The computing stuff rant thread

[Mr Larrington]

MOAR update woes as Seagate Central NAS utterly fails to restart after a firmware update.  I may need to RTFM chiz.

[Wombat]

Bloody Bitdefender!

You are slow, useless and obstructive.  Several hundred times more obstructive than Norton ever was, preventing me from accessing anything on my blu-ray drive at all, and then taking 20 minutes to fail to scan the remote DVD drive, and locking up the PC in the process. Its a seriously powerful PC, with lots of resources, so why should scanning an optical drive take over the whole machine? Its set to auto-update, yet every time I fire up the PC it squeals that its out of date, and what am I going to do about it.

Well, what I am going to do about it is simple, get rid of you, you useless heap of crap -today, in fact in the next ten minutes, regardless of having a couple of months subscription left...
So shall I rely on Windows (10) own products, or go back to Norton, which at least when I asked it not to scan a certain thing, did at least obey, instead of blithely scanning it regardless and then locking up?

I just want something that works, and does not require lots of interaction from me.

[Afasoas]

We've used BitDefender up until quite recently and tbh, didn't experience any kind of problems.
It's not uncommon for leading AntiVirusCos to provide new signatures several times of day. Is it possible to quiet the out-of-date warnings?
I'd be surprised if there wasn't an option to exclude the blue ray drive from scans. Which is fine if your using trusted read only media.

[Wombat]

Its been pretty painful from day one, but has got far worse since upgrading to Win10, which caused Bitdefender to commit suicide, meaning I had to download their total removal tool from their website and reinstall a version which was only accessible via their forums, to get it working again.  The comments on the forums are not complimentary...

The "out of date" warnings only annoy me because its meant to deal with the issue itself, but it doesn't, I have to manually update it.  I also takes up to half an hour to do that update, whereas Norton never took anything like that long.  I have told it to ignore the blu-ray drive on numerous occasions, and on recent occasions I've told it to stop scanning anything at all, yet it still scans it. Basically, it just refuses to do as its told. 

Gone now, and PC working better, which is a relief since one of today's tasks is going through a load of old discs I wrote ages ago, to see if they still have a purpose other than as bird-scarers.

I was amused that when removing it, it detected I was doing so, and asked why.  The final question was "what OS are you using?" and a list of OSs, which did not include Windows 10, so my comment in the last box was that this summed it up, that they are hopelessly out of date, and seemed totally unprepared for Windows 10.

Things were not helped by an issue which Win 10 seems to have with recognising optical drives.  Mine was recognised, but for some types of media, it didn't seem to want to read it, meaning I resorted to my external DVD drive.  Drive firmware now updated and all seems to be well (fingers firmly crossed).

[Mr Larrington]

Machine, what the actual fuck have you done with Classic Start Menu?  Put it back THIS INSTANT!

[ian]

After much puzzling about why my Time Machine backup ground to a halt (on the last machine it claimed to be read only, on this one it sledged disk first into a lake of time-retardant jam) I finally removed the apostrophe from an external drive name and the jam was gone.

El Capitan doesn't like the apostrophe. He's the anti-grocer.

Seriously, in 2015 and computers still choke on shit like that. Grammar pedants recoil.

[mrcharly-YHT]

Seriously, in 2015 and computers still choke on shit like that. Grammar pedants recoil.

So they should. What the hell was wrong with 8.3?

You want apostrophe's in drive letters, filenames, directories but you think companies letting SQL injection via their websites are being lax? Are you taking the Bear Grylls rehydration technique?

[ian]

Seriously, in 2015 and computers still choke on shit like that. Grammar pedants recoil.

So they should. What the hell was wrong with 8.3?

You want apostrophe's in drive letters, filenames, directories but you think companies letting SQL injection via their websites are being lax? Are you taking the Bear Grylls rehydration technique?

Ordinary humans use computers, not programmers. Attempting security by screwing usability is a common and epic fail.

[Asterix, the former Gaul.]

'reminds me I must speak to my ISP and ask why their line speed in France is now the same as it was c. 10 years ago, now 18x slower than my York line speed. 

[Mr Larrington]

After much puzzling about why my Time Machine backup ground to a halt (on the last machine it claimed to be read only, on this one it sledged disk first into a lake of time-retardant jam) I finally removed the apostrophe from an external drive name and the jam was gone.

