Mod_Virgule Update

Wednesday 27 July 2005 at 7:34 pm I've posted another release of my mod_virgule fork this week. Grab the source or take a look at the changelog. This one includes the new and improved configuration handling code. Instead of loading and parsing the entire website configuration on each and every hit, it's now loaded once per Apache process and stored in thread-private memory that persists across requests. Much more efficient. I also did some more general code cleanup and removed more of the hard coded stuff that makes it hard to use mod_virgule without editing the source code. There are still one or two hard coded things that I need to make configurable. Maybe in the next release. It's getting close to a completely configurable system that could be compiled, installed, and configured for any site. Anyway, the new code has been running on robots.net for a couple of weeks now and appears stable.

West Nile Virus

Wednesday 27 July 2005 at 4:11 pm We received a warning from our neighborhood association yesterday saying that someone in our area had been diagnosed with West Nile Virus. Infected mosquitos have been collected in Irving as well. We seem to have a pretty good crop of dragonflies around our yard this year so hopefully they'll take care of any mosquitos. They can eat about 600 mosquitos per day each. When I was mowing the yard this past weekend, there were five or six dragonflies following me around like personal bodyguards. If you're in the Dallas, Texas area, the Dallas Environmental Health Services Department offers an interactive online map showing the status of animal tests, human cases, and mosquito collection in the area.

Mod_Virgule Update

Thursday 21 July 2005 at 11:00 am I've been working on mod_virgule code again. I finally addressed one of the long-standing mod_virgule ToDo items. One of the many inefficiencies of mod_virgule was that it had to load and parse the site configuration XML file on each and every hit. Now that we're compiling against Apache 2, we can use the newer APR memory management code. So I've modified the code to use the thread-private memory pool for configuration storage. Now each Apache process loads config.xml one time at start up. I still stat the config file on each hit to see if a reload is needed. The new code is running live on robots.net and I'll release a new rev of the source soon if it all holds up okay for the next few days.

I posted something about this on the mod_virgule development mailing list but I think the list is dead. I haven't received anything from the list since last December. The list webpage seems to be gone as well. Is anyone out there still interested in mod_virgule development? Let me know and I'll start a new mailing list if there's any interest.

How to annoy RedHat's Legal Department

Monday 18 July 2005 at 2:29 pm Interesting Trademark news today. I've been trying out CentOS 4.1 on one of our production servers as a possible replacement for Red Hat Linux. CentOS is a compiled from Red Hat Enterprise source RPMs, patched to remove any Red Hat logos. I ran into some problems with CentOS related to selinux and posted an email to the selinux mailing asking about it. Someone from Red Hat answered my question and helped me out. In my email I said, "I'm running a CentOS 4.1 (Red Hat EL) box with an Apache..." Today, I got this email from Red Hat regarding my post on the selinux mailing list:

From: Trademark Enforcement, tme@redhat.com

Dear Mr. Rainwater:
Red Hat appreciates your interest in supporting and providing open
source technology. We recently became aware of your email below in
which you state that CentOS 4.1=Red Hat. Of course this is not true
since CentOS does not provide the stability, security and manageability
that Red Hat provides, CentOS is not equal to Red Hat. Red Hat would
appreciate in the future that you please refrain from equating CentOS to
Red Hat.

Thank you in advance for your cooperation and your support in open
source technology.

Sincerely,
Red Hat, Inc.

It then quoted the body of my post to the selinux mailing list. Weird. I guess I need to be careful to say CentOS 4.1 is compiled from the same source as Red Hat Enterprise Linux instead of saying it's "the same as" Red Hat Enterprise linux. I'm curious if there are any real legal implications to this? Can I get into legal trouble for saying "kleenex" instead of "facial tissue" in an email when refering to a brand that doesn't use the Kleenex trademark? Isn't this the same thing? I'm even more curious about the really weird sentence structure used in the third sentence of their email. Somehow I think they meant that to be two sentences.

Apparently, the CentOS folks heard from Red Hat's legal department earlier this year.

