Category Archives: Weird

Business, Space, Technology and Society, Weird

“Landing” A Super Heavy

27 Comments

Elon issued a crazy tweet yesterday.

And someone has already come up with a render.

Administrative, Technology and Society, Weird

Computer Problem

56 Comments

I’m posting this from Patricia’s machine, because mine died in its sleep last night. When I got up, it had reset for some reason, and was ready to boot. But it wouldn’t. It just spins forever. I tried reverting to previous kernels, but still no joy. It even fails when booting to rescue it. Not sure how to even start to diagnose it. I could try booting her machine with it (very similar hardware), to see if it’s a software issue, but I’d have to figure out how to edit the fstab, because it overmounts a separate drive as /home, and her machine wouldn’t have it.

Anyway, fun times.

[Update a while later]

Definitely not a software problem; I tried booting it from the drive I use to boot my laptop, and the same issue. I looked at the hardware monitor in the BIOS, and not seeing any issues. The CPU temperature seems fine. And the CPU seems to be working well enough to get to the boot menu. I suspect it is a motherboard issue (though it could be memory). I should see if it will boot with memtest.

[Tuesday-morning update]

Per comments, in the BIOS setup, I am seeing all three drives (the SSD that the OS lives on, the hard drive that is /home, and the SSD that Windows lives on for the VM), 32G of RAM. All looks fine from that standpoint. Next step is to find a stick and put memtest on it.

[Update a while later]

OK, I’m posting this from the machine. It seemed to boot fine from a Fedora 33 live USB (i.e., it doesn’t seem to be a hardware problem). Now to figure out why it won’t boot from its own drive, or from the other Fedora drive I tried. Any diagnostic suggestions?

[Update a few minutes later]

So I ran fsck on /dev/sda (my system drive). It said there was a dirty bit set on the first partition, but other than that it found no problems. But it still won’t boot.

[Afternoon update]

So, using the instructions on this page, I tried reinstalling grub2. On the last command, I got this error message:

****************************************

[root@localhost-live /]

# grub2-install /dev/sda
Installing for i386-pc platform.
Unknown device “/dev/sda1”: No such device
Unknown device “/dev/sda1”: No such device
Unknown device “/dev/sda1”: No such device
Unknown device “/dev/sda2”: No such device
Unknown device “/dev/sda1”: No such device
Unknown device “/dev/sda2”: No such device
Unknown device “/dev/sda3”: No such device
Unknown device “/dev/sda1”: No such device
Unknown device “/dev/sda1”: No such device
Unknown device “/dev/sda1”: No such device
Unknown device “/dev/sda1”: No such device
grub2-install: warning: ../grub-core/partmap/gpt.c:190:this GPT partition label contains no BIOS Boot Partition; embedding won’t be possible.
grub2-install: warning: Embedding is not possible. GRUB can only be installed in this setup by using blocklists. However, blocklists are UNRELIABLE and their use is discouraged..
grub2-install: error: will not proceed with blocklists.

************************************************************

[root@localhost-live /]

# ls /dev/sda1
/dev/sda1

So I don’t know why it’s having trouble knowing the device (sda1 is my boot partition). Any ideas?

[Update a few minutes later]

Wait a minute. Why is it installing for an i386 platform? This is a Ryzen. [Off looking up man on grub2-install]

Weird. It says the default platform is the one that the installer is running on. I’m pretty sure that this live USB is x86_64.

Here is the boot partition:

EFI grub2 mach_kernel System

[Update a while later]

OK, weirder and weirder. I’m following the instructions on this page (just the last one to reinstall grub and shim), but when I do the dnf, it times out getting to the repositories. And I can’t ping Google. Yet I’m able to web surf. Riddle me that, Batman.

