North York
City of Toronto
Ontario, Canada
Planix, Inc. is where I work.
Secrets of the Weird is where I play!
The Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, Inc. , i.e. the IEEE.
The USENIX Association and LISA.
UNIX Unanimous since 1986. I'm a founding member!
There's lots of stuff below! Just like many a UNIX manual page this is not just one screen full of text (and pictures). Scroll around and see what you can see!
![[[Canada and the Internet]]](canada-netglobes.gif)
As you might guess I'm a Canadian and a part of the Internet as a whole.
I'm located in North York, a part of
The City of Toronto, here
in Southern Ontario.
A Silly Picture:
![[[this would be Greg]]](woods.gif)
[A slightly bigger, newer, picture is here .]
More faces of record:
Planix, Inc. - send mail to
info@planix.com
Me - send mail to
woods@planix.com
... or
woods@weird.com
... or
woods@robohack.uucp
![[[:-)]]](smiley-dot.gif){kind=small}
![[[PGP Now!]]](pgp-now.gif)
For sending me authenticated (and/or encrypted) mail, please use my
Weird.com PGP Public Key Block KeyID:0xC259C785Fingerprint:D612 7008 2257 195F 8A00 6B02 627B 5F14 C259 C785
or my
Planix PGP Public Key Block KeyID:0x78BFF47FFingerprint:6E2B A766 C150 2E72 6471 BA1F 667D 71B7 78BF F47F
Do not EVER even try to send me spam!
More complete and current information may be available via "finger". If you have a browser that supports the "gopher" protocol you can do that with a single click .
![[[View my Profile on LinkedIN]]](linked-in-button_view-my-profile_160x25.gif)
Please visit my FreeWare Software and Programming Projects pages.
Recently the IETF reluctantly published some RFCs describing a couple of ways that some sadly ignorant (and/or horribly pessimistic) people seem to think might offer a way to authenticate e-mail senders.
The only real way to authenticate any form of electronic communications is to use strong and proven cryptographic techniques, such as public keys, signatures, and encryption. One of the best ways to employ such technology for Internet E-mail has been around now for over a decade and a half, and that's the PGP program by none other than Phil Zimmermann. Almost a decade ago the IETF published RFC 2440 documenting a modern way to use PGP with multi-media i18n e-mail. There are several implementations of PGP that are widely and freely available. There are also commercially supported implementations. Any and all decent modern mail readers support PGP.
Of course PGP won't stop spam until and unless a vast majority of e-mail users learn to only open and read PGP-authenticated (and/or encrypted) mail from people PGP says they can trust, and only if the vast majority of PGP users are very dilligent about protecting their keys and about who's keys they sign. Spammers who can enter the web of trust, either by stealing well known keys, or by tricking well known key users into signing their keys, may be able to get their messages in front of unwilling eyes, at least until the appropriate revocations take effect.
Sadly we're still waiting for even governments and important companies such as banks and other financial intstitutions to adopt any form of decent cryptography to authenticate (and keep private) the e-mail they send to their citizens and customers.
Please install and begin using PGP at your earliest convenience. Please sign all e-mail you send to me. My PGP keys are published on all of the major key servers and are also available from the links above in the contact information section.
Where to find PGP
Note that I have also rewritten and enhanced the rblookup
script in my release of the
host
program.
For more information about the junk e-mail issue, please visit the Fight Spam on the Internet! site.
The good folks at Declude are offering a very comprehensive list of DNS Black Lists (DNSBL). An alternate, but as of 2001/11/17 somewhat dated, list is also available.
ORDB are offering a DNS Black List of open relays.
SpamHaus are offering a couple of useful DNS Black Lists, one of active spam sources, and another of exploited hosts.
SORBS are also offering a variety of useful DNS Black Lists. Their DNS BL also hosts the SPEWS (Spam Prevention Early Warning System) data (with a unique identifying A RR value).
DSBL are the suggested replacement for ORBZ, which is also now defunct.
A set of somewhat different kinds of DNS Black Lists are maintained by RFC-Ignorant.org. This list is queried with domain names, not reversed IP addresses. They're trying to raise awareness about the importance of RFC 2142 standard mailboxes.
Finally I must mention Spam Cop, which is a wonderful site that collects spam reports in a real-time archive, and they've recently been maintaining an almost real-time DNS Black List of active spam sources.
