Category: Tech

I just updated the footnote fortune file for Patronizers. Yes, my Patronizers get a Unix fortune file containing all the footnotes from my nonfiction books. I thought it was daft, but apparently a few readers actually use the dang thing. My exhausted brain wondered, “How hard would it be to build a Mastodon bot that posted one of these every few hours?” Turns out: not hard at all.

First, install toot (https://toot.bezdomni.net/). FreeBSD packages it as py311-toot.

Then register an account for your bot, using the regular Mastodon web interface. I registered @quotebot@io.mwl.io. (Yes, I have my own fedi instance. My main account is @mwl@io.mwl.io. No, you can’t have an account on it.)

$ toot login
Enter instance URL [https://mastodon.social]: https://io.mwl.io
This authentication method requires you to log into your Mastodon instance in
your browser, where you will be asked to authorize toot to access your
account. When you do, you will be given an authorization code which you need
to paste here.

Login URL:
https://io.mwl.io/oauth/authorize/?response_type=code&redirect_uri=urn%3Aietf%3Awg%3Aoauth%3A2.0%3Aoob&scope=read+write+follow&client_id=FPzkCcqnGBLNO5Vo4V95CvfilcyRlMIrOSN1ncgxZmI
Open link in default browser? [Y/n]: n


This server’s default browser is Lynx. For whatever reason it can’t display the entire authorization code. Lynx is used for low-vision accessibility testing, so I suspect that the masto interface has an accessibility problem. I copied the link, opened it in my desktop’s Firefox, and copied the authorization code.


Authorization code: i6OsrQq77knbO4Gq.....

✓ Successfully logged in.

I can now toot from the command line.

$ toot post "test from toot cli"
Toot posted: https://io.mwl.io/@quotebot/113249574738108310

Go look in the web interface, and you’ll see the post. Easy enough.

Posting from a program is easy enough.

$ quote-source | toot post

Now I need a quote source. I could use something database-driven but I happen to have the mwlfortune file handy, so I’ll stick it in a mwlquotes directory. I’d like more than the footnotes so here’s a sample of another quotes file. Each quote is plain text, separated by a percent sign. I won’t be methodically adding to this, but if I’m digging through something old and see a suitable line I’ll add it.


Someone had brought cake. Someone was a bastard.
%
The only universal configuration language is despair.

Now build the fortune data files.

$ strfile -c '%' mwlfortune
"mwlfortune.dat" created
There were 582 strings
Longest string: 421 bytes
Shortest string: 6 bytes
$ strfile -c '%' bodyquotes
"bodyquotes.dat" created
There were 2 strings
Longest string: 54 bytes
Shortest string: 49 bytes


If you give the directory as an argument to fortune(1), it will pick a fortune at random from the combined files.

$ fortune /home/mwl/mwlquotes
Yes, that's megabytes--you know, the unit below gigabytes. Yes,
megabytes can apply to disks.

Try it a couple more times and you’ll see we get random quotes.

Dumping this into our bot is pretty simple.

$ fortune mwlquotes/ | toot post

Initial tests show a problem, though. Fortunes respect terminal standards, and include mid-sentence newlines. Fediverse posts do not. We need to get rid of the newlines. I wound up with this bot script.

#!/bin/sh

fortune /usr/local/share/mwlquotes/ | tr '\n' ' ' | toot post

Why put this in a script? So I can edit it easily later.

Now put this in my personal cron. Most folks said posting every six hours would be reasonable, so that’s where I’m starting.

13 */6 * * * /usr/local/scripts/quotebot.sh

That’s it. Every six hours, at thirteen minutes past the hour, the bot followers get a random quote from one of my books. Took about two hours to fully implement, including writing this post.

The folks at NYCBUG persuaded me to give a talk on email this Wednesday night. It’s free to the world, but you must RSVP at the link.

(followup at https://mwl.io/archives/23504)

I suppose the hip kids would say this is enshittification, but it’s certainly a betrayal.

