…Except, manually comparing files shows no difference between files in random sampling. Aside from the dos format. Yes, a file saved in a dos format will be revealed by diff as having differences. Folks, be careful what you’re editing with/how you’re saving files if you use Windows. :p

…That or make sure you have dos2unix installed (yum -y install dos2unix on real(tm) Linux; apt-get install tofrodos for those of you who are heretics) and then execute the following:

find . -type f \( -name '*.css' -o -name '*.js' -o -name '*.php' -o -name '*.module' -o -name '*.inc' -o -name '*.pl' -o -name '*.sh' \) -exec dos2unix {} \;

…That’ll run some fun happy dos2unix conversion while skipping anything that shouldn’t be touched. Hell, it’s probably skipping things that should be touched, but hey, these are the filetypes I needed to cover.

RewriteEngine on
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d
RewriteRule ^/?(.*)$ http://TARGETDOMAIN/$1 [L]

Drop this sucker in, swap out ‘TARGETDOMAIN’ with where you want your 404′d files redirected to. Bah.

The first was rather slow paced, but interesting. Seems like it’s potentially a solid series.

Plus the opening (Tabi no Tochuu/Kiyoura Natsumi) is chillingly epic with a haunting chorus.

Awesome opening theme usually translates to awesome series, of course.

Update:

Having finished the first season, I’ve got to say – epic. Only the Japanese are crazy enough to create a show about economics and pair it with the incarnation of a Wolf deity.

Solid story, amusing characters (Holo is channeling Lina Inverse – at least the addiction to food part) and the right touch of action. There’s just enough asskickery that it causes proper tension (as opposed to say, Gundam, where it all gets boring after a while).

A++++++++++ would watch again.

Server:

First, install the EPEL repository. If this article is dated, be sure to click the install link to grab more up to date instructions from their FAQ. But, for now:

rpm -Uvh http://download.fedora.redhat.com/pub/epel/5/i386/epel-release-5-3.noarch.rpm

BTW, EPEL is a nice repository filled with all sorts of interesting software that RHEL/CentOS should have, but don’t. It’s basically all the up to date software of Fedora, without the annoyance of Fedora.

Next, you need to enable packages from EPEL for Munin:

echo 'includepkgs=munin munin-node perl-Crypt-DES perl-DateManip perl-HTML-Template perl-IO-Multiplex perl-Net-Server perl-Net-SNMP rrdtool rrdtool-perl' >> /etc/yum.repos.d/epel.repo

(I’m going to be honest, I think the perl-Crypt-DES package might be from something completely unreleated. :p)

Now, install Munin:

yum -y install munin munin-node httpd

We’re installing munin-node as well as munin, so you can immediately see graphing awesomeness by monitoring your Munin server itself. Apache (or some webserver) is necessary to actually view your Munin data. Anyhoo, once installed, edit a few things. Mostly:

/etc/munin/munin.conf

Find the localhost entry and replace it with your monitoring server’s hostname. EG:

[lemuria.taldar.com]
    address 127.0.0.1
    use_node_name yes

Add in an alias to your apache config so you can, you know, see Munin:

echo 'Alias /munin /var/www/html/munin' >> /etc/httpd/conf/httpd.conf
/etc/init.d/httpd graceful

You may want to put that in a specific virtual host, if you have them – or even set up .htaccess protection. That’s outside the scope of this post, however.

Finally, start munin-node and ensure it starts on booth:

/etc/init.d/munin-node start
chkconfig munin-node on

Open your browser, navigate to your Munin installation (http://yourserver/munin if following the listed procedure), and… Chances are, you’ll have to wait a few minutes for Munin to actually collect data. But in a short time, you should have more pretty graphs than you ever dreamed possible.

Client:

Setting up a client is just as easy – you can skip the ‘munin’ part and just install ‘munin-node’. Once done, check:

/etc/munin/munin-node.conf

…for settings. For the most part, all you really need to adjust is:

allow ^127\.0\.0\.1$

Replace 127.0.0.1 with the IP of your munin server. Save, quit, start the node:

/etc/init.d/munin-node start
chkconfig munin-node on

Back on the server, open up:

/etc/munin/munin.conf

…And add an entry for your new client. Example:

[fatov.taldar.com]
    address 192.168.42.69
    use_node_name yes

No need to restart anything on the server, since Munin’s monitoring is cron-based.

If you’ve got iptables running, you probably need to add a rule to allow the client to accept traffic from the server. Open up:

/etc/sysconfig/iptables

..And add:

-A RH-Firewall-1-INPUT -m state --state NEW -m tcp -p tcp --source IPOFYOURMUNINSERVER --dport 4949 -j ACCEPT

Then restart iptables:

/etc/init.d/iptables restart

Note the –source line; this should restrict tcp/4949 to your Munin server. Since nothing else should be talking to your client on 4949, you might as well go the distance in keeping things secure.

