Remember to upgrade your Kindle from Amazon – there’s a new firmware upgrade available, taking the system to version 2.5.2 (24.3MB – you may want to transfer via USB…) (more…)
Archive for the ‘sysadmin’ Category
[UPDATE] SEACOM cable back up (for now)
2010
07.25
07.25
Notification at 20:04 on 23 July 2010 read that the link was back up and stable.
For now. (more…)
[UPDATE] SEACOM – finally, a light of hope after cable outage and line down: 23 July
2010
07.22
07.22
SEACOM expects all connectivity to be restored to full pre-crash conditions by 23 July 2010. The repairs are not complete yet, but, officially, “in the final stages of completion”, with only testing to go before the cable goes back down into the water.
[UPDATE] SEACOM operational update re repairs and down time
2010
07.17
07.17
Finally, SEACOM has posted new (well, another) report regarding the undersea outage off Mombasa, which, though initially projected to be completed by 11 July will most probably only be finished by 22 July 2010 according to latest reports.
Finally, though, they have announced that the “designated ship has been deployed to the location of the fault where it will proceed to locate the cable on the seabed.” They say that this action will have to take place in and around the area the cabled was dropped by the installation ship over a year ago due to tidal movements that may have relocated the cable on the sea bed. “This is normal and caused by the natural sea bed movements and strong submarine currents in that area.” (more…)
[UPDATE] SEACOM still eyeing the 22 July as targeted restore date
2010
07.15
07.15
Nothing much new, there is not even an operational update from SEACOM. However, unofficial reports are still pointing to 22 July 2010 as the targeted completion date forthe service to be restored for the submarine cable running up the East African coast. (more…)
On the fly compression of a tar-ball or mysqldump
2010
07.14
07.14
Just to jot it down lest I forget:
Tar’ing the local directory and streaming the tarball straight to gzip:
tar cvf - . | gzip > target.tar.gz
MySQLdump’ing directly to gzip: (more…)
[SOLVED] qlikView installation on Windows 7 – installation error
2010
07.13
07.13
You may encounter the following error on installation:
Installation ended prematurely because of an error
when trying to install 32-bit or 64-bit qlikView on Windows 7. With or without UAC (User Access Control), installation fails.
Suggestions to (re-)install vbscript.dll using regsvr32 vbscript.dll in the c:\windows\system32 (64-bit equivalent) directory didn’t help.
(more…)
End of life for Ubuntu versions
2010
07.12
07.12
In the story relating to release upgrades for Ubuntu, below the end-of-life table for the Ubutu Releases from the Ubuntu Wiki – just to have it all in one place; I’m only including the LTS (long-term support) editions, as these should be the only ones deployed on live production systems. In the meantime, Maverick Meerkat is due in October 2010, supported for 2 years. (more…)
[UPDATE] SEACOM – no news is good news?
2010
07.12
07.12
Since their last update, SEACOM – via their news section or the SEACOM Blog which are ostensibly the same (sort of very weak SQL coding and gaping holes asking for SQL injection) – has not released any further news since 9 July 2010 — the target date of recovery is 22 July 2010. (more…)
[UPDATE] SEACOM cable outage update – new ETA: down until 22 July
2010
07.09
07.09
There has been a flurry of updates relating to the repairs to the SEACOM cable. In short – don’t expect anything before 22 July – previous expectations of “5 – 8 days” were over-enthusiastic from the operator themselves…
While restoration capacity has successfully been sourced and implemented from other cable operators servicing the eastern and southern African regions, a lot of work lies ahead regarding the actual SEACOM cable. It appears that the exact location of the cable break, above and beyond the previously reported repeater issues, has been pinpointed at 4 700m below sea level, resulting in the need for specialised repair equipment, robotics and expertise.
The repairs, according to SEACOM, are in the hands of third-party contractors who – beyond weather and sea conditions – run on their own timeline. So the cable operators, SEACOM, have put forward 22 July as a possible next repair date. (more…)
[UPDATE] (no) News on SEACOM down due to router off Mombasa
2010
07.09
07.09
So the site’s back, but there’s no news. No news is good news?
