DragonFly BSD Digest » About This Site

New book review tag

Justin Sherrill — Sun, 22 Jan 2012 02:05:46 +0000

I’m going to have at least 1 book review up next week, 2 if I can make it. I’ve done this several times now, so I’ve added a ‘Book review’ category so that they all can be found together.

+1 for the site

Justin Sherrill — Thu, 02 Jun 2011 01:46:27 +0000

I added a Google “+1″ button to the site, over on the right. Not that the site really needs it, but it tickles me that they’re using an old (but still in use) meme for this idea. I’d link to places it was used on our own DragonFly mailing lists, but searching for “+1″ isn’t working too well.

Ads off the page

Justin Sherrill — Tue, 11 Jan 2011 04:32:44 +0000

I removed the Google ad off the sidebar; it was making me enough cash to buy a sandwich on a yearly basis.

I’ve replaced it with a link to my Amazon wishlist. If you’re feeling generous, you can buy me a book! If you aren’t, you can just keep reading, and I’ll keep posting.

RSS changed!

Justin Sherrill — Sun, 21 Nov 2010 23:55:27 +0000

If you can see this, the RSS switch worked. Here’s hoping.

RSS feed change for Digest

Justin Sherrill — Sun, 21 Nov 2010 04:22:42 +0000

I’m moving the RSS feeds for the site to go through Feedburner, so I can see how actively they are used. I’m putting in a redirect, so it should not (I hope) affect reading it for anyone, but this note is here just in case.

The new location for the RSS feed will be: http://feeds.feedburner.com/dragonflybsddigest

Proper credits

Justin Sherrill — Sat, 21 Aug 2010 23:13:57 +0000

Samuel J. Greear has been posting news while I was off somewhere in Lake Huron. I didn’t fix it to show proper credits, for which I apologize. He’s done a wonderful job, however, and his name is now shown correctly on his posts.

I now get to actually read the past week’s Digest for recent news, for the first time ever.

Slightly less RSS

Justin Sherrill — Thu, 22 Jul 2010 03:45:45 +0000

For some reason, the direct links to recent Digest articles wasn’t working on the DragonFly site’s main page. I’ve disabled it for now, but there’s always the feed here, or Twitter, or Tumblr.

BSD links plz

Justin Sherrill — Sat, 12 Jun 2010 02:51:19 +0000

I did some cleanup on the various BSD links I have on the sidebar of this site; are there any sites I’m missing? I’d like to be as complete as possible. Please supply URLs.

(Be warned that some messages may not show up immediately because links in comments will rarely trigger the spamfilter – I’ll check for them.)

Holy crap, 4,000 posts!

Justin Sherrill — Thu, 10 Jun 2010 02:02:05 +0000

This technically is the 4,001st post. The Twitter feed is read far more than I expected, too.

I’ll update the layout to celebrate.

Back in action

Justin Sherrill — Sun, 09 May 2010 09:55:55 +0000

Sorry – temporary power outage from high winds killed shiningsilence.com for about a day. Back now!

Hello, government!

Justin Sherrill — Thu, 14 Jan 2010 14:17:25 +0000

I noticed some slowness when reaching this server, this morning. Logging in, there was no heavy CPU or swap usage. Looking at netstat, I saw the reason: the Department of Homeland Security was poking around.

I had a ton of http connections from the Department of Homeland Security. Here’s a fragment:

tcp4       0      0 cpe-74-74-237-13.http bcp2.cbp.dhs.gov.4985 FIN_WAIT_2

tcp4       0      0 cpe-74-74-237-13.http bcp5.cbp.dhs.gov.5628 FIN_WAIT_2

tcp4       0      0 cpe-74-74-237-13.http bcp2.cbp.dhs.gov.6168 TIME_WAIT

tcp4       0      0 cpe-74-74-237-13.http bcp2.cbp.dhs.gov.5551 TIME_WAIT

tcp4       0      0 cpe-74-74-237-13.http bcp5.cbp.dhs.gov.5783 FIN_WAIT_2

tcp4       0      0 cpe-74-74-237-13.http bcp2.cbp.dhs.gov.5319 TIME_WAIT

tcp4       0      0 cpe-74-74-237-13.http bcp2.cbp.dhs.gov.5077 TIME_WAIT

tcp4       0      0 cpe-74-74-237-13.http bcp2.cbp.dhs.gov.5636 FIN_WAIT_2

tcp4       0      0 cpe-74-74-237-13.http bcp2.cbp.dhs.gov.5130 TIME_WAIT

tcp4       0      0 cpe-74-74-237-13.http bcp2.cbp.dhs.gov.6007 TIME_WAIT

tcp4       0      0 cpe-74-74-237-13.http bcp5.cbp.dhs.gov.6546 FIN_WAIT_2

tcp4       0      0 cpe-74-74-237-13.http bcp5.cbp.dhs.gov.6083 FIN_WAIT_2

tcp4       0      0 cpe-74-74-237-13.http bcp5.cbp.dhs.gov.6397 FIN_WAIT_2

tcp4       0  12923 cpe-74-74-237-13.http bcp2.cbp.dhs.gov.4972 CLOSING

tcp4       0      0 cpe-74-74-237-13.http bcp2.cbp.dhs.gov.5273 TIME_WAIT

tcp4       0      0 cpe-74-74-237-13.http bcp2.cbp.dhs.gov.5157 FIN_WAIT_2

tcp4       0      0 cpe-74-74-237-13.http bcp2.cbp.dhs.gov.6130 FIN_WAIT_2

tcp4       0      0 cpe-74-74-237-13.http bcp2.cbp.dhs.gov.6171 FIN_WAIT_2

tcp4       0  26015 cpe-74-74-237-13.http bcp2.cbp.dhs.gov.5758 FIN_WAIT_1

tcp4       0      0 cpe-74-74-237-13.http bcp5.cbp.dhs.gov.5660 FIN_WAIT_2

tcp4       0      0 cpe-74-74-237-13.http bcp5.cbp.dhs.gov.5547 FIN_WAIT_2

Looking at my web server logs to see what was being retrieved, it appeared to mostly be this Digest: (again, a fragment)

63.167.255.152 - - [14/Jan/2010:08:52:20 -0500] "GET /dbsdlog/2004/09 HTTP/1.1" 200 66280 "-" "Mozilla/4.0 (compatible;)"
63.167.255.152 - - [14/Jan/2010:08:52:19 -0500] "GET /dbsdlog/2007/01 HTTP/1.1" 200 69492 "-" "Mozilla/4.0 (compatible;)"
63.167.255.152 - - [14/Jan/2010:08:51:29 -0500] "GET /dbsdlog/2008/03 HTTP/1.1" 200 71795 "-" "Mozilla/4.0 (compatible;)"
63.167.255.152 - - [14/Jan/2010:08:52:21 -0500] "GET /dbsdlog/2008/06 HTTP/1.1" 200 76529 "-" "Mozilla/4.0 (compatible;)"
63.167.255.152 - - [14/Jan/2010:08:52:17 -0500] "GET /dbsdlog/2007/05 HTTP/1.1" 200 72058 "-" "Mozilla/4.0 (compatible;)"
63.167.255.152 - - [14/Jan/2010:08:52:19 -0500] "GET /dbsdlog/2008/10 HTTP/1.1" 200 73876 "-" "Mozilla/4.0 (compatible;)"
63.167.255.155 - - [14/Jan/2010:08:51:52 -0500] "GET /dbsdlog/2004/02 HTTP/1.1" 200 66507 "-" "Mozilla/4.0 (compatible;)"
63.167.255.152 - - [14/Jan/2010:08:52:23 -0500] "GET /dbsdlog/2005/01 HTTP/1.1" 200 67146 "-" "Mozilla/4.0 (compatible;)"
63.167.255.152 - - [14/Jan/2010:08:52:19 -0500] "GET /dbsdlog/2006/02 HTTP/1.1" 200 70752 "-" "Mozilla/4.0 (compatible;)"
63.167.255.152 - - [14/Jan/2010:08:52:16 -0500] "GET /dbsdlog/2007/03 HTTP/1.1" 200 70718 "-" "Mozilla/4.0 (compatible;)"
63.167.255.152 - - [14/Jan/2010:08:53:12 -0500] "GET /dbsdlog/xmlrpc.php?rsd HTTP/1.1" 200 918 "-" "Mozilla/4.0 (compatible;)"
63.167.255.152 - - [14/Jan/2010:08:51:31 -0500] "GET /dbsdlog/2003/12 HTTP/1.1" 200 67549 "http://www.shiningsilence.com/dbsdlog/2010/01/13/5306.html?bcsi_scan_B185D4CBD207A2FC=1" "Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.9.1.7) Gecko/20091221 Firefox/3.5.7"
63.167.255.152 - - [14/Jan/2010:08:52:22 -0500] "GET /dbsdlog/2005/09 HTTP/1.1" 200 67506 "-" "Mozilla/4.0 (compatible;)"
63.167.255.152 - - [14/Jan/2010:08:52:19 -0500] "GET /dbsdlog/2006/01 HTTP/1.1" 200 71474 "-" "Mozilla/4.0 (compatible;)"
63.167.255.155 - - [14/Jan/2010:08:52:43 -0500] "GET /dbsdlog/2005/05 HTTP/1.1" 200 67073 "-" "Mozilla/4.0 (compatible;)"
63.167.255.155 - - [14/Jan/2010:08:52:20 -0500] "GET /dbsdlog/2007/09 HTTP/1.1" 200 71813 "-" "Mozilla/4.0 (compatible;)"