Enabling More Stuff

You’ll notice that different servers might have different graphs – you might see MySQL show up on a database server, while it doesn’t show up on a webserver. When you install munin-node, the installer does some checking and enables plugins that seem to make sense. What if you want more stuff? Simply check:

/usr/share/munin/plugins/

…And see what’s available. To enable something – we’ll use ‘netstat’ as example, you just make a symlink in the Munin config plugins directory. Example:

ln -s /usr/share/munin/plugins/netstat /etc/munin/plugins/netstat

Restart the node after this:

/etc/init.d/munin-node start

MySQL

You might have a MySQL plugin enabled by default, but – by default, it won’t pull anything of use. To remedy this, hop on your node, and open up:

/etc/munin/plugin-conf.d/munin-node

Add or modify the following:

[mysql*]
env.mysqlopts -u munin -pSEKRITPASSWORDSHHH

Replace ‘SEKRITPASSWORD…’ with some sort of password. Note the MySQL user (-u munin) you’ll be creating is fairly unprivileged. Speaking of which, let’s create that:

mysql
create user munin@'localhost' identified by 'SEKRITPASSWORDSHHH';
flush privileges;
quit;


…Again, replace the password. After all this – you guessed it, restart the node:

/etc/init.d/munin-node start

Shortly thereafter you should start getting MySQL data on the server.

Thankfully, the cables leading to the drive backplane are just barely capable of reaching the middle slot. Helps to pull them and reroute them – you can get them to fit snugly but not ridiculously tight.

Blah.

Here’s hoping it’s on Amazon in downloadable form like Seventh Heaven was, because I’m far too cheap (and impatient) to do the import thing.

It provides output similar to the following:

Status report as of: 2010-02-19 09:00:01

dom0 Information:
------------------------------------------------------------------------------

host                   lolhost.irtehrox.com
total_memory           65535
free_memory            9276

Running domU's:
------------------------------------------------------------------------------

NAME:                  MEMORY:   VCPU:
20000-web002              2048       1
20001-web001             12288       4
20001-web002             12288       4
50005-db002               2048       1
50005-web002              4096       1
60015-dev001               256       1
60015-web004              4096       1
80123-web005              8192       1
80123-web006              8192       1

While you certainly could glean this information by looking at the list of systems you should be keeping, or even logging into the server itself, who has time for that? :p

The good stuff:

#!/usr/bin/perl

# Configuration -------------------------------------------------------------
# Domain to send e-mail from; for the actual user, we use our hostname
my $SENDER = "somedomain.foo";

# Address to e-mail report to
my $RECEIVER = 'user@somehost.foo';
# ---------------------------------------------------------------------------

# Global Variables
my $hostname = "unknown";
my $email_body = "";
my $stamp = "unknown";
my $hr = "------------------------------------------------------------------------------";

# Part 1: Intial setup; grab our time, hostname, etc.
open(HOSTNAME, "/bin/hostname |");
while()
{
        # Get rid of the break
        chomp($_);

        # Kill anything after a proper hostname; this may need to be commented out
        # or modified depending on your needs
        $_ =~ s/\..*//g;

        $hostname = $_;
}
close(HOSTNAME);
$stamp = qx(date +"%Y-%m-%d %H:%M:%S");
chomp($stamp);
$email_body = $email_body . "Status report as of: $stamp\n";

# Part 2: Grab key Xen info for the dom0
my (@info_holder);
$email_body = $email_body . "\n\ndom0 Information:\n$hr\n\n";
open(XM, "/usr/sbin/xm info |");
while()
{
        # Get rid of the break
        chomp($_);

        # Selective acquisition of data
        if(($_ =~ /^host/) || ($_ =~ /^total_memory/) || ($_ =~ /^free_memory/))
        {
                # Quick regexp to ensure the line can be split easily
                $_ =~ s/\s+/ /g;

                # Eliminate the colon
                $_ =~ s/: //g;

                # Split our line
                @info_holder = split(/ /, $_);

                # Attach line to e-mail
                $email_body = $email_body . sprintf("%-20s   %s", $info_holder[0],
$info_holder[1]) . "\n";
        }
}
close(XM);

# Part 3: Grab list of running domU's
my (@domu_holder, @domu_out, $i);
$i = 0;
open(XM, "/usr/sbin/xm list |");
while()
{
        # Get rid of the break
        chomp($_);

        # Kill the header and Dom-0 lines
        if(($_ =~ /^Name /) || ($_ =~ /^Domain-0 /))
        {
                next;
        }

        # Quick regexp to ensure the line can be split easily.
        $_ =~ s/\s+/ /g;

        # Insert into our holding array
        $domu_holder[$i] = $_;

        # Increment our counter
        $i++;
}
close XM;
@domu_holder = sort(@domu_holder);
$email_body = $email_body . "\n\nRunning domU's:\n$hr\n\nNAME:                  MEMORY:   VCPU:\n";
foreach(@domu_holder)
{
        # Split the line so we can extract name, vcpu, mem
        @domu_out = split(' ', $_);

        # Format it up!
        $email_body = $email_body . sprintf("%-20s   %7s   %5s", $domu_out[0], $domu_out[2],
$domu_out[3]) . "\n";
}

# Finally, send the e-mail
open(SENDMAIL, "|/usr/sbin/sendmail -t");
print SENDMAIL "To: $RECEIVER\n";
print SENDMAIL "From: $hostname\@$SENDER\n";
print SENDMAIL "Subject: Xen Status Report For $stamp\n";
print SENDMAIL $email_body . "\n";
close(SENDMAIL);

No doubt there’s an easier way to go about doing this, but I have a talent for simplifying the complex and complicating the obvious. Should’ve been a politician.

