Wheel mouse in Slackware Current

This morning I brought in my old Logitech FirstMouse+ from home and connected it to Slacktop. As expected, Slack recognized the PS/2 mouse and I was able to use its basic functions upon logging into X. However, the mouse wheel didn't work; Slackware still requires you to manually tweak the system's config to get the wheel running.

Doing so is quite simple, though. Become root and open in /etc/X11/xorg.conf in your preferred editor. Then find the section labeled "Core Pointer" and make it look like this:

Section "InputDevice"

# Identifier and driver

Identifier "Mouse1"
Driver "mouse"
Option "Buttons" "5"
Option "ZAxisMapping" "4 5"
Option "Protocol" "IMPS/2"
Option "Device" "/dev/mouse"

I had to had the last four lines above. The reason the option for "Buttons" is 5 is that the wheel is seen as 3 buttons -- one for each way it rotates and one for when you press it as a button.

If you have X already running you'll need to exit and restart the X server for the change to take effect.

Monday update

Yesterday morning we took the girls to the playground in Miles Park, over in Whitemarsh. Small as she is, Amanda likes being outside, and Alexandra loves running around and playing on the slides and going fast in a swing. Afterwards, she's so tired out that she takes a four-hour nap.

After getting back from the park and putting the girls down for their naps, I spent some time outside with the leaf blower and rake. We have a few trees that dump a ton of leaves on the property so it takes awhile to tidy up. Even though my leaf blower is also a vac that mulches the leaves, I put them all out for collection, rather than saving them for compost. There were a lot of pine needles mixed in and I'm concerned that using the resulting mix for mulch would kill more than just weeds.

I still haven't found my wedding band. What a PITA.

Home today

Alexandra got a cold the other day and I had to pick her up from the daycare at noon yesterday. We took her to the pediatrician later and she confirmed it seems to be a bad cold, but nothing worse. So, she needed to stay home today, something she was not at all happy about. She really enjoys going to daycare, which is run like a pre-nursery school (we refer to it as "school").

In other annoying news, my wedding band has gone AWOL. This is more than a little strange, since I generally never take it off. I noticed this morning it was gone. I'm hoping that it somehow came off in my sleep and I find it soon.

What a wonderful day.

New cable modem

We will soon be rolling out a new option for our commercial cable modem customer -- static IPs. As a member of the new product deployment group, I get to be one of the guinea pigs to beta test the product. So, tonight I brought home one of our SMC 8013s, a cable modem & router.

I was given config file to upload to the box. After doing so and connecting it in place of my Motorola SB4101, I was online with my new static IP. I have a /30 subnet, which gives me 1 IP for the WAN side, 1 for the LAN's gateway, and 2 for hosts. Not wanting to putz with my LAN's config just yet, I'm still using NAT.

Sometime next week my boss and I are going to swap modems to simulate a node move. Basically, we want to make sure that what's currently my modem will come online at his house with the same IP I'm getting here, and vice-versa for the modem he now has.

As an aside, I want to note that dyndns.org continues to give great DNS service. With a new public IP, I needed to update the "A" record for mail.building-tux.com. After logging into dyndns.org and changing the IP, the record propagated very quickly. I was able to send test emails to myself from my Gmail and Yahoo! Mail accounts within about 15 minutes.

All Your White House Are Belong To Us!

In A.D. 2004 Re-election was beginning:

John Kerry: What happen?

Theresa Heinz-Kerry: Somebody set up us the re-election.

John Edwards: We get signal.

John Kerry: What!

John Edwards: CNN turn on.

John Kerry: It's You!!

Bush: How are you gentlemen!!

Bush: ALL YOUR WHITE HOUSE ARE BELONG TO US

Bush: You are on the way to unemployment.

John Kerry: What you say!!

Bush: You have no chance to survive make your time.

Bush: Ha Ha Ha Ha ....


---Courtesy of Skunkabilly at THR.

Fifty Reasons Why...

Just go see them.

