What?! No Reset Button! – No hands remote fix of a jammed server…

The scene is set late at night and a failing hard disk has forced the filesystem on a very remote server to go read-only. The server RAM fills and the system steadily jams up. There are two ssh terminals open. Any command such as “ls” or “umount -l” or “mount” or “reboot” all return the . . . → Read More: What?! No Reset Button! – No hands remote fix of a jammed server…

An old time NTP DDoS lingering on

NTP DDoS STILL Ongoing

A few years later and there is still an old time DDoS lingering on abusing part of the NTP protocol:

This DDoS abuses the “ntpdc monlist” command to generate a DDoS “Amplification Attack” All this has been long ago known and long ago fixed 2010/04/24: ntp.org – Amplification Attack using ntpdc . . . → Read More: An old time NTP DDoS lingering on

24 Years Hence – y2038

What’s with looking 24 years ahead?

How many computer or control systems are still going to be running in 24 years time?…

Surprisingly, more equipment than might be first imagined…

Hence what has been termed the “unix millennium ‘bug’” is being seriously considered and fixed now.

To explain all about the unix ‘y2038’, there is . . . → Read More: 24 Years Hence – y2038

Gentoo-isms #2 – Can’t load firmware file

So, you find in your kernel logs or elsewhere some error message something like:

bnx2: Can’t load firmware file “bnx2/bnx2-mips-09-6.2.1b.fw”

That indicates there is a binary blob (or whatever firmware) missing that is needed for that device.

The fix is to load up the Gentoo packaged firmware files. Most are in (surprise, surprise 😉 ) . . . → Read More: Gentoo-isms #2 – Can’t load firmware file

What is with systemd consuming UPower?!

So… Another flurry of confusion and heat as the systemd team annex more code… This time it is UPower as used by the desktop environments for their system hibernate/sleep (Gentoo – upower USE flag).

Why all the heat and wasted time?… For just myself, this is another systemd occasion for where I’ve been briefly knocked . . . → Read More: What is with systemd consuming UPower?!