Quin's Adventures

Linux Lunacy

2009-04-23T23:12:00.004+10:00

Okay, so since I got my brand new PC, I've had a few spare parts to play with. I went to rebuild a system with some odds and ends using my previous board, only to have it mysteriously shut down and start screaming this high pitched noise. Further investigation (read; pulled the entire sucker apart until it was nothing) showed the CPU became unseated from its socket. I assume heat did it, because none of the clamps had come off and the heatsink was firmly attached. Unfortunately, the CPU is fried, so I dug out an even more ancient board, my old AMD K7 with a Duron 850MHz.

After messing around a little, I finally settled on using Debian; I was looking to set up a media center in the lounge room for my mother to watch videos on (as she's using her ASUS Eee-PC with its tiny screen at the moment), but I also wanted a system I could (ab)use remotely - Linux seemed to fit the trick nicely - or so I thought.

I have literally spent the last three days, two migraines, and generally making myself feel crappier than I am - not really over installing Debian itself, the whole process of putting a base system on there went flawlessly after I realised GRUB's "Error 18" meant the board's BIOS couldn't handle a boot partition of more than 8GB. I guess the board really is old, and to be honest I am surprised it still works, it's been collecting dust for over six years now. My problem lay in trying to get the 3D accelerator (an ATI Radeon 9550) going, which was orphaned by the dead system.

Now, I'm no Linux newbie, I've used it quite competently in the past (to the point where I even had fun playing with Gentoo at one stage), but the error I was getting had me stumped, X.org would boot, but all I would get is this:

(**) fglrx(0): using built in AGPGART module: no
(II) fglrx(0): [pci] find AGP GART
(EE) fglrx(0): [agp] Failed to get AGP mode!
(EE) fglrx(0): cannot init AGP
(II) fglrx(0): driver needs X.org 7.1.x.y with x.y >= 0.0
(WW) fglrx(0): could not detect X server version (query_status=-1)
(EE) fglrx(0): atiddxDriScreenInit failed, GPS not been initialized.
(WW) fglrx(0): ***********************************************
(WW) fglrx(0): * DRI initialization failed! *
(WW) fglrx(0): * (maybe driver kernel module missing or bad) *
(WW) fglrx(0): * 2D acceleraton available (MMIO) *
(WW) fglrx(0): * no 3D acceleration available *
(WW) fglrx(0): ********************************************* *

No amount of messing around with the Proprietary or Open Source drivers would do anything to fix this, something was stopping it from getting access to the AGP card. My friend, Hirato, even decided to give it a shot by logging in remotely and playing around (I suspect to stop me from getting dismayed at Linux completely), but even he gave up after a few hours, it seemed unfixable. Even Google was coming up pretty useless here, and us geeks basically use it as our #1 information resource on the internet. Most people were having the exact same problem, but there was never any real solution from others, and I guess anyone experiencing the problem either gave up or never posted their success story; so that's what I'm trying to do here now to fix that.

So, I was about to give up, as my headache was starting to return from overexertion, when I decided to whack one more last-ditch search into Google: "linux agp amd k7". The results themselves didn't look too promising, apart from the top two which were mailing list threads (on an almost completely irrelevant subject), but I decided to flip through the threads nevertheless. There was a bunch of talk about kernel crap and debug calls, but the end result of those discussions ended in one clear thing; EDAC on an AMD K7 running Linux steals system resources and doesn't release them to other modules, like "agpgart".

To me, it seemed a bit far fetched, but I decided to give it a go anyway - I had nothing left to lose. I ran a "lsmod | grep edac", two results; "amd76x_edac" and "edac_core". Okay, so I poked around /etc a little and found "/etc/modprobe.d/blacklist" to the bottom of which I placed these two lines:

blacklist amd76x_edac
blacklist edac_core

I then rebooted the machine just to be sure everything was back to running how it should be, as I had been messing around alot, but I'm pretty sure I could've just run "rmmod" on the modules if things had have been clean. To my surprise, I ran "startx" and the damn thing worked.

