I was notified that one of my slave MySQL DB's stop replicating. An immediate investigation showed that because I dont slave the mysql.user table (is there a reason to do this?), SQL that required a certain user and privilege failed on the slave and broke replication.

Ouch.

To fix this I stopped the replication and took note of the master log position (Exec_Master_Log_Pos) and slave's master log file (Relay_Log_File). Both are found with 'show slave status'.

I then added the mysql user account with appropriate privileges reset the slave, manually pointed mysql to the master log position and then started to slave again.

A couple of seconds later the slave caught up with the master.

Users, databases, passwords and IP addresses have been changed to protect the innocent.

Based on his own analytics, each email Robert Scoble sends he receives 1.5 to 2 back.

This ratio blows out when you have people who work in large companies needing to justify their existence and convey an appearance of them actually doing work. These people tend to translate sending email as doing actual work when it really is detracting time and creativity from others.

How can working this way scale? It cant.

To combat this I employ the following email processing techniques

• I do not respond to emails unless there is a question that is directed to me.
• If an answer to a question that requires me to respond is directed to a single person, I will pick up the phone and call that person instead of emailing them. In Getting Things Done parlance, this allows me to "close the loop" as soon as possible.
• If I have to respond to a reply-to-all email I only include the people who I know the response impacts. I will not include people I do not know within a reply-to-all email.

What has this resulted in? Well, for starters I'm able to achieve much, much more real work as I dont have a constant email barrage to deal with. Im also able to achieve inbox zero quicker and with alot less effort.

Employing an email filter which archives all email that I'm not To'd on has also helped gain real results. My blog post how i cut down 90% of my email with less than 20 seconds worth of effort explains this filter.

overload image mandle

SIP commonly runs over UDP but there are times when you may need to run it over TCP.

To allow SIP TCP clients to connect with asterisk update sip.conf with the following

Within your SIP clients definition you have to add transport=tcp for each individual connection.

Reload sip within the asterisk console and confirm that asterisk is now listening on 5060/tcp with netstat.

On August the 13th, 2010, Oracle sent a memo to its Solaris Engineering employees stating that no OpenSolaris 2010.05 or later distribution will be released.

Access to Solaris source code will be through Oracles Technology Network as part of Oracles Technology Partner program. Oracle will distribute updates to CDDL and other opensourced license code following Solaris releases.

Read the full memo here

This is not a surprising move by Oracle considering their failure to engage the Open Solaris board which helped spawn a spork called Illumos. I do see this strategy as Oracle attempting to bring focus to their engineering teams driving Solaris further into the Enterprise space pushing out other competing Unix operating systems.

This move could backfire though.

Oracle has lost (or let go) many talented hackers recently such as Simon Phipps, Stewart Smith, Tim Bray, Jay Pipes, Kohsuke Kawaguchi and James Gosling. With this recent announcement will the exodus continue?

Whilst I sit and wait to see what this move does to Solaris and its community, I'll continue to read Jonathan Schwartz's (ex Sun CEO) insightful, frank and open blog appropriately titled "What I Couldn't Say…".

opensolaris songbird wallpaper by maccu

Do you need to discover what IP netblocks are owned and operated by google to perhaps add to your firewall ACLs?

Use dig.

$ dig -t txt _netblocks.google.com