It's a good thing I have two T1 routers here, not one, so the second someone complains my router is suspect I can swap it out. And it's good I have an illicit barrel-key for my smartjack enclosure, so when XO says ``we think the problem is your fault but have no idea for sure because we can't loop back your smartjack. It won't answer the loop code. so, you need to check your equipment and your wiring. okay? so we can't proceed any further. Please you do that and then call us back.''
``No, let's loop back the smartjack first.''
``We can't---''
``I'll do it for you. <plunk>. K., see that?''
``Yes, I see it looped. uh...''
and so on. These telco guys are extremely sharp, clever, effective as long as they're kept moving fast. If you let them slow down, they have time to think and be political and make up reasons it's not their fault.
blahblahlblahlblah [default] ?^Z
[1]+ Stopped(SIGTSTP) install
# disklabel wd0 > ascii-label
using slice blah blah blah...(blah)
# dhclient dc0
DISCOVER
OFFER
REQUEST
ACK...
# ftp castrovalva
[...anonymous]
ftp> cd incoming
[...]
ftp> put ascii-label
[...]
ftp> bye
Then I powered off, fixed whatever I changed my mind about, ^Z'ed
again, ftp'ed the file back, and disklabel -R wd0
ascii-label. Yay BSD. seriously. This is the right kind of
half-asleep for sysadmining. I'd still rather be doing something
else, but at least it's a little fun, as opposed to Windows-sysadmin
half-asleep where I find you'll actually do more accurate work if you
have a few drinks first.
oh, and how did I do the math for the partition layout?
^Z
[1]+ Stopped(SIGTSTP) install
# bc
bc: not found
# echo $(( 63 + 262144 ))
262207
# fg
262707
Filesystem type for partition blah blah [blah] ?
..and so on. BSD rocks. I guess Gentoo is sort of like that, but everything takes longer. And it's not just compiling taking longer. It's just, complicated and clumsy. everything about it.
I got villan to help upgrade the firmware in one of the PRISM2 cards we are using for hostap, and the 1.4.9 -> 1.7.4 station firmware upgrade made the difference whether or not OpenBSD's ath(4) driver in station mode could associate to the NetBSD AP. who knows how many, if any, of our neighbors will be helped by this. The firmware upgrade may even fix the crashes, who knows, but I still want to ditch that NetBSD AP and replace it with OpenBSD where there is a commitment to free wireless drivers. OpenBSD 4.0 ath(4) even seems to work with AR5213, but it's only slightly tested so far.
(actually, to be precise, I had two cards, a 1.3.6 card and a 1.4.9 card. so, what I did is,
so...see if the 1.7.4 card doesn't work, I can roll back to 1.4.9. I didn't actually upgrade the sort-of-working crashes-twice-a-week 1.4.9 card to 1.7.4, potentially leaving me with zero working cards and no access point. Hahahahha you didn't really think I'd do something so FOOLISH as that, did you? Hahaha oh mercy if I could get away with such sloppyness around here my god life would be so so easy.)
seriously. this sucks. i hate it, i hate it. I'm tired. It's not fun. I dread every project. And there's no alternative but to give up what little control I have, and go buy shrinkwrapped consumer crap that I don't just think, I know, will give me more problems. because I deal with that crap, too. at my parents' house, at Eric the Priest's house. crashing. slowdowns, bad performance. NAT state mysteriously bound to physical switchports. security bugs. tools that look like 'telnet' or 'ssh' but aren't, are some bizarro broken version of said tool. clumsy toolchains that stop working when you upgrade the tool host (I use quagga on my access point). low-quality radio chips. i really don't know.
The only trick I've found is to buy hardware, and bury it in the sand for two or three years waiting for the driver to get written and stabilized. It only works maybe a third of the time, but it's a trick.