Election Day -- Finally

Finally Election Day is here and we can put this campaign behind us. Except for the inevitable legal wranglings. (frump)

I voted before work, after Judith and I dropped of the girls at daycare. I got to my polling place at about 0710 and there was already a line. My MIL works the polls at another polling site nearby and she told me that turnout was heavy.

Now there's nothing to do but wait and see how it turns out.

Computer time

If you run any kind of a server having the correct time set on the box is helpful for ensuring that items like log entries and emails are dated correctly. Even on a workstation, it's preferable to have the correct time. Often, a computer's clock will gain or lose time and you need to keep resetting it, which is a pain in the neck.

Thankfully, it's easy to automate this. Network Time Protocol provides a way to have your computer automatically keep its clock in sync with an authoritative clock, by polling an NTP server. Here in the US there are a number of publicly-accessible NTP servers. I have my machines set to access a server run by NIST, the National Institute for Standards and Technology. The page for the NIST Internet Time Service is here. On that page, NIST gives you info about NTP and links to NTP clients for Windows machines. It also provides info about how to use NTP from a Mac.

Pretty much all Unix and Unix-like OSes include an NTP client. For example, SUSE Linux includes xntp, which can be configured through YaST to start at bootup and poll an NTP server.

Finally finshed

Today my partner and I finally finished the big cabling job we've been working on for one of my clients every weekend this month. The only things left to do today was punch down a couple jacks near a new piece of equipment, install a switch and a couple of hubs, and patch all the connections through from the patch panel to the core switch. I also installed their email and file server in their new locations.

Afterwards we grabbed lunch and he installed a new doorbell for me and fixed a fouled up flourescent light in my kitchen. Doing anything with AC power gives me the heebie-jeebies. It's good to be friends with an electrician. :-)

It's alive!

Finally, Bagend has arisen from the grave. I pulled it out of the crawlspace last night (no fun, there) and since I'd covered it in a Hefty bag, it actually wasn't all full of spiderwebs.

First order of business was to gut the case. Out came the power supply. Out came the motherboard tray. I decided to keep the 3Com NIC to see if it was still good, which turned out to be fortunate. I also kept the 32x CD-ROM drive, although I pulled it out of the case. There was no floppy to salvage, it having already been removed. Aside from the case itself, the only parts I reused were the 3Com NIC and the case fan. The mobo, RAM, CPU and old PS went into the trash.

Putting all the new components together took about an hour since I was taking it slow. Aside from the components obtained from NewEgg, I also installed a 52x CD-ROM drive which came out of my MIL's PC when I installed a CD-RW drive for her earlier this year. So, Bagend has two optical drives but no floppy drive. (I need to do something about that hole in the front of the case.)

It didn't boot up on my first try. After some head scratching, I realized that I'd connected the power switch to the mobo headers one pin off. Once I moved the connector over the box fired right up.

I did a little bit of tweaking in the BIOS, then rebooted, popped in the SUSE 9.0 Professional DVD, and commenced the install.

Installing SUSE from DVD beats the pants off using CDs. Instead of periodic disc swapping, once you're ready to actually install everything you click OK and it goes. I didn't time it but it took about a half hour to finish the installation. I didn't do a full-boat install but I did add a good amount of stuff to SUSE's default selection of software. WTH, I've got the disk space.

Speaking of which, I partitioned the drive with 512 MB swap, 30 GB for /, and the remained as /home. On a desktop or laptop I don't see the need for fancy partitioning schemes, but having /home on its own partion facilitates backups and allows you to reformat /, but leave your data instact, if you do an upgrade. I used SUSE's default filesystem -- ReiserFS.

It's a good thing that I didn't chuck the old 3Com NIC. For some reason during the install, SUSE didn't recognize my new mobo's onboard Realtek-based NIC. Without the old NIC I wouldn't have got the box online.

By the time I was finished it was around 2200, my normal weeknight bedtime. I didn't want to go to sleep just yet, so I putzed around by installing the latest releases of Firebird and Thunderbird. Since I'm no longer using Mozilla Composer regularly, I may stick with the individual apps, rather than the Mozilla suite.

