mibus.org

As many of you know, the company I work for (Internode) was recentlyish purchased by iiNet. iiNet’s headquarters is in Perth, which is 1.5 or 2.5 hours “behind” Adelaide time. There’s no longer a multi-timezone clock available for the panel, so… oh well I just wrote one myself. Right now, it only supports GMT+8 as the “remote” timezone, but it’s easy enough to change the code. The code is up on GitHub: https://github.

One of the things I’ve spent a lot of time with, has been EMC NetWorker (previously Legato NetWorker). A vaguely common issue is for a process of some kind - backups, staging to tape, restores, etc - for no reason just stop making any new progress. Once you’ve checked off the common reasons - like making sure you haven’t run out of disk space or usable tapes - it seems like the only option is to restart NetWorker as a whole, losing any in-progress actions (even ones that are to devices that haven’t stalled).

IPv6 is a new and complicated piece of technology; like any new technology it takes a while to get used to and discover what does and doesn’t really work. Who am I? I’m Robert Mibus, and I helped roll out many of the IPv6-enabled services at Internode (now part of iiNet). I’m writing this based on my personal experience and opinion, so even though I reference Internode frequently, please don’t consider any of the below official communication from them, OK?

Just to illustrate the insanity of ABC’s position in the takedown of Python-iView - here is how to “download” the latest Doctor Who episode from iView, without using an application that infringes the takedown notice as I understand it. Update: To be clear, this may well still violate the iView Terms of Service… that I’ve never read, and that you don’t get prompted to if you follow the below; the below I pieced together without use of the site.

Dear ABC, As a regular ABC watcher, I was dismayed to hear that a takedown notice was sent to Jeremy Visser with regards to his distribution of the “Python-iView” software: https://jeremy.visser.name/2009/08/python-iview/ Python-iView is, in my mind, little more than a VCR or PVR for the iView service - and from a moral perspective is thus no more or less “wrong”. The approach you have chosen to take would not be legal to take against Tivo or FetchTV recording the FTA DVB-T broadcasts, so it should not be taken against Python-iView.

It’s a pattern I’ve seen repeated endlessly around me, a pattern I’m guilty for falling into entirely too often myself. You want something, but you don’t ask for it. Maybe you think you’ll get a “no”, maybe you’re too worried about what the other person will think, maybe you don’t want to annoy or offend someone. Maybe there’s some other reason. Ultimately, it all goes the same way. You don’t get what you want.

Among other things at work, I help look after a small set of Solaris hosts. One of the real frustrations I have with Solaris is the lack of functionality in many of the “standard” applications, things that I’ve come to consider usual (and often essential). We work around these shortcomings by having GNU utilities installed, but with a “g” prefix so that scripts depending on the native Solaris flags and options still work perfectly.

I was wondering where all my space was going in MythTV recently, so I figured I’d whip up a quick “du” that will give me a per-title breakdown of usage. It assumes you have just the one storage area for recordings. #!/bin/bash STORAGEPATH='/mnt/storage/Media/MythTV/recordings' DBPASS='abc123' QUERY="SELECT basename,title FROM recorded ORDER BY title;" MYSQL="mysql -u mythtv --password="$DBPASS' mythconverg" SIZE=0 COUNTING_FOR='' echo $QUERY | $MYSQL | tail -n +2 | while read BASENAME TITLE; do if [ "$COUNTING_FOR" !

To help my kids celebrate Mother’s Day this year, I wanted to do something a little different. Instead of just a present, I wanted the kids to be able to give her something a bit more one-of-a-kind. I’d bought an ATtiny85 to play with some of the ATtiny Arduino support (or failing that, work out how to use avr-gcc directly). I also had a bunch of very bright LEDs and some cheapy cell batteries sitting around doing nothing.

A friend passed me a bounce of mail to my domain; DNS-related it said. Dutifully, I checked the record: $ dig @ns43.domaincontrol.com mibus.org mx ; <<>> DiG 9.7.3 <<>> @ns43.domaincontrol.com mibus.org mx ; (2 servers found) ;; global options: +cmd ;; Got answer: ;; ->>HEADER<<- opcode: QUERY, status: NOERROR, id: 541 ;; flags: qr aa rd; QUERY: 1, ANSWER: 3, AUTHORITY: 2, ADDITIONAL: 0 ;; WARNING: recursion requested but not available ;; QUESTION SECTION: ;MibUs.