So, been going nuts with SNMP.  It’s fairly simple with the tools nowadays to graph traffic with MRTG.

So, I added basic statements and access list for the Cisco switch (2924XL) and walked it.  Added that to a page.  Added the same to the one at work and punched a hole for my own IP to be able to talk to it.

Then my desktop – you can install SNMP widgets in XP.  Now had stats on the ethernet interfaces.

Then looked at the Cisco 837 at work.  Added that.

Was quiet for a while… started looking around at what else would support it.

The wireless router.  WRT54GL with OpenWRT.  Did it…?  Yes, there’s SNMP libraries.  Graphed.

At this point, you can see the traffic flowing through the network if you know how it’s hooked up.

Looked at the DSL modem (Speedstream 4200), no SNMP option on the web page.  BUT… the telnet interface does mention it, and there’s a windows tool for it… got wireshark to see what it was doing.  ‘public’ is the default community, I can’t even find mention of that in the config, or how to change or lock that down.

Either way, graphed.

Then found and figured out the OIDs for SNR and attenuation.  So I have a running look at the suitability of my line.

Trying to figure out the sync rate now.  That *should* be graphable.  Not many examples out there – most seem to run against scripts that parse the HTML page of the router.  Sub-optimal.

Or, how I learned to triple-boot Windows, OSX, Ubuntu.

So, I got a new PC.  MSI Wind Nettop 100. Dual core Atom, low-power CPU, put a 1TB WD Caviar Green drive in it.  And found in one review, links on how to install OSX on one… I had to try.

I ended up installing Windows first – because I must – and then OSX – which wiped Windows somehow, then trying again, and… well, a couple of times, you get the idea.

Finally, how I ended up doing it.

First, I decided on ~30GB for each OS.  The rest of the drive I’ll use for storage.  So, 30GB NTFS partition for Windows is primary #1, installed XP.  I think because of the CF slot, it shows up as drive E all the time – no matter.  Partition #2, I had to mess with – it wanted to install on the NTFS partition though it couldn’t, or something.  Managed to boot into Ubuntu, then clear it so that it could select it as an installable partition.  Installed fine – you have to turn USB support to Hi-speed in the BIOS for this to work.

Then strait to Ubuntu.  Manual install, split into 4 different partitions – /, /home, /var/log, and swap, all extended.  It installs Grub with XP listed without even asking – but not OSX.

That was easy enough – in Ubuntu, edit /boot/grub/menu.lst.  Copy the Windows entry, changing just the title and partition number to match the reality:

title OSX
root (hd0,1)
savedefault
makeactive
chainloader +1

Then it comes up in the menu.  But, select it, and the OSX bootloader loads Windows by default.

Thus, hit a key when it prompts during that boot, and choose OSX.  Then within there, edited the bootloader config file like:

sudo nano /Library/Preferences/SystemConfiguration/com.apple.Boot.plist

There’s an empty Kernel Flags section there – and you can specify what it boots first.  That I changed to the Mac partition as well, with:

<key>Kernel Flags</key>
<string>rd=disk0s1</string>

If you’re unsure you can get the information of the disk and it will tell you which one it is within OSX.

TaDa.  Boots Ubuntu by default, but have a few seconds to choose XP or OSX.  I need to make XP the default, realistically, for now, but otherwise… cool.

I think OSX worked better as well.  I’ll need to tweak it.

So, came to me with an Acer 613txv.  Supervisor password on it, so couldn’t boot or get into it.  Older laptop, nobody’s remembered what it was.

Removing the CMOS battery doesn’t do it, obviously.  Took it apart to find a jumper for resetting it… doesn’t have, but there *is* a switch block.  I couldn’t find any documentation on it, but… only 4 switches, so the possibilities were simple.

So, easy instructions.  First, remove keyboard.  There’s one screw on the bottom with an arrow pointing to it.  Unscrew, the pull out the tabs on the keyboard, and pry around to pull it up.

The switch block is under the keyboard ribbon cable.

