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| Tuesday, 9 June 2026 | Dereel | Images for 9 June 2026 |
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Still more web site load issues
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Topic: technology, opinion | Link here |
Whatever it was that was hammering my web sites has gone, either away or into hiding. My two current sites, fra.lemis.com and sin.lemis.com, were almost idle.
In fact, sin was idle. It wasn't logging any requests at all. But it was active: I was able to access it perfectly normally under the name sin, and it was one of the addresses for www. tcpdump showed that it was receiving some traffic on port 80 (http), but they weren't being logged by the server, neither as hits nor as errors. What's going on there? Did I make some subtle change that I didn't notice?
One way to find out: take another snapshot of fra and move it to Paris (cdg.lemis.com) and see what happens. After the eternity to get it running, the same thing happened there: almost no hits. It wasn't the DNS: I had updated my zone file to include cdg in the www list, but it didn't seem to sink in. And the TTL was 1 second, so it should have been almost immediate.
But what about lax? The web server was still running there, though it was no longer on the www list—and it was still getting hits, days after being removed from DNS! It looks as if many clients, notably the ones that I want to throttle, are not paying much attention to DNS updates. Still, at the moment things are relatively calm. I can do some more thinking about how to handle the next overload. One might be a large server to handle the transient load.
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More symlink pain
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Topic: technology, opinion | Link here |
I've noticed a number of strangenesses about symlinks: some went away, some tied themselves in knots. And it's not over yet. teevee:/home/grog/Photos was once a symlink to eureka:/Photos/grog, but it was gone. Why is this? Nothing seems to have had anything to do with my problems on hydra.
But definitely the worst was that /Photos had a symlink /Photos/grog/Photos pointing to /grog/Photos. This morning, after 24 hours or so, my nightly photo backup failed:
rsync: readlink_stat("/Photos/grog/Photos/Photos/Photos/Photos/Photos/Photos/Photos/Photos/Photos/Photos/Photos/Photos/Photos/Photos/Photos/Photos/Photos/Photos/Photos/Photos/Photos/Photos/Photos/Photos/Photos/Photos/Photos/Photos/Photos/Photos/Photos/Photos/20230930/Hugin/e-from-house-9.tiff") failed: Too many levels of symbolic links (62)
By that time it had filled the 16 TB disk with copies—I must find a way to ensure that rsync copies links rather than entire files—and it took me much of the morning to remove them again. I wonder what other dangers lurk.
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More ssh strangenesses
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Topic: technology, opinion | Link here |
Yesterday I failed to get sshd working correctly on eureka. All the more surprising that today I saw:
eureka: Warning: Permanently added 'cdg.lemis.com' (ECDSA) to the list of known hosts.
That was connecting from eureka to cdg. But the connection in the other direction still failed. I wish I knew what is going on here.
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M.Zuiko 150-600?
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Topic: photography, general, opinion | Link here |
I'm still lusting after an OM System M.Zuiko Digital 150-600 mm lens, one of the longest super-telephoto lenses available, corresponding to 300-1,200 mm on a “full frame” camera. And with a 2x teleconverter it would get a “full frame” equivalent focal length of 2,400 mm.
But do I need it? I already have the Leica Vario-Elmar 100-400 mm lens. Do I really need another one? At the very least I can investigate.
First, how do the lenses compare? Thomas Eisel produced a useful comparison video, comparing the 300 mm prime, the 150-400 mm lens that I tried last year, the 150-600, the 100-400 mm and the 75-300 mm lens, which he put in that order. He didn't mention my Vario-Elmar, though I have heard that it would come behind the 100-400 mm M.Zuiko. Apart from considerably better image quality, it also has considerably better image stabilization, about 4 EV better than the Olympus 100-400, and probably even more than the Vario-Elmar (Panasonic/Leica are too polite to mention the value). So from that point of view, it sounds like a good choice. The question remains: do I need it? Interestingly, it's also useful as a macro, and I've run into issues with close-ups of small, distant things, for which it could be useful.
The other question is: where can I get one cheaply? From time to time I look at things on Buyee, and sure enough, there's one available in good condition for 288,000 ¥, about AUD 2,550. But can I trust them? There are additional prices: Buyee commission (“Proxy Service Fee", about $3 to $5 US), shipping and Australian GST (10%).
How much is the shipping? They don't divulge the exact prices, which depend on size and weight, but they could be reasonable. All in all I should still be under AUD 3,000. And the next cheapest is $2,732 from Japan, a more reliable sum. That corresponds to about $3,005 after GST. Both of these are used. Or I could buy a brand new one for $3,505 in Australia, with Australian warranty.
Which do I choose? Buyee still sounds suspicious to me. The item in question is interesting:
Only listed 40 minutes ago! But I saw it yesterday! Now maybe they automatically renew if they don't sell, but it seems fishy to me.
There's a solution to all this, of course: don't buy anything. But it's interesting to note that I have been quoted $3,689 for the current version of the Vario-Elmar. That's over double the $1,628 that I paid nine years ago.
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Larissa
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Topic: animals | Link here |
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| Wednesday, 10 June 2026 | Dereel | Images for 10 June 2026 |
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Ha ha, only joking
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Topic: technology, opinion | Link here |
Unexpected email from Aussie Broadband this morning:
Recently, we sent you an email about changes to your NBN 25Mbps/5Mbps Unlimited ($75) plan(s).
Please disregard these changes, this was an error.
Your NBN 25Mbps/5Mbps plan(s) will not be changing from 1 July 2026.
And that after all the problems I had updating my system! Can they maybe allow me to try out the current “plan” and then return to the old legacy plan if I don't like it? Called up Aussie and spoke to Hayden. No, that won't work, as I expected, though it would have been in their interest. So the upgrade test would cost me $164 in the first year and $144 from then on. Not interesting for me, so it's all off again.
Now if the had only told me that last week.
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Still more broken symlinks
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Topic: technology, opinion | Link here |
Wanted to save mail this evening while on teevee. ~/Mail/foo doesn't exist. In fact, ~/Mail doesn't exist. It should have been a link to eureka:/home/grog/Mail, but it was just gone.
What's behind all this?
| This page contains (roughly) yesterday's and today's entries. I have a horror of reverse chronological documents, so all my diary entries are chronological. This page normally contains the last two days, but if I fall behind it may contain more. You can find older entries in the archive. Note that I often update a diary entry a day or two after I write it. | Do you have a comment about something I have written? This is a diary, not a “blog”, and there is deliberately no provision for directly adding comments. It's also not a vehicle for third-party content. But I welcome feedback and try to reply to all messages I receive. See the diary overview for more details. If you do send me a message relating to something I have written, please indicate whether you'd prefer me not to mention your name. Otherwise I'll assume that it's OK to do so. |
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