When you see the backup of a (non localhost) client failing with the message:

Fatal error: Failed to authenticate Storage daemon

Keep in mind that bacula uses tcpwrappers, though probably not in the way you expect it.

instead of doing:

bacula-sd : 111.222.333.444

do:

$name-sd : 111.222.333.444

where $name is the name you specified in the bacula-sd.conf

Most services that use tcpwrappers (tcpd) use the name of the service (bacula-sd in this case), but bacula has a cute approach to it that listens only to the name you defined for the service. As far as I can tell this applies only to bacula-sd, and not bacula-dir or bacula-fd.

So, say you would have the following config in bacula-sd.conf:

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Storage {                             # definition of myself
  Name = foo.bar-sd
  SDPort = 9103                  # Director's port
  WorkingDirectory = "/var/lib/bacula"
  Pid Directory = "/var/run/bacula"
  Maximum Concurrent Jobs = 20
}

then your /etc/hosts.allow would read:

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foo.bar-sd : 111.222.333.444

Please note that you will still need to take care of your passwords on both ends, any mismatches there will results in no backups being made. Be sure to test your backups regularly.

general bacula, open source

Normally I don’t answer ‘blocked’ phone numbers on my cellphone, but since I’m expecting a call from a company I got tempted today. It was (off course) some call center, who immediately asked:

“I’m sorry to bother you, but do you by any chance have children under the age of 12?”

my (logical) answer was:

“I fail to see how that is any of your business”

Now, comes the interesting part about the whole affair: my cellphone number is not listed anywhere. That’s right, nowhere. Sure, I’ve given it to some companies who I do business with, and off course all my friends and relatives.  So, how exactly did some random call center get it’s hands on my number? Obviously, the only way they could have gotten it is because one of the mentioned companies has sold out on it’s customers, and there you have it. Could be the telco, could be another company. I doubt we’ll ever find out exactly who.

On the plus side,  here in The Netherlands we have something called (translated) “don’t call me“. It’s an online database, and numbers registered in it can not be called by marketers. ( That is law, by the way ).  It has worked fabulously for my home phone number , which has been listed there since day one. I just forgot to list my cell in there too,  since I’ve never been called by marketers on that one. It’s listed now.

I do feel there should be a law prohibiting companies selling any of their customer information to a third party. Privacy and such. Specially when it comes to e-mail addresses and phone numbers.

general life, personal, privacy, spam

Someone on IRC pointed me to this wonderful bug in Spamassassin, it’s easy to quickfix, but the fix itself will become a bug in 10 years, in any case, until they push an update that correctly fixes this:

##{ FH_DATE_PAST_20XX
header   FH_DATE_PAST_20XX      Date =~ /20[1-9][0-9]/ [if-unset: 2006]
describe FH_DATE_PAST_20XX      The date is grossly in the future.

( meaning emails sent in 2010  will also trigger the scoring )

should be changed into:

##{ FH_DATE_PAST_20XX
header   FH_DATE_PAST_20XX      Date =~ /20[2-9][0-9]/ [if-unset: 2006]
describe FH_DATE_PAST_20XX      The date is grossly in the future.

Making it not a problem until we reach 2020

On my ubuntu box the rule is found in:

/usr/share/spamassassin/72_active.cf

Special thanks to Habbie for making me aware of the problem on IRC!

oh and by the way:

Happy New Year!

general, work open source, spam

I had a wonderful Christmas this year

On the 24th, my girlfriend Kirsteen flew in from Vienna, where she lives, and she stayed until the 27th. We did the whole exchange of gifts on Christmas-eve, a first for me – it’s more a British tradition I think, and since she’s Scottish … I think I’m converted She liked what I got her, and I loved what she got me.

Otherwise, we did nothing exceptional for x-mas, the usual: stuff yourself with food and watch a ton of movies (I has Blu-Ray).  She brought the latest Star Trek movie on DVD (great!), which she got from her friend Amber for x-mas.

Unfortunately, my daughter could not join the party, but that’s life for you. I still have some gifts for her, so she’ll get them later.

New years will involve working for me, one of the tragedies of life as a computer geek.  But in January I will see both my girls again, and I ‘m looking forward to that a lot.  A trip to Kirsteen in Vienna (and a trip to Bratislava together from there) is in the works. And I’m sure we’ll enjoy that little break very much.

January will also (hopefully) finally bring the delivery of my new bike (picture on the right). I’ve been biking to work since I started my new job at Mirabeau Hoorn in November, it’s a mere 15 minute trip and the first time I’ve worked so close to home that I can bike there. I love it every day (and hey, it’s healthy too!).

family, general life, personal

Venezuela president Chavez used the climate summit for his own political agenda, in a speech where he claims Venezuelan rights to the Dutch Antilles, an island group 40 miles north of Venezuela.

These islands have been under Dutch control since the 17th century. Long before attempts of Venezuela to become itself independent.

