Planet Geek!: Today in the Book of Why

April 12, 2006

Today in the Book of Why

Friendzzzz, open our K&R to page 32, psalm 12. Today we shall recite from the Book of Why, wherein all manner of faults in life are exposed for cleansing...

Let us begin...

Why... did my MythTV primary volume kick the bucket just at the point where I'm ready to start working on some code to interract with it? We thank the powers at Maxtor for not taking the half a terabyte of other storage with it during it's death throws. Amen.
Why... does the Linux kernel decide to number ethernet ports, particularly wireless ethernet ports, in a totally arbitrary way? Booting up may provide us with the mysteries of eth1, or perhaps today it's eth2, or even something like eth1_someoddtext. Amen.
Why... is the Eclipse WTP project, such an awesomely wonderful and fantastic environment, be occasionally revealing itself as 'not -quite- 100% stable', particularly when I'm in the middle of convincing a client to use it? Amen.
Why... does the Bluetooth stack on the Treo 650 suck so bad? Simple requests for OBEX services cause the phone to crash and reboot. Connections to it are spotty at best, and it offers NO services up to a remote requestor. Makes it very hard to say "Please get my photos off my phone." It is safe to note that almost every other Bluetooth phone on the market today at least provides a Bluetooth FTP service. The Treo doesn't even have decency to say "no services", it simply drops the connection. Amen, dammit.
Why... is there no easy way to hit the Tab key in Firefox in a textarea, and have it generate a Tab? Amen.

We shall ponder these life puzzles as we ommm around the coffeemaker and await enlightenment via it's gurgly goodness.

Posted by dbs at April 12, 2006 9:52 AM

Trackback Pings

TrackBack URL for this entry:
http://mt.homeport.org/cgi-bin/mt-tb.cgi/2732

Comments

Ieeee! You've had a "fun" morning, eh?

Posted by: Lisa at April 12, 2006 11:32 AM

it's a pain if all your ethernet interfaces use the same drivers, but if they happen to differ you can force which one is which in /etc/modprobe.conf, e.g.:

alias eth0 tg3
alias eth1 e1000

at least in centos...

Posted by: dilletante at April 12, 2006 2:22 PM

The Linux kernel may arbitrarily name interfaces, but you can define new names for them, even basing such decisions on MAC addresses or the like: ifrename.

Posted by: -dsr- at April 12, 2006 2:23 PM

tes is better for enlightenment. *nods*

Posted by: cat at April 12, 2006 2:28 PM

Using 'nameif' can be even simplier for strictly eth devices, but nameif or ifrename are the two most common ways to alias a device reliably. Just do not alias them back to numbers.. that can lead to some interesting problems if the hardware changes. ;)

Posted by: Points at April 12, 2006 4:49 PM