Mircea Bardac /random_thoughts

My ISP’s DNS server is not running great these days and I’ve decided to run my own DNS Server, since I’m using Linux. The idea was to cache the DNS entries locally and query the ISP DNS servers only when needed. This way I would prevent the current timeouts. I’m using bind (named - daemon) as a DNS Server.
I’ve used the following page to help me change in my named configuration:
http://www.faqs.org/docs/securing/chap21sec164.html

Another good resource on DNS Servers is: http://www.tldp.org/HOWTO/DNS-HOWTO.html

I also plan increasing the ‘time to live’ in the DNS cache (local server) for the entries, since I don’t want to rely too much on the outside DNS Servers. I would special zones for the domains that need regular updating (such as dyndns.org, no-ip.org and others).

I was browsing today through the news on kde.org site and I found the KDE-CVS-Digest (something similar to a report of the recent activities - for the ones who don’t understand).
One thing that really impressed me was a recent optimization that claims to remove flickering and make Konqueror (the file browser in KDE) load directories 2 to 3 times faster. That is something most of the KDE users noticed. Too many redraws makes your computer look slower.

I think this kind of “discoveries” is the reason why I like the OpenSource communities. There’s always somebody who finds/implements something and makes everybody else’s life a lot easier. Everything is so dynamic (some of the people might say too dynamic)and such optimizations make you really enjoy each and every contribution.

I have managed to port & configure my GnuPG keychain from my previous installation (on windows).
Got it working on KMail. I’m still researching how to install the crypto plugin without messing up my system to allow detached signatures.

My public key is available here.

After ‘managing’ to break my KDE on Friday evening by upgrading from 3.2.0 to 3.2.1, I have discovered today that it wasn’t actually my fault. It wasn’t actually broken, but it missed the ‘not built-in themes’, like one really good looking theme: Plastik.

One of the packages (kdeartwork to be more precise) required Qt 3.3.1 because the theme libraries (.so files) were built against it although KDE 3.2.1 can be built against Qt 3.2.3 (according to the requirements). This slight change, also permitted by a missing dependency (Qt 3.3.1 should have been put as a dependency, to the kdeartwork pack or to the kdelibs pack) made me lose almost 2 days (most of the weekend the weekend). In the end, I filed a report to the ArchLinux forums to notify the package maintainers of the missing dependency (and save some other people’s time).

Finished downloading the binary packages of KDE 3.2.0 for ArchLinux 0.6. I’ve sacrificed some hundred something MB out of my 1.5 GB traffic limit per month only for KDE & some other missing packs from the base ISO CD. Now I’ve realised why ArchLinux occupies only one CD. It does not have KDE or Gnome on it, it has only Xfce (which looks quite slick, but I need a little bit more flexibility).

At least now I can say I have a beautiful interface