Just my Blog

One of the things I wanna going to do is build my own 'micro-cluster' to play around with MPI (Messaging Passing Interface) stuff...

But... I don't have a lot of machines, so I gonna use my dual-opteron system for this... My approach is... install and activate a few Xen virtual machines and let them become a cluster.

But first, I have to solve the 32bit vs 64bit issues.

I need these kind of technical challenges... at my work they are not really there

In the current version 0.0.3 of SIS there are no real good error messages.

But when I start reading the weblog of Bert Hubert, I read a posting regarding 'The perfect error message'.

So... when I ever got the time and the mood to start developing version 0.0.4... error messages will be implemented.

Finally... I was able to release version 0.0.3 of my beautifull script.

Down here the changelog from version 0.0.1 to 0.0.3:
0.0.1 26-07-2006

• First concept ready, although if no DISPLAYNAME or something else is available the script picks up the previous value.

0.0.2 27-07-2006

• Solved the problem if nothing was found.
  
• Added the feature to save it to XML or CSV by using the -o flag, default is XML
  
• Added the feature that the file will be saved to a filename with computername and timestamp.
  
• The possibility to define with the -s flag where the file must be stored
  

0.0.3 25-09-2006

• If from an application the name is 'not-defined' let's take a part of the registry-key
  
• Read OS Information (Name/Version/ServicePack)
  
• Name changed from "Software Installed Scanner" into "System Information Scanner", because of a lot of features extra into the script.
  
• Speeding up the registry reading and making other subroutines for reading data out of the registry obsolete
  
• Also implemented a new output formatting, version 0.2. It is backwards compatible with output version 0.1

This script is not yet released open source, because of pending a decision of my boss.

On my struggle with my 64bit machine... and using 32bit applications especially the Flash-plugin for mozilla...

So I found the nspluginwrapper... this wrapper will wrap the stuff to a 64bit-env. So I download it and installed it, but... the file npviewer.bin must be compiled on a 32bit-env... So I (re)installed a 32bit-chroot env on my machine (I did it before, but I screwed this environment)... And it compiled

After compiling it, I moved it into the directory where it belongs to...

I restarted mozilla... and guess what... in about:plugins the Flash plugin was listed

So I went to YouTube and... yes... mozilla crashed!

My next step will be... installing and compiling mozilla in the 32bit-chroot-env... and let the users start it from there... on the other hand... It got some benefits, one of them will be... they will be able to view Win32 Codecs...

As you probably have read, I am writing a script (for more information about this read this posting).

I had written a nice subroutine like:

and I called this routine using:


And the result was


Nothing... but it must return a value... Just what is said... I must return a value... after adding a return command in the subroutine... it worked


The result:

I was reading the LJ 150 and at a certain moment, during reading the article from Dave Taylor named "Analyzing Log Files" I noticed some processor consuming order in his examples.

At a certain moment he wrote the next commandprompt to search for HTML files in the access_log:

awk '{ print }' access_log | sort | uniq -c | sort -rn | grep "\.html" | head

This command consumes at my system:
real 0m0.097s
user 0m0.084s
sys 0m0.020s

If you put the grep command right after the awk command
awk '{ print }' access_log | grep "\.html" | sort | uniq -c | sort -rn | head
the filter consumes:

real 0m0.042s
user 0m0.028s
sys 0m0.012s

The reason why this is faster can be explained that in the first filter you will sort first the whole dataset and after that you remove with grep the non .html entries. The second one (the one I suggest) removes first all the non .html entries and will sort it afterwards.

In one of my postings, I wrote about the 64bit problems I have with my dual-opteron system. Now I found a application named nspluginwrapper.

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nspluginwrapper is an Open Source compatibility plugin for Netscape 4 (NPAPI) plugins. That is, it enables you to use plugins on platforms they were not built for. For example, you can use the Adobe Flash plugin with x86-64 compiled Mozilla browsers.

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And now I hope that this tool wil fix it

Yesterday, I had a lunch appointment with Bert Hubert. It was actually the 2nd time we met each other IRL.

About 2 years ago he had given a cool presentation about some technology... He was also the first and until now the last one who ever kept my attention during a technical presentation... During that presentation I was astonished of the things he told us.

During the lunch appointment, he told me about the project he is working on... It sounds great... the real nice things about doing cool stuff with technology!

I really enjoyed the appointment... Due to the conversation we had... I got new ideas for my own project.

A few weeks ago, there was a message on the Intranet of the company.
The IT department will track your system to prevent problems, even if you did not ready noticed them.

So I had read the message and closed the MS IE window... and... what do u think... a BSOD

So I start waiting for a phone call of the IT-dep...

And guess what... untill now... they didn't call

As I had wrote into my previous posting, I am working on a new version. From this point I am working on release 0.0.3 of the SIS tool. The SIS-tool is at this moment closed source pending on a descision of my boss regarding choosing a license type (read this posting).

So down here the changelog of version 0.0.3:

• 'not-defined' for applications does not appear any more in the applicationname, it will take the last part of the registry key if displayname is not defined;
  
• Read Windows specific information, like registerd organisation/owner/product id/version et cetera;
  
• Name changed from 'Software Installation Scanner' into 'System Information Scanner', because the tool does more then scanning for installed applications;
  
• Speeding up the reading out of the registry, and replace the different subroutines for reading data out of the registry by just 1 subroutine.

If the tool will become open-source... I will let you know

With the tool I had written to gather information about windows computers there was a little 'problem'.

On the computer on one of my collegues there are 3 records with not-identified storage devices. After analysing his registry keys I saw the next key:

##?#{E9C3AF91-1F3B-474f-B307-1ECE7FF4AF41}#OneTouch_II&B611JNEH1394;{53f56307-b6bf-11d0-94f2-00a0c91efb8b}

It was the a key from the Maxtor OneTouch application to synchronise data on the external drive.

So I decided to not implement it

As you can see, I added Google Adsense to this blog. One of the fun things is, that one of my friends (Netherlabs) is also using Adsense to promote their company. Yesterday their ad was on the blog

In a perl script I wrote for my boss, I added 3 lines of code... so I got rid of the 'not-defined' applications.

For those who do not know we're I am talking about...

I wrote a tiny perl script for the Win32 platform to scan the registry and create a list of installed applications and a list of ever used storage devices...

But... I wrote the code in the time and with equipment (because at home I don't have a Win32 machine) from my boss... So if you had read my posting regarding a license purpose... you understand... that if they agree... I would release it

Update: I also found the registry keys to fetch the information regarding the Windows-version... So I am now implementing it . I Also tested the script on a Windows 2003 system... and it also worked on that one

On one of the servers, the PPTP connection fails... (looks like random)

He're you have a part of the logmessage:

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> pid 54629 (pptp), uid 0: exited on signal 6 (core dumped)
> pid 66766 (pptp), uid 0: exited on signal 6 (core dumped)
> pid 78996 (pptp), uid 0: exited on signal 6 (core dumped)
> pid 93587 (pptp), uid 0: exited on signal 6 (core dumped)
> pid 9914 (pptp), uid 0: exited on signal 6 (core dumped)

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So I have some stuff... to find out, I remember that there we're some NICs how might have some trouble with the PPTP client... If you know where I can find this information, please let me know.

And again... In one of the previous posts I noticed blog-spam... and again... I had a long queu of a lot of comments to be approved... By they we're all classified as p0rn

So I removed them all and set in the webserver a deny to my log from any ip-addres in the range of 85.255.113.76/20.

Hopefully I got now rid of them