Category: Computer bits

Computer stuff

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Upgrading to MT 3.2

Finally got around to upgrading to MT 3.2. Rather than upgrading the existing installation, I opted to make a copy of the database and a parallel installation of MT. That way, if something went wrong, reverting back to 3.17 would be simple. Fortunately nothing went wrong.

There are a number style sheet changes that will take me a while to integrate into this blog (if ever), but the RunningBlog is using the new templates. I gotta say, StyleCatcher is pretty sweet for grabbing new blog styles (themes in 3.2 now). I’m really liking some of the default styles available. The new interface is nice to work in too. Rebuilds seem to go faster in 3.2 also.

I think once I figure out how the styles are organized, changing the look of the blog is going to be easier to do.

Update: Rats…individual archives are broken. looks like a problem with SCode. Nope, turned out I needed to fix the mtview.php template and rebuild it. Duh.

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My sprintf(“Pentium %d”,rand()) beats your sprintf(“Pentium %d”,rand())!

Tom’s Hardware has a good article today about decoding the apparent random numbers Intel now uses to label it’s processors. Now that Intel and AMD appear to be leaving behind straight MHz/GHz classifications for their CPUs, they’re resorting to model number designations, like Pentium 570, or some other seemingly random number. But apparently there’s some method to the madness, although by the end of the article I was left with the impression that it won’t be long before CPU designations start resembling car VINs. People are going to need databases to figure out just what kind of processor they’re getting.
Buying the next computer is going to take a lot of research.

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What on earth is PGPTray doing?

I have PGP 9.0.2 installed on my laptop. For some reason, PGPTray gets busy now and then and spikes the CPU load to 100%. No idea why, or what it’s doing. Not a lot of disk activity, but it sure kicks the laptop’s fan into high gear. Does this for 5-10 minutes or so, stops, then starts back up again maybe 15 minutes later.
After a little bit of digging, I found this thread in the PGP Forums that seemed to explain everything (something about PGPTray polling disks). But then toward the end of the thread it’s mentioned that the problem was fixed with 9.0.2. So maybe I’m having another problem. I’ll have to check and see if it’s doing the same thing on the computer at home.

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phpMyAdmin searching bot

Every now and then, I’ll spot a bot hitting the server looking for an installation of phpMyAdmin. Presumably it’s looking for a version to exploit or one that can be used to swipe data from. They typically come as a burst of requests trying to find it in some variation of commonly used folders.

Today though was the first day I spotted a bot that actually specified a user-agent in it’s HTTP request. Isn’t that kind of like a burgular wearing a bright red shirt that has ‘THIEF’ written on it?

h-69-3-143-228.nycmny83.covad.net – – [11/Oct/2005:08:19:54 -0400] “GET /PMA/main.php HTTP/1.0” 404 4998 “-” “PMAFind”
h-69-3-143-228.nycmny83.covad.net – – [11/Oct/2005:08:19:54 -0400] “GET /phpmyadmin/main.php HTTP/1.0” 404 5005 “-” “PMAFind”
h-69-3-143-228.nycmny83.covad.net – – [11/Oct/2005:08:19:55 -0400] “GET /mysql/main.php HTTP/1.0” 404 5000 “-” “PMAFind”
h-69-3-143-228.nycmny83.covad.net – – [11/Oct/2005:08:19:55 -0400] “GET /admin/main.php HTTP/1.0” 404 5000 “-” “PMAFind”
h-69-3-143-228.nycmny83.covad.net – – [11/Oct/2005:08:19:56 -0400] “GET /db/main.php HTTP/1.0” 404 4997 “-” “PMAFind”
h-69-3-143-228.nycmny83.covad.net – – [11/Oct/2005:08:19:56 -0400] “GET /dbadmin/main.php HTTP/1.0” 404 5002 “-” “PMAFind”
h-69-3-143-228.nycmny83.covad.net – – [11/Oct/2005:08:19:56 -0400] “GET /web/phpMyAdmin/main.php HTTP/1.0” 404 5009 “-” “PMAFind”
h-69-3-143-228.nycmny83.covad.net – – [11/Oct/2005:08:19:56 -0400] “GET /admin/pma/main.php HTTP/1.0” 404 5004 “-” “PMAFind”
h-69-3-143-228.nycmny83.covad.net – – [11/Oct/2005:08:19:57 -0400] “GET /admin/phpmyadmin/main.php HTTP/1.0” 404 5011 “-” “PMAFind”
h-69-3-143-228.nycmny83.covad.net – – [11/Oct/2005:08:19:57 -0400] “GET /admin/mysql/main.php HTTP/1.0” 404 5006 “-” “PMAFind”
h-69-3-143-228.nycmny83.covad.net – – [11/Oct/2005:08:19:57 -0400] “GET /mysql-admin/main.php HTTP/1.0” 404 5006 “-” “PMAFind”
h-69-3-143-228.nycmny83.covad.net – – [11/Oct/2005:08:19:57 -0400] “GET /phpmyadmin2/main.php HTTP/1.0” 404 5006 “-” “PMAFind”
h-69-3-143-228.nycmny83.covad.net – – [11/Oct/2005:08:19:58 -0400] “GET /mysqladmin/main.php HTTP/1.0” 404 5005 “-” “PMAFind”
h-69-3-143-228.nycmny83.covad.net – – [11/Oct/2005:08:19:58 -0400] “GET /mysql-admin/main.php HTTP/1.0” 404 5006 “-” “PMAFind”
h-69-3-143-228.nycmny83.covad.net – – [11/Oct/2005:08:19:59 -0400] “GET /main.php HTTP/1.0” 404 4994 “-” “PMAFind”
h-69-3-143-228.nycmny83.covad.net – – [11/Oct/2005:08:19:59 -0400] “GET /phpMyAdmin-2.5.4/main.php HTTP/1.0” 404 5011 “-” “PMAFind”
h-69-3-143-228.nycmny83.covad.net – – [11/Oct/2005:08:20:00 -0400] “GET /phpMyAdmin-2.5.1/main.php HTTP/1.0” 404 5011 “-” “PMAFind”
h-69-3-143-228.nycmny83.covad.net – – [11/Oct/2005:08:20:08 -0400] “GET /phpMyAdmin-2.5.6/main.php HTTP/1.0” 404 5011 “-” “PMAFind”

This bot didn’t just hit my server once…it visited three times in the same day…from the same address.

Not much useful in Google about this beast. Just a couple of posts. The rest of Google’s results are just webserver usage statistics showing hits by the bot.

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Sun Ultra 10 vs dual P II 450

How does a Sun Ultra 10 box compare with a dual Pentium II 450 box in terms of performance? We’ve been looking to replace this server for some time now, but since there is never any budget for this kind of thing, I’ve been relegated to scavenging hand-me down servers. One possibility is to take a Dell PowerEdge 6300 with dual P II Xeon 450s and see if I can turn it into a quad processor unit with the CPUs from this box. Another possibility replace this server with a Sun Ultra 10. I wonder if I can install Fedora on an Ultra 10…
Nope, x86 and PowerPC only…looks like I’ll be stuck with Solaris. I wonder how well Solaris 10 runs on an Ultra 10. Maybe if I’m lucky I’ll be able to scavenge enough parts to beef it up some.
According to Distributed.net‘s speed pages, a dual P II 450 will crunch RC5-72 keys at 1,825,164.00 keys/s (I think that’s probably this machine…). A dual UltraSPARC II 400 MHz does 1,134,165.67 keys/s.
Maybe I should try to set up the quad PII box…What I really need to do is scrounge up a better machine.