The Parting Glass


Of all the money that ere I had, I spent it in good company.
And of all the harm that ere I've done, alas was done to none but me.
And all I've done for want of wit, to memory now I cannot recall.
So fill me to the parting glass. Goodnight and joy be with you all.

Of all the comrades that ere I had, they're sorry for my going away,
And of all the sweethearts that ere I had , they wish me one more day to stay,
But since it falls unto my lot that I should rise while you should not,
I will gently rise and I'll softly call, "Goodnight and joy be with you all!"


The Donegal Express has moved to http://www.donegalexpress.net/

the frost is off the ground, and moving day is at hand

--Auntie Shrew

The site hasn't been updated recently, because I am in the process of moving "The Donegal Express" to its very own site. It'll be with Wordpress to boot!

Please stay tuned for the new site announcement. I'll make that once all the old posts are properly archived over there, and all my little bells and whistles are set.

Our recent unknown intruder penetrated using the superuser account, giving him access to our whole system.

--The Plague

I saw this on Veritas' Backup Exec support site. After staring at the screen, stupefied by what I was reading; then I just started to laugh. Let me pull up the relative sections. I'm sure there are going to be like, eighteen people tops who will ever read this and find it funny.

3. How to tell what version of the Backup Exec UNIX agent is installed?

Either:

a. Start the UNIX Agent up at the command line by typing ./agent.be &. This will start another instance of the UNIX agent and display the version number when the agent starts.

b. Reboot the UNIX computer. When the computer comes back up, the version of the agent will be displayed on the screen.

Reboot the UNIX computer?

Yeah, that's what you want to do. Just go into a closet and start flipping switches.

# sync;sync;reboot -y

Feel the rush!

"Why the hell is our server down?"

"Uh, I was just checking which version of the Backup Exec Client we had on it."

8. What rights are necessary to install the UNIX agent?

The operator must be logged in as root.

See #14

10. Are Differential and Incremental backup jobs possible?

Differential and Incremental backups are not allowed. Only the Normal, Copy, and Daily backup methods are allowed. Differential and Incremental backup jobs rely on an archive bit, which a UNIX computer does not have.

You can't do an incremental backup? Wow! That's not a good thing to admit. Get on that, Veritas.

11. What is UNIX?

UNIX is a multi-user operating system with built-in networking capabilities.

If you're going to do a "What is UNIX" FAQ, shouldn't you make "What is UNIX?" #1? I'm just sayin'...

12. How can UNIX support multiple users?

UNIX can take multiple terminals hooked up to its serial ports.

UNIX can have users logging in from the network (telnet or rlogin).

UNIX can act as a file server (NFS).

UNIX can act as an application server.

Actually, no on that third one. An NFS server doesn't really support multiple users, it just allows parts of a filesystem to be shared by multiple systems. It really doesn't do much, except allow users to see files from other servers.

13. Is there just one type of UNIX?

No, there are three major types: System V (Five), System IV (4), and BSD. System V is the most popular. AIX is a combination of the two. Each vendor adds support for more commands and changes switches sometimes. For example, SCO and Solaris are both based on System V whilst HP-UX is based on System IV but most commands are the same in principle.

System IV? What the hell is System IV? I own so many O'Reilly books, my kids no longer go to the zoo. I don't think one of them mention System IV.

So I went looking for backup:

If you have your System III or PWB documentation handy, you might look at the title page. You'll find Ted Dolotta's name prominently displayed.

Ted was at Princeton, Bell Labs, and INTERACTIVE Systems in the '70s and '80s, and he just retired from Softbank, where he was vice president.

Hi, Peter,

I noted your query in ;login: regarding System IV UNIX at Bell Labs.

As best I remember, there was indeed a System IV, but it was never offered for licensing via Western Electric. I no longer recall the exact reason why, but I think that it was not a major step beyond System III.

Good job, Veritas!

