Tech

Tech-focused ramblings. Computers, blogs, and whatever else fits.

Occasional downtime

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First off, about the downtime for the past few days. This may be happening on and off for a while. I’m working on my CD collection again, which often necessitates switching my ‘puter over to Mac OS 9. As my webserver only operates when I’m running Mac OS X…well, no webserver when I’m working. I’ll do my best to remember to switch OS’s before I leave for the day, however there are no gaurantees. Most of the time things should be up and running, however.

Up and running

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Okay, I just got things up and running again. As of right now, everything on my site should be working correctly — now off to bed, I’ve got to get some sleep tonight!

Downtime

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Sorry about the recent downtime (the last couple days or so) — something went seriously glitchy on the machine, and I had to do a system repair on OS X, which nuked the web directory. Thankfully, I’m not a complete idiot, and had backed up the entire site before the repair, and so a quick copy back, and things seem to be up and running again, for the most part.

Unfortunately, the copying has changed read/write permissions on many of the files, and so not all of the interactive elements of the site — such as my messageboards — are working at the moment. I should have those fixed within the next day or two, but it’s a bit late tonight to go digging for the documentation. I’ll post an alert when things work again, of course.

Quick update from Seattle

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I’m actually still in the midst of my vacation, but while sitting here at a friends house checking e-mail, I figured I might as well take the opportunity to get a little updating done here. If nothing else, just to get something changing on here to assure people that I am alive, and have survived my travels so far.

I’ve stripped out the last of the manual updates from this mainpage…from now on, all updates and archives of old posts should be handled by this CGI script — assuming I’ve got it set up correctly.

Which may be a pretty big assumption…we’ll see.

In any case, I’m back in town this Thursday, so things should start getting back up to speed sometime around then. See you all soon….

Colophon

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Just a minor change here — took the machine/server/system info box out of the sidebar and created a colophon for the site. Since this isn’t really of major import to most people, it’s not linked in the main Contents listing, but is available through the links at the bottom of the page.

NewsPro up and running

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Okay — looks like this is up and running. Rock on. :) From now on, I’ll be using this script to update the main page of the site, rather than diving into my main HTML file every time I need to throw some little thing up here.

I’m really beginning to enjoy actually running my own server more and more as I dive into the tricks I can play…

[From Usenet: 5.24.96 2300]

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[Note: This was originally a post to the alt.sys.mac.newuser-help Usenet newsgroup. I’m including it here for completeness. Originally archived here.]

Nils Dahlmann-Resing wrote:

I do not know how to print postscript files I got off the net without a helper application on a MAC, though the printer is a postscript printer. Any idea?

A shareware utility called Drop*PS (the * is really a bullet) will work wonders, as long as all you want to do is print. Drag the .ps file onto Drop*PS, and it sends the postscript data directly to the printer to interpretet it. Nice ‘n simple…

[From Usenet: 5.23.96 2300]

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[Note: This was originally a post to the comp.sys.mac.misc Usenet newsgroup. I’m including it here for completeness. Originally archived here.]

Was wondering if anyone had attempted an install of NetBSD on a mac…?
–and–
Anyone attempted a firewall system like this…?

I’ve currently got a Performa600cd, which is networked in my apartment to two Win95 machines and a Unix server running FreeBSD. Ethernet connects all the machines, and we’re using TCP/IP to communicate among the various machines (as Win95 apparently doesn’t support AppleTalk).

Problems: Haven’t found a way to get filesharing going yet. The Winboxes don’t support AppleTalk (which would be easiest on my end), and I haven’t found anything to let my Mac recognize the Winboxes (at least in a filesharing type setup). Currently we’re telnetting/ftp’ing among the boxes to get files back and forth. Works, but a bit of a kludge. Also, haven’t been able to get a completely uesable proxy/firewall system running on the Unix server yet. My roommate found a version of SOCKS to run that Netscape is recognizing without a problem, but few other of my Internet clients recognize SOCKS. The only programs I’ve found that have SOCKS options available are Fetch and Anarchie, neither of which will work outside of our intranet. We’ve also been unable to find proxy setups to put on the FreeBSD-based Unix server, so I can’t configure those options in my programs. End result…Anarchie, Fetch (to a limited degree), Telnet, and Netscape work fine from machine to machine within our apartment, but only Netscape is able to travel outside our apartment. Luckily, Netscape does support E-mail and Usenet, but I’d still much rather be running Newswatcher and Eudora.

Possible solution: Installing NetBSD on my box to let me run Unix, and start figuring how to connect things from there. I’m just unsure how useable/stable the current (1.1) release of NetBSD is, and whether it would be worth the time to experiment with.

Pertinent Info:

  • 1 Macintosh Performa600cd w/FPU 20/510 (one 160Mb internal and one 350Mb external) running 7.5.3 (with Open Transport).
  • 2 Win95 boxes
  • 1 FreeBSD 2.2.1 Unix server
  • All machines connected via Ethernet
  • Single ppp dialup line to connect to my local ISP via a 28.8 modem connection

Feel free to re: to Usenet, but I’d appreciate it if you’d cc: the message to me (wo…@alaska.net), as I’m none to thrilled with Netscape’s Usenet interface, and have a tendency to ignore it for days at a time.

Many thanks ahead of time for any possible help…

[From the archives: 5.14.96 1406]

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[Note: This was originally written back when I was hand-coding my pages. Original entry is here.]

You know, I just do not pay enough attention to this fool page. (grin) Anyway, another Woody is up at Web Wide Woodys, and I’ve finally started updating my Club Events Schedule again. (shrug) I’ll get back on the ball one of these days…

Public Notice: I am considering nuking just about everything presently on my webspace sometime in the near future, to set up a site for local Anchorage bands. Questions, comments, words of wisdom are appreciated…just e-mail me!