(II) fglrx(0): AGP card detected
(**) fglrx(0): using built in AGPGART module: no
(II) fglrx(0): [pci] find AGP GART
(II) fglrx(0): [agp] AGP protocol is enabled for graphics board. (cmd=0x0f000314)
(II) fglrx(0): [agp] graphics chipset has AGP v2.0
(II) fglrx(0): DRI initialization successfull!
(II) fglrx(0): Acceleration enabled

Honestly, I did a dance in the living room right then and there. Three days of messing around and it was something as simple as removing a couple of faulty modules, I really couldn't believe it. It's this type of obscure annoyance that made me give up on Linux in the first place, but I really have to say I am overjoyed to have found the solution which nobody else could seem to correlate. So if you're having trouble getting an AGP card going in an old system (namely the K7 series motherboards), try turfing out the "edac" modules - it worked for me.

And that's my success story on another adventure in Linux Lunacy, hopefully you Google'rs will come across this entry in the years to come, find it answers your question and be forever grateful that you never got the headache I had to endure. Happy 3D acceleration to you.

A Drug Called Google

2006-12-24T17:26:00.000+10:00

Google, google, google. Servicing millions around the globe, it now contains half my life, including; This very Blog, as well as my Browser Settings, Calendar, Docs and Spreadsheets, Email, Notebook, Webpage, Homepage, Search Results, Photos, News Reader, and Chat. Needless to mention the other products I frequently use like; Earth, Image Search, Maps, Toolbar, Video, Web Search, Groups, and Translate.

So you have to ask yourself; How much before enough is enough? Before it consumes us all? Also, what do they want with all this information?

CatX - A Story of Determination

2006-06-26T15:14:00.000+10:00

CatX Loading an Archived FileI was looking for a program to catalog my cd collection, but unfortunately none seemed up to scratch. At first I was going to settle for an external program that worked off a central database, but after sifting around for a while I had other ideas.

What I wanted was something that'd show all my files in the main tree on the media drive in their respective directories. When you double click on an archived file, it tells you to insert the cd, then proceeds to execute it. I played around with WinAPI until my head hurt, but I did come across one thing I made use of, SetupPromptForDisk which handles the CD stuff. In the end I wrote the cataloguing program in mIRC, and just used a stub program I wrote to handle the association.

Lo and behold, CatX was born. In less than a day I managed to hack up this little program to run an archived file from CD anywhere on my network, so now the tedious task of remembering what is on which cd is no longer a problem, and it fits in with my nice little tree of data.

Wikipedia Adventures: Masturbation

2006-06-08T18:08:00.001+10:00

While reading about the SSRI antidepressant I take, Citalopram Hydrobromide on Wikipedia I was taken on an interesting tangent (as is common when reading articles to follow a daisy chain of links) to an article on Anorgasmia (of which I suffer as a side-effect of my medication) that lead me to an article on Masturbation in which I found something that made me giggle, and I quote;

In 1994, when the first African-American female Surgeon General of the United States, Dr. Joycelyn Elders, mentioned as an aside that perhaps it ought to be mentioned in school curricula that masturbation was safe and healthy, she was forced to resign, with opponents asserting that she was promoting the teaching of how to masturbate. Many believe this was the result of her long history of promoting controversial viewpoints and not due solely to her public mention of masturbation. Her case led to the coining of a new and humorous slang term for masturbation: Firing the surgeon general.

Also, interestingly related to the article is a List of Songs About Masturbation.

Westnet Usage Grabber

2006-04-29T17:55:00.000+10:00

As you may know, I recently made the move to Linux. As an ADSL customer with WestNet, I needed a simple way to view my current download usage, and lo and behold wug is announced. Also, just in case you're wondering why I didn't use the Mozilla NetUsage Extension, the reason is simple; I don't always have my browser open, and I don't always want to know what my usage is when I do have it open.

Quick Demo:

everybody@sonic:~$ wug help
Westnet Usage Grabber version 0.01
(C) 2006 Quinton Reeves GNU GPL

/home/everybody/bin/wug [options]
  apad          Pad values on the right instead of left
  last          Use the last cached grab
  tree          Tree style output
everybody@sonic:~$ wug
WestNet Usage Statistics @ Sat Apr 29 17:59:31 EST 2006 (1d6h0m28s remain)
  On Peak  [ Limit    20000M ] [ Used 19780.82M ] [ Left   219.18M ] [ Free  3026.63M ]
  Off Peak [ Limit    20000M ] [ Used  8744.82M ] [ Left 11255.18M ] [ Free   812.16M ]
everybody@sonic:~$ wug tree
WUG
|- Date           Sat Apr 29 17:59:34 EST 2006
|- Rollover       1d6h0m25s
|- On Peak
|  |- Limit       20000M
|  |- Used        19780.82M
|  |- Left        219.18M
|  `- Free        3026.63M
`- Off Peak
   |- Limit       20000M
   |- Used        8744.82M
   |- Left        11255.18M
   `- Free        812.16M