New Micros TiniArm 2131 Woes

Thursday 23 June 2005 at 4:23 pm Robots.net is now happily running on CentOS 4.1 and Apache 2. I've posted the source and changelog to the new mod_virgule code. Hmmm... what's next?.

I ran into trouble with the TiniArm 2131 board. The recommended flash programmer is proprietary software from Philips that only runs on Windows. After a little searching online, I found lpc21isp written by Martin Maurer that compiles on Linux and might work, however it's not licensed under a Free Software or Open Source license. I don't understand people who release copyrighted source code without some sort of a clear license defining how you're allow to use their code. In this case, I skipped it and moved on. Then I discovered that Paul Stoffregen had written a GTK+ based flash programmer for the Philips line of ARM processors called lpc2k_pgm. It's licensed under the GNU GPL and it compiles and runs just fine on my Fedora-based laptop. Unfortunately, it doesn't yet support the LCP2131 chip. I don't have the time to add support so I emailed Paul and New Micros. They're going to loan him a board in exchange for adding support to his software. That's good news even if it means my TiniARM experiments will be on hold for a little while.

Porting mod_virgule to Apace 2.x - part II

Wednesday 15 June 2005 at 4:18 pm After a little more hacking on Monday, I completed the port of mod_virgule to the Apache 2 API. It's now running natively using the 2.x APR functions directly - no need for the 1.3 compatibility headers at all. I'm going to bang on it a few more days and then shift robots.net over to it. I'll post the source later this week as well.

I'm doing the work on a new CentOS Linux 4.0 box that I set up to try out CentOS. Most of our boxes still run Red Hat 9 and since Red Hat's demise I've been casting around for a suitable replacement. CentOS seems ideal. It's basically a community supported, free (as in speech and as in beer) clone of Red Hat Enterprise Linux. So everything is exactly where it should be and works like you'd expect it to.

In other news I just got my hands on one of the New Micros TinyARM 2131 boards. It's a tiny little ARM microcontroller (1" x 1.3") with 32K Flash and 8K RAM. Looks like another gcc cross compiler adventure in the making.

Porting mod_virgule to Apace 2.x

Thursday 09 June 2005 at 3:44 pm I got mod_virgule working on Apache 2.x this week. I started with the patch for the official codebase that James Henstridge did back in early 2004. While the official mod_virgule hasn't changed much in the last couple of years, mine has continued to diverge due to patches for libxml2 and other requested features. So it took a little tweaking to get the old Apache 2 patch to work but it still saved a lot of time. I'm not planning on keeping Apache 1.3 compatibility, so I dropped some changes from the original patch related to 1.3 support.

I've still got a ways to go before it's ready for release. At present it relies too heavily on the APR compatibility headers. Once I get things cleaned up, I'll move robots.net to an Apache 2 server with the new code and give it some good testing. A release should follow shortly after that.

It's nice to play with some C code again after all the website related Perl coding I do at NCC.

Random News from the Month of May

Monday 30 May 2005 at 5:55 pm Yesterday Susan and I braved the scattered rain to attend Dallas Artfest 2005. It turned out to be overcast and cool but only a tiny bit of rain fell. Susan found some interesting jewellery and it made a nice break from work.

I've been working with David Anderson in porting his robotics library for the MRM board to gcc 3.4.3. I've added a little code of my own in the process and I'm using Doxygen to produce pretty web-based documentation for the whole thing. We still have a ways to go but I'm hoping to release the completed library as a DPRG project in a month or two (under GPL of course).


We saw Hitchhiker's earlier this month and found it sadly disappointing. It appears to have been adapted to the big screen by people who had no clear understanding of Douglas Adams brand of humor (or British humor in general). It almost appears they didn't understand it was supposed to be a funny story and tried very hard to turn it into an action movie by excising anything remotely amusing from the script. Even worse, they frequently removed the setup for jokes but left in the punch line or left in the setup and removed the punchline, making the story incomprehensible (or at least very non-funny) for those who hadn't read the book, heard the radio version, or seen the TV adaptation. The one redeeming moment was when the real Marvin made brief cameo appearance. I suspect everyone reading this has seen the movie by now but if you haven't, save your money and buy the very nice DVD of the BBC television version which is a lot more fun.