El Capitan doesn't like the apostrophe. He's the anti-grocer.

Seriously, in 2015 and computers still choke on shit like that. Grammar pedants recoil.

You think you've got problems?  I have two NASen.  The older one very properly displays its name as "El Gordo" but no matter how I try to jibble things the newer refuses to be anything other than "FATBOY", which offend my delicate sensibilities.

[Mr Larrington]

And another thing.  Google, did I give you permission to change the way your search results appear on my fondleslab?  In some sort of horrible proto-mobile layout?  So that it looks, well, shit?

No.  No, I did not.  Now put it back before I come round to your house chocolate factory with some piss-poor fireworks and a Zippo

[Jaded]

Seriously, in 2015 and computers still choke on shit like that. Grammar pedants recoil.

So they should. What the hell was wrong with 8.3?

You want apostrophe's in drive letters, filenames, directories but you think companies letting SQL injection via their websites are being lax? Are you taking the Bear Grylls rehydration technique?

apostrophe's what? 

[ian]

Frankly, if I want to call my external drive Finestre's Dark Cupboard of Recalcitrant Electrons, I bloody well shall. Or not, les apparantlies. I'd be less annoyed if it said 'I don't think you want to do that' (in the delightful and rather proper voice of Kate this week) when my finger hovered over the apostrophe key rather than fill the Console with cryptic error jibble. Null condition 1003, exit code 8, you say? That could be a fucking whale sighting for all I know. And it used to work, because it always had the bloody apostrophe.

[David Martin]

Yet the wizards of the dark arts [1] can have file names of whatever characters they wish. Including ones so obscure you really cannot type them in.

..d

[1]Unix

[Kim]

...and ones that get parsed by the shell in unintuitive ways.

[David Martin]

Oh the joys of winding folk up by including nasty things in the filename. Backspace is a good one. Carriage return is another. trailing spaces add to the fun.

[Mr Larrington]

Lusers used to similar things, at least as far as Windows would allow them to, which caused a certain amount of embuggerance when copying their files to an OS which does not tolerate such slackness.  It being impossible, or at least illegal, to educate lusers I had to nail up some SCIENCE to disembugrificate their file names.  I'm fairly sure the SCIENCE on our side had been failing almost daily for about three years before they employed me

[Afasoas]

I'm almost livid. If it weren't for the fact I picked up this piece of hardware for beans, I'd be through the roof. And I seldom get angry about anything.

I'm finally sending my first ZFS snapshot from brox (home server) to mundo (backup server).
I couldn't work out why I was getting such poor transfer speeds. ~150 Megabit/second. CPUs/IO no where near maxed out.

Then I checked the event log on mundo. It's getting spammed choc full of these:

Code: [Select]

Nov  8 04:20:09 mundo kernel: [14143.334095] net_ratelimit: 131 callbacks suppressed
Nov  8 04:20:09 mundo kernel: [14143.400836] sky2 0000:05:00.0 eth0: rx error, status 0x7ffc0001 length 1020
Nov  8 04:20:09 mundo kernel: [14143.450895] sky2 0000:05:00.0: error interrupt status=0x40000008

Oh yes. I've reduce the MTU and the problem still persists. It looks like dodgy hardware is to blame: Marvel 88E8056  It's some sort of timing issue - the t'interwebs are full of geeks gnashing teeth with the same problem and no resolution.

On the bright side, the command line looks impressive.

Code: [Select]

zfs send -R biz@2015-11-08T02:52:10 | pigz -4 | ssh -i /root/.ssh/id_rsa_zfsbackup_biz_mundo.bikeshed.internal zfsbackup@mundo.bikeshed.internal "unpigz | sudo /sbin/zfs receive -Fduv biz"

If this works, I'll try using trickle to shape the bandwidth down somewhere south of 100 Megabits/second and just be very patient.
Now I really must get some ZZzzzz

[Afasoas]

Now this is a rant at myself.

