Not much going on lately. Been playing xbox too much (KOTOR is awesome). Between KOTOR and .hack//infection I really haven't gone out much. Last weekend I did goto the midnight showing of some Kung-Fu movie at the Coolidge with some friends. It was called 'crippled avengers' (imdb link below) it was great, I laughed and had a good time.

http://us.imdb.com/Title?0077292

work

At work I've been getting to know user-mode-linux (I wont say UML because I know that will confuse everybody). So far its a pretty interesting system, but I think there are some obvious things that should be fixed (like if a xterm cannot open for the default console dont hang the system, fail gracefully). I've managed to figure out alot of the options and moved default console over to a telnet port, which is nifty but it seems like after the system has completed booting that port disappears. Owell. I downloaded one of the redhat filesystems from their site, it kind of worries me in that it doesn't seem to create new ssh server keys, and how do I know I can trust all the binaries in that disk image? I'll likely end up making my own disk image in a couple of days.

I've also been dealing with the backup stuff still. I'm really beginning to hate retrospect. But its what we've got and I have to work with it. I guess its really not retrospect I hate so much as some of the systems I'm having to backup. We have a Raidzone OpenNAS system, with 1TB of IDE Raid5. Pretty neat, and from what I hear it cost alot less than a netapp would have cost. Anyways, the thing that bothers me about the raidzone is you cannot upgrade easily as its a binary only kernel module. I want to drop in a IntelPRO1000xt NIC but I worry that the 2.4.6 kernel they provide wont support it well enough and it seems I wouldn't be able to upgrade to 2.4.20. Sure, I could upgrade if I fork $2500 over to raidzone. If there are any companies out there violating the GPL right now I am willing to bet Raidzone is one of them. You can't download anything from them. Its sad because they're in the business of selling Linux RAID systems and they're totally screwing themselves. Somebody at raidzone should read 'the magic cauldren' because I really do like this system, but the binary only driver is really screwing me. My current thought is if after adding this NIC and I cant get it to work I'll swap it out with a different IDE Raid controller (Like something from 3ware, from what I can tell their drivers are included in the Linux kernel). If anybody has any other recommendations I'd appreciate it, email me.

other

If you're in the Boston area you should come to the 2600 meet tomorrow. Its at the prudential center, in the food court. We meet around 5p and leave around 8:30p. Its not just a gathering of 12yo's talking about AOHell, and trading warez. Many of us are Linux/UNIX/OSS enthusiasts' and some of us even work or have worked for OSS companies. It's open to everybody, and we usually have alot of fun.