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I run nightly backup scripts, which email me a summary report that includes, among other things, information on disk usage.

I'd been watching the percentage creep steadily up on my main (root) mount drive with increasing concern, but not sufficient concern to actually investigate what the culprit was and whether or not it was a legitimate use of drive space.

Except the other day the percentage finally got dangerously close to 100%, so I finally had to stop putting it off and figure out what was going on.

Turns out it was embarrassingly simple.  MySQL was happily generating binary log files which tracked Every Single Thing it did, ever, all the time.  Just like it was told to do by my /etc/mysql/my.cnf file (via the 'log-bin' option).  Only apparently the files never go away and don't participate in the normal logrotate process (for obvious reasons, once you understand the purpose of the binary logs).  So they just keep piling up, indefinitely.  To the tune of ~25GB, in my case, for a small set of low-footprint MySQL databases running since about 2006.

Once I understood the situation, it was easily remedied by adjusting the options I supplied to the nightly run of mysqldump (which is what I employ as my MySQL backup method):

--flush-privileges
--flush-logs
--delete-master-logs
--master-data=2

The critical one was '--delete-master-logs', not surprisingly, but the other ones came along for the ride as I waded through the mysqldump man pages.

"Why not just disable binary logging", you ask.  Because they're actually a good thing, which is why they're enabled by default.  In a disaster recovery scenario, they let you bridge the gap between your last full backup and whatever transactions occurred until the point of the disaster.  The issue wasn't that they were being generated, it was that they weren't being cleaned up each time I did a full backup (at which point they become superfluous).

So.. the moral of the story is the age-old lesson that computers always do precisely what you've told them to do, whether you actually want what you asked for or not.

Here's a recent listing of free/open-source FPS games.  I was aware of about half of them.  Anyway, I just wanted to jot down the list for future reference.  Free is good.

And actually, while I'm at it, here's a similar article, this one listing free linux RTS games.

Oops -- apparently a well-known ~x86 dependency 'bug' was allowed to surface in stable gentoo.

Here's a forum post and a bug report.

Here's the recipe I used to get around the recent shenanigans associated with e2fsprogs-libs going stable.

1. emerge -avt1 --nodeps e2fsprogs-libs

2. emerge -avt --unmerge com_err ss

3. emerge -avt1 --nodeps e2fsprogs-libs

4. emerge -avt1 --nodeps e2fsprogs

5. emerge -avt1 --nodeps mit-krb5

6. revdep-rebuild -v

Then world updates can proceed, or whatever else you planned on doing.

For reasons that I'm sure involve lawyers, VirtualBox OSE requires some human intervention to correctly install.  The 'additions' iso is flagged as unfetchable by emerge, so it must be downloaded manually and put into /usr/portage/distfiles.

http://download.virtualbox.org/virtualbox/1.6.6/VBoxGuestAdditions_1.6.6.iso

Obviously, '1.6.6' should be changed to the version du jour.

Once you've moved it to /usr/portage/distfiles, be sure to correct the file settings:

• chown portage:portage /usr/portage/distfiles/VBoxGuestAdditions_1.6.6.iso

• chmod 664 /usr/portage/distfiles/VBoxGuestAdditions_1.6.6.iso

The issue only manifests if you've got the 'additions' use flag enabled for app-emulation/virtualbox-ose, which you probably do because it's neato.

Apparently some of my video cards are now officially decrepit.  A recent world emerge broke X for me because my two nvidia geforce FX5500 cards are now on nvidia's 'legacy' list, and no longer supported by the latest (or future) drivers.  It's nothing a quick edit to /etc/portage/package.mask didn't fix:

>=x11-drivers/nvidia-drivers-177.0.0

Then the following steps got me back up and running:

• emerge -avt nvidia-drivers

• update-modules

I tripped on this issue awhile back (when a lightning strike killed one of my nics), but in all the recovery chaos I neglected to document the issue.  And so I tripped on it again just yesterday when I juggled nics between two machines.

The issue is that udev makes a note to itself of which mac addresses correspond to which ethernet device indicators (eth0, eth1, etc..), when they're initially discovered.  And then it 'reserves' that indicator, so if, say, you pull out the nic that was eth0 and put in a new one, it won't get eth0, which is non-intuitive (at least if you've been installing nics for years).

The fix is easy, though.  Just edit the following file:

/etc/udev/rules.d/70-persistent-net.rules

You can either delete the line that contains the indicator that you want to reassign, or you can just edit the mac address itself.  A reboot (or possibly even a restart for udev - I don't know I didn't try) will get the new nic exposed as expected.

It can also be helpful to just run: 'ifconfig -a' if you're not sure which nic got assigned which ethernet device indicator.

Here's a little puzzle for you.  What's wrong with the following two statements:

Along with more choices, and the consequences associated with those choices, Fable II boasts an improved combat system for mastering weapons and magic, an AI canine best friend and the much-anticipated Dynamic Co-op Mode, adding multiplayer functionality for you and your friends.

