Gargleblaster.org

duh :)

Merlijn — Tue, 09 Mar 2010 08:03:05 +0000

Someone on chat asked me what switches he had to use to execute php on the command-line. He tried to execute a php script, and all the command returned was the contents of the script, instead of executing it.

At least… that was what he claimed. I don’t use php on the cli a lot, so just to be sure i wrote a quick test script, which executed flawless.

So I took a look at the script he tried to execute:

echo html_entitties_decode(file_get_contents($argv[0]));

So the script did exactly what was asked ;) outputting the content of the script itself, instead of outputting the content of the file given as 1st argument to the script.

hi hi.
He overlooked the fact that the 0-key of the argv array holds the name of the script itself, instead of the 1st argument given on the cli :)

Mysterious crashes of netatalk on freeBSD 8

Merlijn — Sun, 14 Feb 2010 08:25:13 +0000

I experienced mysterious crashes of the netatalk daemon installed on a freeBSD8 box. The apfd was advertised with mdnsresponder, but at the moment I tried connecting to the shares, the afpd crashed. Nothing showed in the usual logs. I tried several debugging modes, but nothing seemed to give any clue where I had to find the cause of the crashes.
I took another look the /var/log directory, wondering which logfile could provide me with any clue.

Turned out that auth.log was giving information:
Feb 14 08:35:06 zaphod afpd[9740]: twist Erlkoenig.gargleblaster.org to /bin/echo "You are not welcome to use afpd from Erlkoenig.gargleblaster.org."

Aha! this ringed a bell! I recently installed denyhosts, which uses hosts.allow.

A quick look in hosts.allow gave :

# The rest of the daemons are protected. ALL : ALL \ : severity auth.info \ : twist /bin/echo "You are not welcome to use %d from %h."

So adding:
#netatalk afpd: ALL: allow
Did the trick… netatalk is working as expected again.

What really happened…

Merlijn — Sat, 02 Jan 2010 12:14:14 +0000

The answer is yes

Merlijn — Sun, 29 Nov 2009 10:38:04 +0000

Ask Slashdot: Do You Hate Being Called an “IT Guy?”

69.69.69.69

Merlijn — Fri, 13 Nov 2009 12:27:31 +0000

merlijn@nietzsche 4 ~$ nslookup 69.69.69.69 Server: 10.1.2.5 Address: 10.1.2.5#53


Non-authoritative answer:

69.69.69.69.in-addr.arpa	name = the-coolest-ip-on-the-net.com.

Authoritative answers can be found from: arpa nameserver = I.ROOT-SERVERS.NET. arpa nameserver = H.ROOT-SERVERS.NET. arpa nameserver = E.ROOT-SERVERS.NET. arpa nameserver = K.ROOT-SERVERS.NET. arpa nameserver = A.ROOT-SERVERS.NET. arpa nameserver = D.ROOT-SERVERS.NET. arpa nameserver = G.ROOT-SERVERS.NET. arpa nameserver = M.ROOT-SERVERS.NET. arpa nameserver = B.ROOT-SERVERS.NET. arpa nameserver = C.ROOT-SERVERS.NET. arpa nameserver = F.ROOT-SERVERS.NET. arpa nameserver = L.ROOT-SERVERS.NET.

Stupid, stupid stupid!

Merlijn — Thu, 12 Nov 2009 19:24:51 +0000

No other word for it. Stupid Americans.
How on earth do you think of assigning a patent to Microsoft for something which was invented around the time that Bill Gates crawled out of his mother?

Microsoft Patents Sudo?!!
The patent

RIP Stepwise.com

Merlijn — Wed, 04 Nov 2009 06:37:40 +0000

Sadly, Scott Anguish decided to pull out the plug of Stepwise. This site was for me the place to be in the early OS X days. Scott was one of the first to provide details on setting up *nix tools on OS X. Since 2004 or smth, the site slowly died. But I still visited stepwise daily to check the collection of news bits from Scott his rss feed. Always good for developer-related news items main sites missed.
Scott has his own blog at http://www.abandoninplace.com/, but it misses the nice selection of developerfeeds.

Listened to KCO – Tan Dun

Merlijn — Thu, 15 Oct 2009 19:15:40 +0000

Koninklijk Concertgebouw Orkest
Conducter: Tan Dun
Solo piano: Lang Lang
Seat: Balkon Front rij 2 stoel 70

IPv4, IPv6… the end of tah internetz as we know it?

Merlijn — Tue, 08 Sep 2009 15:21:33 +0000

Since 2001 (www.hal2001.org) I am very well aware that there is something called IPv6. And very well aware that the pool of IPv4 adresses is running out. When giving courses to new helpdesk personal at a large ISP in the Netherlands, I always warned them that IPv4 will have it’s limits…and we really need to prepare ourselves for IPv6. Well… to be honest…even myself was thinking the last years: well…right…let’s see.

But more and more reports (stories) are popping up in the blogosphere and techsites. IPv4 is running out! yes! IPv6 does suck! (serious design flaws do exist) And the worst, a lot of firmware/embedded software, often not upgradable by users, doesn’t support IPv6.

Ars Technica however has recently published a nice article about what the current state of IPv4 really is. And it doesn’t look good. Either we switch to IPv6…or switch to Carrier Grade NAT (CGN). The latter seems to be seriously sucky imho.

MacPorts

Merlijn — Mon, 17 Aug 2009 16:45:27 +0000

sigh… for my own reference:

port selfupdate
port outdated
port upgrade outdated

to update macports itself and the installed ports through macports.