Monthly Archives: January 2017

Unattended Updates in Linux

Windows 10 forced updates is in the news and a senior CNET editor who personally experienced the ordeal is encouraging others to share their experience. I don’t use Windows anymore. The last time I used MS Windows Anything was around 2006. I switched to Linux in the desktop back in 2007 and I’ve been using Linux in servers before that. When I say use I meant exclusively.

Not that I am against un-prompted updates, I do have automatic updates turned on in my machines, desktops and servers. In Debian and Ubuntu they call it unattended updates and as it is in the rest of Linux, I can customize which packages are included or excluded. I can blacklist certain packages not to update. It automatically checks for available new versions of packages (software, apps) and I have it configured to download and install them in the background. Yes in the background. It is logged of course and an email sent out to my Gmail account. If something fails to install I am also informed through email. None of my work is interrupted.

Morgan And Arrival: Two Films To Review

What kind of race are we? Are we naturally war-like, violent or peaceful and friendly? The answer would vary, from history and race and geography. Are we a failed race because of our disunity? Or are we denying our nature and impulses for violence?

Morgan is a film about a machine-human hybrid produced by a corporate entity for profit to produce a superior soldier. It stars Kate Mara and Anya Taylor-Joy (whose performance in The Witch is also noteworthy) as laboratory produced human hybrids. The interactions of Anya’s Morgan character and her scientists-guardians are the films plot driver. There is constant reference to Helsinki which is I guess what happened to another similar effort by the company which failed. Helsinki being a metaphor to civilian scientists losing their detachment from their subject, or Helsinki being a metaphor to hostages shifting their loyalty to their captors.

Kate Mara’s Lee character is introduced as a corporate agent of judgment. She is also an agent of execution. Also I find the comparison between Lee and Morgan regarding their intellect, social skills and physical power very interesting. Which one should have survived their encounter? Do I agree with the film’s depiction of the victor? I feel that is where the film fails. I was searching for my feelings one way or the other and there’s none.

Arrival is the story of a language expert recruited by the government to solve the mystery of aliens coming to earth in 12 ships. All over the world governments employed their own experts to try and communicate with the aliens. Amy Adams’ Louise is a single woman who teaches in the university when the aliens arrived. The film isn’t linear and there is a purpose to it. Louise theorized that the alien language isn’t linear too. So we have a race of aliens that somehow know the beginning and end and so act accordingly. Louise tried to make sense of the alien message and it is: that the aliens are here to help us because 3,000 years down the road they are going to ask humans for help.

Even if you know the start and end of your journey, it still needs some amount of faith to take the trip. Why believe the message? Did Louise even translate it properly? I’m sure the aliens believe their message because they made the trip. But why should we? Unless it is shown to us with personal proof, human beings do not believe. Humans will only believe what they can understand. We understand when we can see and touch it. Close and personal. I understand why a lot of people are seeing Jesus in this movie. 🙂

Income, Expense and Profit Summary 2016

Income, Expense and Profit Chart
From January 2016 to December 2016

The 2016 story is income goals were not realized.
There was vacancy throughout the year.

An Unfortunate Series Of Events

First I got an email telling me of a fail event detected on my RAID device. Then 12 minutes later a second email this time from SMART monitoring complaining that one of my hard drives could not be opened. There is a difference between a failed to open device and a failed device situation.

So I verified these situations with the terminal. I verified the SMART monitoring report.

#smartctl -a /dev/questionable-device

I verified the status of the RAID array.

#mdadm –detail /dev/md0

I have a degraded array, one device is removed and faulty. The device is /dev/sdd. This is the 1TB hard
drive which is the oldest of the 4 I’m using.

I opened the black box. I pulled the SATA cables and examined them for anything out of the ordinary. I put them back again. I opened the terminal to check if I have access to the hard drives.

#smartctl -a /dev/all-the-drives

I added the faulty drive to the RAID array with:

#mdadm –manage –add /dev/md0 /dev/faulty-drive

I checked the status of the RAID array.

#cat /proc/mdstat

donato@desktop:~$ cat /proc/mdstat
Personalities : [raid6] [raid5] [raid4] [linear] [multipath] [raid0] [raid1] [raid10]
md0 : active raid5 sdd[3] sdb1[0] sdc1[1]
1953260544 blocks super 1.2 level 5, 512k chunk, algorithm 2 [3/2] [UU_]
[=====>……………] recovery = 26.4% (257972512/976630272) finish=104.2min speed=114919K/sec
bitmap: 6/8 pages [24KB], 65536KB chunk

unused devices:

I guess this time it’s for real. The RAID array is rebuilding itself. Back to my monitoring station then.

Required Apps ( A List)

Some required apps in my Android tablet and mobile phone are:

email app (default), messaging app (default), Chrome browser are on top of the list.
Calendar app, To-do app,
Facebook, Twitter, Feedly and Keepass.
VLC for media player.
Dropbox and another cloud app in my case it’s Megasync.

The default file manager always sucks so I download ES File Explorer. Spotify, Skype (for some friends who aren’t in Messenger), FBReader (ebook) and a document
scanner.

Copying Beethoven

I watched a Youtube clip of Copying Beethoven. It’s the scene where the master composer was performing Symphony #9 and was nearly totally deaf. He had an assistant conducting behind the scene. Symphony #9, Ode to Joy, one of the most loved among his works. I am inspired to listen for the rest of the day to the classics.