Also of interest is my profile.d userbin.sh, which adds ~/bin to my $PATH. Pretty basic stuff, which is why I'm wondering why it isn't included as a default, but oh well. I create heaps of useful (and useless) scripts which follow me around to each Linux install, putting them in my home directory makes sure they're backed up when I do.

Adventures in Linuxland

2006-04-27T19:01:00.000+10:00

Recently, I took another stab at the 򪪪򪪪world of Gentoo Linux on my server system knuckles, and it impressed me so much with how far it came since I last used it (2004.1), that I was compelled to install it on my laptop, sonic and rid myself of the dreaded Windows XP Home. While it took me just over a day to get my server up and running, I ended up spending six days getting everything setup optimally on my trusty lappy. Without inbuilt wireless support, I scrambled around for a CAT5e cable and plugged it up so I could actually download the installation files.

The first of my problems started when I was installing, I needed to configure the kernel for the system, and I loathe too many modules (it slows the compile time, and doesn't fine tune your system, which is the point of using Gentoo), so I had to tweak the settings based on a very sketchy output from msinfo32. For the first run, I decided it was best if I just compile a simple kernel that would just run, I was soon glad I did. Sifting through references on powermanagement and laptops on the Gentoo website and WiKi, I found I should install a seperate branch of the Gentoo kernel called suspend2, which enables the advanced features found in laptops, such as suspend to disk (also known as hibernate).

Before I went fiddling with the kernel alot, I decided I should be doing something useful while tweaking the various system configuration files, and knowing X.Org/KDE would take a very long time (from previous experience), I emerged that and set to work.

It was very easy to get distracted by various tangents along the way, while doing my power management, I stumbled across references to fbsplash and decided to whack in support for that, which required another kernel tweak. Failing to get the Intel 915 framebuffer working, I used VESAFB-TNG which worked a charm, because it was important to me to run the laptop at it's native 1280x800 resolution in 24bpp.

Once X was all installed, I went off to test my nice framebuffer enhanced kernel. Upon bootup, I was informed that there was no 1280x800 image in the theme I'd chosen. My path forked again as I hacked apart the 'Gentoo' theme and resized the image, then tweaked the config file for it to make it look just right. Alas, after all this was done, I was presented with errors about ACPI not working, aparrently I needed to select a proper CPU scaling method, as well as find the proper option to select the resume device. There, I ended up getting frustrated looking for the correct tree in make menuconfig and edited .config by hand. Now it wanted security features built in (namely MD5 and other crypto stuff), so I did that, compiled, and finally it worked.

Time for KDE, and as I expected, KDE 3.5.2 was stunningly beautiful, but the reason I'm here was to fine tune the crap out of my system, wasn't I? I found some docs on X.Org, Transparency, and the Composite Extension and set out to get it up and running, knowing I would hardly use it due to the amount of resources it hogs, I just wanted to look at the pretty eyecandy for a while. As it turned out, I had to recompile X.Org and KDE with a new USE flag composite. Thankfully, not every single part of KDE needed recompiling in the process, as the first iteration had taken a day and a half. When all was done, composite ended up hogging way more resources than I initially expected, the KDE transparency dialog didn't take effect immediately and required me to restart X (this is one of the reasons I use a screen session for most of my work, on both sonic and knuckles).

Turning to the rest of the system configuration at large, it was time to get my WiFi working, as I didn't see any support for my card I ended up doing a Google Search and found that I needed the madwifi project for my Atheros based chipset. Getting this setup was one of the most frustrating parts of the whole procedure. The project's IRC channel were no help in diagnosing why it would refuse to connect to my access point (the best they offered was to roll back to an older version which did absolutely nothing). Giving up on them I decided to do what I do best, learn for myself by prodding every single part of it. Seems it didn't like using WEP encryption, and I couldn't use WPA because I play with my Nintendo DS only, which only supports WEP. I didn't want to leave my AP ungaurded so I setup MAC address filters to only allow my systems to connect (and while I realise this is unoptimal, it was about the only choice I had).

