Tales From The Geek Side

Today I installed WebSVN 2.0. I’m pretty impressed. It’s a very fast and useful web based tool for browsing subversion repositories. It’s so fast that I’m questioning why Tortoise is as slow as it is.

This is the first version that I was able to install due to security reasons. Previous versions effectively bypassed authorization settings because WebSVN would run as the web server user account. This version of WebSVN reads and honors authz files. All you need to do is configure Apache to authenticate users the same way as you would for SVN and tell WebSVN where your authz file is. This version also has a lot of usability improvements (no more tedious scrolling!) as well as a much improved look.

The stuff I like the most (so far):

• New look
• Honors authorization file
• No more scrolling when digging in a deep directory tree!
• Web based blame
• Web based diff
• Syntax highlighting via enscript

Today I paid my $15 to Schedules Direct.  That gives me three months access to their TV listing data which I use for MythTV.  The offer a free 1 week trial that I signed up for not too long ago.  When I paid my $15 via credit card through paypal I was surprised to see that my listing service was extended by three months.  I assumed they’d truncate the remainder of my trial period but they did not.  Their site reports that they have reached their break even point and it seems likely that they will be able to reduce the cost of the service to $20 per year.

Today I setup a trial account with Schedules Direct and configured my MythTV backend to use my lineups from Schedules Direct.  It went very smoothly.  The steps were:

• Create an account with Schedules Direct.  They offer free 1 week trials.  After a few days I’ll pay for 3 months.
• Update backend to latest from debian-multimedia.org
• Run mythtv-setup to change channel lineup source
• Run mythfilldatabase to grab listing information
• Test

Note that I did not have to update my myth frontends!
I had no hiccups at all along the way.  I was pleasantly surprised to find a nice simple interface for creating and managing lineups at schedules direct.  The only thing I’d like to see is a way to change the names of lineups.  I have an HD tuner card and an analog tuner card.  I like having a digital lineup and an analog lineup — both lineups are broadcasts.  To do this I have to use two different zip codes.  The result is that the names of the lineups are almost identical though the zip code is added to the name.  However, in mythtv-setup I can’t SEE the zip code (it’s truncated).  That makes setting the lineups a guessing game.

On most of my Internet facing Linux systems I have /tmp as a separate file system. I do this primarily so that I can set noexec and nosuid on the file system. While that won’t stop a real intruder it will slow down or stop script kiddies and worms.

This causes a minor issue with Debian. When I upgrade packages I’ve noticed that many packages create scripts in /tmp and try to execute them. That, of course, fails with noexec set on the file system. For a while I’ve been forcing myself to remember to remount /tmp prior to upgrading. This is error prone and I knew there must be a better way. Today I took the time to find a better way.

Apt is highly configurable but you’d never know it because you almost never need to changes default settings — at least that’s been my experience. Browsing through /usr/share/doc/apt/examples/configure-index.gz I found what I was looking for. You can specify shell code to run before and after apt invokes dpkg. I created a file /etc/apt/apt.conf.d/99local where I placed the following:

// Auto re-mounting of /tmp
Pre-Invoke {"mount -o remount,exec,suid /tmp";};
Post-Invoke {"mount -o remount,noexec,nosuid /tmp";};

Now I don’t have to remember to remount anything. This is also useful if you wanted to keep things like /usr/bin mounted readonly.

In the fall of 2005 a server that I operated was broken into. The perpetrators defaced every index.* file on the system including those in the archives of a mailing list that I’ve run since December of 2005. Recently it came to my attention that those files were overlooked in the cleanup process. I checked my backup CDs from 2005 and found that I did not have any backups that could be used to restore the defaced archives. So I did what anyone would do, I searched for ways to regenerate the archive. Mailman includes tools to regenerate archives but there are some issues.

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Earlier this year a friend of mine asked if he could give my email address and/or resume to recruiters at Google. Google set aside half of a day for engineers to look for resumes and contact friends who might be the type of person good would like to hire. I’d been happy with my current job so I was hesitant but I relented and said he could give them my email address. Over the next 3 months I experienced a level of disorganization that I never would have expected from a company with the Google’s reputation. The experience has soured my opinion of the company and it has given me insights on what to avoid when I take on the role of interviewer.

If you happen to be reading this and you work with me at my current job don’t get too excited. I told my manager that I was interviewing with Google. I didn’t want him to hear it from somewhere else and get the wrong idea. I was completely honest when I told him that there was very little chance I’d accept an offer if given one.

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