Gary Numan Digest Sun, 6 Feb 2000 Volume 2 : Issue 10 Today's Topics: Administrivia - Two Wrongs DO Make A Right! Divorce time! Gary Numan North American Fan Club Manchester 99 more cars spotted Israel cable ch.8 Numan Convention Numan popping up!!! the automated human ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Date: Fri, 04 Feb 2000 03:13:54 -0700 From: "Joey Lindstrom" Subject: Administrivia - Two Wrongs DO Make A Right! To: "digest@garynumanfan.nu" So, y'all are wondering what in the heck happened to your Digest for the past few issues, eh? Well, to satisfy Nick Fox et al - this was my fault, period. :-) 'Twas a misconfiguration (on my part) in two different machines that conspired to deprive you of your semi-weekly dose of Numan. Suffice it to say that the problem is fixed and should not recur. We think that most of the held-up Digests were, in fact, delivered (better late than never), but if you missed any issues, you can catch up at: http://digest.garynumanfan.nu Essentially what happened was this: I made two configuration errors when setting up the Digest machine several months ago, and those errors exactly cancelled each other out, producing a setup that (seemingly) worked just fine. About a week and a half ago, I fixed one of those errors, and that caused the OTHER error to begin manifesting itself - and stifling distribution of the Digest. What follows is a rather-lengthy explanation of what exactly happened and why it was so hard to figure out what was broken. While it's not overly technical, if yer not into the techie stuff, you already know what you need to know... feel free to skip to the next message. :-) The Gary Numan Fan Server is kinda badly named, because it actually consists of six servers - maybe "Gary Numan Fan Network" would be more appropriate. Anyways, the problem that cropped up concerned three of them ("The Big Three" I call 'em, since they're the main players). They are: VALEN (Windows NT) SINCLAIR (Windows NT) IVANOVA (Linux - Redhat Edition) (bonus points if you understand the reference - the other machines here are named DELENN, GARIBALDI, GKAR, and SHADOW) VALEN was the first machine I used when setting this whole shebang up, and is still in service. As needs grew, I found it necessary to add a second machine (SINCLAIR) to take on some of the jobs that VALEN was doing. In fact, I don't actually own the machine - it's on long-term loan from a friend of mine, in exchange for free web hosting. :-) Anyways, I offloaded some of VALEN's jobs to SINCLAIR, and things were balanced rather nicely. Then I moved (back in October), and two events happened a short time apart. 1) My internet ADSL provider does not own its own facilities in the area to which I moved (whereas they DID own their own hardware up by my old place). Therefore, they lease services from a third party, and unfortunately this third party doesn't provide a "routable modem". This means that another job, namely routing internet packets between all the machines here, had to be added to one of the existing servers. Without really thinking about it, I gave that job to VALEN, which was also my Windows NT PDC (Primary Domain Controller). This was a minor mistake that set up the next two - the job should have been given to SINCLAIR, a more-powerful machine. 2) We found out that "cs.uwp.edu", the Unix machine that produced the Gary Numan Digest for the first 8 years of its existence, was about to be retired - at least, we thought it was something that was gonna happen within a couple of weeks. So we bandied plans back and forth and eventually settled on this: I would purchase a low-end computer, bolt it into the network, install Linux on it, and then we'd have a place to produce and distribute the Digest from. This was, in fact, exactly what happened, and the machine was given the name IVANOVA. Now, in setting up IVANOVA (and indeed any machine on the local network), it had to be configured so that it would know *WHICH* machine was responsible for relaying packets to the internet (ie: who its default "gateway" was). In this case, that machine was VALEN. Outgoing traffic had to pass through VALEN before going out to the internet, and conversely everything coming into IVANOVA went through VALEN as well - that's what "routing" is all about. At my old place, I never had to worry about this - the ADSL modem handled all routing and we simply "pointed" each machine at the ADSL modem itself. The problem here is that I basically know very little about the Linux operating system. I got the system up and running in a hurry, based on the knowledge of networking I'd garnered in dealing with the WinNT servers, under the assumption that Dave Datta (a Unix guy) would be able to help me with any operational problems and generally get me up to speed on Linux in general. At this point, we figured time was of the essence and that a partially working machine was better than no machine (and no Digest). However, then came word