2016 — 9 October: Sunday
At some point I shall have to switch on the "resting" BlackBeast to inspect, very closely, its access to my NAS. There's an irritating difference between the way a "new" file can be created on the NAS from BlackBeast versus the way the ownership and permission properties of such a "new" file differ when I attempt to create it on the NAS from Skylark. Nothing that a burst of sudo from a terminal can't fix after the fact but, equally, nothing that I wish to have to fix every time.
"Fault" may lie with the new level of UltraEdit, of course. It's already shown an annoying tendency not to honour the default UTF-8 that I want both in new files and even in existing files that I perform simple edits on.
This is Linux, David. You can do anything in/with Linux...
I'm pleased...
... not to see1 any but the slightest trace of yesterday evening's unwelcome Vespula vulgaris on the back of my neck. I'm also pleased to (not) see any further trace of the ridiculous suggestion that the unlamented Bliar was contemplating a return to politics, but that could just be me.
I waxed...
... a little bit "philosophical" in one of my emails yesterday — must be the impending State Pension!
It's "simply" a question of bringing your battered emotions back into sync with your intellect, while still making some kind of reasonable life for yourself...
If you manage to raise a happy healthy child or two, make more friends than enemies, and leave a gaping hole in peoples' lives when you eventually check out... that's about the best you can hope for.
I stand by...
... some comments I made nine years ago:
One can philosophically deduce, I suppose, that all our political spin doctors (both in Whitehall and in the White House) are (by natural inclination or training) semantic holists. Particularly when describing the successes in Iraq, the war against drugs, the progress in halting global climate change, or the underlying strength of what looks increasingly like a global economy held up by smoke and mirrors.
The original Chronicle essay (in part, on analytical philosophy as reflected in the work of Monty Python) has long since gone walkabout. [Pause] Now, how about some breakfast?
Nice to see...
... my i5NUC is currently more "advanced" than anything else around Technology Towers:
It's busy playing me a compilation of jazz from Ronnie Scott's club. Nice.
A little learning...
... is, indeed, a dangerous thing. Case in point: after a detour through the Badger's Farm Sainsbury's for a couple of well-fired loaves, Len was invited to make what he could of the mess that my little learning had managed to weave around my Synology NAS access hereabouts. He has almost finished convincing me that maybe I would indeed be better off using the client PC-level NFS rather than the user-group-and-ID-oriented Samba. When I set up the /etc/fstab on Skylark I initially "went with" Samba and CIFS (although I have to admit that BlackBeast still has NFS access).
I went for the one I "knew" I could set up versus the one I was less confident about. [Pause] But at least I've now managed to relocate all my webfiles in a more sensible location on the NAS and still successfully publish to AWS.
[Further pause, for a hastily-assembled snack]
It's looking as if it's way past time for a wholesale clean-up of the NAS. Mind you, creating a new shared folder "properly" via the Synology's own tools, and assigning it "sensible" access and ownership permissions has been very helpful.
Acting out of a...
... sense of mild, but probably morbid, curiosity2 to see who likes to follow me around I briefly installed the "Lightbeam" plugin, and then took my Firefox web browser straight out on to the web for a little stroll round most of my more commonplace watering holes:
I clearly don't lead quite as sheltered a web life as I might like. Before you ask, I have no idea what that Facebook icon is doing there as I have never been a member of that odious gang. But the Met Office also seems pretty high on the list of offenders, while that lonely little "a" is "Aeon" magazine, who seem not to feel any great need to track me.
Bah, humbug!
I've just been told (not reminded, by the way) that there's a reported, but unfixed, bug in the Synology control panel. The settings for NFS permissions should be:
Client : 192.0.0.0/8 Privilege : Read/Write Squash : Map all users to admin Async : Yes Non-priv : Denied Cross-mount : Denied
I had been using 192.168.1.*
Once I'm back on solid foods I shall try it!
It seems faintly ironic...
... that the PC currently giving me the least trouble is actually the tiny little i5NUC. Perhaps I should go into exile as a trainer of performing elephants?
I recently rescued...
... a small batch of paperbacks from the last incursion of water I hope to experience in this house. Having done my best to dry them out, I'm currently enjoying Jeremy Bernstein's wonderful essays in "Cranks, Quarks, and the Cosmos". The current one, on Schrödinger, literally fleshes out his vigorous pursuit of the ladies in between trying to poke holes in Quantum theory. And winning the Nobel. I only recently picked up his "What is Life?" but now learn it got excoriated by Max Perutz:
... what was true in his book was not original, and most of what was original was known not to be true even when the book was written...
Crikey!
Happily...
... accessing the NAS via NFS now works a treat with the revised settings. The trick is getting them right in the Synology's Control Panel. I have now commented out all the Samba CIFS entries in the etc/fstab and will, after a good night's sleep, attempt to repeat the trick on the i5NUC. BlackBeast, meanwhile, should already work perfectly.