miau 0.6.5 is finally out. This release mostly about bugfixes -- which is appropriate for application that is supposedly no longer /developed/. Like I have already said gazillion times, next generation miau is in works. Not that I would expect that to change any time soon...
Permalink | Comments (5)I was bored. I was a litle tired, but I didn't feel like hitting the bed just yet. My significant other was watching show jumping, and basically I felt like watching something -- something other than show jumping. Instead, I decided to play a bit of rRootage. The game didn't last for long. I was, and would still, be stuck at level 7B on first game mode. Sigh. Hey, tonight I would continue Penumbra Episode 1...
I'm not sure about the dates anymore, but I think it all started around the time Debian switched X.org. Every now and then when I started my computer (read: finished playing, and rebooted back to Linux), X.org would not find my mouse, and refuse to start. I would then log in, sudo to edit /etc/X11/xorg.conf, and change my mouse device from event2 to event3, or vice versa. Then maybe year, or half a year ago the problem vanished, and I was glad.
About a month ago I, once again, finished playing, rebooted back to Linux, logged in, and realised my mouse didn't move. I opened an XTerm, and took a look at the log. "No mouse found"? Since when did X start without a mouse? Heck, it wouldn't even accept symlink to mouse event device! I changed the event device again, and everything started working. Suddenly I got an idea. Now that X doesn't complain about missing mouse, would it accept configuration with two mouses if the other was missing? I soon discovered it would. My problem was once again solved. For now.
When demo-client of Enemy Territory: Quake Wars was released for GNU/Linux, I downloaded the file while still at work so that I could try it as soon as I got home. Installing the demo didn't bring any big surprises -- the installer would run with 32-bit compatibility libraries, but the game wouldn't without full 32-bit chroot. Naturally I already had that ready for games such as UT2004/Alien Swarm and Neverwinter Nights. I started the demo... and my mouse was totally weird. I could move the cursor, but it would soon jump back to where it was a few moments ago. Eventually I managed to create an account, log in, and start a game. The mouse wouldn't be any better in-game. It actually reminded me of mouse in Savage, but as bad as it was here, it wasn't as bad as with Savage. I figured this was yet-another mouse event related problem, similar to Adobe's Flashplayer mouse click bug, and it would be fixed soon. I quit the game and decided to check back later.
Like I mentioned earlier, I decided to play Penumbra Episode 1 tonight. Unlike before, however, the mouse wouldn't cooperate. It wouldn't cooperate at all. In fact, it would behave just like it did with ET:QW. This would no longer be a problem with ET:QW alone. In fact, this problem would also appear in UT2004! Something's not right.
I searched Google for " linux games jumpy mouse", and got a bunch of hits. Against all the odds, some of the hits actually looked promising. Particulary the ninth hit on linuxworld.com. "My rodent refused to behave, and the cursor shook and stuttered across the screen in a manner that made the game nearly unplayable." That would describe my problem precisely! I exported the thing, and tried UT2004 again. Problem solved!
So, my mouse would work again. What did I learn? Well X sucks for starters, that's for sure. Why won't it accept a symlink created by udev as mouse device? I know, it would be far too convenient to have X use semi-static device filename such as usb-Logitech_USB-PS.2_Optical_Mouse-mouse instead of event2, which would change to adapt fluctuations in earth radiation. No, I didn't learn anything useful, I didn't even learn what caused the problem. My best guess is that SDL got confused of two configured mice, even though only one was operational. However I figured one more reason why GNU/Linux isn't exactly ready for general population. If something as simple as mouse configuration can be a big problem such as this, what are the other problems like? I'm all for Linux games, I would love to play my favourite games without having to boot to Windows. WineX and Cedega are not the answer, only a temporary solution.
Update: Thu Nov 1 16:01:55 EET 2007
Having more than one entry for a single mouse doesn't help. When I booted back
to Linux last night, X was missing a mouse again. Sigh. Apart from that, GDM
also decided that system default language is actually Finnish. I suppose
choosing default locale with dpkg-reconfigure locales isn't enough for
GDM. Oh give me a break...
I've been to Swizerland three times before. First when I was 6, then when I
was 15, and again when I was 23 or so. I have to admit I don't remember too
much about the first two trips, but I do remember that the third one was short.
I only had one evening free at Zürich, but it was a business trip after
all. This time my wife and I would spend a long weekend at my aunt's place in
Luzern (or Lucerne), and briefly stop at Zürich at daytime.
I often have tail printing Apache's access log on one part of my virtual desktop. This doesn't serve any particular purpose, but when I get really bored, I may have a look at it, usually to see how people have landed on my web site. Most of the time there's nothing worthwhile going on, just Google, MSN, and Yahoo crawling my site, over and over again. Sometimes I can spot a botnet zombies trying to find a vulnerable server, usually through well-known PHP applications, but that's all -- most of the time.
Like so many times before, I was bored, and took a look at the log. Against all the odds there were traces of real human beings accessing my site, using IE 7! Wow. To make this occasion even more special, he used Microsoft's Live Search to get there. Funny, I didn't know people actually used Microsoft's search engine. And how did he get here? Using just "forbidden" as key word? I quickly pasted the referer URL to web browser to see what kind of results the search would return. 57 million generic hits, none on the first pace refering my page. I suppose some people are as bored as I am. Oh well.
I continued to read the logs, and spotted another hit from Microsoft's search, using "kyoto". And another, this one using "conditioning". The IPs do not match, but they're similar. Are these IPs for a proxy of some sort?
65.55.165.39 - - [03/Oct/2007:09:17:10 +0000] "GET /photos/chin a_2005/00000029.html HTTP/1.0" 200 2934 "http://search.live.com /results.aspx?q=forbidden&mrt=en-us&FORM=LIVSOP" "Mozilla/4.0 ( compatible; MSIE 7.0; Windows NT 5.2; .NET CLR 1.1.4322)" % dig -x 65.55.165.39 ;; ANSWER SECTION: 39.165.55.65.in-addr.arpa. 646 IN PTR bl2sch1081905.phx.gbl. ;; AUTHORITY SECTION: 55.65.in-addr.arpa. 2380 IN NS NS1.MSFT.NET.
gbl? MSFT.NET? Microsoft?
% whois 65.55.165.39 OrgName: Microsoft Corp OrgID: MSFT Address: One Microsoft Way City: Redmond StateProv: WA PostalCode: 98052 Country: US NetRange: 65.52.0.0 - 65.55.255.255
I took a closer look at the logs and realised, that MSNBot had crawled most of target pages just moments before this Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 7.0; Windows NT 5.2; .NET CLR 1.1.4322) found it through the search. (Log file.) Smells fishy. And what is this gbl TLD anyway? It's not valid TLD, that's for sure. Is Microsoft trying to distort web browser user agent statistics, or what is this?
Searching Google for .phx.gbl returns links to number of websites, but none give definite answer. It seems that phx.gbl is tightly related to Microsoft, as it also appears with other Microsoft's services such as MSN Chat and Hotmail. The wildest theories go as far as to suggest that phx.gbl, or Phoenic Global Information Systems, is used to monitor traffic that goes through Microsoft's public servers.
I don't really know what's going on, but I wonder why Microsoft can't have the IPs to reverse resolve properly. Also, since it's quite obvious that there's no ordinary web browser at the other end of the connection, why does it pretend to be one? Put your tinfoil hats on and start watching your neighbours.
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