that a stay-of-execution had been granted to cs.uwp.edu, and that IVANOVA's services wouldn't be needed any time soon. So, I basically FORGOT about the whole project for a couple of months. Then, sometime in December, I made a configuration change. VALEN is somewhat underpowered, and while I wasn't having any performance issues, I felt it made sense to shift the job of packet-routing from VALEN over to SINCLAIR (a dual-processor Pentium box), which should have been the router in the first place, to make better use of the resources I've got. But in doing so, I made two mistakes that cancelled each other out, so they went UNNOTICED until two days ago. Mistake #1: When I moved the job of routing to SINCLAIR, I had to reconfigure all of the machines on the network to tell them "hey, don't route your packets to VALEN anymore, send 'em to SINCLAIR instead". This was done - but in the process I forgot to reconfigure IVANOVA. So, IVANOVA was still routing its packets to VALEN. Mistake #2: There's a configuration setting in Windows NT Networking called "IP Forwarding". This should be turned on in any machine that's doing packet routing, but turned OFF in any machine that isn't (ie: just about every other machine in your network). When I disconnected the routing functions in VALEN, I failed to turn off this setting. Result: Traffic coming into IVANOVA went via this route: Internet -> SINCLAIR -> IVANOVA Traffic going out from IVANOVA to the internet went via this slightly-more-complex route: IVANOVA -> VALEN -> SINCLAIR - Internet This is a misconfiguration that, by fluke, worked fine - two wrongs making a right, as it were. Because IP Forwarding was still turned ON in VALEN, it was dutifully accepting packets from IVANOVA and relaying them to SINCLAIR, unnecessarily doubling VALEN's traffic. Because those traffic levels were still amazingly low, it went unnoticed for quite a while. In late December/early January, Dave Datta uploaded all of the Numan Digest software into IVANOVA, and began production of the Digest. Everything seemingly worked smoothly... until about a week and a half ago, when, while changing some network settings across the network, I happened to notice that I'd left IP Forwarding turned on in VALEN. So, naturally, I turned it off. Result: some people were getting Digests, others were not. Also, everything people SUBMITTED to the Digest was arriving just fine (which further confused the issue), because all incoming mail comes to SINCLAIR first, which then relays it to IVANOVA. What I didn't notice was that the people who were still getting Digests were those people who had email boxes here at the NuServer, because IVANOVA could still talk to any machine on the local network (including SINCLAIR, the machine that handles all the mailboxes), but *NOT* to the rest of the internet. Granted, one Digest arrived in my mailbox NINE HOURS after publication, but at least it got here. :-) It went on for a while because I incorrectly assumed the problem was with Dave's software (it's easy to suspect fault in something you don't understand, after all) and never suspected a routing problem, so I figured I'd just wait for Dave to telnet in (the poor guy has a very busy schedule so this took a while), snoop around, and say "ah! Found the problem, ok, it's fixed!". But, when he tried to telnet into IVANOVA, he found that he could not connect - at all. Luckily, I also have a second internet connection here (through a different provider and on an isolated section of the local network) so once he told me that, I was able to perform some tests and determine that IVANOVA could only talk to local machines. And that left me puzzled - SINCLAIR was forwarding packets to everybody EXCEPT IVANOVA for some reason (or so I thought) - but about a half hour after making that determination, a light-bulb went on and I'd figured it out. I turned IP Forwarding back on in VALEN, and voila!, IVANOVA could talk to the world again - and it immediately began shipping Digests out like crazy. :-) SINCLAIR had indeed been forwarding packets to IVANOVA, but IVANOVA had been responding with packets addressed to VALEN, which was saying "Bite me! I don't route anymore!" and NOT forwarding them to SINCLAIR. Result: a broken connection. It's still configured this way (IVANOVA to VALEN to SINCLAIR - sounds like a hockey play-by-play, doesn't it?) - Dave's gonna help me get it configured properly, but for now it's working just fine (if in a way that most sysadmins would cringe at if they saw it). Say, anyone out there have a "Linux For Complete Freaking Idiots" book they wanna sell, cheap? :-) So, that's what happened. I feel like SUCH a twit, yet at the same time it was such an obscure little problem I'm not surprised it went unnoticed for so long. And that's what made it so hard to diagnose - it was difficult to imagine that a routing mistake in IVANOVA, from over three months ago, could cause a machine that had been working *FINE* to