Cox Crow

Forcing the Link Speed to Stupid

Various implementations of Ethernet negotiate the link speed, so that devices can communicate at the optimal rate. Depending on the capabilities of the equipment, this is could be anywhere from a 10Mbps half-duplex link to an 1000Mbps full-duplex link. In some circumstances, one end of the link is forced to a specific setting, and the other end has to adjust to that. Practically speaking, most NICs have trouble adjusting. This is especially true when the link partner decides that it won't talk at any rate other than 10Mbps full-duplex.

Why? you ask. There's the right way, the wrong way, and the Army way.

4:32:13 PM # Google It!
categories: System Administration

Reminder: Your Subscription Will Expire

Userland provides site hosting and updates for Radio Userland users on a subscription basis. The cost of the first year of this subscription is included in the price of Radio. If the subscription is not renewed, then two things will happen:

1. The Radio Userland program will no longer update itself.
2. Files on radio.weblogs.com will be removed.

If you decide not to renew, and will continue publishing from another location, there are some things you should do to prepare the world at large, to notify your readers of the change. Readers come in all shapes and sizes. Some of them are human, others are machines. Humans, as a rule, are somewhat more flexible than machines, and can be notified in a plethora of ways. Machines like things to be just so. Not only do you have to speak their language, but you have to be grammatically correct.

Since we're speaking of a web site here, the machines in question speak the Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP), and may understand HTML and RSS. This is good, because you won't be able to use an HTTP Redirect on radio.weblogs.com, with all that implies.

For the HTML version of your site, edit your template to include a meta element, then re-publish everything. This will cause some machines to load the new location. This is an example that will cause the browser to load the new location zero (0) seconds after loading the original location.

<meta http-equiv="refresh" content="0;url=http://weblog.bluepenguin.us/0106188/index.html">

Joe Friend passes on a UserTalk macro which will customize the meta element for each page:
<meta http-equiv="refresh" content="5;url=http://www.newsite.com/<%local (pta = html.getpagetableaddress ()); local (path = pta^.path); return (string.replace (path, ".txt", ".html"))%>">
Some machines, primarily search engines, do not pay attention to this element.

For the RSS version, there was some argument a while back about a method for using RSS to inform feed consumers of a change in the status of an URL. There was no real agreement on what to do about this, but discussion died once Dave Winer wrote something for Radio Userland. Due to the lack of consensus, this has only been implemented in Radio and NetNewsWire. This does not reduce its utility, since at least a subset of your readers will be moved to follow.

The following procedure is not intended to be a comprehensive guide to site migration. While it assumes that you will not use Radio to update your non-Userland-hosted site, the differences between this and simply using another host for your Radio-generated site are minimal.

1. Edit your template to include the meta element mentioned above.
2. Write a farewall post for the Userland-hosted site.
3. Hand edit your rss.xml file to point to the new location.

   
   <?xml version="1.0"?>
   <redirect>
   <newLocation>http://weblog.bluepenguin.us/0106188/index.xml<;/newLocation>
   </redirect>

4. Upstream everything to radio.weblogs.com.
5. Turn off the Radio.

Any questions? This method is not recommended if your readers do not use Radio Userland.

10:11:12 AM # Google It!
categories: Writing Online

That Web Server Survey Thing

I've been following the Netcraft web server survey since, oh, 1997 or so. And either I deleted the e-mail announcing the March survey in a frenzy of spam killing, or I never received it. Looks like Netcraft has converted.

Some time during March, Netcraft introduced an RSS feed as part of overall site redesign. From the looks of things, Mike Prettejohn has confirmed they are using MoveableType. The only trend apparent in the survey for March is that 3.3 million sites have been added to the survey.

9:36:36 AM # Google It!