....2080....2090....2100....2110....2120....2130....2140....2150....2160....2170....2180....2190....2200....2210....2220....2230....2240....2250....2260....2270....2280....2290....2300....2310....2320....2330....2340....2350....2360....2370....2380....2390....2400....2410....2420....2430....2440....2450....2460....2470....2480....2490....2500....2510....2520....2530....2540....2550....2560....2570....2580....2590....2600....2610....2620....2630....2640....2650....2660....2670....2680....2690....2700....2710....2720....2730....2740....2750....2760....2770....2780....2790....2800....2810....2820....2830....2840....2850....2860....2870....2880....2890....2900....2910....2920....2930....2940....2950....2960....2970....2980....2990....3000....3010....3020....3030....3040....3050....3060....3070....3080....3090....3100....3110....3120....3130....3140....3150....3160....3170....3180....3190....3200....3210....3220....3230....3240....3250....3260....3270....3280....3290....3300....3310....3320....3330....3340....3350....3360....3370....3380....3390....3400....3410....3420....3430....3440....3450....3460....3470....3480....3490....3500....3510....3520....3530....3540....3550....3560....3570....3580....3590....3600....3610....3620....3630....3640....3650....3660....3670....3680....3690....3700....3710....3720....3730.. done.
Applying patches... done.
Fetching 5495 files... done.

The script said "Fetching 5495 files," but since it wasn't providing a progress indicator, I rigged one up in another window:

royce@heffalump$ while true; do ls -1 /usr/upgrade| wc -l; ls -lARt /usr/upgrade | head -2; sleep 1; done
   3783
total 50548
-rw-r--r--  1 root   stephb   262982 Jan 15 09:14 ac156aa7853fca9e0c739ce6e0e8691ac9a2a651653e74e69f845a9a91832ca7.gz

When it is finished, the script reports files that it cannot update, files that will be removed, files that will be added, and files that will be replaced. Make specific note of the files that cannot be updated; you will want to manually compare them with the distributed files when you're finished.

The following files are affected by updates, but no changes have
been downloaded because the files have been modified locally:
/etc/devd.conf
/etc/mail/sendmail.cf
/etc/mail/submit.cf

The following files will be removed as part of updating to 6.2-RELEASE-p0:
/etc/periodic/weekly/120.clean-kvmdb
/usr/include/c++/3.4/ext/demangle.h
/usr/lib/libpcap.so.4
/usr/lib/libpthread.so.2
/usr/share/doc/en_US.ISO8859-1/articles/building-products/b378.html
/usr/share/doc/en_US.ISO8859-1/articles/wp-toolbox/x32.html
/usr/share/doc/en_US.ISO8859-1/books/handbook/kernelconfig-nodes.html
/usr/share/doc/en_US.ISO8859-1/books/handbook/mac-examplehttpd.html
/usr/share/doc/en_US.ISO8859-1/books/handbook/mac-labelingpolicies.html
/usr/share/doc/en_US.ISO8859-1/books/handbook/network-bind9.html
/usr/share/doc/en_US.ISO8859-1/books/porters-handbook/LEGALNOTICE.html
/usr/share/doc/en_US.ISO8859-1/books/porters-handbook/c1038.html
/usr/share/doc/en_US.ISO8859-1/books/porters-handbook/c1189.html
/usr/share/doc/en_US.ISO8859-1/books/porters-handbook/c1234.html
/usr/share/doc/en_US.ISO8859-1/books/porters-handbook/c19.html
/usr/share/doc/en_US.ISO8859-1/books/porters-handbook/c190.html

[snip]