If you find yourself looking up domain names and IP numbers in various
WHOIS servers you might find this
jwhois
client to be extremely useful. It has a very powerful runtime
configuration language and comes with a ready-made example configuration
file which directs it to the appropriate WHOIS server regardless of
whether you give it an IP address or a domain name to look up.
Once upon a time (before I moved most recently) I had a small collection
of old computers. Well maybe it wasn't all that small....
Sadly most of it deteriorated beyond repair while being stored in the
less than ideal conditions of an old garage, and the rest was still far
to much to accomodate at my new house. It was all sent for recycling.
I had managed to collect several Digital PDP-11 systems, including a complete 11/34 system; many spare 11/34 bits and peripherals (including a monster RP-03 drive); a no longer functioning 11/20 (with real core memory!), and a couple of partial 11/04 systems, and even a small 11/23.
I also had quite a collection of Sun-3 stuff too. I had several 3/260s and a very well endowed 3/280, as well as a couple of 3/60s.
The first computer of my very own, and one that I used for all my daily personal work, was an AT&T 3B2/400. It was toasted by lightning in 1989 and after an almost year-long battle with Allstate (I'll never buy insurance from them again!) I finally managed to get it (and the fried modems and terminal) replaced with a used 3B2/500 that I found for about %10 of what the 400 would have cost to replace new. I also had a few of those most wonderful DMD-5620 terminals, a couple of Telebit modems, and such to go with the 3B2. Now that was a REAL UNIX™ computer!
I became the reluctant owner of a couple of MicroVAX system for a while (a MicroVAX-II with some kind of graphics in it, and a VAXserver (3100, I think) that looks to be fairly well equipped too). I traded them all for some once enterprise-class DEC RAID sub-systems for my AlphaServer.
I also had a couple of DECstation 5000s, and several assorted peripherals and such. I used one of these as a workstation for a while.
On the slightly newer side there were three or four little Digital Alpha Multia machines hiding near the big iron. I had one of them running as a workstation until the infamous little 74623 burned out on it. I think all three needed that chip replaced, and I had a tube of ten higher grade chips sitting and waiting to be used for the repair for years, but never any real need to run such tiny little machines....
I guess you could call my main personal workstation, and our main Internet server, as well as one of my working NetBSD test machines, all ``old'' too. They're Sun SPARCstations, a pair of SS-20's and an SS-5. I love my SS-20 with it's bw2 interface driving an ultra clear and solid 1600x1200 monochrome display. It's certainly fast enough as a diskless X11 workstation too! Another little SS-20 has been our main internet server replacing an older SS-2, and it's more than enough for a home e-mail/web/ftp/etc. server.
I'd love to find a Sol-20, preferably with North Star diskette drives, just for the sake of nostalgia, since that was the first type of computer system I used. It doesn't really have to be working, I guess, as I have no real desire to use any of the software I once used on it (which included Electric Pencil II, UCSD Pascal, and of course NorthStar BASIC).
I'd also love to find an RCA Cosmac ELF (1802) system of some sort. That was to be my first personal computer, but unfortunately the mail order place I (or rather my Mom) bought it from ripped us off ($500 in about 1980 or so!).
(At some point I'll probably move this to a separate page, add some pictures, and add more information about the newer in-use systems too!)
My (consolidated) bookmarks page.
Long long ago in a galaxy far far away I discovered Smalltalk. Well, actually I discovered it in an article written by Alan Kay in Scientific American, vol. 237, the September 1977 Special Issue on Microelectronics: Microelectronics and the Personal Computer, pages 230-244 (the same issue where the new Cray-1 and the IBM 375/178 were compared and contrasted) [Scans now available at DigiBarn Books: Alan Kay]. That wasn't the last time Smalltalk was mentioned in that popular journal, nor even the last time Alan Kay was published in it, but I think it was the first.
There is finally a true-to-the-original implementation of Smalltalk-80 done by none other than some of its original implementors, including Alan Kay, Dan Ingalls, and Ted Kaehler! It is Squeak!. Squeak is wonderful! Squeak is incredible! Squeak is portable! You should use Squeak!
Most people who know me will know that I detest each and every one of Microsoft's products. I recently came across a supposedly anonymous review, of sorts, of Microsoft Word. I couldn't have said it better (especially since I have never used it), so read the Word review for yourself.
The very first known computer virus was a subroutine called PERVADE originally written more than 25 years ago (1975) by John Walker to propagate his game ANIMAL around to new users on the old Univac 1100 series machines. (The full story is here).
