from the "comically ironic" department

For a while now, I've been kind of half-seriously joking that <% link http://www.aol.com/ AOL %> should release its <% link http://enterprise.netscape.com/products/contentsvcs/enterprise.html {Netscape Enterprise Server} %> web server as <% link http://www.google.com/search?q=open+source+software {open source software} %> since it already did with its other web server software, <% link http://aolserver.com/ AOLserver %>.

Today, my joke has become a reality in a way: <% link http://www.redhat.com/ {Red Hat} %> announced that it is <% link http://news.com.com/Red+Hat+acquires+AOLs+Netscape+server+software/2100-7344_3-5388906.html {acquiring the Netscape Enterprise Suite from AOL and will be releasing it as open source software} %> (<% link http://www.redhat.com/about/presscenter/2004/press_neighbor.html {press release} %>). The Netscape Enterprise Suite includes <% link http://enterprise.netscape.com/products/identsvcs/directory.html {Netscape Directory Server} %> and <% link http://enterprise.netscape.com/products/identsvcs/certmgmt.html {Netscape Certificate Management Server} %>.

Perhaps another one of my long-term visions will also come true: I can finally implement <% link http://developer.netscape.com/docs/manuals/enterprise/nsapi/contents.htm NSAPI %> support for AOLserver, which would make things a little easier for folks to migrate to AOLserver.

halloween costume cuteness

Halloween is only a month away, which means it's time to find some overly cute costumes for your kids if you haven't already. The folks at babystyle.com have got some absolutely adorable costumes.

Check them out:

Fun in the Sunflower Bunting
$20.00 $9.99

Dilbert the Dragon
$24.00 $11.99

Take the Bunny and Run
$24.00
Out of stock

Sweet Peas in a Pod Bunting
$20.00

nsingres is now official

It's official: I just committed the <% link http://panoptic.com/wiki/aolserver/nsingres nsingres %> module to <% link http://aolserver.com/sf/cvs/nsingres {SourceForge CVS} %>. nsingres is an internal DB driver for AOLserver.

Source tarball is available here: <% link http://aolserver.com/downloads/nsingres-0.1-src.tar.gz nsingres-0.1-src.tar.gz %>

encodings and character sets

<% link http://www.furfly.net/ {Janine Sisk at Furfly} %> has been working hard to migrate her customers to the latest AOLserver 4.0.x release, which has been helping the project find bugs and answer migration questions. This has been incredibly helpful and the most recent issue involved <% link http://listserv.aol.com/cgi-bin/wa?A2=ind0409&L=aolserver&P=7601 {encoding and character set settings} %>.

Her problem, in a nutshell, is that users are entering data into the system originally authored in Microsoft Word which uses the <% link http://www.microsoft.com/globaldev/reference/sbcs/1252.htm {Microsoft Windows Codepage 1252} %> character set which contains codepoints for things like en-dashes (0x96 = U+2013), ellipses (0x85 = U+2026), and some other elements. However, if you treat CP1252-encoded data as <% link http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UTF-8 UTF-8 %> (<% link http://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc2279.txt {RFC 2279} %>), it won't render correctly: all bytes in the range of 0x80-0xFF, which contains en-dashes and ellipses, are encoded using two bytes instead of just one. In this particular case, the en-dashes become transcoded from 0x96 to the sequence 0xC2 0x96. The 0xC2 looks like this -- Â or 쎂 -- depending on which one your browser rendered correctly. You may recognize it and wonder how it got in your own pages and how to remove it, too.

For Janine, her solution was to <% link http://listserv.aol.com/cgi-bin/wa?A2=ind0409&L=aolserver&P=8895 {instruct AOLserver to use the ISO-8859-1 character set as the output character set} %>, which would mean the inputs by the users originally in CP1252 would get output from the server as ISO-8859-1 which is a close enough match, I guess. The configuration might look like this:

ns_section "ns/parameters"
ns_param OutputCharset iso-8859-1

I'm not sure what she has the other related encoding and character set settings set to, but I've asked and hopefully will find out and update this entry with the details.

who's your daddy?

I'm a big fan of <% link http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0000114/ {Steve Buscemi} %>, but this morning I saw something very disturbing on <% link http://news.google.com/ {Google News} %> ... a picture of <% link http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0000346/ {Macaulay Culkin} %>.

Now, in and of itself, that's not very scary. What's scary is the double-take I did when I first saw the picture. I thought to myself, "Boy, that must be a really young picture of Steve Buscemi ..." until I realized it wasn't him! See for yourself:

For appropriate photo credit, here's the original article where <% link http://www.ctv.ca/servlet/ArticleNews/story/CTVNews/1095469680204_44/?hub=CTVNewsAt11 {Macaulay gets smacked down for dope posession} %> and the picture of <% link http://www.imdb.com/gallery/granitz/1385/Events/1385/SteveBusce_Grani_382662_400.jpg Steve %>.

