systems_glitch

I love that doing low-level tasks is just as simple as it's always been -- apparently getting a serial console set up with systemd is a real chore. I haven't tried it, but Sark has and apparently can *not* get the configuration to be persistent! Router looks good! It's nice to have the right bracket instead of just cutting the top off with a hacksaw

link to album: https://imgur.com/a/EI0e7JH I ended up with this little Teltone TLS2 "Test Line Simulator" from an equipment pick-up last fall. It's basically an analog two-line PBX: it's microcontroller driven and provides dialtone, ringing, and will let you call between the two ports. One port is station 40, the other is station 29. There's a switch for ground start or loop start for each port, presumably that's to allow for testing old PBX trunks that use ground start. I'd verified that it works with two telephones, but hadn't tried modems with it. I plugged a 2400 bps external modem into a SPARCstation 2 that was on the bench and set it up as a modem line. Pretty basic setup, just update /etc/gettytab for your line specs and /etc/ttytab to enable getty on the chosen serial port. It'd been so long since I had to set up a modem port on SunOS 4.x, I forgot about running ttysoftcar (TTY Soft Carrier detect) so the line wouldn't auto-answer at first. Closeup of the hardware, sit back and enjoy der blinkenlights: SS2 connects to the main network over 10base2/ThinNet The "client" end is a Leading Edge Model D (DOS PC) with an internal modem: Works fine! Even attached a screen session and IRCed over the link!

Huh, interesting. I run a similar setup on most of my hypervisors (Slackware though, not CentOS). I'm getting better than 12 MB/sec sustained on a big DB dump, but not gigabit speed. Are you also using a standard Linux layer 2 bridge for what the virtio device is connected to?

Excellent to have another "convert" Interestingly, trmg found the likely solution to a problem I've been having for years: whenever I dial certain numbers from one of my Asterisk servers to the old NPA-NXX for Albany, NY cell phones, audio will drop at exactly 15m30s every time. If I say off-hook long enough, Asterisk will eventually terminate the call. This is only when I originate, and only to that NPA-NXX. I'd assumed it was an issue with my SIP provider, and since it affects one person I call every now and then I hadn't looked into it any further. But, trmg was running into the same issue! I'll let him confirm but I believe it was this line of his pf.conf that got it straightened out: match out on egress inet proto udp from $pbx to any nat-to (egress:0) static-port Where $pbx is an alias for the internal IPv4 address of his PBX.

New IRC server is officially in place, we changed the CNAME on irc.binrev.net to point to the new server at binrevirc.com Thanks to everyone that helped get this done in a quick and timely fashion!

We started a local 2600 meeting around the beginning of the year, we meet in Lexington: rockbridge2600.com Anyone else know of other get-togethers in central VA? Loosely defined as "too far from Charlottesville and Blacksburg"

2018 JUL 20-22 Anyone else planning on going? I'll be there, may be helping with the NOC crew.

We're working on getting a new BinRev IRC server up, to cut over from the current server hosted by SoldierX. The new server is currently in testing, you can connect, register your nick, and join at: binrevirc.com There's no hostname/IP cloak, so if you want that you need to set up a vhost with HostServ. We're running on IPv4 and IPv6, allowing both cleartext and TLS encrypted connections. LetsEncrypt cert, no self-signed nonsense. We are currently allowing tor on the main IPs, that will likely change in the future.

link: http://tenfourfox.blogspot.com/2018/04/unboxing-talos-ii-its-here.html That's from a friend's blog, he was on Raptor's preorder list for the project. The machine costs over $7000 but it's a true deskside workstation. It uses IBM's open POWER9 architecture, and supposedly every bit of firmware on the machine is open source. Doesn't look like he's gotten past the "it powers on" point yet

It's easier to pin failure on a convenient scapegoat, so much the better if it's a faceless group like "pirates." There's a guy who was selling a closed-source version of some open source community developed hardware who's got a thing against me, as I revived the original open source project and started selling hardware kits again. His business failure is definitely because of me, or so he claims Not, you know, selling a low-quality copy at a higher price and then closing the source on the people who *created* the original!

So, I came across this today: http://www.wipo.int/amc/en/domains/search/text.jsp?case=D2017-1828 Apparently the company that owns/develops/whatever pfSense nowadays, NetGate, got slapped around for squatting on opnsense.com and using the domain to discredit the OpnSense project. I'd kinda got the feeling that pfSense was heading toward the closed-source corporate end of the scale. That's unfortunate to see. Guess I'll be trying out OpnSense some time -- I use a plain OpenBSD install on the routers I own/manage, but I often recommend pfSense to clients who want to manage their own.

I've been going through more Sun stuff lately, and decided to get IRC up and going on a few things. First off, SPARCstation 10, Ross HyperSPARC 166 MHz, 128 MB RAM, OpenBSD 5.9, running EPIC4 (excuse the mess!): EPIC4 was compiled from source *on* the SS10. Total configure and build time around 25 minutes! Console terminal is a DEC VT320 in 132 column mode. Took a bit to figure out that, when using a 132-column terminal as the system console, you have to set the width in NVRAM. Setting TERM=vt320-w is not sufficient. Second, a SPARCstation IPX, 40 MHz CPU, 32 MB RAM, SunOS 4.1.4, running ircII-2.2.9: Works fine in a SunView console, too! ircII was also compiled on the actual machine, I forgot to time it, but total build time was around 20 minutes or so. It's restricted to 8-char nicks. It's the oldest version I could find that would just build on SunOS 4 -- ircII-1.75 failed to build.

I'm sure you could come up with a spoofed source to feed it

That old stuff is often hard to kill! At least we don't need a dedicate X application to see if they have coffee, nowadays

https://www.joltcola.com/ Sark tipped me off about this. Picked up 4x cans for $4 at Dollar General tonight. Haven't tried it yet, but I hear it tastes the same as the old regular cola kind, from before the battery bottle days.