Missives

Fedora libvirt/qemu error on upgrade

Today we upgraded a server that ran a bunch of VMs to Fedora 25 and all the VMs failed to come back online after rebooting. Checking the logs I found this: 2017-04-14T08:39:35.304547Z qemu-system-x86_64: Length mismatch: 0000:00:03.0/virtio-net-pci.rom: 0x10000 in != 0x20000: Invalid argument 2017-04-14T08:39:35.304579Z qemu-system-x86_64: error while loading state for instance 0x0 of device ‘ram’ 2017-04-14T08:39:35.304759Z … Continue reading Fedora libvirt/qemu error on upgrade

Horizon Zero Dawn Xi Cauldron Is Confusing

After you override the core in the Xi Cauldron (which unlike the others I’ve played through so far, happens pretty early), Aloy says “now I can override more machines”. But annoyingly, you don’t actually get the override until you finish the quest, which happens when you exit the cauldron. Along the way back you’ll encounter … Continue reading Horizon Zero Dawn Xi Cauldron Is Confusing

Rust nightly + Homebrew

I used to use this Homebrew “Tap” to install Rust nightly versions, but it stopped working at some point. I messed around with it a lot and determined it had something to do with newer Rusts not liking the install_name_tool calls that homebrew forces on libraries during installation. So I looked into rustup (the nice … Continue reading Rust nightly + Homebrew

Perl Module XS configuration is hard

I wrote a simple little Perl Module recently, and it reminded me how frustrating it is to get it all working. I’m not even talking about the .xs preprocessor (xsubpp)—that’s weird, but it’s fairly straightforward. Most contingencies are accounted for and you can make it do whatever you want, and in my case, the results … Continue reading Perl Module XS configuration is hard

32-bit clang deficiencies on Mac OS X

I was pulling my hair out getting this compiler message tonight: warning: property ‘x’ requires method ‘x’ to be defined – use @synthesize, @dynamic or provide a method implementation in this class implementation [-Wobjc-property-implementation] According to Apple’s Objective C documentation: By default, these accessor methods are synthesized automatically for you by the compiler, so you … Continue reading 32-bit clang deficiencies on Mac OS X

Mac OS X codesigning woes

I just discovered this wonderful bug. Apparently “hdiutil makehybrid” is stripping code signatures in some cases. I first verify the code signature on an App (a build of Emacs, in this case)—there are no errors: $ codesign –verify _dmg-build/Emacs.app/ $ I then use “hdiutil makehybrid” to create a disk image out of the directory. $ … Continue reading Mac OS X codesigning woes

Playstation 4 NW-31250-1 Error

All my Playstation 4 downloads were failing today with “DNS Error” and “NW-31250-1”. I ran a tcpdump on my router and found this: 15:07:10.389761 00:ee:ff:aa:bb:cc (oui Unknown) > 11:22:33:44:55:66 (oui Unknown), ethertype IPv4 (0x0800), length 109: (tos 0x0, ttl 64, id 0, offset 0, flags [DF], proto UDP (17), length 95) red-death-router.porkrind.org.domain > 10.0.0.113.49218: … Continue reading Playstation 4 NW-31250-1 Error

Mac OS X 10.9 (Mavericks) and SSH pkcs8 keys

After upgrading to Mavericks (Mac OS X 10.9) I found that ssh-add wasn’t working. After investigating I discovered that the SSH shipped with Mavericks has a regression and doesn’t support pkcs8 keys. Mac OS X 10.8’s SSH supported these keys just fine. Earlier in the year I had read an article about using pkcs8 formatted … Continue reading Mac OS X 10.9 (Mavericks) and SSH pkcs8 keys

iMessage on Mac OS X not working

My iMessage suddenly stopped working in the Messages app and I couldn’t get it to log in properly. In the accounts section it would spin for a while when I typed my password and then give this error: The registering device does not have appropriate credentials I finally decided it must be some background task … Continue reading iMessage on Mac OS X not working