I though I was being clever, writing a script to regenerate a series of single use SSH keys:

Code: [Select]

#!/bin/bash

keyPath=~/keys_for_brox
keyDesc=(   var-log-archive-rsync-backup \
            dba-mysql-rsync-backup \
            www-rsync-backup \
            etc-rsync-backup \
            vmail-rsync-backup \
            dpkg-selections-rsync-backup \
        )
command=(   "rsync --server --sender -ltrze.iLs . /var/log/archive/*" \
            "rsync --server --sender -ltrze.iLs . /var/backups/mysql/*" \
            "rsync --server --sender -vltrze.iLs . /var/backups/www/" \
            "rsync --server --sender -vltrze.iLs . /var/backups/etc/" \
            "rsync --server --sender -vltrze.iLs . /var/backups/vmail/" \
            "rsync --server --sender -vltrze.iLs . /var/backups/dpkg/" \
        )

rm -rf ${keyPath}/*

for ((i=0;i<${#keyDesc[*]};i++)) ; do
    ssh-keygen -q -t rsa -b 3072 \
        -f ${keyPath}/id_rsa_${keyDesc[$i]}_bourbon.biscuit.ninja \
        -N "" \
        -C ${keyDesc[$i]}
   
    sed -i "1s|^|command=\"${command[$i]}\,no-agent-forwarding,no-port-forwarding,no-x11-forwarding,no-user-rc |" ${keyPath}/id_rsa_${keyDesc[$i]}_bourbon.biscuit.ninja
done


This is a step towards reconfiguring automated backups from a few VPS boxen following loss of the boot disk in my home server. The only thing is, I copied and pasted the script from a text editor to vi, forgetting to pop it into insert mode first. I then ran the script.

I wound up running "rm -rf ${keyPath}/*" without keyPath properly defined.
The net result was running "rm -rf /*".

* faceplants desk *. FFS. I'm an idiot. I've hosed my entire home folder and goodness knows that else.
Moral of the story - don't use "rm -rf". Don't run potentially lethal scripts without properly eyeballing them.

Oh, and my previous rant? 3/4 through backing up, the snapshot transfer broke.

[Afasoas]

Well that could have been a good deal worse.

It looks like only my home folder was affected.
Fortunately my kerberos keys had expired so I didn't delete anything off my network shares. And I managed to save out a copy of my krb5.keytab too so I don't have to worry about re-exporting keys. Accessing my password database might have been tricky without them. My other home compobulators haven't been setup with new keys yet since rebuilding the server following its boot disk failure.

That might not mean much to some, but it just brings home the importance of backing up data.

Hopefully in a few days time I'll have the backup regime sorted and I can put this mess behind me.

[Kim]

Then I checked the event log on mundo. It's getting spammed choc full of these:

Code: [Select]

Nov  8 04:20:09 mundo kernel: [14143.334095] net_ratelimit: 131 callbacks suppressed
Nov  8 04:20:09 mundo kernel: [14143.400836] sky2 0000:05:00.0 eth0: rx error, status 0x7ffc0001 length 1020
Nov  8 04:20:09 mundo kernel: [14143.450895] sky2 0000:05:00.0: error interrupt status=0x40000008

Oh yes. I've reduce the MTU and the problem still persists. It looks like dodgy hardware is to blame: Marvel 88E8056  It's some sort of timing issue - the t'interwebs are full of geeks gnashing teeth with the same problem and no resolution.

"Is it an Intel?  No?  Then it goes in the bin."

Life's too short for crappy network chipsets.

[Afasoas]

I know I know. You are absolutely right as ever.

Ugh.  I should pony up and buy some better hardware for the backup server.

[Ben T]

Printer cartridges. My printer now doesn't print at all in magenta or yellow.
Epson recommend replacing the cartridges which are from cartridgesave with genuine epson ones.
which are 26.99
I could get a whole new printer for 21.99
 

[simonp]

Apparently people actually fail the theory test.  Since it consists of about 5% obscure but easily revised facts (stopping distances, uncommon roadsigns, species of pedestrian crossing), 20% common sense and 75% "D) Slow down and proceed with caution.", you really have to worry.

I didn't revise in any meaningful way for my motorcycle theory test, and got 2 wrong. Didn't practice at all for the hazard test, that was harder, but I still passed.

I find it slightly hard to comprehend how people can fail this, but many people struggle with stuff that is much easier, so I shouldn't be that surprised.

[Mr Larrington]

iTunes, if you are going to fuck around with the volume of my amplifier would you kindly put it back the way you found it afterwards?  That way the drums at the start of the news will not cause the light fitting to remain attached to the ceiling.