Now it was time for ACPI and suspend2. After tinkering around for a few hours I finally managed to get hibernation to work, which was what I wanted, because if I close the lid it needs to resume for where I left off for me. Unfortunately, the WiFi decided to give me more problems by refusing to reload whenever I resumed. I hooked up the CAT5e cable again and did some research, but found no viable answers. My method of fixing it; shut the whole damn system down and start again. I would later work out when I accidently did ifconfig ath0 down that I needed to unload all the wlan modules, kill all references to the interface, and run /etc/init.d/net.ath0 start all over. Still haven't tested this method with hibernation yet though.

Next, I wanted media playing. I'd used mplayer before, and liked the libcaca output, but getting it to run optimally required me to fiddle with config settings for a while. It was a big step from using the idiot-proof Media Player Classic in Windows.

The other part was finding a decent music player. As I wasn't going to use the archaic XMMS, I played with WINE for a while as I was considering doing all this on my partners laptop too (an idea which I've since abandoned), and she would want games like GTA: San Andreas. So I tried WinAMP 5.21, but unfortunately, it missed features, refused to give me a taskbar entry, and decided it would stay 'on top' no matter what I did. Probing around the net I tried a few players, including BMPx (an XMMS fork), audacious (a BMP fork (yeah a fork of a fork)), and amaroK.

amaroK 1.4-beta3 in KDE 3.5.2By far, the prettiest and most useful player was amaroK, and with all the feature-laden options, it lacks one simple thing; Queue Management. Sure there's a queue, but apart from adding/removing files to/from the queue, the only other option is moving the selected entry up/down. I'm the type of guy who likes to build a masterful queue containing over a day worth of music, randomise the sucker, and set it off to play while I work. amaroK lacks this very functionality, and it will be this simple fact that I may stop using it, despite all the great work done to it. A review of bugs.kde.org revealed someone else had posted a wishlist containing the same thing, and the amaroK developers response to this; "This feature will never be added to amaroK, as discussed on IRC". Reading this, I was totally devestated. How could something so useful be totally dismissed? I guess that's the fickle FOSS world for you.

What amuses me is that while doing all this, I still managed to do work on my project xrcd (and create an SVN Repository for it), and have a fight with freenode's head of staff. I'm not doing bad for one man in a single week, am I?

Rob Levin's FeeNode

2006-04-27T13:34:00.000+10:00

Two years ago, I embarked on a journey to leave my home network of corrupt operators, AustNet, and search for a better, more suitable place for an open source developer and collaborator, like myself. I'm no famous person, but those who know me generally like me. I took with me a few friends, who had also been disgruntled with the way our current network was being run. Operators were meddling too much with channels, taking them over, and generally creating unwanted politics.

At the time, I was working on an IRC bot which joined channels and simply counted how many lines were being spoken. My idea was that you have more of an idea how useful a channel is if you get a count of activity as well as number of users. Typically, here, I was inspired by a few things Google had attempted in the past, but had failed due to privacy concerns. My project in no way logged the content of messages seen, and provided a way for channels to stop the bot, which I and many others affectionately called murl, from joining their channels should they so wish.

I had heard of freenode from a few people about IRC, and decided to investigate the website. Needless to say, it sounded like a developer's wet dream. Hastily, I joined the network, and it's associated social/staff channel to investigate further. There, I was greeted by a cheery (at the time) staff member by the name of asuffield, who I started to question about the network. After I was satisfied that everything met my needs, I started to talk about my project and if the staff there would have any problems with it, promising to work with staff members wherever possible to ensure that I was no bother. This staff member was very intrigued by the project, and I spent quite a long time discussing it with him, at the end of which I was welcomed to bring my project to the network.

During my first few weeks on the network, I encountered my share of problems, as an open source developer does, but the most of which was directed from an extremely small number of very uptight users screaming bloody murder about privacy. Despite my tireless efforts to make the project viable, and keep these people happy, my dream was soon squashed by the intervention of one so-called head of staff, lilo.

