Ubuntu lists it as:

Zeroconf LIRC daemon using input event devices
This is a small LIRC-compatible daemon that reads from /dev/input/eventX
devices and sends the received keycodes to connecting LIRC clients. Inputlircd
needs no configuration, it uses the standardised names for the keycodes as
used by the kernel. Many USB remote controls that present HID devices, as well
as multimedia keyboards should work out of the box.

Why is this good, well I just install this package and well I get full remote support – once I’ve configured the applications, which is still a pain in the arse. Now if the applications could be written to work with the zeroconfig lirc with well zero config the world will be great (well ok less un-great).

Its now running on Debian for the next Cacti box (assuming it doesn’t have the gd bug).

What has helped with the new Cacti box is a combination of a few things – the new 1 min poller patch spreads I/O out better, and allows me to poll device which don’t do 64bit SNMP counters yet have gigabit ethernet ports every min, and leave everything else at 5 min. Improvements on plugins and a switch to cactid (a c version of the poller) has also really helped. The system now process ~400 hots in 35 seconds, dealing with ~4100 data sources and ~2200 rrd each min. Not bad.

There are a couple things that need improving however:
1) The threshold system now inspects data straight from the db before writing to the rrd files, which unfortunately causes the graphs in the email to be 1 cycle out of date (ie not show the data the emails about).
2) The Uptime+Threshold system host down email only works by patching files yourself at present when using cactid

As for ubuntu – either stop shipping cactid, or compile it again the correct version of the libraries. I’d much rather the package not be there than for it to not work, it gives people a bad impression.

On sunday I listened to the following talks:

1. John Leach – Everyone Loves Eric Raymond
   Another one of the talks I’d knew would be quite funny. Pretty informative too
2. Matthew Garrett – Linux and Laptops
   I have a laptop and linux, so hey might and well listen to this one. Turned out to be one of the funiest talks of the weekend too. By the way don’t buy an Acer……
3. Richard Moore (IBM) – IBM and Open Source
   We have quite a lot of IBM stuff at work, so I thought I might pop along. It would appear IBM and Microsoft have defiently switched place, IBM is the company that is listening and doing lots of interesting things while Microsoft is the company telling customers what they want and how they should do things.
4. The Hour of Power — short demos of cool stuf
   Basically interesting stuff to look at.
5. Mike Hearn – Packaging and Autopackage
   I liked the sound of this to start with, but the more I herd the more I disagreed. Yes we do need to make things easier to install in linux, but not without loosing all the advantages. Nearly all the improvements auto packager offers could easily be implemented in the likes of apt.
6. The LugRadio team – Thankyou and goodbye

The end of the show. Left wanting more as everything good thing should.

At the end we went back to the hotel, wasted a few hours then went down to the bar. Started outside, but then grew too big and moved inside when the Lug Radio presenters joined the rest of the people at the Quality Chin. A good night of drinking, talking and the odd glass of champagene. Another late night and off to bed tired and drunk again, once the last of the presenters had gone, and nearly everyone else had called it a night.

Anyway when we did get down there we where waiting in a small queue and then into the venue. It was a reasonably sized student union, although as its actually part of the rest of the uni building and not a separate building it was hard to gauge it size. The bar was open and plasma screen where displaying some pictures and a now and next off what was to come. A small intro from the Lug Radio team and the event kicked off.

There where 5 room – The main room and bar, with the 2 BOF points and lan gaming off to the sides, and exhibition room which forms the rest of the bar (if it was open), The Chin and Beard rooms (for smaller talks) and the third and last bof point. The talks I attendants on Saturday where

1. Gervase Markham – How to Destroy the Free Software Movement
   An entertaining talk on well how a fictional company was working on Destroying to free software movement
2. Matthew Somerville – MySociety and Pledgebank
   I did try and see Ewen Spences talk, but he never turned up so I went to see the MySociety talk. It was quiet interesting – especially as I’d already used part of the site and not realised
3. Stephen Lamb (Microsoft) – Microsoft and Security
   Should have really gone to another talk to be honest – felt a bit lectured to and bored during this one
4. Lunch – Unfortunately we turned up on mass to a very busy and understaffed Varsity and missed the mass debate, but it was decent enough food at least
5. Des Burley (Mills & Reeve) – A lawyer on open source
   Interesting talk on the problems facing open source law wise
6. Matthew Bloch (Bytemark) – Virtualisation
   An interesting talk on a technology I’d like to play with but haven’t found a reason (The stuff we could use virtulisation for at work unfortunately is all done on Microsoft stuff)
7. Ian Lynch – The OpenDocument Fellowship
   Some details on the way the OpenDocument Fellowship is working. Would be nice to switch to an Open format at work – but need to wait for Microsoft to get their word pluggins sorted first. Assuming they do one for all the version of office we use.
8. Bruno Bord – This Talk May Contain Swearing
   AKA LugRadio Live and Unleashed warm up talk An excellent talk, especially given English isn’t the speakers first language.
9. LugRadio Live and Unleashed

All in all a great day. The Bar was well used, the aircon was a little ineffective but it wasn’t too warm. Its colder than my office at work anyway.

After the main event we all got very wet walking back to the hotel, stayed wet while a few of us got a KFC. Showered changed then off to the party.

Party – Was better than I was expecting, attendance was down from the main event of course, but still pretty well attended. Unfortunately the bar eventually ran out of Guinness, Cider and Grolsch so I ended up having to have a pint of Stella at one point, but at least been a Student union it was cheap. The DJ wasn’t bad – but given he was a club DJ was lacking in the wide range of Music demanded by the crowd, so the dance floor remained fairly empty most of the time. His rock selection was worst of all having to resort to repeating a few tracks. Next year I’ll pay attention and bring a cd with a few decent tracks (No Rammstein I promise – unless anyone else wants some played). The SU tried to kick us out early, but Jono sorted that out and we stayed till just before 2 and headed back to the hotel for a quick chat with a few people then off to bed for the night.

