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A night off
Apr. 23rd, 2007 06:47 pmWhat a concept. I'm turning the computer off as soon as I post this.
Spent much of the morning battling a recalcitrant Travan tape drive. I picked that machine for the mail server specifically because it had a backup drive on board. Linux recognized it, the commands that should be able to use it make a valiant effort, but... it keeps getting I/O errors. Tried several tapes with similar results. I'm hoping it's just dirty, since it's been sitting unused for several years. Couldn't find a cleaner cartridge, so I have to order one. Meanwhile, backup is by making tarballs and storing them on another machine that does daily backups to tape.
Script kiddies and spammers are still after the machine, but I'm more confident now that it can resist them. The one who keeps trying thousands of usernames and passwords against ssh is certainly never going to get in that way, but I'm about ready to close the ssh port to outside traffic entirely in any case. The spammers in Taiwan and Norway who keep trying to use it as an open relay are getting dumped each time. I ran the prescribed checks against sendmail and it passed them all. So, I'm going to turn down the concern and get my other work done for a while.
Tess was frantic to get to the grass yesterday, but today she was better behaved mostly. She got 45 minutes and came back in without too much urging. (Well, I waved a peppermint alfalfa treat under her nose, but she had to come all the way in to her stall before she got it.)
Car report: Gasoline prices are back up. In fact, they are now the highest they've been in almost a year, higher than when I bought the car. Filled the tank this evening on the way home, and when I ran my spreadsheet, found that for this tank I got 28 mpg, including the day of that awful slushy snow storm. My running average for the last five fuel purchases is 27.05 mpg. As the weather improves, the mileage is climbing again. Hit 6000 miles at the end of last week, though, so I've got to take it in for maintenance.
Weather has been threatening all day, but no rain. Now they seem to have dropped it from the report, but it is still air and damp, with looming clouds. If it were a little warmer I'd be expecting tornado watches.
Anyway, off to do other things.
Spent much of the morning battling a recalcitrant Travan tape drive. I picked that machine for the mail server specifically because it had a backup drive on board. Linux recognized it, the commands that should be able to use it make a valiant effort, but... it keeps getting I/O errors. Tried several tapes with similar results. I'm hoping it's just dirty, since it's been sitting unused for several years. Couldn't find a cleaner cartridge, so I have to order one. Meanwhile, backup is by making tarballs and storing them on another machine that does daily backups to tape.
Script kiddies and spammers are still after the machine, but I'm more confident now that it can resist them. The one who keeps trying thousands of usernames and passwords against ssh is certainly never going to get in that way, but I'm about ready to close the ssh port to outside traffic entirely in any case. The spammers in Taiwan and Norway who keep trying to use it as an open relay are getting dumped each time. I ran the prescribed checks against sendmail and it passed them all. So, I'm going to turn down the concern and get my other work done for a while.
Tess was frantic to get to the grass yesterday, but today she was better behaved mostly. She got 45 minutes and came back in without too much urging. (Well, I waved a peppermint alfalfa treat under her nose, but she had to come all the way in to her stall before she got it.)
Car report: Gasoline prices are back up. In fact, they are now the highest they've been in almost a year, higher than when I bought the car. Filled the tank this evening on the way home, and when I ran my spreadsheet, found that for this tank I got 28 mpg, including the day of that awful slushy snow storm. My running average for the last five fuel purchases is 27.05 mpg. As the weather improves, the mileage is climbing again. Hit 6000 miles at the end of last week, though, so I've got to take it in for maintenance.
Weather has been threatening all day, but no rain. Now they seem to have dropped it from the report, but it is still air and damp, with looming clouds. If it were a little warmer I'd be expecting tornado watches.
Anyway, off to do other things.