At first, this man seemed nice enough, and even appeared willing to work with me to 'iron out the kinks'. Soon enough, that attitude passed, and after a few complaints, the bot and myself found themselves banned from freenode (or D-Lined as it was called). After trying staff@freenode.net (to which there was no response), I asked my friends to talk to them for me, when I did return, I was saked to disable my 'indexing' of channels, and with one foul swoop, half the point of moving to freenode was lost.

As of now, I've spent the last two years on freenode. I, and many others, have endured constant harassment from lilo, including a highly frequent stream of global notices begging for donations, supposedly so he can focus more on freenode and less on trying to earn a living (and who of us wouldn't want to be paid to sit on IRC all day, but I mean, come on). He's been seen meddling with channels, and their politics, but rarely ever seen doing actual work which would benefit freenode. Several times, IRCd and Services projects have been started to improve the network, and discontinued due to lilo's politics getting in the way of actual implementation, pissing off more than his fair share of developers in the process, including myself, as I was naive enough at the beginning to think I could help this shell of a network be a better place, even after my own dream had been dashed.

When freenode channel policy changed, we were forced to bring our channel, #juped, into line with the changes, as at the time we had no general purpose (the main project was abandoned), and we were now considered 'off-topic'. CXI and I spent a week building webpages, repositories, and other parts essential to a developer community. We labeled ourselves as a collaborative of developers who worked on our own projects, but shared ideas, tips, and general knowledge to help each other when needed. Alot of the time there may have been general chatter, but who can focus on work 24 hours a day?

We submitted a Group Application with freenode, and were assured it would be seen to as soon as possible. lilo interrogated us and our webpages fiercely trying to find a loophole in our effort in order to give us a negative reply, after being disappointed our application was simply lost, this has not only happened to our channel, but many other channels lilo did not agree with. Without a Group Contact, your channel is not official, and freenode may take the channel from you at any time they wish.

The current situation started when a fellow developer and friend on mine, jilles (who was among the developers lilo had pissed off in the past), witnessed the next donation atrocity lilo was embarking upon at his personal weblog. The man now wants US$312,000 to fund a new motorhome, and pay his outstanding student loans.

Quote; ..."it would help a lot in the development of freenode if I could travel more. I could visit sponsors on their home turf; I could meet participants at conferences. I could do "coder weekends" to help advance the development of replacements for our aging software. Replacing our old trailer with a middle-range motorhome would let me do that."

Do I need to point out, a large number of developers in the open source community do not even live in the USA? Myself, and the friends I brought with me are from Australia, bioanarchism is from Singapore, and jilles is in the Netherlands. None of us would benefit from lilo getting a motorhome, nor do I think he'd do anything more than simply travel where he pleases, ignoring those open source developers that don't interest him, and giving fake pleasantries to those he does visit.

Also, I haven't seen one single iteration of attempted software replacements succeed, unless he's planning on going to these coders houses, chain them up, and whip them when they don't do as their told, I don't see how he will accomplish doing this with a motorhome. The current generation software, hyperion, is just a patch of their old software, dancer. Changing the name was just to make it look like something had actually been done.

Fed up of the attitude this head of staff had taken toward leeching money from innocent developers (we're not rich you know, we'd be closed source developers if we were), jilles left the network in a fit of disgust. After doing so, I sat there for a moment; "Hang on, jilles is quite a level-headed guy, for him to get like that, there has to be serious problem.". I was informed of the personal blog, SpinHome by some of the channel members, and I soon found out the problem.

lilo has taken advantage of his position before to accrue dontations in the name of freenode for his own personal benefit, harassing us users with global notices. I knew it wouldn't be long before it started again, he already globalled three times when Google announced it would now be hosting their Summer of Code on SlashNet, urging us to join the channel he set up for the occasion, ##googlesummer.

I followed jilles to AthemeNet, where he is both a developer and staffer. He'd already set up a mirror of #juped there, so I joined that and the staff/social channel #atheme and began to interrogate them. It took me three days of careful decision to finally make the move to that network, after my experience on freenode, I'm more than suspicious of a network before I integrate myself now. Although the network is currently small, I've found the staff to be friendly, the policies fair, the politics minimal, and most of all, there is no head of staff. All decisions are passed by vote of all staff.

