SpaceX experiences anomaly during launch
SpaceX have experienced what they are calling “an anomaly” during tonight’s liftoff of their Falcon I system. Early tweets on the topic indicate that there was an issue during tank separation which caused the rocket to explode. This has not been confirmed, but given the sudden loss of video from the launch vehicle, and the even more sudden termination of their webcast, it is not out of the realm of possibility.
Hopefully they have good data to help prevent this in future launches.
Embarq Customer Service: FAIL
This is why customer service personnel should 1) be located in the country whose population they are serving, or at least 2) human, awake, and able to respond to requests from potential customers.
I am online tonight shopping for a local land-based telephone service. After spending twenty minutes looking around the Embarq website at their various plans, I still have not found out how they define “local” as in “Local phone service” which is included in their basic package. I know, it should be in the FAQ section, or somewhere else linked directly from the page describing that as included in that package, but it is not.
So I find their Customer Service page and, conveniently, they have a Sales Chat link. I fill in my question, and submit it. This is what follows:
Scott Schulz
Initial Question/Comment: Looking at your service, but unable to find out what constitutes Local service. How is that defined?6:19:08 PM System System
Jill @ EMBARQ has joined this session!6:19:08 PM System System
Connected with Jill @ EMBARQ6:19:08 PM System System
Phone Number: 919xxxxxxx6:19:08 PM System System
Hello, thank you for contacting Embarq Customer Service. Please give me one moment to pull up your account information.6:19:21 PM Customer Scott Schulz
I do not yet have an account6:22:33 PM AgentJill @ EMBARQ
Can I please verify you on the account with the last four digits of your social security number or the password on your account?6:22:46 PM Customer Scott Schulz
I do not yet have an account6:27:08 PM Agent Jill @ EMBARQ
It seems that you have been idle for more than two minutes. I apologize for any inconvenience, but if there is no response in the next 2 minutes, this session will end. Thank you for your cooperation.6:27:34 PM Customer Scott Schulz
I do not yet have an account, I am shopping for oneJill @ EMBARQ
Thank you for connecting with Embarq! If you require further assistance, feel free to contact us again. You may chat live with an Embarq agent 8am to 8pm Eastern time Monday through Friday and 11am to 8pm Eastern time on Saturday. In a moment, you will be asked to take a short survey to rate your satisfaction with Embarq. Your feedback is important to us and we would appreciate you taking the time to respond. Have a great day Scott!6:29:58 PM System System
Jill @ EMBARQ has left this session!6:29:58 PM System System
The session has ended!
So much for pre-sales support… and so much for using Embarq as a carrier.
Ubuntu Hardy: The 10 Minute git Install
Since updating my laptop to Hardy Heron I had not yet installed an update git, so I thought it would be a good time for that:
Install the usual prerequisites:
sudo apt-get install curl libcurl4-openssl-dev libexpart1-dev
Fetch, unpack, and build:
wget http://kernel.org/pub/software/scm/git/git-1.5.5.3.tar.bz2
tar jxf git-1.5.5.3.tar.bz2
cd git-1.5.5.3
make prefix=/usr all
Unfortunately, at this point I got an error I had not seen on prior installs:
* tclsh failed; using unoptimized loading
MSGFMT po/de.msg make[1]: *** [po/de.msg] Error 127
make: *** [all] Error 2
A little snooping brought me to this site. While I’m sure that his method works, it seems a bit extreme to hand-build all of the listed packages. Fortunately the answer to my problem was there:
sudo apt-get install gettext
After installing gettext, re-running ‘make prefix=/usr’ completed as expected. After it is built, it is a simple matter to install all of the new goodness:
sudo make prefix=/usr install
Running ‘git version’ should return the newly installed version. If you want to track the development version, you can now use this installed version of git to check out the devel repository and build it using the same steps.
Twhirl’ing on Linux
I’m not a huge fan of some of the things Adobe has released over the last couple years, e.g. the uber-bloated Acrobat Reader, but I do like their Air product. Sadly, until a couple weeks ago it was unavailable for linux… but that has now changed!
Adobe Labs have released an alpha of Adobe Air for linux, and tonight I finally remembered about it and downloaded it. It is closed source, but I find it useful, so I installed it. Installation is as easy as 1) download the bin file, 2) give it execute perms, and 3) run it as root so it can install systemwide.