The following files will be added as part of updating to 6.2-RELEASE-p0:
/bin/pgrep
/bin/pkill
/boot/kernel/amdsmb.ko
/boot/kernel/geom_md.ko
/boot/kernel/if_ixgb.ko
/boot/kernel/if_stge.ko
/boot/kernel/ipmi.ko
/boot/kernel/linsysfs.ko
/boot/kernel/mfi_linux.ko
/boot/kernel/nfsmb.ko
/boot/kernel/ng_tag.ko
/boot/kernel/ppc.ko
/boot/kernel/rr232x.ko
/etc/freebsd-update.conf
/etc/rc.d/auditd
/etc/rc.d/auto_linklocal
/etc/rc.d/bridge
/etc/rc.d/bthidd
/etc/rc.d/mdconfig
/etc/rc.d/mdconfig2
/etc/rc.d/mountlate
/etc/security/audit_class

[snip]

The following files will be updated as part of updating to 6.2-RELEASE-p0:
/COPYRIGHT
/bin/[
/bin/cat
/bin/chflags
/bin/chio
/bin/chmod
/bin/cp
/bin/csh
/bin/date
/bin/dd
/bin/df
/bin/domainname
/bin/echo
/bin/ed
/bin/expr
/bin/getfacl
/bin/hostname
/bin/kenv
/bin/kill
/bin/link
/bin/ln
/bin/ls
/bin/mkdir
/bin/mv
/bin/pax
/bin/ps
/bin/pwd
/bin/rcp
/bin/realpath
/bin/red
/bin/rm
/bin/rmail

I then performed the first part of the install, which installs the new kernel and supporting files:

[root@heffalump /usr/upgrade/upgrade-to-6.2]# date
Mon Jan 15 09:32:24 AKST 2007
[root@heffalump /usr/upgrade/upgrade-to-6.2]#
[root@heffalump /usr/upgrade/upgrade-to-6.2]# sh freebsd-update.sh -f freebsd-update.conf -d /usr/upgrade install
Installing updates...
Kernel updates have been installed.  Please
reboot and run "freebsd-update.sh install" again to
finish installing updates.

I rebooted as instructed:

[root@heffalump /usr/upgrade/upgrade-to-6.2]# shutdown -r now
Shutdown NOW!
shutdown: [pid 96143]
[root@heffalump /usr/upgrade/upgrade-to-6.2]#
*** FINAL System shutdown message from royce@heffalump.prv.tycho.org ***
System going down IMMEDIATELY



System shutdown time has arrived

After reboot, note that we are running a 6.2-RELEASE kernel, but userland has
not yet been updated:

[root@heffalump ~]# uname -a
FreeBSD heffalump.prv.tycho.org 6.2-RELEASE FreeBSD 6.2-RELEASE #0: Fri Jan 12 10:40:27 UTC 2007     root@dessler.cse.buffalo.edu:/usr/obj/usr/src/sys/GENERIC  i386

[root@heffalump ~]# ls -la /bin/ps
-r-xr-xr-x  1 root  wheel  28728 Jul  2  2006 /bin/ps

We now install the rest of the files that have been changed between 6.1-RC2 and 6.2:

[root@heffalump ~]# cd /usr/upgrade/upgrade-to-6.2

[root@heffalump /usr/upgrade/upgrade-to-6.2]# sh freebsd-update.sh -f freebsd-update.conf -d /usr/upgrade install
Installing updates... done.

[root@heffalump /usr/upgrade/upgrade-to-6.2]# date
Mon Jan 15 09:45:17 AKST 2007

Another reboot, and now our kernel and userland match:

royce@heffalump$ uname -a

FreeBSD heffalump.prv.tycho.org 6.2-RELEASE FreeBSD 6.2-RELEASE #0: Fri Jan 12 10:40:27 UTC 2007     root@dessler.cse.buffalo.edu:/usr/obj/usr/src/sys/GENERIC  i386

royce@heffalump$ ls -la /bin/ls
-r-xr-xr-x  1 root  wheel  23444 Jan 15 09:37 /bin/ls

Once my download of ISO for disc1 is complete, I'll look at the three straggling files (/etc/devd.conf,/etc/mail/sendmail.cf, and /etc/mail/submit.cf) and merge any changes as appropriate.