A great weekend it was too.

I got down there about 5ish Friday, then waiting about 30min for Junior ’s (sward) train to arrive (he missed the one he was meant to be on). As it was the first time either of us had been to Wolverhampton we took a taxi to the Quality Hotel (via the wrong one thanks to a taxi driver who miss-heard sward). We both checked in and went to unpack. I got into my room and bloody hell it was hot. I found out later they had heating problems and the heating was jammed on full which given the weather really didn’t help. The room was pretty good, especially at the cheap rate Jono from Lug Radio had secured for everyone.

Predictably we headed off the bar for a drink, and ended up drinking a fairly warm pint of Murphy’s – main due to that fact that was the only thing worth drinking, plus given the heating issues everything was generally warm. We hung around for a while and eventually bumped into a few other people who where down for lugradio. At about 8 we set off in a big group walking into Wolverhampton, through the grubby subway system a few times. We arrived at the Hogshead and had another drink, and then went out for something to eat. The eating party soon split up into 2, one lots went for a curry and the group I was in when for a Chinese all you can eat. It was pretty good and much needed – I always get very Hungary after a long journey. We went back to the party at Hogshead for another few, but after the filling Chinese and the fact I needed sleep we headed off back to the hotel – getting a bit lost on the way back. Took the wrong initial subway, ended up in the right second lot anyway, but then went up the wrong side off the exit and headed up the wrong road. We eventually got back to the hotel after realising what we had done and backtracking. Spent the next hour talking to some people outside the hotel who where here for lugradio and then headed off to bed (well into the oven).

A bit of messing around – including installing the version from Testing I found out I need a new kernel for WPA.

Of I went and got 2.6.17 and compiled it.

Things of Note:
I had to use the ieee80211 module and the ipw2200 module from the kernel – but they appear to work so now problems.

After that network manager poped up – it found my wireless network. Selected it, a setup box appeared in which I put my WPA pass-phrase in and off it went and connected – all working a lot more reliable that just wpa supplicant on its own. Could be down to the new kernel mind. However it is very easy to use, and well I impressed. It’ll make using my laptop as a laptop a lot easier.

Update
Wow – after all this work and finally wireless is the most stable I’ve ever had it on Linux. In fact its not gone wrong once since this. Even in windows I was having a few problems now and again. Speed is good, stability and great and it just works. I enter a password in at the start and it goes off, picks the right network and passpharse and just sets it up for me.

Basically allows you to draw diagrams of you’re network, and it takes data from the rrd files and displays different coloured arrows show the percentage of the link used.

Basically allowing you to see whats going on, on your network and where all the traffic is going/coming from

However at work we have started to look into Open Source.

We currently have an every-growing Cati Install. Cacti is a great bit of software – at its most basic it creates graphs from SNMP data. It makes it very easy to add new hosts and created and managed display them. This is a good thing in our network – we are currently monitoring 116 devices with it, and this is growing every week as I get around to adding more devices.

With a number of addons (see http://cactiusers.org/) Cacti can also do a lot more. Currently the system:
1) Graphs various data from servers, switches, UPS’s and everything else we feel like monitoring with SNMP
2) With a few Perl scripts it even monitors various data from the likes of Exchange, ISS and Citrix (Using nsclient which can pull data available in WMI to Linux)
3) Monitor servers for restarts (via checking uptime). Emails us when every a server restarts
4) Threshold Monitoring – the system can email use when ever a value has gone bellow or above a value for a certain amount of times (mainly used to warn about UPS usage and disk space)
5) Reporting – Can build reports from the rrd files to find out top talkers etc

We are adding more and more features to the system all the time. Its very helpful to have a system which sits there and monitors everything we throw at it so we don’t have to keep a close eye on things.

The next open source system was are looking at using is good old Squid. We are getting a number of 100mb net connections at various sites and we need to replace of aging ISA boxes. Given that we have loads of old hardware available we’re going down the squid box. If we find ones is performing slowly just build another one to help out. Currently in testing and working out what rule and routing needs setting up still.

Initial impressions are good – the GUI is more responsive and playback is good. I like the replay gain feature and the crossfade looks promising (it sometimes produces some pops/click when switching between songs of different codecs at the moment). The upgrade was easy to do, patch the current firmware (can be done using a windows gui tool under wine), upgrade as normal and then drop the files onto the machine. To upgrade rockbox you just have to replaced the files on the players hd with the newer ones – no more firmware to upgrades.

The plugins are good too, and the quality of the picture viewer seems better than the iRiver one (at least for non-optimised pics). The only thing it misses is video, but I can drop back to the normal firmware if needed.

I’m using an experimental build – so some of the bugs may be due to this

See Misticriver for the firmware

Pro
+Superfast boot up
+More info
+Skinable
+Quicker GUI
+More Options
+ReplayGain

Cons
-Some features a bit buggy
-Battery life isn’t as good (may be due to some of the options I’m using)

To summarise: I haven’t used the built in firmware for the past two weeks, so well I think its good.

A little digging around my system (and a read of all them emails cron sends me which get dumped to a folder which empties it self every so often) relived that due to a permissions change on my spam folder (I delete the entire thing caus my mailsever ran out of space and I was in a hurry) sa-learn could no longer do its job. A quick (well slow – it had to process about 2000 odd emails) run of sa-learn and my spam level is back to slightly above the usual levels, and that should hopefully drop as I feed more emails into se-learn.