Timezone configuration on SLES Linux

Having some trouble with clock drift with 2 SLES 9 SuSE linux boxes. Turns out vmware and the hwclock settings I chose during setup of the OS have been conspiring to put a long drift on my two systems. Fixing it is somewhat simple. Setting it up right the first time is obviously the best solution. To remedy:

Do this stuff to get your time figured out and fixed to where you want from an OS perspective:

Totally stolen from: http://www.planetmy.com/blog/how-to-configure-timezone-on-sles-linux/

The following tutorial will guide you How to configure TIMEZONE on SLES Linux.

Basically you can configure Linux timezone using two methods which is using command or YaST.

Note: use timezone “GMT+0“ for an example below.

For YaST timezone setup, it’s pretty simple. Login to terminal and type:

#YasT Setup

yast timezone

Select Global, select GMT+0
Hardware clock Set To: Localtime
Click Accept.

For command line setup, you’re require to know these 2 files /etc/localtime and /etc/sysconfig/clock.

#Backup existing file

mv /etc/localtime /etc/localtime.old

cp /etc/sysconfig/clock /etc/sysconfig/clock.old

#Edit configuration files

ln -s /usr/share/zoneinfo/GMT+0 /etc/localtimevi /etc/sysconfig/clock

TIMEZONE=GMT+0

HWCLOCK="--localtime"

Bear in mind, you can have different timezone setup for individual or global user by using user profile in your system. For an example,

#Edit configuration file

vi /etc/profile or ~username/.bash_profile
export TZ=/usr/share/zoneinfo/Asia/Kuala_Lumpur

Export “TZ” will overwrite /etc/sysconfig/clock or /etc/localtime setup. Mean that I can use Kuala Lumpur as my separate time zone for particular user in the same system eventhrough my primary timezone setup is GMT+0.

NTP setup
#Edit NTP configuration file

vi /etc/ntp.confserver 0.europe.pool.ntp.org

server 1.europe.pool.ntp.org
server 2.europe.pool.ntp.org
server 3.europe.pool.ntp.org
server your.ntp.server

#Restart NTP Server

rcxntpd xntpd restart

Hardware Clock

#showing hardware clock

hwclock --show

#set the system time from the hardware clock

hwclock --hctosys

#set the hardware clock from the system time

hwclock --systohc

Done!

After doing this verify your clock isn't drifting crazy by using ntpq and lpeers to figure out your clock delay offset and jitter numbers. Seems to work well, saves us some trouble in the future maybe it'll help someone else out of course.

Failing that this thread on the vmware community website illustrates the "clock=pit" option.

URL TO FOLLOW

It refers to this PDF:
http://www.vmware.com/pdf/vmware_timekeeping.pdf

SSH Passwordless Authentication

http://blogs.translucentcode.org/mick/archives/000230.html was a great find today. Hail google. Hail clarity in technical documentation.

Keep in mind this is dangerous to do if you don't trust your overall account security, but for my purposes at work it's a great way to get something done.

Playing with Crosstool

Not really playing.

Crosstool itself
A version of GCC to compile the compiler (usually something somewhat old)
A GCC Compiler to Compile (usually something new-ish)
A version of glibc
A "sanitized" version of the linux kernel headers


Google Search For Crosstool: http://www.google.com/search?q=crosstool

A quickie script to gather difference between(delta) two unix epoch seconds time values.


#!/usr/bin/perl
use warnings;
use strict;
use Date::Manip;
my $delta;
my $date1;
my $date2;
my $err = undef;
print "Thank you for running $0\n";

print "Enter Unix Time Seconds Value Start:";
chomp($date1 = <STDIN>);
$date1 = ParseDateString("epoch $date1");
print "Enter Unix Time Seconds Value Finish:";
chomp($date2 = <STDIN>);
$date2 = ParseDateString("epoch $date2");

$delta = DateCalc ($date1,$date2, \$err);
print "the \$delta is [$delta]\n";


Bash Tidbit: environment variables after escaped semicolons

If you find yourself in need of embedding an environment variable in a path directly after an escaped semicolon (something that happens when you have version control tools like Telelogic, which use semicolons as a project toplevel node delimiter) it is possible to merely use backticks "`<around the command>`" to get the desired effect.