14. Is there an administrator account in UNIX?

Yes, it is called root or superuser. The login ID is always root. Although it is technically possible, it is rare to see users equivalent to root setup in security. Usually, a small group of users who needs it shares the root account.

15. What is "root"?

Root has the rights to all files and directories. It can start, stop, or change anything it wishes. It is (usually) the only user who modifies the operating system or installs new software (like the Backup Exec UNIX agent). Many system level utilities require root privileges to work.

Shouldn't this one have gone somewhere near #8? Conversely, doesn't #14 answer this?

16. Is UNIX space sensitive?

Yes. For example, typing cd/ is not the same thing as cd /.

There are people who actually wonder this?

17. Is UNIX GUI-based?

No, most versions of UNIX are text-based. A user can usually buy an add-on for GUI support. The GUI add-on is referred to as X Windows.

Someone has actually bought a UNIX GUI package since 1979? For what, SCO? XENIX? I've worked with UNIX systems since 1995. I think I saw one version of UNIX that didn't ship with a GUI, and that was a LINUX box that just needed one downloaded.

19. How are users created?

This is normally done through vendor supplied utilities, which are often menu driven. In SCO, there is a program called scoadmin. However, it can be done through the useradd command. For example, useradd steve will create an account called steve and give it a login ID. There are more switches to specify to create home directories, default shells, group membership, and so on. Some UNIX administrators prefer to edit the /etc/passwd file directly.

Change that to "Any UNIX admin with a shred of personal dignity prefers..."

30. How can the UNIX agent be manually stopped?

a. Type ps -df | grep agent (this gets a listing of the processes that have the word "agent" in them).

ps -df? Someone uses the -d argument? When and where? -df? What, did they want to be special, and not say ps -ef like everyone else in the world?

Note to Veritas. I can do documentation on the side for cheap. Feel free to contact me.

Liberals Don't Upset Me

LEFTISTS, On The Other Hand...

What can I say? Forsake The Troops

Here's the deal, I'm not going to say anything directly about this site. Seriously, why should I? Can't you all just fill in the frikkin' blanks on this one?

But what I'm going to say is this: I believe there is a dividing line between "liberals" and leftists.

A liberal might support..National Health Care. He might support withdrawing from Iraq, and have opposed going in in the first place. I'm personally none to thrilled with being there myself, but not for the classic liberal reasons. It's the leftist that throw stones at those who serve our country.

Dick Gephardt is a liberal; he wouldn't be down with this site.
I doubt Ken Salazar, or Joe Biden or even Bill Clinton would be down. I know what Clinton was doing in the Sixties, but I honestly believe everything he's ever done has been to either get votes or get chicks. And even Kucinich, the one with the Dept. Of Peace, even he I don't think would subscribe to this site. He seems more of the dopey-go-lucky version of a hippie, not the throw blood on servicemen type.

Hillary would be down. So would Boxer and Feinstein. Cynthia McKinney would be there too.

So this is the line; the line between liberal and leftist. Now this is the part where Joe Blogger calls on his readers to flood the site and give them what for.

I'm not going to do that.

I don't care if my devoted reader is upset. I'd have a stroke if the folks who think like me don't have conniption fits. I want the liberals who stop by to let me know they're not leftists. I want the folks who blog and would vote for Kerry to say, "Hey..this is just sickening. These people are whackjobs and wrong, and I don't want to be associated with them." I don't think that's much to ask.

That is all.

I love London - it's so wonderfully dirty.

--Palendri

Hat tip to Pennsylvanian-in-exile.

Kyoto protest beaten back by inflamed petrol traders By Laura Peek and Liz Chong
First off, this is like..England's version of National Lampoon, right? This /can't/ be real, can it? I mean, do the Brits even realize what loons they sound like? I thought they stopped making hats that way.

WHEN 35 Greenpeace protesters stormed the International Petroleum Exchange (IPE) yesterday they had planned the operation in great detail. What they were not prepared for was the post-prandial aggression of oil traders who kicked and punched them back on to the pavement.

