Michael Wheeler

Openfiler – TheSkorm

So I’ve wanted to setup a file server for home to backup two laptops, and a desktop machine and to store data like Music and Movies (Mum has the whole Stargate collection now on DVD and I’m thinking of ripping them for a backup copy). Previous servers I’ve made or setup have been loud, noisy and chew lots of power. This server is actually a Dell Optiplex that was on death row (ready to be sent to the dump) that I was able to rescue.

Hardware wise it’s just a 1.8ghz, 512mb of RAM, gigabit network card and 20GB hard drive. I’ve added a 40GB hard drive and a 320 GB hard drive for the moment to play with.

It’s quite a nice and quite server and I have ordered a 1TB hard drive and SATA card for the server, from Jack, which will provide me with a decent amount of storage.

Software wise I’ve been trailing Openfiler for the server which is an amazing file server bundle that runs on rPath linux. It uses all the new linux hard drive stuff, like LVM and software RAIDs, and has HTTP, NFS, RSYNC, FTP and SMB support for protocols, which is really nice.

The interface for openfiler is just awesome. You can easily add new partitions, and take snapshots of drive. You can manage all the access rights and everything from the web interface. It’s really really nice.

It still needs a bit of work, I had to hit the terminal a few times to fix some bugs, add new users and resize some partitions. The instructions for install are a littler unclear, like when your partitioning, I don’t think you are ment to partition the parts you want to share.

I don’t like the fact it runs on rPath linux and the way it’s made only for rPath, as this means that you have to have a dedicated server for files and nothing else. Most of the time my file server will be idle so I may aswell make it do something else.

It’d be really nice if it was just a package like software, like a gentoo ebuild or a deb package. That aside it’s really nice software and worth a look at.

As for backup software for Windows Vista, it really does suck. The Vista backup tool tries to backup your whole drive, which I don’t want it to do, and it doesn’t back up everything, just documents and the like, which is really annoying. On the other Vista machine I’ve used SyncToy from MS which is a nice piece of software, and so far it has been working well.

I’ll trial these and report back at the end of the testing period.

Screenshot-7 – TheSkorm

Last week I have been messing around with Ekiga 2.8 (or something) calling and video calling people. It was loads of fun and it ran well. The interface however was lacking awesomeness for its day and I was really surprised to see a wicked looking GUI on the Ekiga website. This is where my adventure began.

I first tried the released beta, and after figuring out how to compile (which was clearly stated on the wiki, however the documentation included within the package said the opposite) i attempted to compile, which failed, I then tried the latest snapshots which also failed. I ended up getting a combination of the 15th and 17th snapshots compiled, however it would segfault straight away. I also found out the hard way that there configuration scripts are dumb, and all previous signs of old libraries must be burnt in a fire and that make clean doesn’t actually work.

I then got some other snapshots to compile, although video support would not work, and it was only today when they released the 3.0.1 beta was I able to get video support working.

I’ve included a screenshot of me talking to Hamzah, although his Cam wasn’t included in the screenshot due SDL (from what I gather). Ekiga 3.0.1 seems more stable and nice to use, and feels more skypey. It also ties into libnotify or libsexy (I can’t remember which is which) and does a good job when people are calling you.

Really really nice, and for all you’s wondering my sip is sip:TheSkorm@ekiga.net . ekiga.net provides the best steaks in town, erm, I mean they provide the best STUN service around.

Sophie In The Bubble Wrap. – meg_nicol

I’m the idiot who would break into the post office to pop all the bubble wrap.

I’m the idiot who would break into a hardware store to zip all the zippy ties.

Not many days of school left and I’m trying to keep motivated. Currently struggling in Physics, this relativity stuff is horrible. You know the whole “If was standing on a bus that was traveling at the speed of light, what happens if I walk forward” and “If I’m traveling at the speed of light and I look in a mirror what will I see” type of stuff.

I’m struggling to understand and use the provided formulas correctly. Hopefully I’ll get this sorted before the final exam -_-.

Anyway, I just thought I’d share what’s happening with my life and school.

I’m Pretty Sure I’m Unauthorized – llimllib

zzap has posted a very in-depth article on why the proposed internet censorship sucks. I agree with zzaps post completely and here are my issues and thoughts with the internet filtering.

ISPs should provide filtering by law to all customers, however, it should be a opt in case not opt out. Filtering customers, destroys privacy, impacts on security and speed and doesn’t work

Filtering cannot stop porn sites from being accessed, and filtering can also trigger false positives.

Filtering provides another place for man in the middle attacks, allowing hackers to gain access to where you go, passwords and usernames by sniffing.

Filtering doesn’t work under encrypted connections making is even more useless.

Filtering all of Australia’s internet, which is already horribly slow, will make it even more slower. This is no way to create a “world class broadband network”.

I love my ISP at the moment, because I know that my data gets from one place to another without being Fold, Bended, Mutilated or Spindled. Packets get from one place to another without going through http proxies or the like.

I can see this ISP level filtering masking my IP and most likely will cause problems with shared sites, that block by IP.

I would like to apologise for this shittyness of this post. It’s taken me 30 minutes to write this, and I can’t seem to stay focused.