- EB Games newsletter

Lionhead is still making some tweaks to the online co-op formula. They assure us that online co-op is still coming, and that the goal is to have it launch within the first week after the release in North America. They also clarify that you will still be able to see your friends as glowing orbs prior to the update, but the online interactions will be limited to chat.

- Game Informer

Did you spot it?  The little lie.  Or not so little, depending on whether you think claiming a product has something that it won't actually have is a 'little' lie.  I'm sure the goblins in Marketing are so desensitized to hyperbole that they don't even categorize outright lies as lies anymore.  Perhaps if pressed they'd explain that "It depends on whether 'has' means current tense or future current tense.  Because in the future it'll be true.  Almost certainly.  Probably.  Unless it will cost us too much money.  Anyway, where's the harm?"  The harm is in lying through your bungholes to get people to buy something that doesn't actually *do* what you claim it can do.  We used to call that 'consumer fraud', and it got companies in trouble.  Ah.. those were the days!

I managed to actually squeeze in some gaming the last few weeks, including an abbreviated affair with Arx Fatalis.  If you're an RPG junkie, it's probably worth the $10 it currently costs on Steam, if for no other reason than that you can then sound snobby when you're discussing RPGs with less seasoned gamers.

So EA was going to ratchet up their disdain for people who pay them money for the privilege of playing Mass Effect or Spore on the PC, by using a copy protection scheme that involved online authentication checks every 10 days.  For some inexplicable reason, people got upset at this prospect.

EA subsequently backed off and is now apparently only going to use a more traditional form of customer abuse.  Their change of heart came, apparently, after listening "very closely" to their fans.

Not closely enough.

Listen closely to this:  I.  Hate.  You.

SecuROM doesn't work.  Period.  Using it just makes you look stupid.  Putting it in your games just makes me hate you.  If you want to be stupid and annoying, go do it on your own time, not with products for which I've GIVEN YOU MONEY!!

Astute observers have already identified the true motive behind EA's actions - namely to strike a strategic blow to the used game market, which the big publishers view (through their greed-tinted goggles) as a big ol' giant pile of lost revenue.

Which also makes them look stupid.  And makes me hate them.  Every transfer of ownership of a used game does NOT equate to a lost sale of the same game new at retail.  People buy used games because games are too expensive.  It's the same reason people want to buy songs instead of albums.  But just like the music industry, the mainstream game publishing industry wants desperately to establish a market that allows them to charge you money not just once or twice, but every single time you sit down to enjoy your media.  The concept of 'ownership' is antithetical to their megalomaniacal greed.

And crap like the repeated SecuROM authentication checks are just incremental steps in that direction - where consumers have slowly lost the right to actually own anything.  So every idiot that brushes this stuff off as just tilting at windmills simply doesn't understand the big picture.  They say, "what's the big deal, I'm never without an internet connection, who cares if the game dials the mothership every other week?"  It's not about dialing the mothership, it's about the inexorable erosion of your rights as a consumer.

It's never really about this little annoyance or that little inconvenience.  It's about digging your heals in for a fight against the accumulation of all of those little things that one day measure up to everything.

The powers that be for this battle aren't interested in any given inch, they want to take enough inches to eventually add up to a mile, without anyone ever making enough of a fuss to disrupt the plan.

Here's how you can get OSX (Leorpard) to flush its DNS cache:

sudo dscacheutil -flushcache

If prior to doing so you wanted to see what it actually had cached, use the following:

sudo dscacheutil -cachedump -entries

Not terribly useful, but when you're setting up a LAN and there's some IP:name flux and you need to force OSX to see the new mapping, this is the way to do it.

Want to have the window focus follow your mouse (i.e. without clicking)?  Tough.  You can't.  At least, not for native quartz apps.  You can get the OSX X11 server to do it for X11 apps via the following command:

defaults write org.x.X11 wm_ffm true

But as far as I can tell from googling, it's impossible to get quartz to behave this way.  Which SUCKS!

If you need to do any bulk file transfers from OSX (using SCP or SFTP), Fugu works great.

In what is sure to be a chronic occurrence, I was frustrated by OSX pretending to act like Linux without actually doing the same thing.  Specifically this time I wanted to change the hostname.  The following sort of does it but not really:

• sudo hostname <newhostname>

According to a post at the bottom of this blog, the following are also necessary:

• sudo scutil --set LocalHostName
• sudo scutil --set ComputerName
• sudo scutil --set HostName

In addition, it's necessary to go into [System Preferences] -> [Sharing] and change the 'Computer Name'.

And all of that won't get around the name provided by DHCP, depending on the DHCP server's config.

