Month: January 2022

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Lumos!

My sisters tell me that ‘Lumos’ can be used to activate Android and iPhone flashlights, and ‘nox’ will turn it off.

Strangely, it does not work on my iPhone 12. It does, however, work on my Google Home.

OK, so that’s… interesting. But it turns out that Google is also classy:

And TIM said, Let there be light: and there was light.  And TIM saw the light, that it was good: and TIM divided the light from the darkness

And then TIM had a BEER, and the BEER was good. See next post.

Fun note: if you have Google Home and you click on either of these, you will get to see them in action.

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Converting CentOS to RHEL

Should be easy. Red Hat says it’s easy. Why do it?

In December, 2020, Red Hat announced that it was basically discontinuing CentOS. They bought them, and then put them out of business. This was not a huge surprise, since Red Hat did the same thing in 2004 when they created Fedora. But I do not want to run a bleeding edge OS; I want to run something boring. Given where I am right now I might look at migrating to another distro – but not right now.

So what to do? Well, at the same time Red Hat introduced a ‘No-cost Red Hat Enterprise Linux Individual Developer Subscription’. This gives you up to 16 servers running RHEL.

And they made it easy to convert, with a convert2rhel utility that will convert your CentOS to a RHEL server. Corey has used it with great success. I, on the other hand, have had less:

root@kyushu2 ~]# ls /sys/firmware/efi
config_table efivars esrt fw_platform_size fw_vendor runtime runtime-map systab vars

[root@kyushu2 ~]# parted /dev/sda
GNU Parted 3.1
Using /dev/sda
Welcome to GNU Parted! Type ‘help’ to view a list of commands.
(parted) p
Model: ATA KINGSTON SHFS37A (scsi)
Disk /dev/sda: 240GB
Sector size (logical/physical): 512B/512B
Partition Table: gpt
Disk Flags:

Number Start End Size File system Name Flags
1 1049kB 211MB 210MB fat16 EFI System Partition boot
2 211MB 1285MB 1074MB xfs
3 1285MB 240GB 239GB lvm

So obviously EFI, right?

[01/07/2022 13:53:54] TASK – [Prepare: Gather system information] ***
Name: CentOS Linux
OS version: 7.9
Architecture: x86_64
Config filename: centos-7-x86_64.cfg
Running the ‘rpm -Va’ command which can take several minutes. It can be disabled by using the –no-rpm-va option.
The ‘rpm -Va’ output has been stored in the /var/log/convert2rhel/rpm_va.log file

[01/07/2022 13:57:20] TASK – [Prepare: Checking the firmware interface type (BIOS/UEFI)]
UEFI detected.
CRITICAL – UEFI: Unable to detect any UEFI bootloader entry.

So… not EFI?

Luckily, I have two of these systems. I’m cloning the SSD drives with dd tonight, and I’ll play around with them tomorrow. If you’ve never done a dd drive clone over the network, it’s amazing.

On the destination server:

nc -l 19000|dd bs=16M of=/dev/sda

On the originating server:

dd bs=16M if=/dev/sda|nc 192.168.42.4 19000

And make sure you turn off firewalld on the receiving server!

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Pinball is back!

Well, I guess it never went away, really. But the pinball league did, for a couple of weeks. Too much going on at Birdfish around the holidays. But it’s back! https://business.facebook.com/birdfishpinball/

And I came in second, on my first night after retirement. I suppose it’s because I didn’t have to worry about getting home for work the next day. Like Dana or Doug would ever beat me in anyway. But still, it’s the principle.

Moral victory. Got a prize. The person who won was Alek. Aleksander Kaczmarczyk. One of the nicest young guys I’ve ever met. A regular; he’s been coming here for the last three years – originally, his dad drove him because he was too young to drive.

And, um. He’s the #6 ranked player in the world. https://www.ifpapinball.com/rankings/power100.php

So anyway, the prize!

A good night of pinball, with good friends. If you’ve never been to Birdfish – go to Birdfish. Here’s a shot of their back room.

And now I am going to go read something because… I don’t have to go to work tomorrow!

I may get used to this.

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The Reading List

Just finished:

  • Termination Shock by Neal Stephenson. I’m a big Stephenson fan, but a few of his last have been a little inconsistent. Fall, or Dodge in Hell was just damn painful. He’s back in for on this one, and talking about a technological solution to the climate crisis. Good read. Now, that said – I just finished an audio book:
  • Reamde, by Neal Stephenson. Somehow I missed this one. I enjoyed it very much, and may have to revisit Fall.
  • All About Me!: My Remarkable Life in Show Business, by Mel Brooks. Mel’s biography. I’m a fan, and this is a great book. Memoir form from childhood to now, and goes through his productions. The Fly was produced by Mel Brooks? Did not know that. Mel Brooks and David Cronenberg. Be afraid. Be very afraid.

Current

  • Invisible Sun, by Charles Stross. The last of his Merchant Prince series. Humans who can walk across alternate timelines (called ‘jaunting’ in the book, although those of us who are Gully Foyle purists know it’s nothing of the kind). Solid ending to a series started more than 20 years ago, with crazy politics in two timelines.
  • The Surgeon’s Mate, Patrick O’Brian. The Aubrey/Maturin sea novels have been on my list to read for a log time; I finally started them mid-2021. The Russel Crowe movie, Captain and Commander, had a family friend as the technical advisor, Andy Reay-Ellers.

Next Up

  • Journey To The Edge of Reason: The Life of Kurt Gödel by Stephen Budiansky. It’s impossible for me to decide whether to read this or not. Hey, look, a Gödel dad joke! Up in the bucket list is Hofstader’s Gödel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid, which has been on the shelf for 20 years. I figure his biography will be a warmup.
  • Unwinding Anxiety, by Judson Brewer. Yeah, retirement is causing me some anxiety. I’ll get over it. Maybe with a self-help book or two tossed in first, though.
  • The Queen’s Gambit, by Walter Tevis. I started playing chess again a couple of years ago. ‘Pushed wood’ back in the 60s/70s, dropped it for 50 years, and then picked it up again. I finally watched the show on Netflix. Nice series, but I had no idea – Walter Tevis? He wrote a couple of books that got made into movies. Like, The Hustler. Color of Money. And… The Man Who Fell To Earth Now that is some range.

And yes. Yes, I am reading two books at once and listening to another. And that was before I retired.