Tonight I'm going to try to fine tune the X config and restore all my data. I'm also going to see if I can get the onboard NIC working, as I'd like to take out the 3Com for use as a spare. Aside from the NIC issue I'm pleased with the box, which is a heckuva lot faster than Gondor was with the same OS.

No Jury Duty

I checked Montgomery County's website for jury duty, and I don't have to report to the court house tomorrow. I would like to serve on a jury, but with my background as an attorney I doubt I would get past voire dire. So, I'm glad that I don't have to waste my time by showing up and then being told to go home.

The Secret Weapon

This is one of the best blog entries I've read in quite some time.

Well, for that matter the whole method and practice of Governance in the United States is a mystery to the people of the world. I get quiet exasperated trying to explain "separation of powers', 'federal vs. state powers' and 'constitutional law'. The idea that our system of government is designed to ensure that it doesnt work very well, is simply beyond them. When I explain that the "Bill Of Rights" does not in fact give you any rights, but actually limits the powers of government, that all rights are believed to be yours to begin with and that most of what the constitution does is limit, form and shape government, and that it does not actually say in any explicit language " you have this right or that one". It does tell every one "government can go this far and no further" on a number of subjects.

It gets better. Read the rest here.

WLAN Update

I got my client's WLAN up and running with WEP, but only the 64-bit flavor.

We first disabled Windows Wireless Zero Configuration and then tried 128-bit WEP. No joy. Her PC could associate with the WAP as before, but not pull an IP. We tried renewing the IP and disabling and reenabling the wireless NIC to no avail. It flat out would not talk to the network. So, as a last resort I we setup 64-bit WEP, she got an IP, and we verified Internet connectivity.

Very strange and incredibily annoying.

Still, between basic encryption and MAC filtering, IMO their LAN is reasonably secure.

Home Network Update

I got Rivendell swapped out for Gondor last night, after moving Judith's docs over to the newer PC. It didn't go completely smoothly, however.

Several of Judith's documents were created in MS Works 6.0, although she's been using Word for the past couple of years. I wanted her to have access to the old files in case she needs them, so I installed Works on Gondor. Big mistake.

Following the post-install reboot I discovered that Works was interfering with AVG Antivirus, preventing a core DLL from loading. This left the box without virus protection, an unacceptable state of affairs. So, I reinstalled AVG, which didn't fix it.

At this point I decided to remove Works. Judith no longer uses it and the older files hadn't been accessed in a couple of years, so if she ever does need them we can temporarily install Works, then use it to save the files in .doc format, and then wipe it off the box again. In the menatime, she's got OpenOffice.org 1.1.3, which should serve her needs well.

The Works-vs.-AVG fiasco is puzzling. Both programs peacefully coexisted on Rivendell, although under Windows 98SE. For some reason, they don't on XP. Go figure.

I never did get to start reviving Bagend last night. By the time I was done with Gondor is was about 2100 and I was pooped. I plan to work on it tonight though, especially since my NEC DVD burner and AMD Athlon CPU showed up yesterday.

RSS in Thunderbird

I upgraded Thunderbird on my laptop to the latest version, 0.8. A new feature is a built-in RSS/XML site feed reader. It's pretty slick, although it's not totally intuitive to setup.

You first need to go and create a new account in Tbird, via Tools > Account Settings > Add New Account. Choose "RSS News and Blogs" as the account type. This will create the basic site feed reader account. You then need to go into the account properties and subscribe to the feeds by adding their URLs. You can find out a feed's URL usually by clicking on an "XML" or "RSS" icon on a page in your browser. Then paste the URL into the RSS reader subscription box.

Blogger uses Atomz, rather than RSS, but Tbird reads this kind of feed just fine. The URL to subscribe to this site is http://blogostuff.blogspot.com/atom.xml.

I'll need to add a link to this in the sidebar.