Say your default case on the command line to list the directory contents is thus:


ls /mnt/buford/d/teledb/ccm_wa/poobits01/foo.bar\;foo.bar99.99_int/foo.bar/


And you want the 'foo.bar99.99' to be something settable in a shell variable called $REL you then would insert the following to do such a thing:

REL=foo.bar99.99
ls /mnt/buford/d/teledb/ccm_wa/poobits01/foo.bar\;`echo $REL`_int/foo.bar/


Time Wasting For Fun and Profit

Someone at work mentioned this gamey game: http://www.kongregate.com/games/garin/monsters-den-book-of-dread

Might try it, never know.

Cicada Period Blogging at it's finest.

Heads and Tails of the last file in a directory.

head -n 2 `ls -1rt | tail -n 1` ; echo "...";echo "..."; tail -n 1 `ls -1rt | tail -n 1`

Screen, act like an xterm

Screen when invoked has a multitude of options, but one that was particularly helpful for me was this:

screen -T xterm ssh user@someunixhost

So as to make the TERM environment variable appear to be xterm allowing vi and other tools to work properly.

Figuring out how to get that into my ~/.screenrc so that it takes affect every time is the next objective. Not many of the hosts I connect to identify "screen" as a TERM type.

Obama's Newbie Activists: Unloved By Insiders But Here To Stay

You should ask those more "seasoned" individuals, who there house is built to serve? Their own well being or the well being of the people of this country? Whether in the Republican or Democrat party, I've found that (with some exceptions in each of course) the established members of each organization are convinced of their own entitlement to lead and control things than they are of operating as an organization of free people acting together in the mass of people that make up the parties interests.

Both parties should lean towards the latter half in future or get more Liebermans and might as well be neocon / pseudodem types in your ranks.
About Democratic Convention
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost

Say It Ain't Jew, Joe

A very effective PAC working in the US to advance the interests of the nation of Israel

* not the people of Israel as about half of Israelis believe the US aids Israel too much, which is saying alot.



You don't have to read conspiracy into it either, it's just a case of one country having a very effective lobbying organization that is getting what more than what it pays for from the US government. That lobbying organization is acting in the interests of hard line militarists in Israel. These folks want to stay in power indefinitely, apparently seeing that the best way to do that is to keep tension high in the region, peace is best kept short lived, military funding is perpetual and plentiful, and best of all we(the US) look like the bad guy.



Lieberman is a friend to them, at all costs it seems.



Contrast AIPAC with JStreet the latter being a more worthy lobbying group IMO. Essentially saying, perpetual shows of "strength" and ever escalating conflict is maybe not such a good idea, go figure.
About Barack Obama
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost

Meh, more code stuff this time, playing with Perl's FileHandle modules.

Code like:

1. #!/usr/bin/perl -w
   
   use FileHandle;
   my $ifh = new FileHandle;
   if ($ifh->open("< fee.txt")) {
       print <$ifh>;
       $ifh->close;
   }
   

   
   

GOP Insider Eviscerates Bush And Party: Just "Phenomenal Arrogance"

Read the Article at HuffingtonPost

Brzezinski: Surge In Afghanistan Risky, Some McCain Backers Want World War IV

About Barack Obama
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost

Obama Campaign Manager Airs Cash Woes In Video

About Barack Obama
The EFF is the Electronic Frontier Foundation, notably active against the current FISA laws set of compromises and willy nilly allotments of warrantless wiretaps to aging chimpanzees and bloated curmudgeons currently in office. Oh and telecom immunity too, for the (telecom) business set to safely feel free to continue to roll over when some spook gives them a call.
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost

Apache Commons

Java is an obtuse beast, written by obtuse beasts.

I will be detailing efforts to use the apache commons io framework (DirectoryWalker in particular) in this post.

Apache Commons consists of several helpful extensions to Java in various areas, IO in particular being the one I'm interested, though Math and XML processing code exists for anyone to take advantage of.

Problems that I'm currently working through:

• DirectoryWalker seems to include mechanics for depth limitations, but the default means of shuffling the File objects returned seems to be an Array, the search process itself seems to dive into the filesystem in a chaotic and unseemly way, that does not lend itself to being easily limited to a certain depth.

• Java in general, is somewhat defiant of concrete scrutiny to non domain level experts. So, if one isn't already an expert Java programmer, one cannot take at face value the indications of the documentation for modules involved.

At the moment, I'm determining if indeed I can throw a DirectoryWalker.CancelException and how much more code I'll have to write to do something that is quite simple in a shell script (gnu find, and the parameters --maxdepth --mindepth) in order to mitigate the lack of an ability to constrain a directory walk to an exact distance from a starting point.

From the documentation:

This class operates with a FileFilter and maximum depth to limit the files and direcories visited. Commons IO supplies many common filter implementations in the filefilter package.