This also goes against the idea’s of the Internet. It wasn’t designed to be destroyed like this.

img_2950.jpg – TheSkorm

Had a pretty decent LAN Party last weekend. We played TF2, BF1942, CS:S, Diablo 2 LOD and Warcraft 3 FT. The LAN started at 12:00 and went to 12:00 the next day, and the amount of people varied between 2 and 11, although the average was 9 (Damn people needing to work). The flickr stream starts here.

All in all it was pretty good, 8 pizzas, soft drink. Could have done with some more nachos, but meh. Pretty damn good.

When people aren’t playing games it’s a good chance to trade Creative Commons music and the like. I have 50gb of music now that I’m sorting through. This also gave me a chance to test out the new iTunes 8 and I have to say, it hasn’t changed much. It looks a little nicer IMHO.

The LAN also allowed me to test out my new Nvidia 8600GT graphics card, which done wonders. Since my computer naturally runs hot, I under clocked it, and still managed to get over 50 FPS in most games.

This is also the first LAN where I have been able to stop people from using all my bandwidth, by blocking all ports but HTTP, MSN and the like. This stopped torrents and people playing WOW (which I think is a stupid thing to do at a LAN anyway). To do it using my approach you must have a modem / router running and it must have iptables.

Yours will be different depending on the model and brand of modem, but you can have a look at the script I used to block everything but the stuff I wanted.

iptables –delete FORWARD 1
iptables –insert FORWARD 3 -j ACCEPT -p tcp –destination-port 6667 -i br0
iptables –insert FORWARD 3 -j ACCEPT -p tcp –destination-port 6667
iptables –insert FORWARD 3 -j ACCEPT -p tcp –destination-port 9002
iptables –insert FORWARD 3 -j ACCEPT -p tcp –destination-port 9002 -i br0
iptables –insert FORWARD 3 -j ACCEPT -p tcp –destination-port 6697
iptables –insert FORWARD 3 -j ACCEPT -p tcp –destination-port 6697 -i br0
iptables –insert FORWARD 3 -j ACCEPT -p tcp –destination-port 443 -i br0
iptables –insert FORWARD 3 -j ACCEPT -p tcp –destination-port 443
iptables –insert FORWARD 3 -j ACCEPT -p tcp –destination-port 53
iptables –insert FORWARD 3 -j ACCEPT -p tcp –destination-port 53 -i br0
iptables –insert FORWARD 3 -j ACCEPT -p udp –destination-port 53
iptables –insert FORWARD 3 -j ACCEPT -p udp –destination-port 53 -i br0
iptables –insert FORWARD 3 -j ACCEPT -p tcp –destination-port 80
iptables –insert FORWARD 3 -j ACCEPT -p tcp –destination-port 80 -i br0
iptables –insert FORWARD 3 -j ACCEPT -p tcp –destination-port 1863
iptables –insert FORWARD 3 -j ACCEPT -p tcp –destination-port 1863 -i br0
iptables –insert FORWARD 3 -j ACCEPT -p tcp –destination-port 21
iptables –insert FORWARD 3 -j ACCEPT -p tcp –destination-port 21 -i br0
iptables –insert FORWARD 3 -j ACCEPT -p udp –destination-port 1863
iptables –insert FORWARD 3 -j ACCEPT -p udp –destination-port 1863 -i br0
iptables –insert FORWARD 3 -j ACCEPT -p udp –destination-port 3388:3390
iptables –insert FORWARD 3 -j ACCEPT -p udp –destination-port 3388:3390 -i br0
iptables –insert FORWARD 3 -j ACCEPT -p tcp –destination-port 3388:3390
iptables –insert FORWARD 3 -j ACCEPT -p tcp –destination-port 3388:3390 -i br0
iptables –insert FORWARD 3 -j ACCEPT -p tcp –destination-port 27030:27039 -i br0
iptables –insert FORWARD 3 -j ACCEPT -p tcp –destination-port 27030:27039
iptables –insert FORWARD 3 -j ACCEPT -p tcp –destination-port 110
iptables –insert FORWARD 3 -j ACCEPT -p tcp –destination-port 110 -i br0
iptables –insert FORWARD 3 -j ACCEPT -p tcp –destination-port 25
iptables –insert FORWARD 3 -j ACCEPT -p tcp –destination-port 25 -i br0
iptables –insert FORWARD 3 -j ACCEPT -p tcp –destination-port 465
iptables –insert FORWARD 3 -j ACCEPT -p tcp –destination-port 465 -i br0
iptables –insert FORWARD 3 -j ACCEPT -p tcp –destination-port 993
iptables –insert FORWARD 3 -j ACCEPT -p tcp –destination-port 993 -i br0
iptables –insert FORWARD 3 -j ACCEPT -p tcp –destination-port 995
iptables –insert FORWARD 3 -j ACCEPT -p tcp –destination-port 995 -i br0
iptables –insert FORWARD 3 -j ACCEPT -p tcp –destination-port 5900
iptables –insert FORWARD 3 -j ACCEPT -p tcp –destination-port 5900 -i br0
iptables -A FORWARD -j DROP -i br0