Never ever mess with London Oil traders after they've just come back from the Pub. Unless you grew up in someplace like Belfast or Philadelphia. Then you can probably go a few rounds. Obviously these Greenpeace guys grew up in the suburbs.

They made their way to the trading floor, blowing whistles and sounding fog horns, encountering little resistance from security guards. Rape alarms were tied to helium balloons to float to the ceiling and create noise out of reach. The IPE conducts ?open outcry? trading where deals are shouted across the pit. By making so much noise, the protesters hoped to paralyse trading.
?We bit off more than we could chew. They were just Cockney barrow boy spivs. Total thugs,? one protester said, rubbing his bruised skull. ?I?ve never seen anyone less amenable to listening to our point of view.?

Listening to your point of view? BWAHAHAHAHAHA. No wait, stop, please. "Listening to his point of view". Classic! I can't believe he said that with a straight face. These dudes break into a building, rush a floor with bells and whistles and horns, and intend to cause chaos and disruption. When the folks they intend to disrupt don't roll over, they whine about a free discourse? What in the hell kind of free discourse has you firing off an air horn in someone else's face?

You guys came running in, with your Nazi putsch tactics, and the other guys were thugs? Do you even realize how wrong and inappropriate what you were trying to do was?

I guess they should change their motto, "Greenpeace: When we can't bully others, we cry like little girls."

Another said: ?I took on a Texan Swat team at Esso last year and they were angels compared with this lot.? Behind him, on the balcony of the pub opposite the IPE, a bleary-eyed trader, pint in hand, yelled: ?Sod off, Swampy.?

Dude should have gotten up and started pounding on that hippie again. And the Texas SWAT team should be ashamed. I'm going to look those guys up, we really need to hear what that SWAT team has to say in their defense. Negative one for you, Texas.

I think "Sod off, Swampy." will be my phrase for the next month.

Protesters conceded that mounting the operation after lunch may not have been the best plan. ?The violence was instant,? Jon Beresford, 39, an electrical engineer from Nottingham, said.

And enjoyable. By the way Jon, I wouldn't go traipsing through Sherwood Forest either. You'll see some real instant violence there.

?They grabbed us and started kicking and punching. Then when we were on the floor they tried to push huge filing cabinets on top of us to crush us.?

They tried to push filing cabinets on them? That's strong!

But they were set upon by traders, most of whom were under the age of 25. ?They were kicking and punching men and women indiscriminately,? a photographer said. ?It was really ugly, but Greenpeace did not fight back.?

Of course not. I doubt if any of them even know how to throw a punch.

What happen? Someone set up us the bomb!

--Zero Wing

For some reason, I was the one guy on blogger who couldn't post after they added the new comment system. It was fixed today, so that's good. Anyhow, I hope all my devoted reader wasn't too put out with the unexpected absence.

Help also Mrs. Anna to keep awake for scientific sewing of dresses, even though she be only a woman and a Christian and therefore unworthy of your interest!

--The King of Siam

Let's take a spin around the web, whee...

First up is Doxology. Now before I get to the actual post, I'd just like to take a minute to say something. I'm really impressed with Rebecca. Either she's receiving excellent catechesis (It could happen!) or she's been blessed with an extraordinary sensus fidei. But I guess she'd have to have that. After all, it's not like the Catholic Church does more than pay lip service to the concept of drawing non-Catholics to the Faith in North America. I guess she'd have to be pretty hardcore to begin with, to go to all the bother of converting.

A good post over at The Anchoress today, where she discusses a parish that has decided to pursue intense inter-faith dialogues during Lent, as part of their Lenten practice.

She then goes on, and asks her readers if they think this is a good thing to be doing for Lent. Rebecca answers "no", proving yet again her head is firmly on straight.

Intrigued, I headed over to The Anchoress' site. I was in for a treat.