References:
(http://commons.apache.org/io/api-release/org/apache/commons/io/DirectoryWalker.html)

Deciphering HPUX 11.0 era compilers and how they tend to fail to build Chinese code (zhchs, zhcht locales) when it is attempted at my workplace, on certain machines.

What this all brings to mind is the tendency of Unix System Administrators to "poison the pool" so to speak by *not* documenting their setups. I'll put this simply for anyone who is a Unix / Linux advocate in todays world of computing, Unix is difficult enough to understand for people who understand it. Throwing shit together and putting it in production with no supporting documentation creates no end of grief when the eventual (and certain) leaving of your job occurs. Unless you want your name to be cursed nigh unto eternity by those that follow you, DOCUMENT YOUR SETUPS AS YOU GO.

Thank you, and good night.

Pflugerville, Texas - Hanovers Market, a great place for Beer, texas BBQ and friendly outgoing bartenders that will let you hop on over and wrangle your own beer of choice in the back with the taps.

The Smear of Smears, Racism and Ron Paul

Currently working on expansion on this trackback:

http://haloscan.com/tb/sonichost/3905451830583339730

Ubuntu Geek -- Tips,Howtos,Tutorials and Articles about Ubuntu Linux (Dapper - Edgy - Feisty - Gutsy)

I've been digging this site the past few hours, finding things to tweak with my ubuntu installation. Very valuable collection of resources for the Ubuntu users out there.

Ubuntu Geek -- Tips,Howtos,Tutorials and Articles about Ubuntu Linux (Dapper - Edgy - Feisty - Gutsy)

NIN Remixes

Political Dystopia never sounded so good, yet again.

Y34RZ3R0R3M1X3D is out, and I give it my blessing.

1. Guns by Computer (Saul Williams)
   
2. The Great Destroyer (Modwheelmood)
3. My Violent Heart
4. The Beginning of the End
5. Survivalism_tardusted
   
6. Capital G
7. Vessel
8. The Warning
9. Meet Your Master
10. God Given
11. Me, I'm Not
12. Another Version of the Truth
13. In This Twilight
14. Zero-Sum
    

Blog Aggregates: McCain vs Paul and others.

In reference to the McCain Paul Letter on Andrew Sullivans The Daily Dish struck me. I don't have the same reverence for McCain for various reasons, but I feel for those that see their heroes go down the wrong path nonetheless.

DownThemAll! » DownThemAll! 1.0 Beta

DownThemAll! » DownThemAll! 1.0 Beta

Ron Paul Has Won?

http://rss.townhall.com/trackback/www/7bec946b-bc0e-4a5f-a73f-5eef4f7913dd/

Zogby Spread Poll Result

http://truthseeds.org/2007/11/19/ron-paul-wins-latest-zogby-poll/

A Ron Paul Voter Checklist

Things Ron Paul supporters should do:

This will frequently update. Well, maybe not so frequently.

Register for polling at Zogby to make sure you have a chance to be sampled in their polling data. They also do polls on request.
RedState is a den of snakes, writhing and flicking with straight up Right Wing Tyrranist apologizers and fervent collaborationists, watching their cycle switch over, and very much being the bastion of where George Bush's wind has blown, no matter from which end it is blowing.

In this kind of place prepare to deal with hostile echo chamber advocates of the first order, who will bait you with low roaded speech at every turn, and reveal their bigoted nature only haltingly and with much encryption. This is not only the going penance in the world online. In the world at large they make their presence known by their willingness to be blind and asleep to obvious tyrranies, large and small, with the demon of Apathy firmly laid at their brow. To ask another to do for them that they would not be bothered, against their will. For that be willing to do for your fellows, to get this statesman on the pulpet. It may be bully, but it needs to come. An executively expansionist tyrant every four years, has gotten tiresome, and at least Bill you could relate to, but Hil I think should stay, and rest her hand on the new york senate where she should stay, she should stay. At least it'll make her far from Texas that way.