The reason I point all of this out here, now, is to show just how little we've learned in the intervening time. Instead of making systems more secure it would seem we (i.e. Microsoft) have been doing exactly the opposite.
The Famous Jung-Myers-Briggs and Similar Tests: Take the Jung Myers Briggs Typology Test with The HumanMetrics Jung Typology Tester. I come out most often as an INTP, though on some days, being a somewhat middle-of-the-road kinda' guy, I'm also sometimes ENTP, INTJ, or even ENTJ and sometimes ISTJ. See also The Personality Project.
Here are some handy pinout tables I made for my own reference.
Visit the Class B Subnetting summary table.
Visit the Class C Subnetting summary table.
These are all originally derived from the ones a guy named
paulh had on his web page once found at:
http://www.pipex.net/people/paulh/classc.html
Unfortunately his web pages have long gone from that site. Thanks for
the ideas Paul H., wherever you are!
Visit Keith Sinclair's IP Subnetting Tool page for a more sophisticated tool for generating subnet tables.
Keith Sinclair at SINS has more good information on IP subnetting and network management too!
For more information on IP numbers and networking in general I'd
recommend the following on-line documents:
The Optimized Engineering Technical Compendium, and
Understanding IP Addressing: Everything You Ever Wanted To Know.
For TCP/IP in particular nothing beats the late W. Richard Steven's
tomes on the subject. You can find the details here at
W. Richard Stevens' Home Page.
The folks at
Chesapeake Computer Consultants, Inc.
also have some very useful tools and an online newsletter about networking.
I read science fiction, listen to most any kind of music that comes along (except opera, heavy metal, acid rock, and some punk; my current listening fav's are folk, jazz, and classical). I ride a motorcycle (when it runs, and when the weather co-operates!), drive a 4x4 truck, and drink home-brew and micro-brew beer (and none of that tasteless commercial horse piss for me! ``Life is too short to drink cheap beer!''). I don't like any spectator sports, but do like many outdoors activities.
You might also be able to visit me online at Orkut. or Facebook. Just search for my name.
I grew up on a farm near the small town of Moosomin, Saskatchewan , and I guess that'll explain at lease a couple of my likes and dislikes! You can keep up to date with the current Moosomin news through the World-Spectator Online , Saskatchewan's oldest weekly newspaper, founded in 1884, and Saskatchewan's first online weekly.
By trade I'm a consultant in the software industry, specialising in systems programming, computer and network security, communications, and software engineering. I am a founding partner in Planix, Inc.. Planix provides UNIX system development and support services. We do everything from ground-up design of systems to remote to monitoring and support.
My forté in software engineering is Software Configuration Management, and more specifically version control, maintenance, problem tracking, and release management. I have in-depth experience with both using and with the internals of RCS, SCCS, CVS (see also CVS), GNATS, Make, Automake Autoconf, and quite a few other similar tools.
My programming experience includes extensive C Language experience with my start as a professional C programmer in 1984, as well as a significant amount of experience with Lisp, and Lisp dialects such as Emacs-lisp. I also have some experience with Scheme. My experience with object-oriented programming comes from several decades of admiration and occasional study of the Smalltalk programming language, and I continue to work with the Squeak implementation. I have a reasonable grasp of functional programming. I am very well versed in most of the ``Little Languages'' found on UNIX systems (such as sh, Korn Shell, sed, and awk). However I have so far resisted any temptation to learn enough about any of the bastardised half-breed languages such as C++, Perl, etc., or even most of their ill-begotten offspring such as Java, C#, etc., to claim fluency in them. In fact I've been calling C++ the ``anti-Scheme'' for over a decade. Other than a few of the C-like scripting languages (ICI, Pike, Icon, etc.) the only new scripting language that has really caught my interest is Ruby, which is highly object oriented in the style of Smalltalk. I'm not even that much of a fan of Python, though I must admit it's almost infinitely better than TCL or Perl or such.
Most of my programming experience is with systems level software, including all levels of networking and data communications. I've also designed and written complete applications and database software, including simple database indexing engines, and I've worked on several teams developing large packages of systems software and applications. As with most programmers I've done a great deal of software maintenance, including a tremendous amount of porting software from one platform to another. In fact I've ported wide varieties of systems and applications software to almost all versions of UNIX ever used, from the original Seventh Edition Research UNIX up to the most modern systems such as Darwin (aka Mac OS X).
