Category: English

I did a thing

This afternoon, I graduated from “has not yet owned an Alfa Romeo” to “currently owns an Alfa Romeo”.

Anyone who knows me will tell you I’m a car guy. And any car guy (as opposed to a Porsche guy or a Corvette guy or a Miata guy) will tell you that every car guy ought to have owned an Alfa Romeo. The problem is that in order to have owned an Alfa Romeo, you must first own an Alfa Romeo; and then, presumably, either you get rid of it or it gets rid of you, or you both get rid of each other. And until today, I had not yet owned an Alfa Romeo.

This afternoon, I graduated from “has not yet owned an Alfa Romeo” to “currently owns an Alfa Romeo”. Specifically, a 2007 Alfa Romeo 147 1.6 TS. At some point in the future, I will move on from “currently owns an Alfa Romeo” to “has owned an Alfa Romeo”, thereby completing my car guy journey; but that will take a lot of work and a bit of money, although in theory I should be able to flip it for a decent profit.

Yes, it’s red, and yes, it has little Italian flags all over.

Currently planned work:

  • Install “24h Le Mans” sticker on trunk lid for immediate 5 bhp boost
  • Change all fluids and filters
  • Replace rear wiper blade
  • Polish headlights
  • Investigate lifter tick
  • Replace clutch pump and / or follower and / or hydraulic line
  • Replace passenger side window regulator
  • Replace driver side window and mirror controls
  • Replace trunk lid lock actuator
  • Fix driver’s seat release
  • Fix or replace various bits of interior trim
  • Replace gear shift lever knob, possibly with a shorter one
  • Replace whip antenna with either bee sting or shark fin

Maybe I’ll even remember to post updates.

Update: 5 bhp boost unlocked

Close-up of the trunk lid of a red Alfa Romeo 147 1.6 TS sporting a white decal showing the outline of the Circuit de la Sarthe with the text “24h Le Mans”.

Update: of course my Italian car has electrical gremlins.

Inside view of the raised trunk lid of my Alfa Romeo 147 with the lining removed. The trunk lock is disconnected and black and red multimeter probes are inserted into the plug. I am holding the multimeter in my left hand; it is set to 20 V and the display is showing12.04.

Update: I had low washer nozzle pressure and assumed the pump might need changing. Only after ordering a replacement pump from a breaker did I realize that the real issue was that the washer hose was getting pinched when I closed the hood. Cutting the cable ties that tied it to the hood strut solved the issue.

View of the front of a red Alfa Romeo 147 from right above / next to the passenger window. The hood is open and there are traces of washer fluid on it. A multimeter is propped up against the hood so that it is visible from the driver's seat. A ratchet is lying on top of the engine, which is visible through the gap between the rear edge of the open hood and the body.

What year is it, NUUG?

The Norwegian Unix User Group is celebrating its 40th anniversary on August 10. I was invited to speak at the event and initially accepted, but after learning of the schedule for the event, which was not communicated to me at the time, I have decided to withdraw.

The Norwegian Unix User Group was founded in 1984, and is celebrating its 40th anniversary on August 10. A short while ago, I was approached by a member of the organizing team (whom I shall not name) and asked to speak at the event as a representative of the Norwegian BSD community. I was given no information about the event beyond what was expected of me (a 30-minute presentation on the topic of my choice) and the names of some of the other speakers. After some hesitation, as I was having a hard time coming up with a topic that I felt would fit the occasion, I initially accepted.

One thing I found odd was that NUUG’s own event calendar (archive) has no information about the event beyond a time and a place. I get that the list of speakers is not yet finalized, even though there’s less than a month to go, but there is literally nothing beyond “more information to come”. All the links just point back to the same page.

Screenshot of NUUG’s event calendar as of 2024-07-12

This morning, someone pointed out to me that there is a registration page (archive) for the event (which, again, NUUG’s own website does not link to or even mention!) with extensive information about the event. And that information… is not good.

Screenshot of a portion of the registration page for NUUG's 40th anniversary celebration, which includes the finale of Miss Norway 2024 and an opportunity to take photos with the contestants.
Screenshot of a portion of the registration page as of 2024-07-12

tl;dr: the event is collocated with the Miss Norway 2024 finals and attendees are promised opportunities to have their pictures taken with the winners and runners-up.

WHAT THE EVERLOVING FUCK, NUUG?

It goes without saying that I will not be speaking at this event. I will try to turn my presentation (which I’d only outlined, not written yet) into a blog post, but no promises. It would have been a reflection on what “Unix” actually means (beyond the simple fact of the trademark) and how that has changed over the years.

If you’re a member (and perhaps even if you’re not), I encourage you to contact NUUG and let them know your thoughts on this matter.

EDIT: I have written to NUUG to ask them to either change their plans for the event, in which case I will be happy to attend and speak, or cancel my membership. I will update this post again when (if) they respond.

EDIT 2024-08-07: I have yet to receive an official response from NUUG. I’ve been told out-of-band that my email has been received and my membership canceled, but I appear to still be on the mailing list. In the meantime, Norwegian magazine kode24 has written a piece on the topic, citing my tweet and this blog post, which kicked up a bit of a fuss on Twitter. Knut Yrvin chose to respond directly to my month-old tweet with a strawman and insults while Malin Bruland rode to his defense with the same strawman. I am not impressed.

DNS over TLS in FreeBSD with Quad9

It has come to my attention that Quad9 have a blog post providing incorrect instructions for how to set up a FreeBSD system to use their service. I have attempted to get in touch with the author and get him to correct it but have received no response. So here, for the benefit of the Great Search Engine Gods, is the correct procedure; see my earlier post on the topic for more details on how it works.

# cat >/etc/rc.conf.d/local_unbound <<EOF
local_unbound_enable="yes"
local_unbound_tls="yes"
local_unbound_forwarders="9.9.9.9@853#dns.quad9.net 149.112.112.112@853#dns.quad9.net 2620:fe::fe@853#dns.quad9.net 2620:fe::9@853#dns.quad9.net"
EOF
# service local_unbound setup
# service local_unbound restart

No need to reboot.

Note that if you only have IPv4, you may experience slightly degraded performance unless you leave out the IPv6 addresses from the local_unbound_forwarders line (and vice versa in the unlikely scenario where you only have IPv6).

wtf, zsh

wtf, zsh

wtf, zsh

% uname -sr
FreeBSD 12.1-RELEASE-p10
% for sh in sh csh bash zsh ; do printf "%-8s" $sh ; $sh -c 'echo \\x21' ; done 
sh      \x21
csh     \x21
bash    \x21
zsh     !
% cowsay wtf, zsh       
 __________ 
< wtf, zsh >
 ---------- 
        \   ^__^
         \  (oo)\_______
            (__)\       )\/\
                ||----w |
                ||     ||

I mean. Bruh. I know it’s intentional & documented & can be turned off, but every other shell defaults to POSIX semantics…

BTW:

% ln -s =zsh /tmp/sh
% /tmp/sh -c 'echo \x21'
\x21

Netlink, auditing, and counting bytes

In which we find bugs in both the kernel and userspace parts of the Linux audit subsystem.

I’ve been messing around with Linux auditing lately, because of reasons, and ended up having to replicate most of libaudit, because of other reasons, and in the process I found bugs in both the kernel and userspace parts of the Linux audit subsystem.

Continue reading “Netlink, auditing, and counting bytes”