Richard Stallman or RMS, is the founder of GNU, and ultimately the Free Software Movement. He was also responsible for gcc, the compiler I’ve been using since… forever.

One thing that interest me is his stand on OPEN SOURCE != FREE SOFTWARE. While this is true when you get down to really understand the meaning of these two terms, people still get confused upfront when presented with these ideas. Since the lecture is basically a Law series lecture, terminologies such as intellectual property, piracy and software license among other things, have to be clearly defined.

While the law students and professors left after the talk, the geeks hung out with him and it was my opportunity to have a photo with him. I’m still starstruck. Teehee!

@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@
@    WARNING: REMOTE HOST IDENTIFICATION HAS CHANGED!     @
@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@
IT IS POSSIBLE THAT SOMEONE IS DOING SOMETHING NASTY!
Someone could be eavesdropping on you right now (man-in-the-middle attack)!
It is also possible that the RSA host key has just been changed.
The fingerprint for the RSA key sent by the remote host is
64:af:03:87:17:e4:23:51:a5:1c:12:e4:47:90:70:b0.
Please contact your system administrator.
Add correct host key in /root/.ssh/known_hosts to get rid of this message.
Offending key in /root/.ssh/known_hosts:1
RSA host key for 192.168.1.179 has changed and you have requested strict checking.
Host key verification failed.

Normally, I’ll just remove the offending line from the know_hosts file and get ony with my life, but after repetitive rebooting and repetitive RSA host warnings, it’s starting to annoy me.

To disable rsa host checking, add a config file to your local .ssh folder,

vim ~/.ssh/config

and add the following options:

# automatically adds rsa host key to list of known hosts
StrictHostKeyChecking no
# sets know_hosts file to the data sink so it will never be written
UserKnownHostsFile /dev/null


I encountered so many difficulties, some of which were my own doing, some was just inevitably natural.

1. Communication was challenged due to language barriers. Although English was used, the other party had poor grasp of it.
2. Non-technical people on the client’s side were forced to perform technical operations involving executing command-line operations in Linux. They get exasperated when typing in seemingly complex commands, only to get unsuccessful results. Patience is definitely not one of their virtues.
3. They don’t want solutions. They just want it to work. Period. Just like magic!
4. Errors in the released software, due to lack of testing. I admit wholeheartedly that this is of my own fault. I should be beaten up and have my Computer Science diploma shoved down my throat.
5. Differences in hardware on my end, and on the clients’ end that resulted in unforeseen results that led to my own confusion.

Everyone was breathing down my neck, including both my bosses and the client’s. I felt like I was so incompetent and so inept. I wasn’t making anyone happy and I wasn’t fulfilling my obligations to everyone’s expectations. There were some instances that I wish I would get fired just to escape the humiliation and all the blame that would boil down on me. The worst part of it is that these clients are flying over here to Manila next week!

On a side note, I had fun working on these two projects. The first one involved a mobile Linux machine to be placed on police cars. It had 4-channel video surveillance, GPS with street map positioning, and although not yet implemented, license plate recognition technology. The second one involved a mammoth hardware intensive 32-channel digital video surveillance, running on a live Linux operating system installed on a 1GB Compact Flash card.

Sadly, all this coolness won’t matter at all if the clients can’t get these things up and running on their side. Sigh. L

I am a Senior Software Engineer and I am considered to be the resident “Linux Guru” in the company. I utterly detest it when I am referred to as such. Not only, does it add bearing on the responsibility of upholding to such a title, in the end I succumb to a realization that I might not deserve it after all.

Also, update autofs package. Earlier version that came with the Fedora DVD shows automount hogging up CPU! On top command, it shows up to 25% CPU even when it’s supposedly not doing anything. That is very high!