According to their new Terms of Service:

You hereby grant to Vultr a non-exclusive, perpetual, irrevocable, royalty-free, fully paid-up, worldwide license (including the right to sublicense through multiple tiers) to use, reproduce, process, adapt, publicly perform, publicly display, modify, prepare derivative works, publish, transmit and distribute each of your User Content, or any portion thereof, in any form, medium or distribution method now known or hereafter existing, known or developed, and otherwise use and commercialize the User Content in any way that Vultr deems appropriate, without any further consent, notice and/or compensation to you or to any third parties, for purposes of providing the Services to you.

This is unacceptable. No other hosting company does this.

The TLDR on the side is deceitful. They say that we own our stuff. Fine. The fine print declares that we license our stuff to them, for full exploitation, without compensation.

I have not agreed to those ToS. Fortunately, I can migrate off their systems without console access, so I do not have to agree. If you use vultr, I suggest you do the same. Also contact them through their contact page and state your refusal. I’m told you can cancel via their page without logging in, but haven’t yet tried it.

I am now investigating alternatives for hosting FreeBSD and OpenBSD systems. Preferably that take custom installs.

I’ll be presenting on TLS at the St Louis Unix Users Group next Thursday. The meeting starts about 6PM CST, but they have a few things to take care of before I start.

It’s on Zoom and open to the public. Connection instructions will be on their web site once they’re ready.

As you probably suspect, the talk is based on my book TLS Mastery.

I’ve included bits of code in my books, sure. Always with warnings to not run it in production, as I am a firm devotee of fault-oblivious computing. You should not follow my example. But after a Fediverse (Mastodon) discussion last night, I’ve decided to share the code of a program I wrote and deployed. In production. When writing SNMP Mastery, I needed to understand how to integrate a custom agent into net-snmp. I also needed to go through the process of getting my own enterprise OID. I submitted the OID request right before Christmas 2019, and 55030 was assigned the next day.

So I promptly wrote my own SNMP agent, use top-notch state-of-the-art Perl 4. There’s some compatibility glue to make it run under Perl 5, but it’s basically Perl 4. Yes, there’s other languages–but Perl is eternal and timeless. Like Cobol and SNMP, that is not dead which can eternal sleeping lie.

This agent is the single source of truth for my published bibliography. Instructions for accessing it are in the SNMP book, but if I’m sharing the code I should provide context.

Browse to https://cdn.mwl.io/snmp/ and you’ll find the MIB file TWP.mib. Put that in your SNMP browser or MIB directory. If you’re running net-snmp you can pull the table with:

$ snmptable -v2c -c megadweeb snmp.mwl.io mwlBooksTable

The file agent-TWP.pl includes the agent proper.

This code has been called “comically evil,” which warms my bitter heart. Yes, I could use a database. But why? The data changes 3-4 times a year, if I’m productive. And yes, the data is in columns, not rows. SNMP doesn’t do rows. It doesn’t really do tables. It only has columns, which you could choose to arrange side-by-side, but that’s a feeble human thing and irrelevant to this primordial protocol.

In writing this I had to choose between complex code and simple data, or simple code and complex data. Given that updates consist of adding an entry to the end of each column, I chose simple code. Yes, there’s an occasional painful update where I realize that I missed one of my old books, but those are increasingly rare.

Anyway. If you want a truly complete checklist of what I’ve written, here it is. Other writers have spreadsheets or text documents or perhaps, if they’re truly prolific, desktop databases. But noooo, I had to do this.

TLDR: do not run my code. That’s one reason I don’t use github; this is not a sample or example, it an inspiration for you to recoil in horror and do better. (I also insist on controlling my platforms, and I don’t control github.) I’m certain this will be presented as an exhibit in my inevitable, eventual sanity hearing.

A friend asked ChatGPT about me. It provided something that looks like an answer, but is not an answer.

This illustrates how these large language models produce things that LOOK like answers, but are not actual answers. I’m a public figure with a fair amount of information in public, but it can’t get the details correct.

