Category: English
Stuff written in English
Periodic ZFS snapshots
As I continue exploring the nearly endless possibilities within ZFS, I figured it would be neat to have periodic snapshots of my mail files. The “Interweb” is filled with various shell scripts for this purpose, and I guess another one won’t make much difference.
Read More → Periodic ZFS snapshotsCD/DVD drives in Windows 7 and code 39 error
A collegue’s desktop computer has twice lost touch with its DVD drive. The drive is OK, it’s recognized by the BIOS, it even booted from a FreeBSD DVD when told to do so. Yet Windows 7 refused to display the drive. The Device Manager utility complained about a missing driver service and something about a […]
Read More → CD/DVD drives in Windows 7 and code 39 errorAbolish bad legacy systems
It’s amazing how easy it’s to lock oneself out from doing anything usable in Microsoft Windows. This particular operating system should be more careful of protecting its handling of executeable files.
Read More → Abolish bad legacy systemsNew server and first attempt at running FreeBSD/amd64 with ZFS for all storage
The switch to new hardware finally happened. This is the first server to run FreeBSD/amd64 under my supervision. ZFS is used for all storage on this server. I chose to install the newly released FreeBSD/amd64 9.0-RELEASE, before upgrading to FreeBSD/amd64 9.0-STABLE by source. It’s just a matter of preference, given my 13-14 years of experience […]
Read More → New server and first attempt at running FreeBSD/amd64 with ZFS for all storageUp and running again late in December 2011
Sorry for the nearly two week absence. This web server’s 10 year old hard drive developed too many faults between December 9th and 10th, and the system became rather useless. The wonky hard drive was replaced with a brand new one this week. Nothing important got lost thanks to AMANDA and a fair number of […]
Read More → Up and running again late in December 2011One year of blogging, more or less
It’s been one year since I started this blog. I have accumulated 33 posts, including this one, and a handful of (experimental) pages. It took a while before I felt brave enough to let Google index my blog. As for comments, a few comments have been to the point, whereas the majority of comments has […]
Read More → One year of blogging, more or lessZFS root fs on FreeBSD 9.0
Gone are the old MFS root fs image and the sysinstall utility. To create a useable ZFS root fs from the 9.0-RELEASE DVD we must specify an alternate location for the temporary zpool.cache file and an alternate mountpoint for the ZFS root fs by using a command like: zpool create -o cachefile=/tmp/zpool.cache -m /tmp/zroot zroot […]
Read More → ZFS root fs on FreeBSD 9.0Goodbye, Dad!
RIP Dennis MacAlistair Ritchie (1941-2011).
Read More → Goodbye, Dad!Dialog boxes for file handling missing in AutoCAD?
A student came by my office today and wondered if I knew how to bring back the usual dialog boxes for file handling in AutoCAD. A quick search using Google revealed the filedia command. The solution is to execute the filedia command, enter 1 (the digit one) as the requested input, hit the enter key, […]
Read More → Dialog boxes for file handling missing in AutoCAD?Colourful console in FreeBSD
I moved a few months ago. Moving from time to time is probably a Good Thing™. While going through my stuff, I came across a printout of this posting to the freebsd-stable mailling list back in 2007.
Read More → Colourful console in FreeBSD