I just had the following error while trying to start Smokeping on one of my newly installed machines:

ERROR: fping (‘/usr/bin/fping -C 1 localhost’) could not be run: localhost address not found

After digging around somewhat (this worked fine when run on the commandline) turns out my /etc/hosts was chmodded 700 instead of 744. Weird, but this meant only root could resolve it. What I don’t understand is why this did not work – my resolvers also return 127.0.0.1 for the “localhost” query.

Anyway, if you get this error, check if the smokeping user can resolve localhost too 😉

As Kris would say, it was some sort of DNS problem… 😉

I was configuring a main smarthost all my other machines should relay though, all Postfix. I configured everything as I should, including allowing Postfix to use PLAIN auth (important step, smtp_sasl_security_options =). However, it still didn’t work.

cannot authenticate to server relay.mx.mydomain[123.123.123.169]: no mechanism available

If you forget smtp_sasl_security_options =, you would get the following error:

cannot authenticate to server relay.mx.mydomain[123.123.123.169]: no worthy mechanisms available

Note the small but important difference: worthy. All Google hits on this problem tell you to allow PLAIN if you get the “worthy” error, except I already did, and this was not the error. #postfix couldn’t help either 🙁 Dug somewhat further…

The missing key? The libsasl2-modules package is also needed, not only libsasl2 (restart Postfix after installing). Tada.

Once you have created a new volume in the CLI tool, Linux does not automatically see the disks. To remedy, use the following:

# echo “- – -” > /sys/class/scsi_host/host0/scan

If one of the volumes was still initializing when you did that, it will have been detected by the driver, but not assigned a device node. In that case, performing the above ritual after it has been initialized will not help. You first have to remove the device again, then rescan again:

# dmesg|grep 0:0:
scsi 0:0:0:3: Direct-Access Areca ARC-1260-VOL#03 R001 PQ: 1 ANSI: 3
scsi 0:0:0:3: Attached scsi generic sg4 type 0
# echo “scsi remove-single-device 0:0:0:3” > /proc/scsi/scsi
# echo “- – -” > /sys/class/scsi_host/host0/scan
# dmesg|grep 0:0:
scsi 0:0:0:3: Direct-Access Areca ARC-1260-VOL#03 R001 PQ: 1 ANSI: 3
scsi 0:0:0:3: Attached scsi generic sg4 type 0
scsi 0:0:0:3: Direct-Access Areca ARC-1260-VOL#03 R001 PQ: 0 ANSI: 3
sd 0:0:0:3: Attached scsi disk sdd
sd 0:0:0:3: Attached scsi generic sg4 type 0

If you’re running Hudson from the Debian package, with the built in Winstone servlet server, and want to serve the application on a specific path rather than the web root (when using it in combination with Apache and reverse proxy), edit /etc/default/hudson and add e.g. “–prefix=/hudson” to the commandline parameters.

Yes, they named it prefix.

Dear Lazyweb,

Is there an extension for Firefox that makes it stable puts quotes around every word in a google query you do? I’m getting sick and tired of a search engine trying to “improve” my searches by polluting the results with matches that have nothing to do with the query thanks to changing the search words (eg junos->juno, newest->new, etc). If not, anyone feel like cooking one up? I will be eternally grateful, or will have to switch to Bing™ 🙁

Yesterday, I upgraded my Ubuntu Intrepid 8.10 laptop (fresh install) to Jaunty 9.04. Turns out this is a typical non-tested Ubuntu upgrade, as literally everything broke. My wifi is non-functional with the 2.6.28 kernel delivered with 9.04, luckily downgrading to the 8.10 kernel made it work fine. Purged linux-generic and all its descendants, so that’s “fixed”.

Next to that, I logged into KDE only to find the main panel missing. Having no clue how to fix this nor feeling like googling (especially since at that point my wifi did not work), I moved my old .kde out of the way and had it create a new one, so it worked again. Copied over some rc files for frequently used apps so most config could be saved, luckily.

When I “unplug” (turn off) my internal bluetooth adapter, or the laptop goes into suspend meaning the bluetooth sleeps too, the “KDE4 Bluetooth Framework” crashes. Somehow the bluetooth system tray icon still works though, it’s just odd.

I get most notifications a few times now, once in a tooltip popup from the system tray icon, and once in a generic yellow rectangle from KDE, containing the exact same text. How’s that for thoroughness!

The network manager icon no longer shows wifi strengh, it’s now a very ugly icon with some kind of antenna with radio wave circles around. Uergh.

KDE4’s battery manager icon is really fugly, and I mean “FUGLY could have done it better myself in mspaint in 20 seconds FUGLY”. Luckily, apt-get install kpowersave gets me the old power icon back with a way more useful hover tooltip, so I could remove the battery monitor applet.