The laity at this Catholic parish has decided that their "doing" will be a doozy. :-)

"This year, we want people to think about making peace during Lent," said the Rev. Randy Phillips, pastor of the nearly 10,000-member church at 12151 Fifteen Mile Road. "To help us think about this, we're bringing people together from different religious traditions to talk about our common hopes for peace.

A doozy, now there's an understatement. It's nice to see that The Anchoress also has a slight bit of suspicion whenever this whole "ecumenical fad" rears its head. Way to go, Anchoress.

Now, let's just break this down a little further.

A. This not only distracts from the purpose of Lent, it can form a tendency to the sin of pride.

"This year, we want people to think about making peace during Lent,"

With all due respect, Father, can we please get people to think about...oh..I dunno...prayer, penance, and fasting during Lent? I mean, seriously now, can we please have forty days out of the year for this? You get Sundays off, for cryin' out loud! Secondly, let's look at how this "reflection" can so easily be twisted. The following is an example:

I'm Jane Average Catholic. Father's told me we need to think about "making peace" while talking with some Protestants, Jewish people, and whoever else shows up at this workshop. Ok, let me review my notes.

Hmm, making peace. Well, how do I act? I'm not in the military, and I don't shoot people or blow them up. I don't even throw rocks when I'm angry. I don't support any violent groups or things. And I believe everyone should be happy and peaceful. Heck, I don't even get mad when my barrista uses two-percent milk instead of skim milk in my mocha latte grande. I've got a handle on this!

But wait, I'll sound like I'm so full of myself if I just say that! I need to come up with something...

Nine times out of ten, what they come up with is the list of things the Church gets beat over the head with.

The Crusades
The Inquisition
Galileo
The Pope helping the Holocaust.

Because you know what, that's how it always goes down. Someone throws out some charge against the Church, real or imagined, and then all the Catholics hang their heads for a sec, before fiercely affirming:

Well, that's the Old Church. We're not like that! We're better than that. Don't blame me! But, well, we're sorry.

Thanks. Some days I get disgusted that I'm on the same team as some of you people.

As a person with some Irish blood, I've been waiting (quite patiently I may add) for someone to apologize for Oliver Cromwell and The Penal Laws. Does anyone out there know what a "Mass Rock" or a "Hedge School" is? But please, babble on about what you think you know about the Crusades. That'll work.

So, what are we left with here? We're left with a "Lent" where the faithful learn: The Church did awful things long before they were born. They need to constantly make amends for this by totally debasing their religion, in order to please others. On the plus side, none of them are guilty, in the strict, technical sense, of "sin".

Nice.

There is a group within the Catholic Church (mostly comprised of mid-level diocese bureaucrats) that are actively trying to destroy the Church. Now most of them, to be fair, probably believe they're creating a better church. They believe they've got some sort of insight, and can create some sort of uberthing that will just knock the socks off that retrograde Catholicism. You know, the one with the prayers and the incense and the Latin and whatnot. I mean, that's so 1962, right? The rest of them just want to destroy. They get off on it. These folks spend their days hatching up programs to slowly but surely destroy the Catholic Faith and replace it with something of their own devising.

Now this one thing, this "dialog for peace" thing, this is right out of their playbook. I've met the people that come up with these sorts of things. I've talked with them. To be more exact ,I've listened to them gloat over their plans. "We will have women priests in fifteen years". One DRE informed me, when I applied to teach CCD. "And you had better get used to that idea. You and your Pope. The Church is heading into a new era. There's nothing you can do about it."

Oh really? Game on then.

SPLASH ONE BOGIE!

Put another notch in the gunbelt of the blogosphere.

Owned

New York (AP)- CNN chief news executive Eason Jordan quit Friday amid a furor over remarks he made in Switzerland last month about journalists killed by the U.S. military in Iraq. Jordan said he was quitting to avoid CNN being "unfairly tarnished" by the controversy.

