At least that is what happened in my previous post, which is why it only showed up today. Of course, even if I had hit Submit, you probably wouldn’t have gotten a notification…
ISP issues… My outbound email was blocked at least most of last week if not longer. I really have no idea how long, but my mail server does show successes up to at least June 17, so it had to be working until then. It appears that the NCF (read as techsavvy) is blocking outbound SMTP. This is supposed to only affect dynamic IP address customers, but it apparently got applied across the board. An email with appropriate information showing the blocked port got me the full response rather than a “What are you talking about?” response.
Supposedly they had been working on it, but for some reason, I would have to reboot my modem (well, router in my case). Luckily I have one of those fancy addressable power supplies, so a quick connection from remote and a reboot request for the cisco’s outlet and we are in business (so I hoped). After waiting for the cisco to reboot, reload and start passing trffic, I was a little antsy, but about 2 minutes later, I could reconnect. A quick check of the mailserver shoued that the email backlog was now reducing. Success. I was afraid that this was some new arbitrary rule on controlling who can send and receive email. Happily, I was wrong.
In other odd news, anyone who has seen my previous post on Microsoft’s “Bing” service might get a chuckle out of this:
This makes the comment about bing being defined as a slag heap seems to be right on the money.
In the course of my $DAYJOB, I ended up using something that I had looked at as a possibility in $PREVIOUS_DAYJOB, namely Ben Rockwood’s toasterview. I had to redo the logic that reports on it, so it’s a rewrite of the SMTP section to handle the way NetApp gets around volumes and aggregates that exceed 2GB on DataOnTap prior to v7.3. 7.3 introduces SNMP v3 which has 64 bit numbers. The earlier versions only handle 32 bits (signed at that). I believe it is 6.1 and higher include support for High Order and Low Order 32 bit numbers to be combined to give you the real values. The logic to handle the returned numbers and combining, along with sorting into aggregates and volumes, as well as some colour logic for the little bar graphs are my contribution. You can see a sample with the identifying information missing. I’m still messing with it a bit, but once completed, I’ll probably ask Ben if he wants it. The original is at Ben’s site: cuddletech. I have to make sure the trending still works, as I hadn’t done that yet and I’m still debating on separating out the snapshot space as a third section. As it’s GPL code to begin with, anyone who wants it can have a copy.
I was writing this earlier today and had a break before completing it. Ed was back in town for a visit from his consulting gig in Boston, and wanted to get together. It was a good time and he says “Hello” to everyone who knows him. Kelly joined us and we spent some time talking about our past at the Jewell of Silicon Valley North (BNR/Nortel). It was fun, but that’s the past and we all have to manage the present now. We were all happy that we are not currently there and having to deal with the new reality of the breakup.
One of the topics that came up was the ignite talks. For those who are familiar with the concept of lightning talks, ignite talsk are similar but have a set format: 5 minutes, 20 slides that auto advance every 15 seconds. They can be on any topic. I’ll bring along one to show at the next meeting. Perhaps we should all prepare one for the meeting after that, it might be fun. Anything is a valid topic.
In addition to that, Kelly will be doing a presentation on lessons learned with VMware and NetApp storage. Educational and fun for all.
The tv3 link is gone. If someone wants it, I’ll see if I can locate it again.