suddenly stop working - I spent most of my diagnostic time basically tearing out the Networking guts of both VALEN and SINCLAIR and putting 'em back in, trying to determine just what the smeg was goin' on. But then I remembered something my friend Tom once told me: "Windows Networking is basically lousy, but the upside is that it's amazingly hard to screw it up", and that's what got me thinkin' that maybe it was IVANOVA that was the source of the problem... ;-) (Well, actually, *I* was the source of the problem... er, never mind.) And speaking of which, this came hot on the heels of a hard disk failure on VALEN, which occurred immediately prior to taking a backup. And as you might have guessed, that dolt Joey deleted the old backup partition before creating the new backup, so BLAMMO!, several websites housed on that drive mysteriously went dark. It has NOT been a good week here in Joeyland... :-) And now, back to our originally-scheduled programming... / From the messy desktop of Joey Lindstrom / Visit The NuServer! http://www.GaryNumanFan.NU / Visit The Webb! http://webb.GaryNumanFan.NU / / "Share your second favorite thing in the universe with a friend." / --Everything I Need To Know I Learned From Babylon 5 ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 3 Feb 2000 18:01:48 +0300 From: "The Tik-Tok Man" Subject: Divorce time! To: "Numan Digest" D&J Hall wrote: b) my wife doesn't let me listen to Numan at home. Man that sucks the big one. How can you live like that? Get a new wife dude. Ziggy! Are you that cute chick with the cool Numan tat? TikTokMan Moscow ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 3 Feb 2000 14:15:02 -0500 From: "Polare Bear" Subject: Gary Numan North American Fan Club To: "Gary Numan Digest" Hello Numanoids Of The World! Jim "The Machman" Napier here! Apologies about the repostings to the digest. Darned el cheapo Excite Mail acting up! Hope all is forgiven! Phil Marsh comments the early days of this digest were overrun with negative comments about the NAGNFC. This was very interesting as well as disturbing to me, so I did a search for the word "NAGNFC" on the old digests. To my relief, I found NOTHING negative. In fact, the earliest issues of the Digest were full of exclusive news from the paper fanzine relayed by NAGNFC member Brian Hammond to share with fellow Digesters. Why couldn't Phil Marsh contribute news? Perhaps because NuWorld and AFE hadn't been invented yet? The NAGNFC was one of the biggest contributors of substantial news to the digest. Please see links to those old Digests below. Apparently I am made out to be a scam artist. I am now helping a fellow Numanoid get the word out on his covers CD on my website. He continually offers a piece of the action, but I've told him more than once I had no intention for him to send me any money. Scam artist indeed. I am going to have to side with Gary Numan on his insignificant whigner stance on this one I'm afraid. In fact, when Phil Marsh starts totally financing national Numan discos without recouping a penny, and when he has given away several Numan items in contests monthly for 11 years, can he call me a scam artist. And then ONLY after he has constructed, copied, collated, stapled, packaged and shipped over 100 paper fanzines for 55 months while charging a subscription cheaper than any other monthly fanzine. But alas Phil, it is far too easy to be an armchair critic than it is to be a doer in this world, eh? Phil Marsh's letter inadvertently proves that. The NAGNFC isn't quite McDonald's with over 100 billion served. However, we can boast of several hundred satisfied customers. To offset all this negativity, read a sampling of e-mails worshipping the NAGNFC that I receive almost daily below. Now that Phil Marsh has been made to look a stupid hot dog brain, I invite well constructed comments by him to the contrary. I expect you will cite your sources this time with hyperlinks as I have had to courtesy to do below. Otherwise, Phil Marsh embarrasses himself far more than me by callous comments made without an inkling of fact, and proves himself in desperate need of a proper hobby. February 20, 1994 Digest Issue #66: http://webb.garynumanfan.nu/deadliner/1994/1-066.txt January 7, 1994 Digest Issue #58: http://webb.garynumanfan.nu/deadliner/1994/1-058.txt November 29, 1992 Digest Issue #11: http://webb.garynumanfan.nu/deadliner/1992/1-011.txt And now this recent e-mail from NAGNFC member Berend DeGroot: Hi there dear Machman! First of all, I apologize for making a big mistake. I thought you were on the south pole, instead of the north! Stupid, stupid, stupid. I would also like to thank you very much for doing all the things you've done. I mean, things like organizing the NAGNFC and all the other activities coming along with it. THANK YOU!!!!!!!! You know, we Dutch Numan fans were, in a way, so goddamn isolated from every kind of Numan news. This has been very tough! But, thanks to the computer and the