Please note that our News module is currently unavailable, due to a security patch implemented by Hosting – we are working on the problem and the news will be back ASAP. (more…)
[UPDATE] SEACOM down – now their website, too
2010
07.08
07.08
Now the website, too...
The official source for SEACOM press releases, www.seacom.mu has decided to follow suit on the router off Mombasa that has decided to crash, with a very boring bog-standard JET Database error message after the “Detecting Flash” redirection:
Microsoft JET Database Engine error ’80004005′
Unspecified error
/index2.asp, line 10 (more…)
[UPDATE] More news : SEACOM router down
2010
07.07
07.07
Local ISPs have been making a variety of attempts and efforts to reroute local traffic to bridge the virtual shut-down of the connectivity of those users solely dependent on the SEACOM fibre-optic cable for their Internet access.
Internet Solutions in South Africa have put in place a variety of rerouting options which, depending on the downstream ISPs, should result in improved browsing availability. Alternate international routes by IS were confirmed to be up in semi-live state yesterday late afternoon. (more…)
[UPDATE] SEACOM cable offline until at least 11 July
2010
07.06
07.06
Slow Internet access (if any – in some cases, you can’t connect to sites without using a proxy) in South Africa… SEACOM has announced that the actual repair on the repeater in segment 9 will take only a few hours, though the full process may take at least 6 – 8 days. The ship is not out and mobilised yet. On their website, there is an update relating to the latest system failure: (more…)
VMWare console and Firefox 3.6.6 – Workaround
2010
07.06
07.06
VMWare Plug-in Error - Cannot access virtual machine console
As the VMWare plugin does not work with Mozilla‘s Firefox 3.6.6 – and as it cannot launch a virtual machine console – you’ll have to use a workaround. This post results from the error I kept receiving:
Cannot access virtual machine console. The request timed out.
The paths are applicable to your OS and version – the below is for Vista 64-bit. You can add a direct link to the VMConsole on your desktop (much easier, actually). (more…)
[UPDATE] SEACOM down again: A ship, a ship…
2010
07.06
07.06
New update at 5am SAST: So they have initiated the deployment of the ship to the wet plant. That does not mean, though, that the ship is actually is already on its way – it’s deployment is initiated…
Official communications from SEACOM have been promised to follow…
In addition:
SEACOM’s investigations have revealed that an offshore repeater has failed on the cable’s segment 9, to the north of Mombasa. This unexpected failure affects traffic towards both India and
Europe. Traffic within Africa is not affected.
[UPDATE] SEACOM down again
2010
07.05
07.05
One of my service providers have forwarded me an update to the latest SEACOM outage:
According to the update, SEACOM has sent out notification that they are currently localising the fault from both Mumbai and Dar-es-Salaam (in Tanzania). (more…)
SEACOM down again – cable break in Kenya
2010
07.05
07.05
Afrihost, as well as a range of other resellers of SEACOM bandwidth, again had to post notifications today of network downtime:
We are experiencing an intermittent International ADSL connectivity problem. Our upstream service providers’ engineers are investigating the cause of the problem. We will post more details here shortly once we have more information.
Services such as Instant Messenger and websites hosted overseas(google,facebook) have been affected.
From my datacentres’ notification reports, I can say that this is related to a failure on the SEACOM link in Kenya; as Afrihost’s only redundancy would be their hosting infrastructure, which their proxy is running on, they’re pointing users to http://www.afrihost.co.za/proxy.pac as the proxy solution for now.
Data centres are using other redundancy links through London and DC on a very congested local network with now high latency… (more…)
Symbolic links in Windows
2010
06.28
06.28
Windows Vista and 7, if not before, allow symbolic links — mklink is your command-line friend!
Creates a symbolic link. (more...)
Firefox 3.6.6 Crash Protection – crashing?
2010
06.28
06.28
Is it just me or is the new version of Crash Protection which pushed itself via a new release of Firefox up to 3.6.6 marking every instance of Flash as crashed? On the one hand, this may be a little salute to the Flash – Apple situation (though I hardly think it likely).
Am I the only one who’s experiencing this? Hmmm…
Oh, yes – remember to make sure your add-ons are up-to-date…
