Weekend changes

It’s been a pretty geeky weekend this weekend.

Having replaced the 80GB disk in my games machine last weekend with a faster 160GB one it gave me the opportunity to at last build a functional replacement from my old SPARCstation 4 as my main server. So, that’s what I’ve been doing this weekend. I had to do the OS install and then configure the web server, learn how to set up the postfix mail daemon so that it didn’t relay nasty e-mails and finally get Bullet to compile and run in a chroot(3)’ed environment.

Of all of the tasks, getting Bullet running was the hardest. Rob’s use oc C is starting to show its age and is causing problems. The assumptions he’s made are starting to break down with modern compilers which are more strict on enforcing ANSI C. Add to this I had to work out the minimum necessary to get a Linux chroot(3)’ed environment (and the discovery that if you link Linux executables staticly they still need the dynamic libraries!!!!)).

I’ve still a few things to do yet. I’ve got to find out how to persuade Apache 2 to allow user web sites (ie. http://…/~user/) which it’s not at the moment and I can’t see why not at the moment. Also, setting up samba for the local Windows file serving would be nice. That’s about that, really.

As for the other stuff I’ve done. Well, I didn’t do a lot on Saturday, mostly due to an animal rights protest happening around work so I couldn’t park and go into town. Today, other than the server hacking, I popped into Oxford City and did a little shopping. I got myself a new jumper for the Edinburgh Wool Shop ‘cos one or two of my older ones are starting to wear out. I also got myself a coffee from Starbucks. On the way back to te car I thought I’d have a look in the Oxford Museum of the History of Science as I was passing.

I was expecting something akin to the Science Museum in London but in a much smaller form. I was very disappointed. It should really be called the Museum of Early Astronomy, Navigation and Biology. If you need an astrolade they have huge numbers. If you want old telescopes they have some along with a similar number of microscopes. The trouble is that that’s about all there is and nothing later than about 1850.

And so, that’s about it, really.

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