Monday - 17 July 2000
www.seto.daynotes Well, it could happen. As you've no doubt heard, the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICAAN) has passed a resolution (see it here) to add additional Top Level Domains (TLD). Well, duh.
Actually, what they agreed is that a "...policy be established for the introduction of new TLDs in a measured and responsible manner." Well, double duh. This is very disappointing as far as the speed, or lack thereof, towards solving the problem of the dwindling supply of domain names.
Speaking of Speed. I setup a new LAN at home over the weekend. Or at least I started setting up a LAN. As you may remember, I ran some CAT-5 wire last weekend to connect a PC at one end of the house to a PC at the other so that it could have access to the internet via my Road Runner cable modem.
This weekend I got around to installing a SMC EZ-10/100 network interface card (NIC) into the PC and configuring it for TCP/IP. I then plugged the other end of the wire into my SMC EZ Switch II 10/100. Surprise, surprise. When I powered the PC up the pretty lights on the switch started blinking. Must have been dumb luck.
Next weekend is to continue working on trying to get a Linux firewall up and running. I spent about four hours this weekend trying to get Coyote Firewall (see it here) going but had problems with its installation script. It makes a call to "which" but apparently my Caldera Desktop 2.4 distribution doesn't like it and the script falls over at that point. Because of this, and because their support desk is way less than helpful in solving the problem (they point fingers at everyone else and don't take any responsibility in trying to solve the problem) I will need to look at other solutions. Oh, by the way. Before I forget, the SMC EZ 10/100 1211-TX NIC uses the rtl8139 Linux driver. Go figure.
Aloha!
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Tuesday - 18 July 2000
NICed Off. What is it with Windows98 and network interface cards (NIC)? Or at least with changing the same? I needed to switch out a 10 MB 3Comm card that came with the Road Runner cable modem service and replace it with an SMC 10/100 one. I needed to do this so that the 3Comm card could be used in the PC that will become my firewall (using two NICs, the 3Comm and an SMC).
So I remove the 3Comm card. Boot the PC and remove everything I could find pointing to its very existence (Network Neighborhood and System) and shutdown. Then I install the SMC card. Power up and watch as Windows comes up and recognizes a new PCI card. It asks for the drivers, which I feed it via the floppy that came with the card and let it do its thing. Windows reboots and comes up without error. It also comes up without internet access.
So I go to the properties tab of Network Neighborhood and double check the settings for TCP/IP (use DHCP for IP address, gateway blank, DNS blank, do not use WINS resolution). Hmmm. There are no errors showing in the System tab and yet I can't get to anything on the net (the browser says unable to resolve the address). Hmmm. I can ping localhost (127.0.0.1) but nothing else.
So I try removing all references to the SMC card in Network Neighborhood and System in the hope that Windows will reinstall the bits it needs and reboot. But that doesn't help. Widows reinstalled the software Okay. But still no access. So I power down and move the card to the next slot and reboot. Hmmm. Now I get VXD errors about drivers pointing to non-existent thingies. Well, Okay, but I continue booting anyway. Still no access. Just for the heck of it I reboot again, and no errors come up. And lo and behold, the pretty blinky lights are blinking. Success. Don't ask me why, for only Windows knows what lurks in the hearts of...well...I don't know. YMMV.
I have to install the software that we ordered (WP, Adobe Acrobat, and NetObjects Fusion) so I am out of here.
8:30am Update. Daynotes.com is BACK! [No it's not. See below - Ed.] As long as you only type in daynotes.com and not www.daynotes.com. I know that last glitch will be corrected as soon as possible so bear with us as we transition to bigger and better things!
***** Noon Update *****
Ooops. Here I thought daynotes.com was back up and running. Actually, it may be where you are. But out here, and in Pittsburgh (where pair.com, my domain host is) it's sort of up and sort of not. When I type in daynotes.com via pair, I end up at syroid manner. If I type in www.daynotes.com, I get no where. Sigh. Sorry for the confusion on my part.
And now this in from fellow Daynoter John Doucette on my travails with NICs.
From: John D
To: Dan Seto
Subject: changing NICS
Date: Tue, 18 Jul 2000 12:26:45 -0600With Win9x I have had good reliable luck changing a NIC by first removing the drivers, shut down, then remove the NIC. Install new NIC then boot and load drivers etc.
For the IP address problem go, Start > run > winipcfg > release all > renew all which should get you going again with out all the reboots and fiddling.
John D.
----- Original Message -----
From: Dan Seto
To: Big John
Subject: Re: changing NICS
Date: Tue, 18 Jul 2000 08:36:30 -1000John,
Thanks. I know you've probably had the info on your site but sometimes I need to learn things the hard way. But I will keep this email and perhaps put it on my site so I can find it again when I need it (hopefully only when the temperature down under reaches freezing [I think he means when hell freezes over, not when it snows in Adelaide - Ed.])<g>
Aloha!
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Hump Day Wednesday - 19 July 2000
SSM. Not much interesting going on in the news this morning. Plus, I need to continue working on getting ready for the meeting on Friday so I am out of here.
Mail Call.
From: Alan Anderson [alana@abac.com]
To: Dan Seto
Sent: Wednesday, July 19, 2000 6:06 AM
Subject: Win 98 CardsAnother concerning cards in Win 98. This carries the method described to you one step further and has worked well for me after learning it from the esteemed Dr Jerry P.