![[BSD daemon]](bsd_devil.gif)
I'm also quite familiar with the innards of UNIX, especially the
``free'' versions of BSD, i.e. those based on the 4.4BSD-Lite and
4.4BSD-Lite2 releases. I have done some device driver development and
other kernel work on various versions of XENIX, AT&T UNIX System V, as
well as the ``free'' versions:
NetBSD
and
FreeBSD.
I currently maintain a highly customised release of NetBSD, using it to support several of my customers, and I have done the same for other customers with FreeBSD in the past. This includes full integration of custom changes and updates, integration and regression testing, full builds of release media, and of course the integration and testing of third-party software packages as well. Primarily I currently support i386, sparc, and alpha, though potentially I can do builds for pmax and vax and anything other hardware I may acquire or be given (I can cross-build for anything, but I can only test with the hardware I have).
I also have deep experience with the internals of the NetBSD and FreeBSD software packaging systems (``pkgsrc'' and ``ports'' respectively), and I maintain local versions of a tiny fraction of the vast number of packages included in NetBSD's pkgsrc collection.
In the fields of computer and network security support I have many years of experience with all aspects of UNIX systems security and Internet security. For a past employer I worked on the design and development of an automated ``expert systems'' tool which audits and monitors the security status of UNIX systems and networks of UNIX systems. I also have experience with doing detailed security audits of systems and networks, risk analysis, threat assesment, and security policy definition and enforcement.
As you might guess from my antique computer collection, I also have extensive interest in, and experience with, computer hardware. Professionally I do a fair amount of hardware maintenance and systems integration on a regular basis. I generally try to avoid working with commodity ``personal'' computer hardware though, only stooping low enough to occasionally use commodity parts to build custom engineered servers and workstations when monetary constraints demand they be built at the lowest possible cost.
I still end up doing a lot of what many people call systems
administration and management, though I often think of it as more like
grunt work than anything else!
The
A.S.R. price list more or less sums up many of my thoughts about
being a sysadmin!
Please do not hesitate to contact me, either directly or through Planix, Inc., if you think I could be of any assistance with any project you are working on.
![[[A Steaming Cup of Java]]](coffeegreen.gif)
I like coffee. A lot. I'm definitely addicted to caffeine. This little ditty says it all:
(Source: the long out-dated Coffee: Source of all life page attributes this wee parody to Kerry Lutz; but Faisal's Quote File, when it wasn't protected, said it's by Dennis Ferguson, though my guess is Dennis just had it in his ~/.signature. Several other people attribute this to National Lampoon's Doon.)It is by caffeine alone I set my mind in motion.
It is by the beans of Java the thoughts acquire speed,
The hands acquire shaking,
The shaking becomes a warning.
It is by caffeine alone I set my mind in motion.
-- à la the Mentat mantra from Dune by Frank Herbert
I'm not a coffee fanatic though — as long as it's fresh and strong I'll
drink it. In other words I don't try to hide my addiction by pretending
to be a connoisseur of fine coffees!
![[CAUTION!]](caution.gif){kind=small}
Mandatory Weird Stuff
![[BEWARE ALL YE WHO TREAD HERE!]](skull.gif){kind=small}
Anyone who slaps a ``this page is best viewed with Browser X'' label on a Web page appears to be yearning for the bad old days, before the Web, when you had very little chance of reading a document written on another computer, another word processor, or another network.
-- Tim Berners-Lee in Technology Review, July 1996
![[[Under Construction]]](construction.gif){kind=small}
![[[Made-In-Canada]]](maple-leaf-cdn.gif){kind=small}
by:
woods@planix.com
woods@robohack.planix.com
woods@planix.ca
woods@weird.com
woods@weird.toronto.ca
woods@robohack.ca
woods@robohack.uucp
![[[ No Aliens Permitted! ]]](noalienzone.gif){kind=small}
This is a No Alien Zone! Uploading of these web-pages to Motherships,
Flying Saucers, or any other craft of an ExtraTerrestrial Nature is
Strictly Forbidden
.
Failure to comply with these copyright restrictions will make me really
mad. The images are all your's to do with as you please though!
![[[The Eye is watching you!]]](blinking_eye.gif){kind=small}
This page has been accessed
times since 22 Sept. 1995.
![[[BACK]]](button-no-back-tiggertr.gif)
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