We also saw Revenge of the Sith. What can I say. At least it's finally over. It was better than the last two but I'm afraid the original version of the first movie is the only one that was really fun as a stand-alone story.

I've had some time to start working on mod_virgule again. My highest priority is porting it to the Apache 2 module API so I can finally ditch Red Hat 7.3 on the robots.net box. I've almost got a clean compile but it's going to take a little while to get it debugged and stable before I switch robots.net over.

Deep Ellum Arts Festival 2005

Tuesday 05 April 2005 at 1:26 pm I spent most of the day Sunday wandering around the Deep Ellum Arts Festival looking at paintings and sculptures by regional artists. Since our office is now in the Deep Ellum area of Dallas, the Arts Festival was within walking distance. I took a few fuzzy photos of the arts festival with my little JB1 camera. Susan was suffering from allergies and stayed home. I thought I'd be on my own but I ran into some friends.

Standing in front of the stage listening to a live band, I recognized a dog which turns up at the RBNO sometimes. Sure enough, attached to the other end of the dog's leash was Bill James, a fellow robot builder. He was there with a couple of friends. One of them, Sarah, is a drummer. She was interested in the band that was currently playing, called Cherry Blossom Clinic. By coincidence, the new drummer for CBC is April Samuels, a fellow website designer who I know from a past consulting job. So after the set ended, I managed to get April and Sarah introduced.

The band members had a photographer with them and spent some time after they got off stage shooting the usual sort of eccentric band photos in a nearby parking lot. This was the first time I'd met the other folks in the band, who turned out to be an interesting collection of people. I only became aware of CBC after April joined the band and this was actually my first time to hear them play. If you haven't heard CBC, imagine a sort of insane Mr. Rogers playing guitar; add vocals, another guitar, bass, and drums. They have the energy of an early 1980's garage-punk band combined with music that's a compositional mix the 1960's and today. I liked the music enough to buy their most recent CD, Orange (a new one is on the way I'm told). You can listen to a couple of mp3s on their website.

In the end I stayed out in the sun a little too long but it was a beautiful day and well worth a little sunburn.

March Book reports

Thursday 24 March 2005 at 6:14 pm Yikes, almost a month since I've posted anything here. Let's see, other than working, I've read a lot of books since my last post. I finished "Physics and Philosophy" by Werner Heisenberg. Interestingly, he recommended that any young people reading the book should go into the field of biology where he thought all the really cool science would be happening next. This corresponds with advice given by Hans Bethe, mentioned by titus in his Advogato blog early this month. Their reasoning was that biology is beginning the transition into "real" science just as chemistry had once physics provided an understanding of atoms and molecules.

In honor of Jack L. Chalker's recent passing, I finally got around to reading some of the Well World series. So far, I've read Midnight at the Well of Souls (pretty good for a first novel), the two part story Exiles at the Well of Souls and Quest for the Well of Souls (so-so), and the next two part story The Return of Nathan Brazil and Twilight at the Well of Souls (best so far). I had to stop there until we could get the next few books. Since they all seem to be out of print these days, it took a little eBay and Amazon shopping to track down some used book stores that had them. We now have all ten of the series so I'll pick up on it again soon.

While I was waiting, I read a few other out of print books that were in the queue including Three to Conquer by the always enjoyable Eric Frank Russell (by coincidence Jack L. Chalker wrote the forward in the book). The plot is set in the futuristic year of 1980. And last, I read two John Wyndham books; The Chrysalids and Chocky.

It's been interesting watching the search engine results for robots this month as the movie by the same name slowly gets closer to the top of page one. The mis-named I, Robot movie pretty much wiped out the search term "robot" for a while but, so far, it looks like they didn't spend as much on SEO for this movie.