This is to differentiate from the time it was "fairly tarnished" when Eason admitted the Baghdad Office lied about what was happening in Iraq. This time, the lies uttered were all his.

"I never meant to imply U.S. forces acted with ill intent when U.S. forces accidentally killed journalists, and I apologize to anyone who thought I said or believed otherwise," Jordan said in a memo to fellow staff members at CNN.

Translation: This was all supposed to be off the record!

After several management restructurings at CNN, Jordan actually had no current operational responsibility over network programming. But he was CNN's chief fix-it man overseas, arranging coverage in dangerous or hard-to-reach parts of the world.

He was really good at it, too. He'd just promise whatever rapists and thugs he had to deal with the "Saddam Plus Gold Deluxe" package.

CNN's global newsgathering infrastructure is chiefly the result of Jordan's work, said Jim Walton, chief of the CNN News Group.

Question of the Day: Is this praise, or blame? Discuss amongst yourselves.

Brought to you by The Donegal Express. Without it: a thousand years of darkness.

See that sign up here - up here. "Defcon." That indicates our current defense condition. It should read "Defcon 5," which means peace. It's still on 4 because of that little stunt you pulled.

--McKittrick

East Asia-Intel.com is reporting a Chinese helicopter fired upon, and sank, an Indian submarine. I've yet to find anyone else confirming this. I also don't subscribe, so I am not seeing the full story.

This /can't/ be good.

MORE BLOOD FOR OIL!

Rick Mercier, an editor at the Free Lance-Star wrote this up about the genocide in Sudan:


But you can bet that a resolution with any teeth to it will meet firm resistance in the council — much of it from veto-wielding permanent members Russia and China. France may also play an obstructionist role.

As this sorry spectacle unfolds in the coming days and weeks, it will be useful to remind ourselves that these three countries not only are blocking meaningful action against the Sudanese government, they’ve actually aided and abetted Khartoum in its cleansing of certain ethnic groups from Darfur.

Here’s how:

—China: The Chinese have been Sudan’s principal arms supplier over the past decade, furnishing Khartoum with copious amounts of tanks, fighter jets, helicopters, machine guns and rocket-propelled grenades.

China also is heavily invested in Sudan’s oil industry, and depends on the country’s oil fields to supply the Chinese industrial dragon with a sizeable portion of the energy it needs to keep growing. Needless to say, Sudan’s weapons purchases are funded largely by the revenues generated by this oil extraction.

—Russia: According to a report issued in November by Amnesty International, the Sudanese government imported four MiG fighter jets from Russia in December 2003 and January 2004. Khartoum was expected to have imported 12 new Russian MiGs by the end of last year. This purchase coincided with the use of MiGs against civilians in Darfur.

When I met with refugees from Darfur in September, a number of them told me that their villages had been attacked by MiGs in late 2003 and early last year. Human-rights groups also have cited the use of MiGs in raids on Darfur villages.

The Russians also have ties to Sudan’s oil industry. Last summer, as the crisis in Darfur was continuing to worsen, a Russian company inked a deal to build an oil pipeline in Sudan.

—France: The Amnesty report found that the French have sold large quantities of bombs, grenades, ammunition and other military items to Sudan in recent years. The French corporation Total holds the rights to an oil concession in southern Sudan.

The United States must confront these forces of complicity and greed by pushing hard for a tough resolution on Darfur.

Well, smack my mouth and call me Sally! Who would have thought the French would be giving weapons to blood-soaked dictators in exchange for oil? I mean, I never heard of such a thing. Say it ain't so, France! We all look up to you, paragon of moral virtue that you are. I mean, you wouldn't use your influence in the UN to protect some cozy little oil deal with the scum of the earth, right? I mean, your opposition to the war in Iraq, that was pure principle, right? Right?

My bad. Apparently, they're big on "blood for oil".

Whenever anything big in the world happens, look at where the usual suspects show up. Maybe we just need to realize they're not going to be rooting for the good guys.