Fantastic effort by MPs - of all parties I am pleased to say - to tell this Government that they got their policy on the Gurkhas badly badly wrong. Although its an opposition (well done the LibDems) vote and hence not binding, this Government would be incredidibly stupid (or is it stupider?) to ignore this vote.
The Gurkhas are different (and the rules about the Gurkhas should also be used to all non-British soldiers who serve - there are literally thousands of Fijians in the forces) and frankly anyone who is prepared to die for this country must be allowed to live here
Wednesday 29 April 2009
Sunday 26 April 2009
A rare techie post
I got my hands on a Sun 420R last week - it would have ended up the tip otherwise - and have been struggling to install Solaris 10 ever since ...
Downloaded Solaris 10 from Sun here and burnt it on to a DVD.... Anyway for some unknown reason the machine would not boot from the DVD (and it also failed with an original, kosher Sun DVD) so I was a bit stuffed. I later managed to install Solaris 9 but that was missing a lot of the goodies I wanted (ZFS, Dtrace etc etc) as well as MySQL etc etc
So I wondered about using a Linux box as a Jumpstart server : bootp doesn't care what it is copying, neither does bootparamd and a bit of googling showed me that it was possible (esp here which was excellent )
Given the usefulness of such a technique - Linux boxes being a damn sight being cheaper than Suns and would make very good inexpensive servers - I went for it...
Firstly I copied the .iso onto the Linux box (192.168.1.3 - ben) and mounted it using the loop option
# mount -o loop /tmp/SOL_10_1008_SPARC.iso /data/sol
This allowed me inside the iso :-)
According to the web site above a few things needed to be done in order to sort out a few glitches...
# ln -s /bin/tar /bin/bar
# ln -s /bin/sed /usr/bin/sed
# ln -s /usr/bin/gdb /usr/bin/adb
A shell script to mimic the Sun mach (1) is needed as well:
# echo '#!/bin/bash' > /bin/mach
# echo "uname -p" >> /bin/mach
# chmod +x /bin/mach
Once all this is done then the jumpstart area can be created using the standard commands. ( I will use the same directory as in the site: /home/jumpstart/install)
# cd /data/sol/Solaris_10/Tools
#./setup_install_server /home/jumpstart/install
Make certain that all the tools are installed that will be required: tftpd, bootparamd and nfs (both common and kernel)
For instance (on my Ubuntu box):
# apt-get install bootparamd (I much prefer apt-get to rpm!)
# apt-get install tftp
# apt-get install nfs-common
# apt-get install nfs-kernel-server
So once all this done, we can configure the server ...
Check that tftpd is enabled in inetd.conf (or wherever your operating system has it).. I used the default of /tftpboot
tftp dgram udp wait nobody /usr/sbin/tcpd /usr/sbin/in.tftpd /tftpboot
Now the fun starts ....
According to Alex's site the following files need to be changes:
Downloaded Solaris 10 from Sun here and burnt it on to a DVD.... Anyway for some unknown reason the machine would not boot from the DVD (and it also failed with an original, kosher Sun DVD) so I was a bit stuffed. I later managed to install Solaris 9 but that was missing a lot of the goodies I wanted (ZFS, Dtrace etc etc) as well as MySQL etc etc
So I wondered about using a Linux box as a Jumpstart server : bootp doesn't care what it is copying, neither does bootparamd and a bit of googling showed me that it was possible (esp here which was excellent )
Given the usefulness of such a technique - Linux boxes being a damn sight being cheaper than Suns and would make very good inexpensive servers - I went for it...
Firstly I copied the .iso onto the Linux box (192.168.1.3 - ben) and mounted it using the loop option
# mount -o loop /tmp/SOL_10_1008_SPARC.iso /data/sol
This allowed me inside the iso :-)
According to the web site above a few things needed to be done in order to sort out a few glitches...