Turn the computer off, put #1 and #3 to on.  Turned it on, F2 for the BIOS, worked.  Turned off Supervisor password, saved, turned off.  Set switches back, and turn on again and it should be good.

Not responsible if you screw it up/fry your dogs/start global thermonuclear war, all that sort of thing.

So I was asked about a Western Digital MyBook World Edition II (whew, that’s a mouthful).

It stopped showing up on the network, couldn’t get anything via USB.  Wanted to know if I knew anything about data recovery.  I don’t, specifically, but I’m useful in some ways.

Looking into it, it seems these drives are dual-SATA, with some linux firmware to manage them, actually act as a NAS if you want, which is what this one was for.  However – instead of RAID1, it was set up as RAID0 – so two 500GB disks making a 1TB volume.  Makes it more difficult – if you lose one drive in that, the whole thing is dead.

I agreed to take it on – if it’s linux software RAID, after all, I’m familiar enough to play with it.

Got it, took it apart, mounted the drives.  Had to buy a power adapter and second SATA cable.  Finally left them in the half-case and dropped my desktop on its side and burned a Knoppix liveCD to work in with them.

After several tries, I think I figured it out…

mdadm -E /dev/sda4 /dev/sdb4

Will give enough information to figure out which is disk1 and disk2.  Then:

mdadm -A -R /dev/md4 /dev/sda4 /dev/sdb4 (Depending on the output of the previous command).

Then mounted that and copied stuff off.

The other three matching partitions seem to be for the system/firmware and swap, and… I don’t know.  I didn’t look into recovering the setup, just the data.  Good so far, some errors that may have been from copying files to an NTFS USB drive – all I had around.

I may look into it more in a day and try to make a full writeup… from my searching, there seems to be a dearth of information regarding the RAID0 setup of these things – which, surprisingly, isn’t really RAID0, just linear – so no striping, I gather.  Works out better in this case.

loneliness (n):

That feeling you get when you haven’t received any email from *any* mailing lists in hours, and have to check to make sure your mail server is actually working…

… and it is.  You’ve just tweaked the hell out of the spam filtering so that you really do only get 99.9% real emails.

Now if only I could get that sort of motivation about SNMP setup.  My switch does it; I’ve got it set.  I just don’t have a collector ready or anything to, well, *do* anything with the data.

Ray Beckerman, one of the few lawyers in the US who seems to be actually aware of and against the RIAA legal farces lately (my opinion), is now under attack personally for his out-of-court blog, here.

It seems a bizarre twist, and anyone taking this article at face value will likely come away with the impression that they’re doing so merely to try and limit his use and scope in othere, or future cases.

Bra-VO, RIAA.  Someone there has balls.  Giant, bronze-painted, inflatable ones.

get into the business of making porn, i don’t care what the content will be, as long as I can write the titles.

“Seven winds froth solidly the beetle”

“Wonder at Soulless Matrimony”

“Seppuku is for Lovers”

So, the roommate is on yayhooray.com.

It seems that they’re very anti-proxy, as when any proxy-specific header is found, they generate an HTTP 302 error with the IP the request came from – most people would just get a timeout page, really.

They must do it in the code (PHP, I think?) in the site, though, as the rest of the content is actually generated and sent after the header – so not a server config.

Got rid of via header and x-forwarded-for headers and it comes up.

Apparently they have a nemesis.  Guys, this isn’t a super-heroes club.

I decided I’d finally try to get Squid/redirect/filtering/blocking going for wireless this week.  Mainly because the stepson has figured out that formatting/reinstalling an OS on his laptop is the easier way past the client-side filtering software.

So.

WRT54G – GL, actually, bought it from ncix.com, fast fast shipping, excellent price, can’t complain.  Got it specifically to use aftermarket firmware without incident.  Tried DD-WRT, and it hung.  Used Open-WRT.  Works perfectly, updated to webif2/xwrt.  That was stable for a couple of months.

Squid was already installed on the server.  Server has its own connection out, and the router has its own as well.  (Separate PPPoE logins, through the same switch).

