Monthly Archives: December 2002

I think Ryan Tubridy will be pleased to see that Shakira’s clothes can’t handle wiggling. He may need resuscitation after thinking about this..

Free electricity – from your phone company!

The Register on the “Windows is cheaper than Linux” report from IDC.

Has anyone seen this error in their system logs?

Dec 4 22:40:09 donncha pppd[2680]: tdb_store failed: IO Error
Dec 4 22:40:09 donncha pppd[2680]: tdb_store key failed: IO Error
Dec 4 22:40:09 donncha pppd[2680]: tdb_store failed: IO Error

I tried google but I guess it’s not a common problem. I’m not 100% certain that it doesn’t affect my net connection, only time will tell.
Oh yeah, it’s a “Conexant HCF 56k Data/Fax Modem” that’s causing these errors. I’m glad I got it working at all, saves me buying an external one..

Dial On Demand with wvdial and pppd – this works very nicely in Red Hat 8.
Add the following to /etc/rc.local and you can masquerade for your home network:

/sbin/iptables -t nat -A POSTROUTING -o ppp0 -j MASQUERADE
echo 1 > /proc/sys/net/ipv4/ip_forward

Yes, there is a way to set IP forwarding with the sysconfig files but I don’t have the patience to look for it right now.
Not sure if that iptables command will work if ppp0 doesn’t exist (ie. when my machine boots). If it doesn’t, then put those commands in /etc/ppp/ip-up.local and it’ll probably work.)
If you get an error in /var/log/messages saying pppd can’t override the default route on eth0, just remove that route /etc/sysconfig/network by deleting the text after “GATEWAY=” in that file.
All I have to do now is start and stop pppd from crontab so I don’t get on the nerves of the people at Esat..

The Definitive BIOS Optimization Guide – Very good read, but paranoid writer, and reflected in his site navigation (just try click “back”)

Wired News: Tossed E-Mails Cost Wall Street – *ouch* Don’t hit delete!

The Main Points of the Budget 2003, good and bad, mostly bad.

WebVoid’s Guide to Mac Gaming – What I’ve done is compiled a list of several exciting games you can play, quite literally, WITH your Mac hardware! Finally, you could play games alongside your estranged PC-owning buddies! And I’m sure they’ll be more than happy to play when you show them the games, too

The strange things you find on IRC..

* pron saw a newspaper column once that said “Smokers have a 50% chance of dying”
* pron contemplated taking up smoking … the rest of us a guaranteed to die !
<diamond> pron: wow, so half are immortal?
<diamond> -)