Calling Applescript from Ruby

Today I wrote a Ruby version of my quicky function for calling Applescript from Perl: def osascript(script) system ‘osascript’, *script.split(/\n/).map { |line| [‘-e’, line] }.flatten end The usage looks like this (almost identical to the Perl version): osascript <<-END tell application “Finder” display dialog “Hello” end tell END

“An Ancient Piece of Computer Lore in a Place You’d Never Expect” or “Dungeon (Zork) Map in Duplicity”

Back in March of 2012 I was watching Duplicity and I noticed something odd about 28 minutes in: In the top right corner there’s an 11×17 paper with an image on it that’s really hard to make out. I recognized it instantly. I first saw the image in question over 30 years ago when my … Continue reading “An Ancient Piece of Computer Lore in a Place You’d Never Expect” or “Dungeon (Zork) Map in Duplicity”

libvirt based QEMU VM pausing by itself

I just debugged this for hours. I have a bunch of QEMU VMs and different sets of them would start pausing themselves. If I resumed them they would immediately pause themselves again. Checking logs showed nothing. I found a disk with a bunch of S.M.A.R.T. errors but it turned out to be a red herring … Continue reading libvirt based QEMU VM pausing by itself

The Core Memory Module from my dad’s homebuilt PDP-11/05

Here is one: This is basically the 1974 version of a DIMM. It measures 16″ by 11.5″ and holds 16 kilobytes. It’s technically 18 bits wide but only 16 were used in the PDP-11. The raised part in the middle is where the cores are actually stored. Each bit is a little ring with 3 … Continue reading The Core Memory Module from my dad’s homebuilt PDP-11/05

Emacs For OS X . com gets a new Mac Mini

I recently used Funded By Me to help raise some money for a new build server for Emacs for Mac OS X . com. I set it up and then decided to start publicizing it on a Friday and by the end of the following Monday all the money had been raised! I was blown … Continue reading Emacs For OS X . com gets a new Mac Mini

VLC 64 Bit Problems

I just spent way too long trying to figure out why VLC wasn’t opening DVDs. I was getting this error in the log window: no access module matched “dvdnav” Turns out the problem is that VLC 1.1.11 only has 32-bit versions of its DVD plugins (or perhaps its 64-bit versions are broken–the end result is … Continue reading VLC 64 Bit Problems

Daemon-Manager: Manage your non-privileged daemons

It seems I’ve been writing little daemons a lot lately–small things that don’t want to run as root but still need to be launched in the background as services. I’ve been noticing because it’s such a pain to integrate them into the system once they are written (or installed). I have to mess around as … Continue reading Daemon-Manager: Manage your non-privileged daemons

Crysis 2–weapon stuck in semiautomatic mode.

So I was playing Crysis 2 and hit a random button on my xbox controller and my weapon went into semiautomatic mode. I could not for the life of me figure out what I had done or get it to switch back. Apparently I’m just dumb but it was so frustrating I tried to search … Continue reading Crysis 2–weapon stuck in semiautomatic mode.

Snow Leopard Time Machine Tweaks

Sparse bundles created by Time Machine in the latest versions of Snow Leopard are created slightly differently than they used to be. It used to be that Time Machine would create a sparse bundle with a name like “machine-name_001122334455.sparsebundle” where the “001122334455” part was your main ethernet port’s MAC address. Now it creates just “machine-name.sparsebundle”. … Continue reading Snow Leopard Time Machine Tweaks

Introducing Daemon Manager

The idea for Daemon Manager came about when I was converting a web site from Apache to Nginx. Nginx doesn’t launch FastCGI programs itself—it only connects to FastCGI sockets and so it requires that you manage the FastCGI server yourself. For a simple web site it might be OK to manually create an /etc/init.d script, … Continue reading Introducing Daemon Manager

Fridge Schematics/Wiring Diagram

I couldn’t find these schematics online anywhere. They came from the behind the front panel of my Kenmore Coldspot refrigerator, model number 106.9555923.