It seems Chavez is quite fearful of an American invasion, since he also claims that US secret agents, spy planes and warships are staging at the Antilles. Paranoia is rarely a good trait in a head of state.

One would hope Chavez thinks twice about actually claiming those Islands, specially since his tone suggests military action to claim them and secure the islands from US presence. The Dutch military might be small, but it is not weak, and this county is a NATO member. Any attack on Dutch territory is grounds for full NATO response. Venezuela is by no means a weak country, nor poor, but anyone will doubt it’s ability to withstand such a reaction.

However, I think Chavez knows this, the man is not stupid, and that makes this just another feeble attempt to get attention. He is nervous about his neighbor Colombia allowing more US troops in, though he fails to see the why behind it.

So, he thinks everything within 200 nautical miles of the Venezuela northern coast is Venezuela territory? That’s nice, I think international law decrees otherwise.

general chavez, politics, venezuela

The boss just dumped a whole stack of books on our desks. Oracle 11g for dummies for me, w000t.

Never done Oracle before, though I am no stranger to Databases at all (MySQL, Postgresql, MSSQL, IBM DB2)

general, work life, oracle

Looking at past, future, and current performance of the global stock market, I estimate the Down Jones will shoot through the 10K+ threshold within 2-4 months (probably closer to 2 then to 4).

The Dow Jones Index will continue it’s climb after that, unless some banks go and do something decidedly stupid, and stock analysts start panicking again.

general financial crisis, life, stocks, world

remember to make backups of all your sites / content before completely reinstalling a server.

general, projects chaotic, linux, murphy, personal, stupidity, world

Some historical firsts are quite newsworthy.

Net Applications reports that for the first time ever, Windows market share has dropped below 90%.  According to sources, this is mainly because Mac OS X is grabbing a stronger footing in the global OS market with 8.87% share. Linux, the iPhone and the PS3 gain a bit too, while FreeBSD looses 0.01%.

Now mind you, these are digits from consumers visiting sites, there could be much more market share for Linux and FreeBSD, because there are many servers running those operating systems, and servers don’t tend to visit websites all that much. The same, off course, can be said for windows servers.

This is significant, Windows has always been the dominant party in the desktop user market, and seemingly, this is changing. This whole year, Windows has pretty much shown a slow but sure decent, with as much as 91.64% market share in April of this year down to less then 90% today.

Why is this important? Well, Microsoft has been under fire for years on end now, allegations and convictions for unfair business tactics and anti-competitive behavior have cost them billions in legal fees, fines and penalties. This is sure to spark a change within the ranks of Microsoft, where the old walls get broken down, and a new flag of cooperation is to be seen on the Redmond flagpole. Perhaps not so much because the end user is aware of the bad things Microsoft has been doing, but more because other vendors (like Apple) offer  better user experience on the desktop. Even the 0.83% share for Linux can be seen as truth to that statement, with the rise of user friendly distributions like the many Ubuntu versions.

Another important factor is the fact that many businesses are adopting an anti-vendor-lock in policy, where they do not wish to be dependent on just one software vendor and their course.

Another key factor is the ‘Vista factor’. Enthusiasm from many people not withstanding, a lot of people have even been heard making the dreaded ‘ME’ comparison earlier. Quite a few of the kinks have been worked out since that initial release, but consumers have long memories, and businesses do not like the heavy hardware requirements Vista has.

I’m not quite opening the champagne bottle just yet, but I am getting rather optimistic about the downward trend for windows. It should spark inovation in the offices of Microsoft, and inovation is the key to all progress.

Featured Post, general Apple, FreeBSD, linux, mac OS X, marketshare, microsoft, OS, windows

Count your blessings, but what if there are none?

Yesterday, since it was a saturday and I have a large amount of spare time in the weekend, I decided to get busy on one of those things I never have the time to do during the week: laundry. (yay!).

So, I loaded up the washer, turned it on, and hopped in the shower. I take pretty long showers ( bite me, it’s the only time in the day I truly relax ), but even so I was kinda suspicious on how fast it hit the centrifuge programm…

*KALUNK!!!*

I pretty much hit the roof, I jumped so high (still in the shower). So I got out, towled off and started to look. It was still trying to centrifuge the load, but everytime it had to actually put in some effort there was a screaching noise and sometimes a big klunking sound which actually made the darn thing shift half a foot or so.

So, that’s either the bearings, or the gearbox that’s totaly shot to hell. I tried to do another test today, totaly empty (because maybe, just maybe, I didn’t pay attention and overloaded it a bit). The banging / klunking sound is gone now, but it still can’t get up to speed…. essentialy worthless because the wash comes out totaly soaking wet that way. (and no, I don’t have a dryer – always hangdry my laundry)

Yay, I was hoping to save some money and  start doing something about my house, which is very empty and kinda eary now that Petra and Femke are gone. But it looks like I’m going to have to buy a new washer.

well, let’s hope that’s the last of the crap that goes wrong for 2008, and that 2009 will cut me a little more slack

general life, murphy