Stuff…

In old news Ofcom has released a draft obligations code for the Digital Economy Act 2010.

1.1 We are consulting on how Ofcom proposes to give effect to measures introduced in the Digital Economy Act 2010 (“DEA”) aimed at reducing online copyright infringement. Specifically, we are seeking views on a code of practice called “the Online Copyright Infringement Initial Obligations Code”.

And they are looking for feedback.  More information available at: http://www.ofcom.org.uk/consult/condocs/copyright-infringement/

Other related URLs:

• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digital_Economy_Act_2010
• http://www.statutelaw.gov.uk/content.aspx?activeTextDocId=3699621

Needed to add 64 IPs to a CentOS 5.4 system and it was going to be a pain adding individual files in /etc/sysconfig/network-scripts/ifcfg-eth0:X

There is a nice way to alias a range of IPs to your interface automatically when the network comes up.

1. Configure your eth0 interface as normal
2. Create a new file: /etc/sysconfig/network-scripts/ifcfg-eth0-range0
3. In the ifcfg-eth0-range0 file you can put the details of the IPs you want to add:
   IPADDR_START=x.x.x.x
   IPADDR_END=y.y.y.y
   CLONENUM_START=0
4. Restart networking

After you restart networking the start IP you added (x.x.x.x) and all IPs to the end IP (y.y.y.y) should be added as aliases to your eth0 interface.

How to list the install date for RPM packages

 rpm -qa --queryformat '%{installtime} %{name}-%{version}-%{release} %{installtime:date}\n' | sort -nr +1 | sed -e 's/^[^ ]* //'

I wanted to default the configuration of a number of ports on an old Cisco 3548. The latest version of IOS support on this system does not support the range command, so, had to manually run a small script (bash 1 liner on linux) and paste in the contents:

$ for i in `seq 40 48`; do echo default interface fastEthernet 0/$i; done
default interface fastEthernet 0/40
default interface fastEthernet 0/41
default interface fastEthernet 0/42
default interface fastEthernet 0/43
default interface fastEthernet 0/44
default interface fastEthernet 0/45
default interface fastEthernet 0/46
default interface fastEthernet 0/47
default interface fastEthernet 0/48

Installed Gnokii from the standard Ubuntu lucid repositories, however, it installed Gnokii 0.6.28.  This was fine, but, upon testing came across an issue.

Notes: Phone Nokia 7250, Cable CA-42

Running in debug mode:

# gnokii –sendsms +MOBILE_NUMBER
….
debugging information
…
Please enter SMS text. End your input with <cr><control-D>:

would work fine to this stage.  On entering a message it would some times work, or, it would sometimes error and crash.

One crash was:

Frame of type 0×02 (SMS handling) received!
SMSC Received
Please enter SMS text. End your input with <cr><control-D>:
test test test
*** glibc detected *** gnokii: free(): invalid next size (fast): 0×0866a950 ***
======= Backtrace: =========
/lib/tls/i686/cmov/libc.so.6(+0×6b591)[0xb750d591]
/lib/tls/i686/cmov/libc.so.6(+0×6cde8)[0xb750ede8]
/lib/tls/i686/cmov/libc.so.6(cfree+0×6d)[0xb7511ecd]
/usr/lib/libgnokii.so.5(gn_char_def_alphabet+0xb3)[0xb77e6a43]
gnokii[0x805bb78]
gnokii[0x804b948]
gnokii[0x804bd5f]
/lib/tls/i686/cmov/libc.so.6(__libc_start_main+0xe6)[0xb74b8bd6]
gnokii[0x804ab61]
======= Memory map: ========
….

So, every time trying to send the message “test test test” would result in this crash.  However, sending “test test” or “test test test test” would work fine.

Another string that would error was: “yeah go on”

Frame of type 0×02 (SMS handling) received!
SMSC Received
Please enter SMS text. End your input with <cr><control-D>:
yeah go on
*** glibc detected *** gnokii: free(): invalid next size (fast): 0×095dcd28 ***
======= Backtrace: =========
….

Checking the Ubuntu mirrors had gnokii 0.6.29 available in: http://gb.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/pool/universe/g/gnokii/

However, running “apt-get upgrade gnokii” would not upgrade this package.  It appears that 0.6.29 gnokii is part of Ubuntu 10.10 (maverick).  Luckily the following worked:

1. Updated /etc/apt/sources.list; adding:
   deb http://gb.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ maverick main restricted
2. Then ran:
   apt-get install gnokii gnokii-cli gnokii-common gnokii-smsd gnokii-smsd-mysql
3. This prompted to install the later packages of gnokii and very little else.  As the dependencies were the same and it didn’t want to install all over maverick we went ahead with the install.
4. Removed the “maverick” repo from sources.list… otherwise, we could inadvertently install maverick packages on lucid and it would become a big mess.

After the install we tested 0.6.29 and it worked fine.