Strange error when compiling ports on FreeBSD

I was compiling portaudit on an older FreeBSD 5.3 machine today and received this strange message after typing make.

On FreeBSD before 6.2 ports system unfortunately can not set default X11BASE by itself so please help it a bit by setting X11BASE=${LOCALBASE} in make.conf.
On the other hand, if you do wish to use non-default X11BASE, please set variable USE_NONDEFAULT_X11BASE.
*** Error code 1

Strange, since I have X11 disabled in /etc/make.conf and the port in question doesn’t depend on X11. Anyway, simply adding the suggested line to my make.conf resolved the issue.

Linux/UNIX/IP Telephony ninja for hire

I’ve recently started looking for my next gig. If you or someone you know needs someone who can architect/build/operate Linux/UNIX or IP Telephony (VOIP) solutions please drop me a note . I will happily pass my current resume on to anyone who requests it. I’m located in the Calgary area at present but I am willing to telecommute/travel as required and I’m available for both contract and salary positions.

Some of my work includes:

– Built and operated the systems infrastructure of one of Canada’s largest e-commerce websites for 6 years. I scaled their server infrastructure to support millions of page views a day. They had over 50 million dollars in sales for 2006 on the infrastructure I built.

– Implemented a nation wide geographically redundant IP based business telephony solution that can support 50,000 subscribers and scale to millions of subscribers by simple hardware additions. Our small team delivered this solution in less than 90 days.

– Worked on the acquisition of a multi-million dollar e-commerce site, migrating the site from it’s infrastructure to my client’s in 3 weeks.

UPDATE: Since I’m still receiving requests for copies of my resume I thought I’d update this post to note that I’m currently employed full time.

Holding the floor down, IBM style

I finally received my newest e-bay purchase, an RS/6000 server to hone my AIX kung-foo with. IBM doesn’t mess around when they build a box, this RS/6000 server has to weigh at least 75 lbs. It’s the heaviest box I own and prob one of the slowest since it only has a 603e (think 90’s power mac) processor at 200Mhz. I think I paid $65 for it plus shipping. Not bad at all, cheaper than a decent AIX book.

It’s surprisingly quiet… until the SCSI disks spin up, they sound like 25 year old MFM drives. They are plain old 80 pin SCA disks so I will have to replace them with some quiet ones I have here. Should make for a fun project over the next few weeks.

231 Watts of HP-UX Glory

I recently bought a UPM EM100 power meter to get an idea of how much power my gear consumes. My little server room consists of my P3 NAS server, a Sun Ultra 5, misc switching hardware and my HP Visualize C3000 Workstation. Normally I don’t run the HP box because it heats up my little closet quite a bit but I ran it for a couple hours tonight to see how much total power those boxes use. All the gear running consumes 346 Watts of power (ouch!) but with the HP box turned off the total is only 115 watts. I guess that’s why it heats up the closet, it consumes 231 Watts of power!

On a side note my MythTV box consumes a paltry 42 Watts of power. I guess I’m not too worried about how much power my office consumes!

Beep Beep Beep… Beep Beep Beep

HP-UX 11.x has an annoying “feature” that if the machine is booted headless (no kb/monitor) it beeps incessantly. Now that my visualize C3000 workstation has HP-UX running smoothly on it I’ve move it to the closet in my office to free up some space in the office. That worked fine except once I had the system without a monitor it was beeping 3 times every 15 seconds. A quick search of the hp-ux docs I have here gave me this little nugget to disable dtlogin. (no point in a graphical login if it’s in the closet)

/usr/dt/bin/dtconfig -d

If I decide to re-enable the graphical login again I can simply do a:

/usr/dt/bin/dtconfig -e

Just thought I’d share that tidbit as it was driving me batty for 10 minutes.