(note that this applies to Leopard 10.5.2)

I read a Q&A article regarding independent (as in developed and published) role-playing games, and ended up with a list of games that I wanted to be sure to (eventually) seriously sample.  So, here's the list, just for reference purposes:

• Age of Decandence
• Avernum 5
• Escalon
• Minions of Mirth
• The Broken Hourglass (in development)
• Depths of Peril
• Rampant Games (an indie publisher)

Whenever I peek through the looking glass at the *real* indie scene, I'm overwhelmed at the passion and variety thriving there, in its own little ecosystem, almost completely invisible to the 'naked eye' of the mainstream media firehose that runs 24/7 in its attempt to feed the great gaping maw of the corporate growth overlords now holding the reins of the gaming industry.  And I come away feeling guilty that I've actually allowed myself to get swept up in the madness of the oppressively heavy marketing jackboot of the mainstream machine.  I feel like I'm right in the demographic sweetspot for these indie shopkeeps, and I'm doing a disservice both to them and to myself by habitually eschewing my own gaming inclinations in favor of simply keeping up with the Joneses.  So I'm also putting this list here as notice to myself to get with the program.

ooo -- a 'live' blog.  I'm so hip.  I'm attending Joel Burton's plone 3 bootcamp at Penn State, followed by the Plone Symposium East.  Day 1 of the bootcamp was fairly casual, but still very valuable.  Day 2 amped up significantly, and covered the nuts & bolts of the most important Plone 3 developer features.  Not least of which is KSS -- which is, by my assessment, one of the most powerful webapp mechanisms I've ever seen.  Basically, it shatters the atomic page request/response model.  Here are a few KSS resources:

• KSS Project
• KSS Intro on plone.org
• KSS Intro on Zope Wiki
  

 A few other doohickies came to my attention:

• Wing IDE
• Clouseau
• IPython
• ipzope
• PDBDebugMode
  
• DCWorkflowGraph
  
• Book: Web Component Development with Zope 3 (excellent concept coverage, apparently.  Written by "some European guy"?)
  

While I've got a long track record of railing against 'action' RPGs, I have an admitted penchants for just plain RPGs, where by 'plain' I mean games that actually offer legitimate role-playing, rather than confusing the concept with random number generation (which has always struck me as a particularly odd pair of concepts to confuse).  So I've had my eye on Molyneux's Fable ever since I caught wind of it.  That was a long time ago.  Even for real time, not just internet time.  Nevertheless, I finally got around to giving it a fair shake, and unfortunately what fell out of it was an admission that it's purported role-playing was a ruse.  I did not react kindly.  See for yourself.

Like the slow eroding effects of wind, rain, and time, I march through my list of increasingly ancient games, whittling them away one by one.  The most recent being Call of Duty, the darling of 2003.  Cinematic WWII shooters are essentially their own genre, and I admit to being able to enjoy them on their own terms.  I've enough sense to know that for every dozen of them that are released (seemingly constantly), there's probably one or two worthwhile entrants, and I try to march through one of them at least once a year.  Next up is MoH:Pacific Assault, I believe, though it will be awhile, since I also have enough sense to space them out pretty generously on account of them all being basically the same game.  But that's about the meanest thing I'll say about Call of Duty, so enjoy the review.

As usual, it was one of Tycho's thought-provoking posts that provoked some thoughts in me which I in turn felt compelled to commit to the public record.  This time, it was the following statement in particular:

"More than anything else, I think it was installing Vista that made me hate PC gaming. The constant, system-level interruptions, the impaired compatibility, and most of all the savage kick to my framerate's exposed groin made me wonder what precisely in the fucking fuck I was doing screwing around with this onyx monolith."

And in the very instant that I read that sentence, the following (potential) conspiracy revealed itself to me:

What if..  just what if..  Microsoft is using Vista to screw up PC gaming on purpose?

Finally!!!  A new game review.  I knocked out Lego Star Wars with a couple of quick late night play sessions.  It was just the sort of thing to get me back in the writing groove at least, if not an actual gaming groove.  I'll have to bite off something a little more serious if I want to get my sea legs back.  But enjoy the review.

Disclaimer: I love Epic.  Not some dreamy, first crush, doe-eyed pre-teen girl kind of love.  No.  A deep, abiding, respectful, sacrifice my own well-being kind of love.  Why?  Well, mostly because of stuff like this:

"Our PC fanbase is of ultimate importance to us. They are our bread and butter. We can't let them down or compromise their experience in any way to accommodate cross platform play."  - Mark Rein

Oh you read that right: a major developer explicitly prioritizing their PC demographic over the proverbial fat-wallet console crowd.

The larger context for the quote is an explanation for why Epic won't be supporting platform cross-play multiplayer for UT3 (i.e. - PC players and PS3 players playing against each other on the same servers).  Here's a full explanation.  Normally, the phrase "won't be supporting" gets me riled up.  Not so this time.  Give me a legitimate reason why you're not doing something, rather than some maliciously deceitful and manipulative bucket of spin, and I'm usually placated.  Make that reason actually involve *catering* to me, and the vast multitude who've served as the very bedrock of your success, and I'll take you home to meet mom.

That's why I love Epic.  Well, that and the fact that they're not Valve.