I then proceeded to the Twhirl website, and while that site’s easy download button did not yet realize that Air was available for linux, there is a direct download link, which Firefox opened properly with Air and installed (it asked for my password again to install as root).
From there, simply click on the icon, enter your Twitter username and password, and away you go!
Upgraded and Still Running
I finally got around to fixing the molecule applets on here tonight, and while I was messing around with this and that, it was time to move this blog to Wordpress 2.5 also. At this point, it looks like everything is working as expected, but let me know if any unexpected behaviour is found.
Critical VMware Security Issue on Windows Hosts
SANS are reporting today that Core Security have uncovered a critical security issue with some VMware products when the base OS is Windows. When running the VMware product versions listed below with a host-shared folders enabled (and at least one configured), it is possible for malware in the virtual machines to access the full filesystem of the host OS. This leaves open the possibility of infection or data destruction on the host machine. And while most production VMware servers are running other versions, e.g. VMware Server, ESX, etc., many of us do run Player or Workstation on test machines.
The affected versions:
- VMware Workstation 6.0.2 and earlier, AND 5.5.4 and earlier
- VMware Player 2.0.2 and earlier, AND 1.0.4 and earlier
- VMware ACE 2.0.2 and earlier, AND 1.0.2 and earlier
Source: http://isc.sans.org/diary.html?storyid=4018
Total Lunar Eclipse
According to NASA there will be a lunar eclipse of the full moon tomorrow night. Hopefully I’ll remember to wander outside and watch it, assuming it is not raining.
From this news item on their website:
On Wednesday evening, February 20th, the full Moon over the Americas will turn a delightful shade of red and possibly turquoise, too. It’s a total lunar eclipse—the last one until Dec. 2010.
The Sun goes down. The Moon comes up. You go out and look at the sky. Observing the eclipse is that easy. Maximum eclipse, and maximum beauty, occurs at 10:26 pm EST (7:26 pm PST).
Ubuntu Gutsy: The 10 Minute VMware Server Install
While there may be packages available for this, I’ve been using the following to install VMware Server and the Management Interface on my Ubuntu Gutsy boxes. The following steps take place immediately after a clean Gutsy Server install.
Step 1: Download the software
Go to http://www.vmware.com and follow the links to download the free VMware Server software. You will need to register for a free license key and then you can download the software packages.
Step 2: Install a few prerequisites
$ sudo aptitude install linux-headers-`uname -r` build-essential xinetd
$ sudo aptitude install libxtst6 libxt6 libxrender1 libxi-dev
If you are not going to install the Management Interface (a web based management console), I believe you need only install the prerequisites on the first line above.
Step 3: Install VMware Server
I keep all my virtual machines in /opt/vmware, so I create that directory before running the following. There is a default directory and if you would prefer to keep yours there, then simply allow the script to create it during the install process.
$ sudo mkdir /opt/vmware
$ sudo chown sws. /opt/vmware
$ tar zxf VMware-server-1.0.4-56528.tar.gz
$ cd vmware-server-distrib
$ sudo ./vmware-install.pl
With the exception of the path mentioned above, I use the defaults for all other options.
Step 4: Install the VMware Management Interface (vmware-mui)
$ cd ..
$ tar zxf VMware-mui-1.0.4-56528.tar.gz
$ cd vmware-mui-distrib
$ sudo ./vmware-install.pl
Step 5: Fix the MUI startup script
At the end of step 4, the vmware-mui install script tries to start the new apache server (httpd.vmware), but that usually fails as #!/bin/sh is not an alias for bash. To fix that, simply edit /etc/init.d/httpd.vmware and change the first line from #!/bin/sh to #!/bin/bash.
After saving the file, you should be able to start it:
$ sudo /etc/init.d/httpd.vmware start
If everything worked, you should be able to now browse to either http://yourvmwareserver:8222 or https://yourvmwareserver:8333 from another machine on your network. Log in with a user account on the VMware server machine.
Server Updated
Updated to CentOS 4.6 tonight. As usual, everything went very smoothly (it seems).
Unfortunately, there was no Apache update, so the logging weirdness continues.
Christmas Decorations on the Desktop
The real desktop this time:
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