# ln -s /bin/tar /bin/bar
# ln -s /bin/sed /usr/bin/sed
# ln -s /usr/bin/gdb /usr/bin/adb
A shell script to mimic the Sun mach (1) is needed as well:
# echo '#!/bin/bash' > /bin/mach
# echo "uname -p" >> /bin/mach
# chmod +x /bin/mach
Once all this is done then the jumpstart area can be created using the standard commands. ( I will use the same directory as in the site: /home/jumpstart/install)
# cd /data/sol/Solaris_10/Tools
#./setup_install_server /home/jumpstart/install
Make certain that all the tools are installed that will be required: tftpd, bootparamd and nfs (both common and kernel)
For instance (on my Ubuntu box):
# apt-get install bootparamd (I much prefer apt-get to rpm!)
# apt-get install tftp
# apt-get install nfs-common
# apt-get install nfs-kernel-server
So once all this done, we can configure the server ...
Check that tftpd is enabled in inetd.conf (or wherever your operating system has it).. I used the default of /tftpboot
tftp dgram udp wait nobody /usr/sbin/tcpd /usr/sbin/in.tftpd /tftpboot
Now the fun starts ....
According to Alex's site the following files need to be changes:
- /etc/hosts
Add the remote machine into it - in this case warspite and 192.168.1.70
One major gotcha: ensure that your local host name is not pointed to localhost (127.0.0.1) but rather to the IP address as assigned ..... - /etc/ethers
Put into this the client's ethernet address :
# cat /etc/ethers
08:00:20:fe:4a:fb warspite
On a SPARC box the MAC is displayed upon boot (even if the machine hasn't got an operating system!) - just write it down! - /etc/bootparams
I got the following to work:
# cat /etc/bootparams
warspite root=ben:/home/jumpstart/install/Solaris_10/Tools/Boot \ install=ben:/home/jumpstart/install \
boottype=:in \
rootopts=ben:rsize=8192,wsize=8192 - /etc/exports
Setup the NFS shares:
/home/jumpstart/install 192.168.1.70(ro,no_root_squash,async,no_subtree_check)
There is a known issue about compatibility between Solaris and Linux versions of NFS so it is necessary to disable NFS v4 on the Linux box ....
# cd /etc/default
vi nfs-kernel-server
Change the first entry to this:
# Number of servers to start up
RPCNFSDCOUNT='8 --no-nfs-version 4'
bounce nfs in /etc/init.d
That solved a major issue.
Don't forget to run exportfs -a - Configuring entry in /tftpboot
This is where it gets fun. The file inetboot needs to be copied into /tftpboot. However which file to copy depends on the platform:
/home/jumpstart/install/Solaris_10/Tools/Boot/platform/sun4u/inetboot
/home/jumpstart/install/Solaris_10/Tools/Boot/platform/sun4us/inetboot
/home/jumpstart/install/Solaris_10/Tools/Boot/platform/sun4v/inetboot
The 420R is a sun4u so this is the file to copy :
/home/jumpstart/install/Solaris_10/Tools/Boot/platform/sun4u/inetboot
This file must be tailored to provde the IP address of the client. To do this convert the client's proposed IP address into hex:
192.168.1.70 becomes C0A80146 (ignore the dots)
In /tftpboot I created the following files and symlinks
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 14 2009-04-26 12:47 C0A80145 -> inetboot.sun4u
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 14 2009-04-26 12:47 C0A80145.SUN4U -> inetboot.sun4u
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 221280 2009-04-26 12:45 inetboot
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 221280 2009-04-26 12:46 inetboot.sun4u
(The inetboot itself is not strictly necessary but I copied it over for good measure)
Now over to the Solaris box ....
Get to the ok prompt and enter:
boot net - text
At which point the machine should boot off the remote Linux box and Solaris 10 be installed ....
Thursday 16 April 2009
A very harsh decision
I am appalled at the striking off of the nurse, Margaret Haywood, by the Nursing and Midwifery Council earlier today. It seems to be a gross over-punishment for the whistle blower. To be honest, if I or one of my relations were in such a hospital I would much prefer that the deficiencies in care - which could possibly cause physical harm to a patient - were exposed even if there were the possibility of some loss of confidentiality.