Niggy Tardust Emerges

Taking a break from politicizing (well, the music is political, guess I lied) the blogosphere. A great concept album, somewhat of a Ziggy Stardust homage, produced by Trent Reznor and released without the benefit of a traditional label. good music, the U2 cover is great, but originals are a massive taste of ear candy. Expect further reviewing as I stew in the album.
He really puts it best here:

My Dearest Friends and Fans,

It is my greatest honor to present to you The Inevitable Rise and Liberation of NiggyTardust!,
my new album produced by Trent Reznor and mixed by Alan Moulder. The wall of sound that we've created is tagged with such graffiti that a passerby would seek out doors and ways to ENTER. Once inside a world defined by dreams come true they'd find aligned with the simplest act of sharing what we treasure. Most people aren't aware of the world of art and commerce where exploitation strips each artist down to nigger. Each label, like apartheid, multiplies us by our divide and whips us 'til we conform to lesser figures. What falls between the cracks is a pile of records stacked to the heights of talents hidden from the sun. Yet the energy they put into popularizing smut makes a star of a shiny polished gun. The ballot or the bullet for Mohawk or the mullet is a choice between new times and dying days. And the only way to choose is to jump ship from old truths and trust dolphins as we swim through changing ways. The ways of middlemen proves to be just a passing trend. We need no priests to talk to God. No phone to call her. And when you click the link below, i think it fair that you should know that your purchase will make middlemen much poorer...

NiggyTardust!

love,

Saul

New Hampshire AD

Here is a nice thing I encourage the Ron Paul faithful to contribute to.

Oreilly vs Ron Paul

In this video (google vid) O'reilly merely attempts to support his own position in any interview. Ron did a good job considering the neocon-windbags constant interruption. All I see from the other side is ignorance of our own historical role in generating animosity by our policy in the middle east. Their solution, more of the same. Now Putin (Formerly Bush's buddy buddy) is Allied with Iran.




Maybe the Bushbots should evaluate the policies they support critically and adjust them rather than their existing plan of "Stay the Course", "with us or against us", "support our private security contractors" and "extraordinary rendition".

Quite honestly, all of the Bushbot neocons might as well vote for Clinton because she's, in reality, the candidate for them. At least they'll get free healthcare out of the deal. And they don't have to lie about decreasing the size of government and lowering taxes.

Front Page Magazine http://www.frontpagemag.com recently posted an article http://www.frontpagemag.com/Articles/Read.aspx?GUID=7169C0C2-D529-4B93-B83A-8C9ECEB455D5 with the contents of an obviously fictitious flyer containing the following fictitious (November has only 30 days folks) contents:

Who Hates Americans? We Do.

Your typical American is:

Ø A racist. A sexist. A homophobe.

Ø An Islamo-phobe.

Ø Is willing to invade other countries for oil and pleasure.

Ø Is easily manipulated by Rush Limbaugh and Jews.

Ø Is the cause of global warming.

Join Us For American Fascism Awareness Day

Place: Washington (Slaveholder) Monument

Date: November 31, 2007

Time: 12PM-2:00 PM

Speakers:

Dennis Kucinich, Ron Paul, congressmen
Adam Kokesh, Iraq War veteran
Chris Hedges, journalist
Cindy Sheehan, Harry Karry, peace activists
Michael Moore, Sean Penn, film-makers

Sponsors:

Peace and Social Justice Crusade, Iraq Veterans Against the War, Code Pink, Muslim Students Association, American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee, Students for Justice in Palestine, Revolutionary Communist Party, International A.N.S.W.E.R., Moveon.org, DailyKos.com, Indy-Media.org, HuffingtonPost.com, Ivorypower.com

So I suppose now Ron Paul will have to contend with the MSM and the NeoCon apparatus attack dogs spewing their flawed rhetoric. I find it heartening to see that he, as ever, remains unhateful and unbigoted in the face of this.

Thoughts on The Morning Show

In Reference To: http://www.590klbj.com/Bios/morning.aspx

Cast of Characters:
Mark Cesar the Milquetoast Moderator.
Sgt Sam the Dominionist Crusader.
Ed Clements (DemoLibertarian?)Hack Liberal (Bearded)

I tell you what, I love the show. I'm just going for heavy satire here basically a really jaded vicious take on what you can expect if you should listen if they get really steamed.

Sam pretty much does his best to blather the Statist Corporatist Surveillance State (he is a former cop) party line. Gee Dubya Bee if fahhhhtin against them there Islamofascists, etc etc. He finds "obvious" sexual connotations with words like "Juicy" on slow news days. He has an odd occasional bout of (feigned?) moral outrage about certain really obvious violations of civil liberties and things, but he doesn't really rock the boat (former cop) with the ones who are in charge of how things work.

Eds job is to make pithy and easily weak arguments against all of the things Sam garners the vast distributed essence of the group-mind known as Bubba Joe Law Abidin in the state to be really mad about.

Mark tempers Sams Weird and Bearded Faux-Conservatism with his own milquetoast variety. Ed gets blocks of time to talk about food and sports. They all bitch about traffic like everyone else.

They steer clear of annoying the Take On Traffic folks because they started running ads on The Morning Show.