Author Archives: mark

About mark

At work, been working on Tandems for around 30yrs (programming + sysadmin), plus AIX and Solaris sysadmin also thrown in during the last 20yrs; also about 5yrs on MVS (mainly operations and automation but also smp/e work). At home I have been using linux for decades. Programming background is commercially in TAL/COBOL/SCOBOL/C(Tandem); 370 assembler(MVS); C, perl and shell scripting in *nix; and Microsoft Macro Assembler(windows).

Another new project – Walmarts OneOps – Day 1

Since Walmarts “OneOps” platform has been open sourced and placed on github for the world to use I have added yet another project onto my TODO list. From a quick read OneOps is designed to deploy VMs from a single … Continue reading

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An interesting issue with SSH in F23

Don’t know when they introduced this gem, but I have been SSHing into servers for years, but I had a need to use DSA keys to SSH into a F22 server from a F23 one, and dsa keys just refused … Continue reading

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F21 to F23 upgrade, issue 2, OpenVPN behaviour changes

The way OpenVPM prompts for access has changed, they have started migrating it to run under systemd. The existing startup script I was using now fails. [root@vpnserver init.d]# service openvpn start [root@vpnserver init.d]# Broadcast message from root@vpnserver (Fri 2016-02-26 17:38:40 … Continue reading

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F21 to F23 upgrade, issue 1, bacula upgrade

The bacula upgrade script fails for mariadb (and I assume mysql) databases that are running in the recomended ‘safe mode’. The script /usr/libexec/bacula/update_bacula_tables mysql (basically runs update_mysql_tables) fails with the error You are using safe update mode and you tried … Continue reading

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For Turnkey3 users, there is now a TK4- available

Another updated version of Tunkey3 called TK4- is floating about on the internet. The primary site seems to be http://wotho.ethz.ch/tk4-/. It is not the long awaited Turnkey4 but a version of Turnkey3 with a lot of connectivity enhancements implemented. The … Continue reading

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Using Diagnose 8 to issue hercules commands from Turnkey3 MVS3.8J

One of the things any Turnkey3 users eventually asks is how to issue hercules commands from the MVS3.8J guest OS, primarily to mount tapes. Generally asked by those users like me that have automated the environment startup to the point … Continue reading

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Windoze10 updates frozen

After over a month of windows 10 updates being stuck at 15% complete, using a combination of wireless and physical ethernet cable (I thought maybe it would not do updates over wireless, but that was not what was stopping it) … Continue reading

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Future personal posts have moved

This blog was getting rather full of personal posts when it should be filled with rambling thoughts on technology or software I was playing with, or complaining about. So I have created a new blog under my personal section on … Continue reading

Posted in Home Life, personal | Comments Off on Future personal posts have moved

Cheap EPUB Publishing possibilities

Well I got a new play phone to do android development with, but thats a long term activity and the smartphone will probably remain in it’s box for a long while yet; as for day-to-day use I still use my … Continue reading

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New Toy has arrived – Lytro (first generation) Light Field Camera

The offical Lytro webpage for this camera is right here costing $149 US… I of course used Amazon to purchase a new product where it was only $112 US (heck a $80NZ saving, use Amazon). Do not buy this product … Continue reading

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