Followed the directions in http://www.panticz.de/Intel-AMT-vPro-under-Linux, to enable direct VNC access (IP KVM like). Everything worked well while a monitor was physically connected.

However, once the monitor was no longer connected, Linux disabled all display output, and VNC only showed a black screen. Took some time to find the right kernel command line parameter to force output:

video=VGA-1:1024x768@60e

Note the "e", which force enables the output.

I just had a funny idea: a password dialog that shakes no when you enter the wrong password, or nods yes when the password is right!
Video

When I log in, I need to enter my password, and then when I want to sudo, I need to enter the same password again. Would it be possible to configure pam to use the log-in password to create a sudo timestamp?

pam_exec.so

pam_exec.so is a PAM module that can call an external program at any stage: auth, account, password and session. Via the expose_authtok it can provide the password on the programs stdin. So I added the following at the end of /etc/pam.d/common-auth:

When editing multiple files I regular get the error Swap file ".blah.swp" already exists when I try to run gvim on an already opened file. Instead of starting a new instance of gvim, I would prefer if the existing gvim was activated.

So, I have upgraded from WordPress to Drupal. All the links should still work.

Preparing for another move of large files, I was considering ways to see the progress of the file operations. Then I remembered that lsof includes the size of the open files in its output. I wrote a small Perl script that starts the file operation in another process, and then use lsof to monitor its progress. I used the size of the source and destination file to create a progress-bar. lsof can be run in repeat mode (-r), I combined this with the process id (-p) and the (known) read and write file descriptor (-d).

$ bar cp /data/cd.iso .
cd.iso:  75% [====================================    *        ]0m22s Left

bar

I recently bought a USB thermometer and humidity sensor (TEMPerNTC and TEMPer Hum). First, these need patches to the Linux serial driver to get working (for 2.6.29-rc1). Then you need the build a program to read the temperature (see here), but that doesn't work for the humidity sensor. Finally, their accuracy is quite low (see also review at the gadgeteer).

sendmsg and recvmsg are not builtin in to Perl. The fact that they take complex structures is a good reason not to include it. But sometimes you want to do more complex things, for example pass filedescriptors over Unix sockets. CPAN has some modules (Socket::PassAccessRights and File::FDpasser), but they require you to compile code for each different platform. Can this be done in pure Perl? There are two problems to overcome: creating the iovec, msghdr and cmsghdr structures and initiating the syscalls.

I bought a Linksys SRW208G on eBay. It seems to be feature packed, I wonder if it is running IOS underneath. However, two things that I don't like: external power brick, and web interface is IE only... It can also be configured over serial, telnet or ssh; not command line but some text based menu system.

The new switch has arrived. It works as advertised, and no extra features. It is more than good enough. I wonder how/if I can graph its bandwidth with Cacti. One good thing: I can hear the harddisks... (the old switch's fan was louder than the harddisks).