I thought of going through this and highlighting everything incorrect, but I have no interest in helping train ChatGPT or in making more details of my life available. Every paragraph has multiple glaring inaccuracies.

Michael W Lucas is a technical author and FreeBSD advocate who has written many books and articles on computer systems administration, networking, and information security. He was born on June 6, 1968, in Detroit, Michigan, and currently resides in Detroit, Michigan.

Lucas is best known for his contributions to the FreeBSD operating system community, including his books “Absolute FreeBSD”, “FreeBSD Mastery: Storage Essentials”, “FreeBSD Mastery: Advanced ZFS”, and “FreeBSD Mastery: Jails”. He has also written extensively on other technical topics, including network security, system administration, and SSH.

In addition to his writing, Lucas has been a speaker at technical conferences such as BSDCan, EuroBSDCon, and BSDTW. He is also a member of the FreeBSD Foundation and the FreeBSD Security Team.

Lucas has been involved with various open-source projects over the years, including OpenSSH, OpenNTPD, and OpenBGPD. He has also been a regular contributor to the BSD Now podcast, where he discusses news and developments in the BSD community.

Overall, Michael W Lucas is a respected figure in the technical writing and open-source communities, known for his expertise in FreeBSD and his clear and engaging writing style.

Yes, that last paragraph is wrong. I’m the biggest fish in a minuscule pond. Most technology writers, and a large part of the open source community, consider my corner irrelevant. ChatGPT is being kind, and facts are neither kind nor cruel.

If you based decisions on this, you would go very wrong. If you use this for your business? That’s your problem.

Also, I’m told that it has declared Michael Warren Lucas dead. ChatGPT obviously wants me to spend more time writing books that can be used to improve it.

I’m a big fan of the fediverse. As of right now (8 November 2022), it deeply sucks. Why?

Because nobody expected Elon Musk to be this stupid.

We expected some daftness, sure. But actions like cutting the entire human rights team, accessibility team, and AI ethics team, plus limiting moderation, have people abandoning Twitter and searching for alternatives.

Nobody wants to live in a free-for-all wasteland. “The right to free speech” is built on “the right to take the consequences.” Without moderators, Twitter is a cesspit.

The Fediverse resembles Twitter[1], except it is run by volunteers on donated equipment. Every time Twitter did something stupid, we got a few thousand folks looking for a better way. We’ve grown steadily as a result.

Almost hourly Musk demonstrates that he doesn’t understand people, doesn’t understand how Twitter is used, and picking stupid fights. I’m told that last Friday, the biggest Mastodon server got 70,000 new users. If you add in all the hundreds of other servers, we’re looking at hundreds of thousands of new accounts. Many servers doubled or tripled in usage.

Here’s a graph of the number of users interacting with our server.

Nobody expected Musk to be this stupid.

Nobody expected this flood of new users.

If you get an account and find it’s slow? The volunteers are working as hard as they can. Scotty is shouting “She canna take any more!” over the roar of the struggling servers. New servers are being installed, but physical equipment must be shipped and mounted and plugged in.

The servers that are doing well, ironically, are the alt-right ones. The worst Nazis already fled Twitter, so they set up their own Mastodon servers. The rest of the fedi automatically blocks those monsters, but they’re actively recruiting both abusers and victims. I’ve seen more than one LGBT person innocently sign up for a disguised white supremacist instance and get a torrent of abuse.

Be patient with the volunteers. They’re doing the best they can. We’ll catch up as soon as we can.

The truth is, nobody can prepare for a stupid billionaire.

[1] No, the Fediverse isn’t exactly like twitter. Each server is a community of interest, like “BSD Unix folks” or “book lovers” or “LGBT in tech.” They can all talk to each other. We have content warnings, so that people can interact with difficult content as they wish rather than having it jammed into their face. Each server does its own moderation. (My server blocks the alt-right, TERFs, racists, ableist jerks, and cryptocurrency scammers.) Where Twitter has been increasingly negative and stressful over the last few years, local control means the Fediverse is downright sweet.