Just makes you wonder ... is Macaulay actually Steve's love-child? Hmm ...

Update: Alex at <% link http://martinirepublic.com/item/newsflash-macaulay-culkin-grows-up-to-look-like-steve-buscemi {Martini Republic} %> beat me to it by two days ... damn! Great minds think alike, or fools rarely differ.

hanging on by a thread

I've been doing a lot of <% link http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Core_dump {core dump} %> analysis at work on <% link http://wwws.sun.com/software/solaris/sparc/index.html Solaris %>, digging deep into the bag of coder kung-fu using <% link http://docs.sun.com/db/doc/816-0210/6m6nb7m49?a=view adb %>, which is a debugger that is not for the faint of heart.

So, trying to help someone troubleshoot a problem with AOLserver on Linux, I asked the simple question of "did it drop a core file"? The answer was, "No, it didn't." That prompts the next question, "Did you set ulimit -c unlimited?" The affirmative answer surprised me: how is it not dropping a core file? Ahh, that's when it occurred to me: Linux has had <% link http://homepages.tesco.net/~J.deBoynePollard/FGA/linux-thread-problems.html {issues with threads} %> (<% link http://www.onlamp.com/pub/a/onlamp/2002/11/07/linux_threads.html {same info, more polished} %>) for a long time now. So, I decided to do some hacking on my own <% link http://debian.org/ {Debian Linux} %> box running my own hand-compiled <% link http://kernel.org/ {2.6.7 kernel} %>.

Apparently, there are some kernel patches to implement <% link http://www-124.ibm.com/linux/projects/mtcoredumps/ {multithreaded core dumps} %> which suggests that the patches were merged into the 2.5.47 kernel. So, why isn't AOLserver writing a core file when it segfaults?

After making dinner and putting the kids to bed, I thought about it and wrote a little test program that starts a thread then aborts in the thread. It wrote out a core file just fine! Then it dawned on me: AOLserver does a <% link http://www.opengroup.org/onlinepubs/007908799/xsh/setuid.html setuid %> to drop root privileges -- Linux, by default, won't write a core file out if the process has changed uid/euid. Figuring I wasn't the first person to want Linux to behave like every other Unix out there, I found my answer in the unofficial comp.os.linux.development.* FAQ: <% link http://www.daimi.au.dk/~kasperd/comp.os.linux.development.faq.html#suidcore {How can I make a suid executable dump core?} %> Making the change in <% link http://aolserver.com/sf/cvs/aolserver/nsd/nsmain.c?rev=HEAD&view=markup nsd/nsmain.c %>, adding the <% link http://linux-documentation.com/en/man/man2/prctl.html prctl(PR_SET_DUMPABLE) %> call, I can now get AOLserver to dump a core file on Linux. Yay.

I've just filed <% link http://aolserver.com/sf/bug/1031599 {SF Bug #1031599} %>, attached the diff's and committed the change.

While this doesn't solve the original problem of why this person's AOLserver is crashing, at least now I might be able to get a core file to look at ...

breaking these chains of love

OK, I don't know how I possibly missed this, but last month <% link http://www.ca.com/ {Computer Associates} %> has <% link http://www3.ca.com/Press/PressRelease.asp?CID=61597 {released its Ingres r3 database product as open source software} %>!

Now, I've been using <% link http://www.mysql.com/ MySQL %> for many years, and have been recently considering using <% link http://www.postgresql.org/ PostgreSQL %> in order to get features that MySQL is still lacking (views, stored procedures, etc.) -- but now, I can use <% link http://www3.ca.com/Solutions/Product.asp?ID=1013 Ingres %> instead!

You can <% link http://opensource.ca.com/projects/ingres/ {download Ingres r3 today} %>! (Requires free site registration.) The current source tarball is ~76MB. I'll be downloading it tonight ... expect to see an AOLserver <% link http://panoptic.com/wiki/aolserver/nsingres nsingres %> module soon.

I don't know if you can tell ... but damn, I'm excited ...

sex, lies and masking tape

Kelly Burgener wrote an article for <% link http://www.underconsideration.com/speakup/ {Speak Up} %>, a discussion blog for graphic designers, titled <% link http://www.underconsideration.com/speakup/archives/002042.html {Pornography Perils} %>. I couldn't resist the urge to leave a comment, which I'm going to repeat here as well:

"an industry of extreme manipulation, coercion, profiteering, and addiction"

Sounds like the Advertising and Mass-media industries, which designers hone their skills to participate in.

Frankly, the business of sex (which includes pornography) has always driven the economy. To try and undermine it is like cutting off your nose to spite your face.

"Like most designers, I believe that graphic design can be a powerful tool against ignorance, exploitation, and manipulation."

You want to help change the world? Spend your effors to counter the products and by-products of the mass media. The hate, ignorance, manipulation and fear it promotes.

Only then, will our largely ignorant, fearsome and manipulated population not feel the need to turn to the sex business for comfort, solace, entertainment and escape.