Remove drivers and all mention of the card in Control Panel. Power off the machine, remove the power cable from the machine, remove the card. Let machine sit unplugged for at least ten minutes. Power up the machine WITHOUT either the old card or the new one.
Play solitaire or read you mail for ten minutes or so. Power off the machine, unplug, insert new card, wait ten minutes. Power up and see if the new card ins recognized, install drivers, power down un plug wait a while and then power back up.
Sounds like a cake recipe, but I really believe that MSoft places memory gremlins all over, does not immediately remove drivers from disks, etc. Removing the cards waiting etc seems to allow the "ghosts of hardware past" to die an honorable death.
Alan Anderson
Grayslake, Illinois----- Original Message -----
From: Dan Seto
To: Alan Anderson
Subject: Re: Win 98 Cards
Date: Wed, 19 Jul 2000 06:33:53 -1000Alan,
Thanks. I get the feeling you are right. The ghost of the machine, indeed.
Aloha - Dan
***** Noon Update *****
Maximum Piffle. Daynotes.com Head Honcho, and ace canasta player (well, okay, he's not the Head Honcho <g>) Tom Syroid is the man. He's the man that keeps daynotes.com going. He's the man who volunteered, nay, demanded that he be responsible for its care, feeding, health and well-being.
Well sometimes, like when babies don't feel well. And you pick them up and hold them up above your head, their little mouths become hoses through which vile green slime comes shooting out with the force of a hurricane. All over that new shirt you just put on.
Well, Tom may be feeling like the shirt right now. Just when he gets our www.daynotes.com domain transferred (again) when his own domain and email is slimed. That is, the Domain Name Service records that point to him, don't. Point that is. So he is cut-off from the world and all of the critical correspondence sent to him will go bouncing into the ether (or token-ring as the case may be). Sigh.
I appreciate all of the work/blood/sweat/tears that Tom does for for the Gang. And I especially appreciate his long suffering, easy-going, always positive manner that he has shown to me over these past months. If only I could be half as good a person as he, I would be a happy man.
Go out to the back porch and lift a few for me Tom...
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Thursday - 20 July 2000
Traveling Over Cs.
There was a young lady names Bright,
Whose speed was far faster than light,
She set out one day,
In a relative way,
And returned home the previous night.
The Journal Nature is reporting the results of an experiment (see it here) in which a pulse of light is apparently observed leaving a chamber filled with cesium gas before it is observed completely entering it. The researchers, L. J. Wang; A. Kuzmich; and A. Dogariu measured a group-velocity index of -310. As I understand it, this means the pulse traveled a distance 310 times the distance it would have covered if the chamber had contained a vacuum. Thus, you could say the pulse exceeded the speed of light through a vacuum by that percent.
However, other scientists are saying the effect is similar to pushing on a line of billiard balls. That is, if you line up a string of balls and hit the ball at one end, what is observed is the ball at the other will leave the line at some velocity. They are saying something similar is happening to the cesium atoms. The light waves coming in on one side of the chamber hit the cesium atoms. Which in turn then force light atoms out of the chamber at the other side even before the entering light atoms have had time to physically reach the other side.
I'm still working on getting ready for the meeting tomorrow so I am out of here.
Aloha!
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Aloha Friday - 21 July 2000
It's Friday!
How'lin Coyote. I decided to give Coyote Linux, a firewall based on the Linux Router Project, another chance. There are two versions of this firewall. The only difference is how the boot disk is created. If you have a Linux system available you can download the free version. This version uses a script to run you through the configuration and creation of the boot disk. The pay version is a Windows based install wizard.
As you may remember, I earlier tried the free version but found that the "which" command was either not installed or not in the path (in my case, it's installed and, as far as I can see, is in my path, but still is not working with this script). As it turns out, they are beta testing a new version of the Windows installer. So I decided to give this version a try (since while it is in beta testing it is free).
So I downloaded the Windows version and ran the wizard. It asks the regular questions, DHCP? Road Runner log in? NIC type, I/O, IRQ, etc. and then created the boot disk. Well, that worked pretty well. But when I inserted the disk into my Linux system and booted it did not recognize the 3Com card. It seems the card I had was not the one I thought it was. So I checked through the very limited list of supported NICs (and as far as I can see, this is the same list for all of Linux firewalls based on the LRP) and decided I would need to get another SMC card since the 3Comm (3c900B) I had was not on the list.
So I replaced the 3Comm with the SMC EZ 10/100 and created a new boot disk. This time, after I swapped cables on the two NICs in the firewall box, and switched ports in the SMC switch, everything was running.
Now I am the first to admit that I am not a Linux expert. And I am definitely not a firewall expert. So I figured I better check to see how things are working by using Steve Gibson's Shields UP! service. Since I am behind a firewall, I needed to download the IP Agent and then ran the service from there. Shields Up! did not find any problems. However, running the port probe found a small quibble. The scan finds ports, but correctly indicates that they are all closed. Compare this to ZoneAlarm's personal firewall (see it here) that places the ports in "stealth" mode. That is, port scans do not detect the presence of the port, much less what state it is in (i.e. open or closed, not Montana or Idaho). But other than that, everything seems to be OK.
I do admit being a little queasy about leaving things like network security to someone else. But until I can learn enough to check on these things myself, I guess that's the way it will have to be.
Have a great weekend everyone - Aloha!
© 2000 Daniel K. Seto. All rights reserved.