24 hours of infamy

I'm the SETI@home User of the Day for Wednesday, February 15th, 2006!
My profile will surely generate an international license-plate-collecting craze.

Internet Groping Considered Harmful

I love it when two of my interests collide. In this case, it's three of them: computing, etymology ... and righteous indignation.

Computer word origins fascinate me. Usually, ferreting out the various etymologies is a positive experience -- like when I found out that DEL is ASCII 127 because punching out all of the bit positions is the only "final" state of each character, and therefore the only way to delete. On more than one occasion, I've gotten lost in Eric S. Raymond's Jargon File for hours, digging up the stories behind words like kludge, crash, wedged and GECOS. This particular quest, though, sent me on a side trip that "... has as much sex appeal as a road accident." (with apologies to Douglas Adams)

Multiple experts on networking -- even Cisco -- claim that ping got its name as an acronym for "Packet InterNet Groper." This always sounded fishy to me: a little hard to say, a little cheesy ... just not very appealing.

It turns out that ping was actually named after the sound of sonar by its late author, Michael Muuss. The "Packet InterNet Groper" acronym is actually a backronym that was probably coined by David Mills.

Michael's page about ping is a fascinating read (and you can even get the original source code) ... and the real explanation is sooooo much more elegant than all of this pawing around in the dark. Every time I see some web site touting the Groping Theory, I long for megaphone the size of New Jersey into which I would yell "COME OOONNNN, PEOPLE!!!" (I may be channeling for Lynne Truss just a tad).

So spread the word! Ask your geek friends what "ping" stands for, and gently steer them in the right direction. Michael's own description says it best:

I named it after the sound that a sonar makes, inspired by the whole principle of echo-location. In college I'd done a lot of modeling of sonar and radar systems, so the "Cyberspace" analogy seemed very apt. It's exactly the same paradigm applied to a new problem domain: ping uses timed IP/ICMP ECHO_REQUEST and ECHO_REPLY packets to probe the "distance" to the target machine.

Thank you, Michael! I don't know if you were ever a gamer, but wherever you are now, I hope that you're always guaranteed the lowest ping times at St. Peter's LAN parties.

Future focus

In order to preserve eyesight or to keep eye muscles in proper shape, we're supposed to occasionally focus out the window or on other faraway objects. It's difficult for geeks like myself to remember to do this.

Why should we have to? Why not have the technology solve the problem for us? Why not make the display data itself require us to change focus?

At first, it could be as simple as an "eyesaver" that keeps track of our active usage and makes one of those stereograms pop up when we've been focused too long. (There are already other examples of this approach: third-party software packages that remind you to take a break after typing for X minutes or after Y keystrokes. )

Later, when 3D computer displays become feasible, it would be trivial to present different data objects as being at different -- or even changing -- distances. Even those of us who can't see those stereograms will be saved from having our eyes fall out. :)

We may find that 3D arrangement of data will have other benefits that we haven't thought of. Zooming in and out will have a whole new meaning. And as one of those kids who can't play FPSes, I'll get dizzy trying to use Excel 2010. :)

The Future of Social Networking?

Some of the new social-networking crop (Friendster, Tribe, Orkut) are a superset of the dating standbys (match.com, eHarmony.com, etc.). The technologies seem to be all collectively wanting to converge towards something that fluidly combines the best features of IRC, email, personal home pages, IM, match.com, blogging, and those Japanese devices that beep when you get close to someone who shares your interests.

What will this magical PSA (Personal Social Assistant) look like? As it sits today, all of these sources make me want to write an aggregating front end to replicate similar data to its various sources -- sort of like Trillian on uber-steroids. With a standardized XML-ish format, perhaps something RSS-like ("Real Simple Socializing"?)

Now if I could only get my PSA subcutaneously implanted and automatically route stills of approaching people to facial recognition software so that their name appears on my heads-up sunglasses ... :)