The BBS2 arrived in around 7 days (I was actually away when it was delivered) and was exactly as expected. The drive slots work well and it was very easy to install the initial drive. Being a simple person I decided to use the 2 drive bays with the same colours as a raid pair, which left me with the extra bay for the operating system disk. I installed the OS with just the first disk and then added the first 2 disks as a RAID array purely for storage. After installing the 2nd and 3rd disks I did need to change the boot order in the BIOS due to the numbering, but that wasn’t a huge problem.

I installed Ubuntu Server 9.04 as the OS as it’s what I have Ubuntu of some flavour on the majority of my other servers and the desktop 9.04 on my laptop. This policy has already paid off and has allowed things to progress smoothly. The install was done via a USB memory stick and went without any problems.

The fan on the server is constant speed and takes it’s power directly from the HDD backplate. Given this limit on the amount of cooling I’m keen to get the CPU (an Atom 330) running with CPU scaling so it generates as little heat as possible. The server shouldn’t ever see a huge load (it’s mainly being used as a NAS and media server) so I’m hopeful that once the CPU scaling is working it should spend much of it’s life at less than 100% performance.

One slight annoyance was that the BIOS version was 103 when delivered, even though there have been several updates and the latest version was released earlier this month (rev 171). Installing the update took a little while as I needed to create a bootable USB DOS stick and copy on the correct files. It took 3 attempts to get the update completed, but once done it fixed an issue with the server sitting at 100% CPU.

mt-daapd doesn’t run on Ubuntu 9.04 due to an issue with how it uses avahi, so I built a custom package using the instructions from the patch author (here). Once installed Rosies iTunes was able to see the library and play from it with no problems.

Presently the storage RAID is using 2 old 200Gb hard drives, but they’re not especially cool or quiet, so I’m going to upgrade to using newer and larger drives at some point soon. I’m not yet sure which drives I’ll buy, so if anyone has any suggestions for 1Tb+ drives, let me know! The cooler and quieter the better.

As usual with the Landmark Trust the accommodation was excellent. The crockery and cutlery was showing it’s age a little, but was still more than functional. At night it was incredibly quiet, though we didn’t see any of the ghosts talked about in the log book!

The weather really helped the weekend as there was barely a cloud in the sky for our 4 days. The sun really had some strength in it (as my head attested to) and t-shirts were the order of the day for the first time this year.

Continuing in the tradition of “deckchair pictures” we were once again joined by Tess for this one (taken on self timer by Rosie):-)

We’re already looking for our next landmark to visit

Our accommodation came courtesy of the Landmark Trust, an organisation I can recommend without reservation for anyone in the UK. We stayed in Saddell Lodge, which as it allows dogs meant we didn’t need to find anyone to dogsit Tess. I suspect she enjoyed it as much as we did, or even more given how muddy she ended up

More pictures will follow over the next few days.

We returned home today after a thoroughly relaxing weekend.

Django stores the passwords in a different format than mod_authn_dbd expects. It also uses salts for it’s SHA1 generation, which further complicates the simple password matching that APR does (and is the checking implemented in mod_authn_dbd). I tried a few different ways round it using mysql queries, but all to avail.

The eventual solution I came up with was to adapt mod_authn_dbd into mod_authn_django, with a password checking routine that understands how django stores the passwords and can do the correct things to compare them.

Not sure if it’ll help anyone else, but if there’s any interest I can make it available

All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing.

Edmund Burke

The US PTO really does make some dramatically poor decisions.

Of course, the patents have to be filed in the first place, so some of the blame must lie with the companies or individuals that make the applications. Surely an organisation like Apple has done a lot of work on the possible ramifications of being granted the patent - otherwise why would they have taken the time and effort to file it?

This patent screams of protectionism and a desire to make money while placing obstacles in their competitors way.

I believe the quote from Edmund Burke sums up my feelings nicely. If you’re contemplating buying anything from Apple, which side of that equation do you see yourself on?

It was a great meal, with a nice atmosphere, superb food and great value for money. Parking for their St Andrews locations can be tricky, but The River House has a large car park.

If you’re in the area and want a meal, I’d highly recommend it!

The alignment wasn’t perfect, but it was done in a rush and I hope it’ll get better as I’m able to take more time.

I also tried attaching the D300 to the scope. The proved to be a huge improvement over the D70 as the exposure metering works - which proved useful in saving time and wasted images Once again, the biggest problem was getting the focus spot on - but that’s something I need to work on.

They certainly won’t be getting any of my money following todays experience!

Apparently none of the staff were suprised by this, but the inability to get the medication prescribed until the following day certainly seemed less than ideal to us