Having ordered a new server, I finally got it yesterday. I thought I’d set it up to act as secondary nameserver, backup mysql and general user-data backup but when I started backing up some of the data from the old server (via rsync over ssh) I found that every few minutes the rsync would die with the error:
Corrupted MAC on input.
This error both showed up in the shell running rsync and also in /var/log/secure on the new server as
Sep 11 16:45:11 server sshd[8254]: Disconnecting: Corrupted MAC on input.
Thinking of changing my email address
It’s a shame it’s so much hassle to change my email address and scrap inbound email to one of my older addresses. Things like having to let all my friends know the new one and adjusting mailing list subscriptions etc. I’ve got several legacy addresses that seem to be the primary sources of spam arriving in my mailbox but I just can’t deal with scrapping them. The effort of deleting spam doesn’t yet outweigh the effort of figuring out who’s still using that address to send me email.
Do people really click on links in junk email about viagra, cialis, online pharmacies, texas hold em, casinos and online gambling and betting? I guess they must otherwise these spammers wouldn’t carry on spamming.
AddressBook / iCal feature.. and a bug
Just found a cool feature in iCal. You can add a “Birthdays” calendar to it by going to Preferences and then ticking the box near the bottom that says “Show Birthdays Calendar”. No big deal you might think, and that’s what I thought.. until I noticed that there were a few birthdays showing up on the calendar that I hadn’t entered!
Pogosticks
Pogosticks aren’t just for kids! Got sent this link tonight, well it was the link to the movie but I had to go digging on the site for more info afterwards.
http://www.yoyoguy.com/unicycle/#FB1200
Check out the Flybar 1200 at the url above. The video (quicktime format) linked to is quite amazing to watch. I don’t think I’ll be getting one though.
Phone contacts update
Here’s an update to the previous entry regarding losing my phone addressbook. In the Apple Address Book application (in OSX) if you select all the names in the Name column you can right click and export all the vCards in a single file. You can also use the bluetooth option “Send File” to send the .vcf file to the Nokia 6822 and the phone then sees it as a business card that has just arrived and offers to add it to the addressbook.
Unfortunately it only adds the first entry in the file to the addressbook and where the “is a company” option has been ticked in Apple Address Book, it imports the record with an empty name value.
5..4..3..2..1.. Phone contacts are go.. err, gone!
MY 6822 died yesterday, it powered on and then just as it establishes a connection with the Orange network locks up with a message “Contact service”. Yes, that’s right. My fairly new phone.. the Nokia 6822 I’d only had since June. With it went all my phone numbers, text messages and preferences.
I phoned Orange thinking perhaps it had been blocked or there was some kind of technical hiccup at their end and was told it would have to be returned to be fixed. I don’t have their phone insurance scheme as all my previous phones have worked for ages but the customer service guy I spoke to said that they’d replace it under some sales regulations or other, I guess because I’ve only had it a few months.
Graphics for OSX
Just recently I’ve been wanting to do some basic graphics stuff in OSX, copy & paste some bits of image, paint onto the canvas, average run of the mill actions that MS Paint would do easily enough. The problem I’ve found is that OSX seems to lack any kind of simple paint application, sure you can download The GIMP but that’s not the point (and not really very simple, see review below). Apple, if you’re listening, there really should be something along the same lines as MS Paint included with OSX 10.5. Please?
hwclock and Dell servers
Whenever the server is rebooted, I’ve noticed that the time goes a bit screwy and jumps forward an hour, having tried a few different settings I found that it wasn’t just this server but others were having the same problem.
Server hiccups
It seems that every few days something goes wrong with the server. Just this morning it died for some unknown reason and I had to get it rebooted. It was still pinging and services such as pop3/ssh/http would connect but then no banners/prompts etc would appear and the service is unresponsive.
Having looked through a number of logfiles, I noticed that just before the crash, there were a lot of failed SSH login attempts from a few different IPs and having seen this before, figured it was about time I did something about them.
Leaving do info…
I normally refrain from posting about work but this is a bit of a special occasion.
I’m finally leaving the company I’ve been working at for the last 6 years.