Administrative, Business, Technology and Society, Weird

Amazon.com

11 Comments

Very weird. I cannot access the website from this computer. It’s not a route issue, because I can get to it from her Windows machine, but on my Linux machine, it times out. Traceroute output is:

$ traceroute amazon.com
traceroute to amazon.com (176.32.98.166), 30 hops max, 60 byte packets
1 * * *
2 81.d6.9bc0.ip4.static.sl-reverse.com (192.155.214.129) 17.514 ms 17.540 ms 17.560 ms
3 ae22.dar01.sjc01.networklayer.com (50.23.118.158) 19.775 ms 17.523 ms 19.857 ms
4 ae9.bbr02.eq01.sjc02.networklayer.com (50.97.19.166) 19.543 ms 19.665 ms 19.535 ms
5 ae6.cbs02.eq01.sjc02.networklayer.com (50.97.17.78) 20.183 ms * *
6 ae0.cbs02.cs01.lax01.networklayer.com (50.97.17.86) 26.906 ms 27.243 ms 27.196 ms
7 * * *
8 * * *
9 ae2.dar01.dal13.networklayer.com (169.45.18.37) 57.537 ms 54.337 ms 55.683 ms
10 * ae16.cbs02.eq01.dal03.networklayer.com (169.45.18.90) 54.432 ms 57.155 ms
11 ae0.cbs01.tl01.atl01.networklayer.com (50.97.17.163) 82.146 ms 84.211 ms 85.019 ms
12 ae8.bbr01.tl01.atl01.networklayer.com (50.97.17.155) 72.644 ms 74.857 ms 72.502 ms
13 amazon.tieatl.telxgroup.net (198.32.132.95) 77.715 ms 74.947 ms 74.869 ms
14 * * *
15 * * *
16 * * *
17 178.236.3.31 (178.236.3.31) 88.314 ms 54.240.229.187 (54.240.229.187) 90.802 ms 54.240.229.217 (54.240.229.217) 84.928 ms
18 * * *
19 * * *
20 * * *
21 * * *
22 * * *
23 * * *
24 * * *
25 * * *
26 * * *
27 * * *
28 * * *
29 * * *
30 * * *

When I ping it, I get this:

$ ping amazon.com
PING amazon.com (176.32.103.205) 56(84) bytes of data.
64 bytes from 176.32.103.205 (176.32.103.205): icmp_seq=1 ttl=233 time=79.8 ms
64 bytes from 176.32.103.205 (176.32.103.205): icmp_seq=2 ttl=233 time=80.7 ms
64 bytes from 176.32.103.205 (176.32.103.205): icmp_seq=3 ttl=233 time=79.8 ms
64 bytes from 176.32.103.205 (176.32.103.205): icmp_seq=4 ttl=233 time=82.8 ms
64 bytes from 176.32.103.205 (176.32.103.205): icmp_seq=5 ttl=233 time=79.7 ms
64 bytes from 176.32.103.205 (176.32.103.205): icmp_seq=6 ttl=233 time=78.7 ms
64 bytes from 176.32.103.205 (176.32.103.205): icmp_seq=7 ttl=233 time=79.2 ms
^C
— amazon.com ping statistics —
7 packets transmitted, 7 received, 0% packet loss, time 6005ms
rtt min/avg/max/mdev = 78.697/80.101/82.796/1.235 ms

When I try to browse to that IP address, I get this:

Your connection is not private

Attackers might be trying to steal your information from 176.32.103.205 (for example, passwords, messages, or credit cards). Learn more

NET::ERR_CERT_COMMON_NAME_INVALID

This server could not prove that it is 176.32.103.205; its security certificate is from *.peg.a2z.com. This may be caused by a misconfiguration or an attacker intercepting your connection.

**************************************************************

Anyone have any idea what might be going on? This only started in the past day or so.

Note: I have the same problem on my virtual Windows machine. I simply cannot access Amazon from this hardware.

[Update a while later]

None of the proferred explanations so far explain why it’s only (AFAIK) amazon.com.

[Afternoon update]

OK, the problem is with ExpressVPN. When I disconnect it, and put Google’s nameserver in /etc/resolv.conf, it works. So I guess I need to talk to them.

[Late afternoon update]

OK, the problem seemed to be the San Francisco VPN server (the default). When I connected to LA instead, the problem went away.