Fedora Core 8 and Firefox Profiles – works, if you know how!

Ever since I migrated to Fedora Cora 8 I was really disappointed that Firefox-Profiles stopped working as I was used to them in Debian. I used different Firefox-profiles to run concurrent instances with other settings – like “regular web-surfing”, “Tor”, “English proxy for BBC iPlayer”, “test-this-random-plugin”.

But not with Fedora. I tried debugging the script, found a multitude of bug-reports against that, with now results.

Today dr|z3d from #tor pointed me to the correct answer: You have to apply the “-no-remote”-command to Firefox to get it working. Unfortunately, this option isn’t mentioned in the manual page to Firefox on Fedora Core 8.

So, if you want to get multiple profiles running: Add a -no-remote to the command-line. That should do the trick.

dr|z3d: I owe you a beer.

Debian backports to include fixed mysql-package soon

A while ago i posted about a security-problem with the current mysql-client package which is included in the Debian-backports repository. I made a comment on the backports-user mailinglist and finally got an reply from the package-maintainer – they’re going to include a fixed version tomorrow.

Splendid! Dear backports.org maintainers: Keep up the good work! One broken package doesn’t spoil the whole repository.

Tech Tags: mysql debian-backports security

Wolfram’s Mathematica to use MPI

Via HPC Wire:

Dauger Research’s PoochMPI is now working together with Wolfram Research’s Mathematica, every student’s favourite equation-solver. The Mac-software will enable Mathematica kernels to communicate directly via the network in a cluster way, instead of using a traditional grid-approach where a master hands out work-units to slave-nodes, as HPC Wire points out.

Dauger build the software together with Advanced Cluster Systems, who already build the Math Grid Toolkit for the Mathematica/Mac.

The software will be available in six weeks.

Tech Tags: poochmpi, mathematica, mac, dauger research, advanced cluster systems

Cluster Interconnects: The Whole Shebang

Via TOP500.org Blog:

Jeff Layton, Cluster Monkey staff-writer, wrote an excellent article about the different technologies available and suitable for cluster-interconnects.

The article covers Ethernet-, Myrinet and Infiniband-technologies, as well as different approches to MPI like MPI/GAMMA, which circumvents all the kernel-level TCP/IP stuff and performs with latencies as low as a friggin’ 9.54 us from userspace to userspace!

I was impressed. Admit it, you’re too. Can’t wait to try that out – could be a project for this year’s Linuxbierwanderung, which will take place in Lithuania this year and which my wife an me will attend.

Cluster Interconnects: The Whole Shebang

Tags:
cluster, hpc, cluster interconnect

New paper: “Designing a Runtime System for Volunteer Computing”

David P. Anderson, Carl Christensen and Bruce Allen wrote a paper about BOINC, the “Berkely Open Infrastructure For Network Computing”, a public Grid run by volunteers with a total peak-performance of about 350 TeraFLOPS.

The paper will be presented on SC06.

350 TeraFLOPS would be enough to challenge the Earth Simulator for the 10th place in Top500, if BOINC would be allowed to take part.

Tags:
boinc, supercomputer, grid, sc06

Mysql woes reloaded

Remember my fun with Mysql?
Got no idea why i didn’t test it more toroughly:

castor:~# ls -l /dev/null
crw-rw-rw- 1 root root 1, 3 Jul 30 17:41 /dev/null
castor:~# echo $MYSQL_HISTFILE
/dev/null
castor:~# mysql -u root -p
Enter password:
Welcome to the MySQL monitor. Commands end with ; or \g.
Your MySQL connection id is 372 to server version: 5.0.22-Debian_2bpo1-log

Type ‘help;’ or ‘\h’ for help. Type ‘\c’ to clear the buffer.
mysql> select version();
+————————-+
| version() |
+————————-+
| 5.0.22-Debian_2bpo1-log |
+————————-+
1 row in set (0.00 sec)
mysql> Bye
castor:~# ls -l /dev/null
-rw——- 1 root root 52 Jul 30 17:43 /dev/null
WTF?!?!? Can anyone tell me what the hell is wrong with those Mysql-people?

Update: I posted a hint on the mysql-website.

Update2: Apparently the bug is well-known as was fixed eons ago. However, Debian Backports still incorporates the old mysql-client-5.0 package which is still vulnerable to this error.
A deleted /dev/null can seriously screw up you whole system; i noticed it because i couldn’t log into Gnome – and my ~/.xsession-errors said “/etc/gdm/Xsession: line 1: /dev/null: access denied” and such…
So i need to apologize to the Mysql-people: It’s not their fault, they already fixed the problem a while ago.