Gondor reborn

I got XP Pro installed on Gondor last night, then added SP2, ran Windows Update, and even installed some apps before calling it a day. I'm going to see if I can switch Judith over to OpenOffice.org, so I installed that instead of MS Office. I still find it annoying that on that hardware, XP runs faster than KDE on SUSE. KDE has simply become bloated, although it remains my desktop environment of choice.

Since Judith doesn't use POP or IMAP for her email -- she's content with Yahoo! mail -- I installed Firefox rather than the full Mozilla suite. I also installed the Noia theme, which is pretty slick looking. This morning I upgraded Firefox on my work laptop to the latest version and installed the Crystalfox theme, which I like even better. It's quite KDEish. I may install it on Gondor later. (I'm using Firefox today at work since I can't get to my mail server -- see previous post -- and just need a browser.)

Tonight I'll swap out Rivendell for Gondor after I move Judith's files and bookmarks over. Then I can hopefully turn my attention to reviving Bagend. Even if my new CPU and DVD drive don't arrive, I can gut the case of the old, fried components, install the new poer supply, RAM, video card, and motherboard.

Linksys SPI

The implementation of stateful packet inspection on the Linksys BEFSR11 router I use at home leaves something to be desired. I turned it on last night, and discovered when I came into the office this morning that I can no longer login to mail.building-tux.com remotely. After a bit of googling, I discovered that the main effect of enabling SPI on this box is to turn off port forwarding.

Crap. Linksys could have documented this.

Oh well, since mail.building-tux.com hosts my personal email there's no real harm done in my case. Of course, this could be a big problem in a different environment. I'll disable SPI when I get home and watch as the flood of pent up spam crashes in.

Parts is parts

I got most of the parts that I ordered for my "new" PC from NewEgg today. The Athlon CPU and the NEC DVD+/-RW drive are still in transit, though. So, after unpacking the other components I installed the Netgear FS108 Ethernet switch, replacing my old 10 meg hub.

The Netgear switch is a nice little unit with a metal case and feels very solid. It uses a wall wart power supply which helps keeps down the size of the switch itself. One thing that impressed me is that unlike typical consumer grade networking equipment, this box has a connector on the back for a separate electrical ground.

After getting the new switch installed I finished backing up my data on Gondor. Last night, I'd made copies of my documents folder to my laptop. Tonight I added my dotfiles -- .kde, .gftp., and .mozilla. Then I burned the same files to a CD, so that I have two backups.

And so, Gondor is currently being reborn as a Windows XP machine for Judith. As I write this, the hard disk is almost finished being reformatted. I plan to get XP Pro installed tonight and maybe SP2. I'll load the apps she needs tomorrow, migrate over her data from Rivendell, and swap towers.

Slackware-current

Slacktop -- my old Dell Latitude CPi P2/366 is now running Slackware-current, as the result of me running "swaret --upgrade -a" yesterday afternoon. I didn't have the chance to try it out before leaving the office yesterday, so I fired up the box early this morning.

I had to do some tweaking to get X to run. I issued "startx" and the XOrg server started to launch, but died with an error that it couldn't find the "keyboard" driver. I took a look in /etc/X11/xorg.conf-vesa and saw that the keyboard driver in that file was listed as "kbd," so I changed /etc/X11xorg.conf (the working config file) to match, and X worked.

The system upgrade included an updated to KDE 3.3.1, which I wanted to take a look at. It's very nice, although slow on this hardware.

Swaret isn't perfect but it's a pretty darn good tool for package management on Slackware. If you run Slack you should definitely give it a try.

Wireless LAN Headaches II

Well, I just got off the phone with the client for whom I installed the WLAN on Saturday. After dinking around in the WAP for a little while, I disabled WEP encryption. As soon as I did that and they reassociated with the WAP they were able to get online and to see each other's PCs in My Network Places.

WTF?!?

MAC filtering is enabled on the WAP so their WLAN is not wide open, but I'd prefer to have multiple layers of security. I'm going to do some more research and then try 64 bit WEP and/or WPA. (WPA is supposed to be an improvement on WEP, although not much. I didn't enable it initially because I'm familiar with WEP.)

I have to wonder if this is some soft of stupid XP Home-ism.