Archive for the 'Hardware' Category

As hinted in the last post, Scummbox.org is running some new services.

To facilitate remote access to my network, OpenVPN has been installed. It was a cinch to install, and through some trial and error I have gotten additional routes passed through to access my home network range from any remote location.

Also installed was TinyProxy. This allows users connected to the VPN to (transparently!) access sites that may be blocked at their location.

A final new service running is GnuMP3d… A remote playlist/streaming client that is tucked behind the VPN to prevent rampant and unauthorized

This entry is being written on the brand new pre-prod scummbox! Weird to write a blog post that could not see the light of day for potential months!

As of yesterday, I decided that pants, the existing scummbox, is getting long in the tooth. It’s an old Celeron 333 maching that I got for free from a company that was throwing a tonne of them out. It lived a hard life before I got it, and it’s lived a harder life since then.

Pants has had cats chew on its power cables, rained on, dropped, had catastrophic power failures and still runs tickity-boo 99% of the time. But that 1% is out there, and I don’t want to get burned.

So I’ve made New Pants! New Pants is running much newer hardware (AMD X2 processor, 2gb of ram) and with a lot more storage (1TiB vs 40GiB) in a well-ventilated case. There has also been a complete OS changeover from the old FreeBSD 5.4 to a current version of Gentoo Linux.

As I type, I’m configuring mail services and copying over some test sites to see how things deal with my Apache/PHP/MySQL installs. WordPress has dealt well with the change, and theoretically mail delivery and webmail are running, too!

The problem will be identifying all the different processes running on Pants, and replicating them on the new machine. Already Apache 2 has changed how I store sites and configure virtual servers… but I’m not expecting it all to be smooth sailing.

Well, another post that no one will see once this build is closer to finished!

Some back story: About two weeks ago, one of my cats stepped on my surge suppressor power switch, and killed power to my machines (the suppressors are now zip-tied to my desk out of reach.) The only machine that was effected was my main Linux desktop (of course) which would no longer boot reliably. Seeing this as a chance to get rid of the last IDE drive in that system, I went out and got a new drive and installed it. Now as I have already posted, I have been with Gentoo for a year. Not one to rest on my laurels and let the Ubuntu sensation pass me by, I decided to install that on the desktop.

So after using Ubuntu for a week, I decided I didn’t like the coddling it does. What do you mean I can’t accidentally uninstall Coreutils and have to spend 4 frenzied hours trying to download and extract a version with no “advanced” tools such as ls and rm? I can’t trust anything that doesn’t boot to the command line prior to a GUI (Thus my current problems with Windows and OSX.)

So, in the spirit of “This works, but not to my satisfaction”, I nuked my Ubuntu install and put Gentoo back on the machine.

Ahh, that’s better.

Immediately I run into package blocks (HOORAY! I missed you, blocked packages!) between coldplug and udev. This is a known issue with older installs (2006.1, from the scrawl on the disc. The current install version of Gentoo is 2007.0) upgrading to the newest packages. Udev now has coldplug included (Linux Primer: Udev dynamically creates your /dev directory… the directory where all your raw devices are kept. Hard drive information, sound card information, etc. It’s much better than the old way. Coldplug checks for devices that cannot be changed while the computer is running… PCI cards and the like… and makes them useable by the linux system.) That paragraph got huge. Time for a new one.

So Coldplug is blocking Udev. No worries. I unmerge (uninstall) coldplug, and do the udev upgrade. Around the same time I change my network settings so that I have a static IP from my router, but it’s not taking. So, reboot. Once the system comes back up, I have to modprobe forcedeth (basically my NIC driver) before I can run /etc/init.d/net.eth0 start (the start-up script for my network card.) It didn’t twig in my head that because of removing coldplug and not running revdep-rebuild (basically recompiles any packages dependent on changed/removed components) to make sure everything used the new Udev, I might have some issues with services.

Prior to leaving to work this morning, I got a pretty big package upgrade going and strolled out the door thinking all is fine. Upon getting to work this morning, though, I find that ssh isn’t running. Oh woe is me!! A new Linux system, and I can’t even tinker with it remotely? Maddening! I meant to install my graphics card drivers and my current favorite Xwindows Manager whilst here (yes, everything I did prior was from a command line.) Nothing chafes me more than my own stupidity in these situations.

So I’ll be pissed about that for a good while

First, an aside: Today I am a real Blogger. I am posting this from a coffee shop in Toronto!

January 10th (or thereabouts) marks the 1 year anniversary of me getting bored with a Windows XP workstation and installing Linux for the first time in many years. Since then I’ve added a wee Ubuntu box and a PowerMac G4 running OS X Leopard (a topic for a different post) to my managre,

My network at home has been dependent on a Linksys Router with a 4 port switch built in for connectivity. It is the BEFSX41 Router with VPN Endpoint, and it has served us well for over two years.

Recently at my (now ex-) job, we’ve started testing IPv6 deployment to end users. I am in this test pool, and sadly the router we have doesn’t support IPv6 in any way, shape or form.

Enter the Linksys WRT54G Wireless G Router (Version 3, for those that care) and OpenWRT. OpenWRT was made possible by Linksys violating the GPL by using a linux distro as the OS on the WRT54G and not releasing the source code. Once the dust had cleared on that debacle, people could write and install their own OSes for the device.

OpenWRT is very easy to install (just flash the proper image to your router) and is package based, for easy expandability. Among those packages are IPv6 stack and announcement packages. It is theoretically perfect for my needs!

Now, you might be wondering why I put “theoretically” in there. The one problem with IPv6 being so bleeding-edge is that nobody has a tutorial on how to configure OpenWRT to handle a Native IPv6 connection. Plenty of information on tunneling IPv6 over IPv4 connections, but bupkis on what I need. If I figure out the proper way to configure it, I’ll be sure to post it here.

A couple quick hints about getting Wireless connections to work properly with the stock OpenWRT install. First: change the default wireless channel from 6 to Auto… Channel 6 is a popular one for many 2.4ghz cordless phones. Second: If you are going to use some sort of WEP security, be sure to install the nas package. You will have no end of problems without it.

I’m quite impressed with OpenWRT thus far… and the sheer number of packages available for it is just staggering. There is Asterisk (VOIP PBX software) packages, HTTP server packages, RADIUS (authentication) packages… too many to list.

If you’re feeling adventurous, and not afraid of potentially “bricking” a router, I’d highly recommend checking out OpenWRT