Category Archives: Random Tech

Santa Clara Area Overnight Fire Causes Comcast Internet and Cable TV Outage

A fire at around 1 am on the morning of August 11, 2012 caused Comcast Internet and Cable TV to go out in parts of the Santa Clara area. As of 1 pm, repairs to the damaged cables appear to be complete and Comcast Internet and Television service seem to be back up. The outage also seemed reduce area cell network coverage on the Verizon network, dropping out local 4G coverage.  Several users also reported weak standard cell phone signal strength and dropped, choppy phone calls during the outage.

If you still have problems reset your modem and call Comcast at 1-877-Comcast if you need more support.

Internet-Outage-Fail-to-Connect

Aside from outages like this caused by destructive events, the Silicon Valley area seems to experience multiple outages for no apparent reason. Why does the most high tech area in the world have some of the worst internet service? How reliable is you internet service?

Is it more reliable than a 3rd world Internet Cafe?

Internet-Cafe-Africa

Green Building UK style

image

Unlike summer in Silicon Valley, the British Isles get plenty of rain to water their buildings and keep them green.

Google’s London 2012 Olympic Hurdles Doodle Gets Lets You Jump in the Action

Google-London-2012-Hurdle-Doodle

This Olympic Google Doodle lets you run and jump the hurdles without hitting the track or breaking a sweat. Just use your arrow keys to run and the space bar to jump the hurdles. Just like a real hurdler, you have to get your steps and timing right or you will be slowed down by the hurdles.

Google-London-2012-Hurdle-Doodle-Results
And the results, far from an Olympic record time, but still a fun way to celebrate the Olympics.

http://www.google.com/doodles/hurdles-2012

The previous Google doodle celebrated the classic Olympic event of the javelin.

Google-London-2012-Javelin-Doodle

Solaris 10 Passwd Permission Denied As Root

So you have a Solaris 10 operating environment and you’re getting “permission denied” errors when trying to change a user’s password while logged in as root.

So you check /var/adm/messages for some clues and you see a message like this:

sunbox# tail /var/adm/messages
Aug  1 13:31:08 sunbox yppasswdd[1221]: [ID 467562 auth.error] yppasswdd: user test_user: does not exist

You know that the user exists, and can still see the user in your NIS passwd files using a command like this:

ypcat passwd | grep test_user

So how do you fix it?

You can restart your NIS processes using this command:

svcadm restart nis/server

Sometimes that will resync the NIS files and processes and get things back in working order. Sometimes you still get the same error.

What finally fixed my “passwd change permission denied” error was actually quite simple once I figured out what the problem was.

At times your NIS map files can become out of sync and need to be rebuilt. This “Passwd Permission Denied” problem can be caused by a recommended Solaris security patch that may have replaced your custom NIS Makefile with a standard issue Solaris one that has PWDIR = /etc and not PWDIR = /var/yp. Using /var/yp instead of /etc is done to separate local system accounts such as root from the standard NIS user accounts of a workgroup.

If you find your NIS Makefile changed from PWDIR = /var/yp to PWDIR = /etc then your users may not be able to login at all and they’ve probably already come running for their system admin. You may need to recover your original NIS Makefile from the backup you ran before patching. You did make a backup right? Or the patch script may have taken you original Makefile and named it Makefile.old or something. You can run a “diff” on those two files to see what changed. If the Solaris patch made changes unhealthy to your career, replace the new Makefile with the Makefile.old file.

A restart of the NIS/YP services is necessary to bring all of the map files back into sync. If a restart of the services doesn’t work, check your NIS directory (usually /var/yp or /etc) for a lockfile.

sunbox# ls -al
-rw-------     1  root     root          0  Aug  1 09:42 .pwd.lock

I removed the lockfile and restarted the NIS/YP processes:

sunbox# rm .pwd.lock
sunbox# /usr/lib/netsvc/yp/ypstop
sunbox# /usr/lib/netsvc/yp/ypstart

You should see a message like this when restarting the NIS processes:

starting NIS (YP server) services:  ypserv ypbind ypxfrd rpc.yppasswdd rpc.ypupdated done.

After restarting, you should be able to see the processes running with “ps” command:

sunbox# ps -ef | grep yp

Now you should be able to reset your users NIS passwords without the “permission denied” error by running the “passwd” command:

sunbox# passwd -r nis <username>

Notes on NIS and YP:

NIS, or Network Information Service, was originally called Yellow Pages or YP, which is why the NIS commands begin with “yp”. Since the term “Yellow Pages” is a registered trademark of British Telecom PLC for it’s non-digital, old school paper commercial telephone directory, Sun changed the name of its system to NIS.

NIS+ commands no longer use “yp” commands.

Since NIS was developed before the public internet, robust security was never a feature. NIS will work fine on a closed research network but is not recommended for any network that touches the internet. There are more modern options to choose from such as NIS+ and LDAP. But if you’re stuck administering a legacy research network that has no funding to upgrade, then you still have to know how to deal with the quirks of NIS.

Existing NIS maps can be (and should be) migrated to other systems such as NIS+ or LDAP. Some shops even use Windows Active Directory for authentication of Linux and Solaris machines.

Sir Tim Berners-Lee Gets Prime Showing in London Olympics Opening Ceremony

Sir Tim Berners-Lee, creator of the first web page in 1990, gets a prime spot in part of the  London Olympics Opening Ceremony. Danny Boyle’s London Olympics 2012 opening ceremony highlights some of the history of technology from the industrial revolution to the modern globally interconnected information age of today. Sir Tim Berners-Lee was given recognition in the ceremony for his role in making our world more connected and dynamic.

Happy Friday and happy Sysadmin Day!

Big things have small beginnings. Why yes they do.

Big things have small beginnings. A quote from Lawrence of Arabia? Or some other recent film? Prometheus I presume?

Big things have small beginnings. Why yes they do. SiliconCali.com. It’s a storm in a tea cup. But will grow slowly as more content is added. Currently this tiny site has been viewed in over 85 countries and growing.

Below is the current WordPress Statistic map from since February 2012 when they started showing country data:

WordPress_Map_since_20120225

Heat Wave hits Silicon Valley

Feeling toasty? The temperature will be hitting 100 degrees here in the Silicon Valley area. Stay hydrated today! Looks like a good day to hit up your local Pink Berry for some cold refreshment.

Rare Annular Solar Eclipse to be Visible from Bay Area May 20 2012

A rare annular solar eclipse will be visible from Bay Area and SiliconCali on May 20 2012.

This animated map shows how much of the sun will be covered by the moon in different parts of California. The center line of the solar eclipse will pass by north of Eureka but will be at least partly visible throughout the state.

 

Super Moon Rising Saturday May 5th

A larger and brighter than normal full moon will greet Cinco de Mayo revelers on the night of May 5th 2012. Known as the “Super Moon” or perigee moon, this full moon is at perigee, which means it is about 50,000 kilometers closer to the Earth than when it is on the other side of the oval orbit at apogee.

Now 14% bigger and 30% brighter!

Super-Full-Moon

Well at least the ‘super moon’ appears that way in the sky. Full moons have been feared throughout history as bad omens. Will standing under bright moon beams make you moon   mad? Or do you picture yourself lounging in the Lunar Shire?

NASA’s ScienceCast put together this informative video:

Happy Friday and don’t forget to check out the moon as it rises tomorrow at 8:34 SiliconCali time!