What follows is a snippet of #juped on freenode after I made the decision, and the reaction lilo had to it;

# angeles changed the topic of #juped to: Rob Levin AKA lilo wants US$328000 for a motorhome (and to generally not have to work for a living), let's get outta here before the global notices start! irc://irc.atheme.org/juped <@angeles> 12:36.08 -!- Irssi: Network freenode removed # angeles!n=quin@dsl-124-148-125-26.qld.westnet.com.au has quit: "leaving" Day changed Wed Apr 26 2006 # walker!n=peter@58.145.146.84 has joined #juped <@praetorian> see topic <@praetorian> pter # walker!n=peter@58.145.146.84 has quit: Read error: 110 (Connection timed out) # shadower!n=shadower@office.auconnect.net has joined #juped # optimus!i=lucifer@foocode.net has joined #juped # mode/#juped: +v optimus by ChanServ # optimus!i=lucifer@beigetower/reboot has quit: "Sleep? Oh boy! That's where I'm a viking!" # optimus!i=lucifer@foocode.net has joined #juped # mode/#juped: +v optimus by ChanServ # Pauk!n=shadower@office.auconnect.net has joined #juped # shadower!n=shadower@office.auconnect.net has quit: Read error: 110 (Connection timed out) < stylus> yo all. :) # Serial!n=~dickens@unaffiliated/serial has joined #juped <@felipe> 13:31 <+somegeek> cool, got to love it <@felipe> 13:31 <+somegeek> topic of #juped <@felipe> 13:31 <+somegeek> they actually managed to get every single detail wrong :) <@felipe> 13:31 <+somegeek> and be unpleasant too :) <@felipe> 13:31 * somegeek is impressed :) <@felipe> maybe make +i? <@felipe> (that's how Serial got here.) < Serial> ;) < Serial> :o # Serial!n=~dickens@unaffiliated/serial has left #juped: "Leaving" # mode/#juped: +s by felipe # mode/#juped: -s by ChanServ < stylus> garrr, tlock.. # somegeek!i=levin@unaffiliated/somegeek has joined #juped * somegeek looks at the topic < somegeek> very impressive < somegeek> the only accurate thing in it is the irc: url :) < somegeek> I'm not using my official position <@felipe> explaining to people which of the bits are wrong wouldn't hurt < somegeek> I do want to continue to work for a living < somegeek> which I'm doing now <@felipe> there's lot of people that don't get it (I'm not really one of them) < somegeek> $328000 is inaccurate, it's $312000 and only part of it is for a motorhome (and actually considering the part I'm chipping in, it's a bit less than $312000) <@Anil> anyways, this is off-topic in here < somegeek> I'm not using my official position, I'm using this generally powerless IRC nick < somegeek> and I'm certainly not using global notices # Anil changed the topic of #juped to: . # PhilKC!i=PhilKC@azureus/PhilKC has joined #juped < somegeek> Anil: oh, leave it up....if you guys want to move I'm sure nobody will object # mode/#juped: +i by felipe < somegeek> in fact, a staffer or two can come by later to provide the official position on user harassment ;) < somegeek> anyway, I'm gone....seriously though < somegeek> you should consider the move, athemenet is a great network * somegeek waves # somegeek!i=levin@unaffiliated/somegeek has left #juped: * PhilKC blinks and wonders what he just walked in on... < stylus> *cough* <@Anil> just some non-sense # Anil changed the topic of #juped to: Rob Levin AKA lilo wants US$328000 for a motorhome (and to generally not have to work for a living), let's get outta here before the global notices start! (and oh, don't forget the $15,000 student loans) | irc://irc.atheme.org/juped # angeles!n=quin@dsl-124-148-125-26.qld.westnet.com.au has joined #juped # mode/#juped: +o angeles by ChanServ # mode/#juped: -i by angeles # mode/#juped: +b *!levin@* by angeles # mode/#juped: +b lilo!*@* by angeles # mode/#juped: +b somegeek!*@* by angeles < stylus> heh. <@stefan> mmm, will that ident ban work with the i= system? <@angeles> oh yeah, forgot about that shit # mode/#juped: -b+b *!levin@* *!