the (un)real thoughts of realbt

So that bizarre problem with name resolution in SUSE 9.1? Seems it has something to do with IPv6. I disabled all references to IPv6 in /etc/modprobe, restarted, and done.

I’m loving SUSE 9.1…

I spent the better part of this weekend upgrading my desktop workstation from Mandrake 9.1 to SUSE 9.1. Okay, so the version numbers don’t make it sound like much an update, but just to be clear, Mandrake is currently pushing version 10.

What does SUSE 9.1 offer? KDE 3.2 is the big one for me. I was still crawling with 3.1 on MDK 9.1, which was annoying. Going from KMail 1.5 (MDK) to KMAil 1.6.2 (Suse 9.1) was well worth it.

Anyway, this entry is more about the problems I ran into during the installation …

For starters, SUSE didn’t want to recognise the sources located on my harddrive, so I had to do an FTP install. This meant I downloaded 3GB of data that I didn’t need to, and spent over an hour fiddling trying to make the darn thing read it locally. Oh well, it installed via FTP in a little over 3 hours, which wasn’t too bad.

Second, there seems to be some major issues with Monitor dpi settings in SUSE with KDE. Things look fine in Gnome, but I’m not much of a fan, so I don’t even bother (although I do note that Gnome 2.6 has much nicer file widgets, a long time coming!). I have a 21″ 1600×1200 monitor, and I expect the darn thing to fit a lot on the screen. But with the default installation and SUSE detecting my video card/monitor combination to only peak at 1280×1024, it did some funky things with XF86Config in terms of monitor size (yes, XF86Config stores monitor dimensions in millimeters). This has something to do with how it calculates the dots-per-inch setting, and thus font/widget sizes within KDE, since KDE relies on this information (unlike Gnome, apparently).

brett@brie:~> xdpyinfo | grep resolution
resolution: 74×75 dots per inch
brett@brie:~> xdpyinfo | grep dimensions
dimensions: 1600×1200 pixels (549×406 millimeters)

Much better. But after the default installation, it was going at 125×125 dpi. This is HUGE! And the monitor settings were quite wrong. So all I had to do was adjust the actual physical dimensions of the monitor, restart the X server, and presto, it was all good to go.

It only took 3 hours to figure this one out.

Why did it detect my monitor size incorrectly? I’m quite surprised at this considering it was able to 100% accurately detect my rather rare Nokia monitor. Once I had KDE up and running, I was able to reset the resolution to 1600×1200 correctly and it was fine.

Next issue is with dns name resolution. What’s going on? Looking up a name through the console (either via ping, host, or dig) is fine. Instant. No problems there. But as soon as I try and connect to another host, things slow down to a crawl. Mozilla, Konquerer, Lynx, even telnetting to port 80 all suffer. And this isn’t just a web issue. It’s anything. As soon as the connection is established, things are fine. But I determined the slow-down was due to name resolution because smart browsers like Mozilla and Lynx indicate that they’re “looking up host …”, and it just sort of crawls until it’s rsolved. Why? This is what I’m wondering. I’m on a DHCP network connected to DSL, all served by another box running a NAT with a DNS forwarder. But no other systems on the network are having this issue, so I highly doubt it has anything to do with my ISP (though I’m always ready to blame Telus), my NAT, or anything particular to my network. I haven’t been able to figure this issue out yet. Let’s hope I figure it out soon. It’s starting to become slow and painful!

Should I ever want to go into (secondary) Education, a computer science major is not enough. It will only count as a teachable subject major if used in conjunction with another concentration (like math, for example). However, if I had a major in math that would be sufficient on it’s own to enter into the education program. This is lame. I’m sure it’ll change at some point because computer science will become more common at the secondary level, and then they will no doubt be short of qualified teachers.

Anyway, I don’t actually have any specific plans to go into education. Just a thought. So don’t worry.

The folks at UBC’s Main Library are keeping themselves pretty busy with construction. In case you haven’t been around the library lately (maybe you work on the far side of campus, or maybe you don’t even go to UBC … or maybe, you don’t even live in Canada!), they are currently undergoing a major process that involves tearing down all of the Main Library except for the 1920s gothic core. Say bye-bye to the Riddington Room. It’s gone. And they’re starting to tear down most of the old stacks, too.

It’s been quite the war zone around the library since the beginning of September, which is why I’ve chosen to call this series of photos Ground Zero, UBC, which adequately (in exaggerated terms) reflects the destruction around the library.

Looking through a chain-link fence to wear the north-wing (housing the Riddington Room) once stood. Earlier this week, there was more frame and less … nothing.

Looking through the same fencing, you can now see the Brock Hall Annex behind Ground Zero.

The development plan.

They seem to have patched up the “gothic core”. The few days that I attempted to do some work out of the Chapman Learning Commons, the construction noise was quite unbearable. I also saw them at some point removing some of the old stones that were placed onto the nasty 50s additions they were taking down. I assume they will be replacing these onto the original core, or onto the new extension when it goes up.

The same shot from a different angle.

All that remains of the north wing. It’s kind of sad to see it reduced to nothing.

This is a part of the stacks that they have started to dismantle.

This shows quite nicely how they have separated the north wing from the rear extension of the building.

All the glass has been removed.

… and you can see all the way through the building.

It feels a bit like an end of an era that I haven’t been around long enough to really see. The new plans include an automated book retrieval system in the new Main Library. They have a fancy name for the new centre — named after the person who donated all the cash to build the project. But I suppose it had to go — studies had shown that there was a 99% probability of being killed or injured or something or another during an earthquake in the Main Library. Something had to be done.