Anyway, while downloading Nexenta Core, I decided to run through Sunjiang again – about the eleventh time. Finally got my hands on a Kaolin Accursed Staff. Not only does it look good, but its stats are teh awesome.

This is a farm I didn’t mind – I can always use more tanned hide squares, after all, and they drop decently enough in this area.

But anyway, the coolness factor of my shiny new staff brings me to an interesting point:

Necromancer armor is damned ugly.

I’d like to be l33t and have a suit of prestige armor for every occasion, but frankly… I really, truly prefer the appearance of the non-elite necromancer armors. Really sad. I’m still going to go elite armor collecting, if only for the sake of getting it – but to be honest, I think I’m going to need to order a few more Xunlai storage panes to toss all the junk into.

(Yes, yes, perfect salvage kits – they’re expensive, and I like to just switch armor, not go, ‘BRB NEED TO MOVE RUNES LOL’ :p)

P.S.: If you’ve tried necro in the past and found it rapidly diminishing in awesomeness, switch from death magic to curses. Curses own.

1. Lose (more) weight – 40 pounds down, 20-30 to go.

2. Quit smoking. Ugh.

3. Get drunk far more often.

New addition this year: learn how to use my digital camera. After reading up on picture graininess (my most hated enemy) while on the can, I quickly flushed, washed my hands, and then grabbed Kos V4 off of my shelf – she’d been sitting there for like a year and a half.

I dare say my camera-fu has improved. At any rate, I present:

KOS-MOS V4 #1

KOS-MOS V4 #2

KOS-MOS V4 #3

KOS-MOS V4 #4

KOS-MOS V4 #5

KOS-MOS V4 #6

Glad I stuck with the moderately priced Canon PowerShot SX100 IS when I was in the market a few years back. I was actually considering going DSLR at the time, but the price kept pushing me back – hell, the price of the SX100 IS put me out at the time. Still, it’s not a bad camera by any means – even with my complete ineptitude at photography, it massacred my old PowerShot S100. Not to mention, I’m improving by leaps and bounds just by occasionally reading a FAQ once every six months. The SX100 IS is, frankly, probably still more camera than I need or deserve.

And life was good, until iTunes decided that delete meant ‘delete entirely’ and killed my copy of Play.

Since then, I’ve made sure to copy mp3s I wish to transfer to my iPod out of my massive mp3 directory, into a special ‘holding’ area, where iTunes can’t do much damage. Oh, yes – I’m sure there are settings for ’stop permanently deleting my music’, but my experience with iTunes (and OS X) is that when you tell a piece of Apple software to do something, it takes it as, “Please do this, however you see fit, Mr. Computer Who’s Smarter Than Me”. (Whereas Unix goes, “Do this.” “K.” and Windows is along the lines of, “Do this.” “…Yeah, you’re going to need a $200 license for that.” )

So, it’s years later and I’m adding two albums I just purchased cheaply to my iPod. Both came fully loaded; chock full of ID3 tags and album artwork. One album transferred to my iPod, artwork intact. The other did not. There’s no possible explanation for this, other than the fact that – as I’ve been saying for years, iTunes sucks.

I wish I could somehow use WinAmp (2.95, bitches!) to manage my iPod. But even that wouldn’t solve the nightmare of portable music.

At one point, I lost my original iPod. Figured I dropped it while getting in my car – whatever, it was gone. Someone was going to have a nice Christmas.

Rather, I had a nice Spring – months later, my original iPod was found outside my door, face down, and had been covered in a foot of snow for the better part of three months. It also functioned perfectly after recharging, and still carries a longer battery life than my newer nano.

If that isn’t infuriating enough, my old nano allows me to use the left and right arrows to scroll through coverflow. The new one does not. I’ve tried software updates. I’ve tried adjusting every setting imaginable. It just doesn’t work.

Do you know how annoying it is to attempt to drive and select music when you’re limited to the worst invention in the history of user interfaces? I swear, I’m going to make it my life’s work to seek out the Apple “engineer” who thought up the click-wheel and beat him soundly with a sturgeon.

To hell with trout slaps; this calls for a beatdown with the most sacred and holy, the Sizzling Sturgeon of Stalingrad.

…Anyway, it’s 2010. Where are all the decent mp3 players?