internet, this has now all changed. I'm not ashamed to say I'm getting a bit emotional now. I've been a Gary Numan fan for about twenty years. Personally, I like the Replicas album the most, and I think that up til now I've never heard anything quite like it. It's hard to describe, but I when I can feel an awful lot listening to it. Perhaps I don't need to describe it. You just have to feel it. So! I finally send you a message that's a bit longer! Hope you're doing fine, and would like you to have my e-mail address: berendthegreat@hotmail.com Until next time! Berend. Next comes some friendly words from NAGNFC fanatic Anthony Petkoff: thanks for offering such great merchandise, I'll let you know when i have the exile tour video copied and send one to you, I'm especially looking forward to the l.a. forum teletour tape, that was the first Numan concert i'd ever attended. thanks Anthony Petkoff ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 4 Feb 2000 21:05:49 -0000 From: "pmm" Subject: Manchester 99 To: Manchester 99 The following live mp3 Tracks have been added: Noise Noise - Full track - Manchester Academy Dark - Full track - Manchester Academy Manchester mix - A short mix of: Seed of a lie - Noise Noise - Remember I was vapour. http://www.darkzone.co.uk ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 3 Feb 2000 16:19:17 +0200 From: Alex Shaltiel Subject: more cars spotted Israel cable ch.8 To: "'digest@garynumanfan.nu'" A bit of cars track (excluding vocals)used as background in the promo for some eco. program on local cable channels 3&8 (the local science/nature channel 8 in Israel) sounded wierdly out of place. ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 3 Feb 2000 22:17:21 -0000 From: "Tracy Joyner" Subject: Numan Convention To: "Gary Numan" Hi will, I would just like say hi and how are you William. And could anyone tell me what date the convention is as i know it is in Glasgow and if Gary is touring up this way this year? thanks TJ ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 04 Feb 2000 12:10:40 -0800 From: Jenny Subject: Numan popping up!!! To: digest@garynumanfan.nu Heres a few tidbits... I was in footlocker and they have tv's everywhere,, and they play viedos on them and when i walked in fear factorys cars with numan was just ending! argh!!! never saw the whole viedo! and there is a credit card commerical that uses cars... not sure which Credit card. and also... ever notice the 70's porn star TRACY LORDS looks a lot like numan? EH?? ok take care :) *jenny* ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 04 Feb 2000 02:42:44 -0600 From: Valerie Iglar-Mobley Subject: the automated human To: The Gary Digest Dear all, Word was passed to me about a couple other industrial-strength music ordering web sites. One carries the grandiose title "Global Electronic Music Marketplace," but earns it for the hundreds of entries: http://www.gemm.com Another one is just for the Brits, since prices are in pounds (or for any Yanks who want to procure international money orders): http://www.netsounds.com If anyone is still looking for those two "black sheep" of the Numan family of albums-- 'Automatic' and 'Human'-- I saw both listed at both sites. Be warned, though. The sites are far too huge for my jalopy of a pc to access without blowing a vacuum tube. Netsounds had 870 items listed; GEMM didn't give me a full count because I couldn't get it all on one page before my 'puter had brain-freeze. More than 250, anyway. love to all, Benjamin Iglar-Mobley http://home.earthlink.net/~iglarmobley P.S. Should the new comp be retitled 'New Dreams For Olds...mobile'? ------------------------------ End of Gary Numan Digest ****************************** ------------------------------------------------------------------- T H E G A R Y N U M A N D I G E S T is produced and distributed by Derek Langsford, Dave Datta, and Joey Lindstrom dlangs@sunstroke.sdsu.edu, datta@cs.uwp.edu, Joey@GaryNumanFan.NU ------------------------------------------------------------------- To reply to the messages in this list, email: digest@GaryNumanFan.NU If you want to be removed, or someone wants to be added, email: digest-request@GaryNumanFan.NU ------------------------------------------------------------------ The Gary Numan Digest is brought to you via Joey Lindstrom and the GaryNUmanFan server Joey@GaryNumanFan.NU All of the opinions in this digest belong to the respective authors and do not necessarily agree with those of the Digest Producers. -------------------------------------------------------------------------- Produced and distributed by Derek Langsford dlangs@sunstroke.sdsu.edu -------------------------------------------------------------------------- To reply to the messages in this list, mail to: digest@garynumanfan.nu If you want to be removed, or someone wants to be added, you can mail to digest-request@garynumanfan.nu --------------------------------------------------------------------------