The 63.167.255.* addresses resolve to dhs.gov addresses. It looks like a web spider, running through the archival links in the Digest. While these pages aren’t that bandwidth-intensive, my upload speed is relatively low, so having a whole bunch of network connections at once does have a noticeable effect.

Wierd. Spidering software hits this and other sites all the time, of course, though usually it’s something from Yahoo or Google. It is appropriate that a government-owned spider would be the most unsubtle in terms of network effects.

How did I get there?

Justin Sherrill — Mon, 21 Dec 2009 01:31:21 +0000

I didn’t set anything up with the Digest and tumblr… Please speak up, if you did it. (found via Google)

Digest Twitterfication

Justin Sherrill — Sat, 19 Dec 2009 02:48:31 +0000

Thanks to the urging and help of Matthias Schmidt and Saifi Khan, posts on the DragonFly Digest now also show on Twitter, as @dragonflybsd. (well, except for this one, as it would be redundant.)

shiningsilence.com issues

Justin Sherrill — Thu, 29 Oct 2009 01:06:35 +0000

I’m suddenly having trouble with the machine that hosts this site (random crashes, hardware disappearing), so there may be some surprise downtime over the next few days until a replacement motherboard arrives…

Eating fresher dogfood

Justin Sherrill — Sat, 24 Oct 2009 23:55:22 +0000

Sorry for the downtime today – shiningsilence.com is now running DragonFly 2.4 and Hammer, so I’ll be able to complain testify first-hand.

If you aren’t familiar with the phrase “eating your own dogfood”, here’s what it is.

Downtime for the Digest

Justin Sherrill — Sun, 18 Oct 2009 14:56:20 +0000

I’m upgrading hardware, so this site will be down for a bit today. This is separate from anything happening with dragonflybsd.org systems.

RSS information added

Justin Sherrill — Wed, 09 Sep 2009 14:21:21 +0000

The main page of the dragonflybsd.org site now has a feed of the most recent 10 articles from this Digest.

A million monkeys, or just me

Justin Sherrill — Tue, 25 Aug 2009 05:27:44 +0000

There’s now a counter in the sidebar to this site (look under my email address) that shows how many posts have been made, ever. Not necessarily helpful for you, the reader, but it makes me feel good.

Also, all those posts, back to 2003, are reachable via the archive page.

Hardware suggestions welcome

Justin Sherrill — Mon, 03 Aug 2009 02:00:26 +0000

This machine, shiningsilence.com, is having some issues. I had to power down because of unrelated problems, and the system couldn’t find the kernel on the next boot, though the issue disappeared on the next boot. That’s enough of an excuse to build new…

Any hardware recommendations? I’m interested in hearing what chipsets/disks/RAID setups/etc. and/or hardware suppliers worked well for people.

Network issues

Justin Sherrill — Wed, 08 Apr 2009 01:13:11 +0000

My apologies, folks – the site is going up and down, along with my network connection. It’s probably because of Time Warner (my network provider) trying and failing to correctly implement bandwidth measuring tools for their upcoming volume cap. (I keep getting passed a private IP.)