Monday, June 30, 2008

Solaris the tree killer

Now how's this for a fun experience - I have got this Solaris 8 machine which for some reason finds it necessary to send a title page with every print job. It does not run its own spooler and prints via a print server instead so I am clueless as to where to look for relevant setting to turn this on. So, in the spirit of waste and insanity so characteristic of our times, the machine seems poised to turn a whole forest to waste in no time as it sends quite a few print jobs.

The only configuration it seems to have is contained in the /etc/printers.conf file which looks roughly like the following:

#
# If you hand edit this file, comments and structure may change.
# The preferred method of modifying this file is through the use of
# lpset(1M)
#
caslon:\
:bsdaddr=kiev,caslon:

garamond:\
:bsdaddr=kiev,garamond,Solaris:

bodoni:\
:bsdaddr=kiev,bodoni:\
:job-sheets-default=none

_default:\
:use=gutenberg:

gutenberg:\
:bsdaddr=nrims-fs,gutenberg:


Now exactly where to tell it to knock off that title page nonsense is anybody's guess... But if you know feel free to tell me in the comments and I will be eternally grateful!

Friday, June 27, 2008

Yes, it does look like ReiserFS may at times be losing data

A little while ago we had an experience that made me suspect that ReiserFS may be "forgetful" - in other words, that files under it might at times go missing. Based on a few peoples' experiences that I have recently read about it appears that my suspicions may have been not entirely without merit.

So the practical advice to be derived from this appears to be the following: unless there is a compelling reason to use ReiserFS use ext3 instead.