This is also a bad decision for another reason; I would have hoped that after the Stafford debacle where concerns were raised but ignored by those in authority, lessons had been learnt about people who expose such dreadful mismanagement. This striking off is a huge retrograde step since it strengthens the position of the management who caused the problem in the first place. Nurses, doctors and others will now have the threat of losing their jobs if they speak to the press about terrible conditions in the NHS.
This travesty must be reversed.
This is also a bad decision for another reason; I would have hoped that after the Stafford debacle where concerns were raised but ignored by those in authority, lessons had been learnt about people who expose such dreadful mismanagement. This striking off is a huge retrograde step since it strengthens the position of the management who caused the problem in the first place. Nurses, doctors and others will now have the threat of losing their jobs if they speak to the press about terrible conditions in the NHS.
This travesty must be reversed.
Tuesday 14 April 2009
Tom Watson
I gather that Tom Watson has consulted Carter-Ruck. One interesting point made in Guido's comments is that the letter from C-R only mentions that Watson had knowledge of the emails not whether Watson knew anything about the smears - a very different thing altogether for the simple reason that Watson inhabited the same office as the disgraced McBride and could well have been involved in conversations (yes that oldest means of human communication - speech) with the person sitting next to him.
Watson must be extremely careful not to cause even more damage to Labour - and I hope that the Mail responds with "Arkell v Pressdram (1971)"
Watson must be extremely careful not to cause even more damage to Labour - and I hope that the Mail responds with "Arkell v Pressdram (1971)"
Monday 13 April 2009
Thursday 9 April 2009
Convoy
In 1917 Britain was on her knees, with the German unrestricted submarine warfare in full flood, with a sinking rate of British, Allied and neutral ships that would leave Britain starving. In April 1917 over 800,000 tonnes of shipping were sunk, neutral ships (understandable) refused to leave port. Later that month, the US Admiral Sims met the First Sea Lord, Sir John Jellicoe, and discussed the issue:
"Is there no solution to this problem?" asked Sims
"Absolutely none that I can see now" replied Jellicoe.
For nearly the first three years of the war, shipping had sailed independently of each other across the Atlantic with ships taking their luck.
The U-Boats were able to find their prey easily since they were scattered across the oceans in a chequerboard fashion, with the chance of ships passing by the submarine being high.
The answer, of course, was convoys - all the ships together and escorted. The oceans emptied and if the U-Boat found a convoy it would only have the chance for a single shot before the convoy swept past it.
Why is this relevant?
I cannot understand why escorted merchantmen are not convoyed past Somalia?
It would only take a single modern escort to keep the pirates at bay - esp with helicopters; the pirates would find it MUCH harder to locate their prey and as an incentive, the merchantmen could be be offered lower insurance rates if they were in convoy....
"Is there no solution to this problem?" asked Sims
"Absolutely none that I can see now" replied Jellicoe.
For nearly the first three years of the war, shipping had sailed independently of each other across the Atlantic with ships taking their luck.
The U-Boats were able to find their prey easily since they were scattered across the oceans in a chequerboard fashion, with the chance of ships passing by the submarine being high.
The answer, of course, was convoys - all the ships together and escorted. The oceans emptied and if the U-Boat found a convoy it would only have the chance for a single shot before the convoy swept past it.
Why is this relevant?
I cannot understand why escorted merchantmen are not convoyed past Somalia?
It would only take a single modern escort to keep the pirates at bay - esp with helicopters; the pirates would find it MUCH harder to locate their prey and as an incentive, the merchantmen could be be offered lower insurance rates if they were in convoy....
Tuesday 7 April 2009
Been busy
I haven't forgotten this blog but I have been busy at work and am too knackered in the evenings to write.
Having said all that, you really couldn't make the MPs spending row. There was a letter in the Telegraph that summed it up nicely: "It might be within the rules but what would your constituents think about it" as being the touchstone that should be used because frankly they are all at it ...
Anyway Easter soon, off to Dorset for a few days ...
Having said all that, you really couldn't make the MPs spending row. There was a letter in the Telegraph that summed it up nicely: "It might be within the rules but what would your constituents think about it" as being the touchstone that should be used because frankly they are all at it ...
Anyway Easter soon, off to Dorset for a few days ...
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