*levin@* by angeles # angeles changed the topic of #juped to: Rob Levin AKA lilo wants US$328000 for a motorhome (and his outstanding student loans), let's get outta here before the global notices start! | Trolling topics and trying to control people's opinions is so communistic it ain't funny, get a better hobby lilo | We were never wanted here, and our group application was lost twice, AthemeNet HO! irc://irc.atheme.org/juped <@felipe> and the +s <@angeles> i tend to agree with jilles <@angeles> let them play their little games, i'll be here waiting for some of the fun # angeles changed the topic of #juped to: Rob Levin (aka lilo) wants US$312000 for a motorhome (and his outstanding student loans), let's get outta here before the global notices start again! | Trolling topics/channels and trying to control people's opinions is very communistic and against your own so called beliefs, get a better hobby lilo | We were never wanted here, and our group application was 'lost' twice, AthemeNet HO! irc://irc.atheme.org/juped <+optimus> bloody kids <@angeles> excuse me? <+optimus> this is very childish <@angeles> sif i care, the shit is starting to get ridiculous <@angeles> no one is forcing you to be apart of it anyway <@angeles> he wants to take it out on someone, i accept full responsibility for my actions <@angeles> i won't let anil or anyone else here take the brunt of my levin-bashing <@angeles> i admit the original topic was a little careless and nasty, but it's ammended now <+optimus> yeah, now with added nastyness! # angeles is now known as quin <@quin> if you can point out a part which is especially nasty and untruthful i will fix it <@quin> at least i'm honest about the way i feel, rather than pretending to be nice and then simply being egotistical behind the scenes <@quin> i don't appreciate bringing the channel in line with freenode policy only to have it be for nothing <@quin> mind you, freenode policy changed after i was assured the context of this channel was ok to bring here <+optimus> wouldn't it be fixed if you went to ##juped ? <+optimus> mind you <+optimus> freenode is poo. <+optimus> i came here for this chan <+optimus> but then I found others i like <@Anil> silo? <@Anil> optimus: athemnet isn't all that bad ;) <@quin> we turned ourselves into a development collaborative, built webpages and repositories <+optimus> well <+optimus> not really <+optimus> all ideas, not much implementation <@quin> to our faces he was all like 'great, we'll get that app done for you' <+optimus> what is athemnet ? <@quin> it was enough to fall into channge guidelines <@quin> channel* <@Anil> optimus: a network founded by jilles and nenolod < stylus> irc://irc.atheme.org/juped <@Anil> both X devs of freenode <@quin> sam built the webpages and repositories by hand <@praetorian> HELLO <@quin> while i spearheaded the channel <-> freenode pr stuff <@quin> i'm forever talking about my project and linux in general # lilo!i=levin@freenode/staff/pdpc.levin has joined #juped < lilo> hi all...just to be clear....are you guys moving, or not? <@felipe> quin: ^^ < lilo> in the absence of an answer, angeles has alternate channel contact status, so I can go ahead and assume you really are moving <@quin> most definately < lilo> kay, thanks....please don't leave the pointer up for more than a week < lilo> that should give you plenty of time to make your move < lilo> (per policy) <@quin> you're violating our sanctity, i've explicitly prohibited your from this channel <@quin> now please stop meddling and leave, we'll be out of your hair soon enough < lilo> you've prohibited a freenode staffer from a freenode channel? * lilo scratches his head # ChanServ!ChanServ@services. has left #juped: <@Anil> oh god # mode/#juped: -s+cnt by ChanServ # Anil!i=anil@unaffiliated/anil has left #juped: <@quin> you have no business commenting on our affairs # mode/#juped: +ntcm by ChanServ <@felipe> hmm # ChanServ!ChanServ@services. has joined #juped # ServerMode/#juped: +o ChanServ by irc.freenode.net # mode/#juped: -oo quin stefan by ChanServ # mode/#juped: -oo praetorian Chandra by ChanServ # mode/#juped: -oo felipe Talrias by ChanServ # mode/#juped: -oo Alex bioanarchism by ChanServ # lilo changed the topic of #juped to: Channel moving to irc://irc.athemenet.org/#juped. Frozen per network policy 2006/4/26 12:28 UTC. Thanks! # quin!n=quin@dsl-124-148-125-26.qld.westnet.com.au has quit: Client Quit # stylus!n=tiforum@unaffiliated/stylus has left #juped: # nenolod!n=nenolod@unaffiliated/nenolod has joined #juped # felipe!n=felipe@my.nada.kth.se has left #juped: # nenolod!n=nenolod@unaffiliated/nenolod has left #juped: < lilo> oops # lilo changed the topic of #juped to: Channel moving to irc://irc.atheme.org/#juped. Frozen per network policy 2006/4/26 12:28 UTC. Thanks! # praetorian!n=praetori@unaffiliated/praetorian has left #juped: # PhilKC!i=PhilKC@azureus/PhilKC has left #juped:

I don't know why he had to take it upon himself to meddle with us, his attention was both unwelcome and unneeded. I was simply trying to inform my members that we were moving, and the reason I had made the decision. As a channel owner, I believe I had the right to voice my opinion, no matter if someone else thinks it was right or not. Not only did he overthrow my channel, he incorrectly setup the forward. It seems he's trying to enforce his 'About' Channel naming scheme on us, because if you click the irc:// link he posted, you'll be taken to ##juped on AthemeNet. I always knew his intelligence was overrated.

Now, to further substantiate my outrage, let's quote some freenode policy;

Channel Ownership: ..."No minimum level of activity or moderation is expected or required of channel owners."...

On Topic Use: ..."Non-Software-Related Peer-Directed Project. Per the PDPC charter, channels which serve projects combining open, informal participation and broadly-licensed, widely-disseminated creative output are considered to be on-topic. If you believe your non-software project may meet the criteria for a non-software peer-directed project, please consult a staffer or email staff at freenode dot net."...

Termination of Use: ..."If you've announced you're moving, we'll leave your channels untouched for that week."...

Also of interest, is freenode's section on Catalysts;

..."Unobtrusive. It's not necessary to invoke authority to help solve a problem, and far better if you don't. Look for an opportunity to nudge the situation into a more productive track. Don't critique the user if a quiet change of subject, or a private conversation on a completely different topic, can help make the problem fade away."...

..."Realistic. Accept the personalities of your users and concentrate on problem resolution. Don't expect people to suddenly change their personalities to make problem resolution easier."...

..."Minimalist. Don't do more than you need to in order to resolve a problem. A problem scene is often the wrong time and place to set policy. Concentrate on the resolution, and on collecting information you can think about later."...

..."Cooperative. Look for opportunities to get people involved in the resolution of their own and others' problems."...

..."Someone with an internal locus of control. Catalysts concentrate on solving problems, not bestowing blame. Treat the situation as the problem, accept the users for who they are and try to figure out how best to help resolve the difficulty."...

..."A user. Remember that you're not in charge. Everybody runs their own little corner of the world. Let them do the job they're capable of. Just help the process along as unobtrusively as possible. Other catalysts are users as well, and nobody is perfect. We're all just here to do our best to keep things running well."...

And alot more there, applies to this circumstance. It seems the head of staff isn't even able to follow their own guidelines for personal conduct. I personally, am glad to be gone, and anyone is welcome to join #juped on AthemeNet, we don't have to worry about keeping the communist dictator happy there.

That's just my two cents (and then some), anyway.

Further Reading;

Email sent to Freenode Staff;
Attention Staff, Upon moving our channel, #juped, I put a pointer in my topic and gave my reason (which is a personal opinion, something that should not be moderated) for making the move. Aparrently, while trolling topics, your head of staff, lilo, came in with his so-called 'powerless' user to give his opinion. Upon banning both his clients, he returned to 'check if we were still moving'. After being informed we did not want him there (as he had no reason to be there) and that I had prohibited him from the channel, he froze the channel and setup incorrect pointers to our new home. I would appreciate it if the pointer was corrected, as irc://irc.atheme.org/#juped points to ##juped on AthemeNet, not #juped, which is our channel. I would also like the behaviour of this person strictly evaluated, as I and many others believe him to be unfit for the role he assumes on freenode. Unfortunately, I will never recommend freenode to people looking for assistance on open source projects and will hereby forward people to OFTC for help. This may change if lilo is removed as head of staff, but for now, it is going to be my personal quest to shun everyone from freenode. What can one person do? You think. Well, think about what one person has already done to your network, and think about the contacts a true open source developer has in the community. I will not rest until this matter is brought to light, and I must warn you, my determination is more than absolute. For further information, you are invited to visit my weblog which contains a full account of the incident in which I am talking about, including a log of the events that occured therein. You may find it at: http://qreeves.blogspot.com/ Yours Sincerely, Quinton Reeves

I doubt the situation will ever be resolved though.