Played for a couple of days with iptables rules on the router.  When I finally got it redirecting traffic at first, I got ‘Invalid URL’ errors.  Added vhost argument.  Didn’t help, got different error but at least it was getting some of the right stuff…

This link made the most sense.  Gave up on iptables.  Used this and this as examples.  Bit of trouble when figuring out how to exempt my actual local websites (on the inside of the web/proxy server) from getting translated.

So, WRT54G:

mkdir /etc/iproute2

echo “201 proxy” > /etc/iproute2/rt_tables

ip rule add fwmark 2 table proxy

ip route add default via (squidproxyinternalipaddress) table proxy

iptables -t mangle -A PREROUTING -i vlan0 -p tcp –dport 80 -j MARK –set-mark 2

iptables -t mangle -A PREROUTING -m mark –mark 2 -j ACCEPT
On the squid/server box:

iptables -t nat -A PREROUTING -s 192.168.x.x/25 -p tcp –dport 80 -j ACCEPT

(yes, I have the network split down a /24… so it’s strange).
iptables -t nat -A PREROUTING -p tcp -d ! (squidproxyinternalipaddress) –dport 80 -j REDIRECT –to-port 3128

Seems to do the trick so far.  The bad part is more web traffic goes through the one box, so the memory, which was usually below 1GB without squid and all this happening, is now at 2.5 out of 3GB.  I doubt it’ll increase much though.

Interesting ethical experiment – I got SRG for the statistics, which seems to work well.  Put up a password-protected page with the stats for all the visited sites.  I’m thinking of setting up a separate page for weekly and one for weekend stats, and giving the household access to view the weekend ones, so that everyone can see what’s being visited.  I wonder if that’ll act as a deterrent.

Also, reminded that we had the Opera (La Traviata) on Saturday night. Few pictures taken.  Not bad – definitely had the feel of a larger undertaking, as the soprano really hit the notes and could project back to where we were sitting.  The balcony was nice, though crowded.

Adriano seemed to like it.  So did Erin – somewhat surprised at that, I think most people brought anew into something classical don’t have an appreciation for it, and what’s more what I expected to happen, I guess.

I should be looking a little happier, but it’s probably for the best – smiles are goofy.

If you don’t know which one I am… do I know you?

The paranoid blogging public is fostering an old code – speaking of intimate details in such a way as to obscure their immediate meaning.

Okay, maybe that’s a bit much, but… it’s more widespread than I think was ever the case in other venues.

Returned the empties that have accumulated over the past month or two today.  Only 68.  Still about a dozen left between the window panes in the kitchen…

Really, it’s quite lovely.

Less bottles than I thought, for the time period, though.  So the lame one is celebrating with a few too many drinks, Hoo-yeah.

What the hell – it was messing up because the Outlook profile wasn’t set up when I first configured it to synchronize, as far as I can tell…

Removed any Outlook profile I had, deleted the association in ActiveSync, adjusted all contacts in Outlook, and then re-synced the Q.  Voila.  Duplicates of all existing contacts…

Oh, wait.

I realize now I could have set it to overwrite existing contacts, but instead I did a reset of the phone anyway.  Back to square 1, synced contacts, reset all sound and display preferences, and we’re good.

Now I need a freeware WAP browser… and something for SSH, perhaps.

No, not really Q.  Nor ‘Q’ as in ‘Q’ueer, either.  Yet.

I seem to be a cellphone whore.  About two months after changing from my RAZR V3C to a Samsung A900, I’m back in Motorola’s camp with the Q.  Windows Mobile 5, CDMA of course, and… shiny.  Only slightly more than I paid for my RAZR over a year ago.  Ah, technology…

I’m a massive geek over such things anyway.  I’ve been playing with it off and on since getting home.  Picked it up around 3PM, activated at work before I left, and it’s been love ever since.

Oh, I’m fickle.  I know I am – it’ll be roses and prettiness for the next few weeks, before I’ll never use it for anything other than the cellphone function anyway.  Then I’ll be sitting in a puddle of my own urine in a corner of the bathroom, sobbing over our broken friendship.  “I tried to change for you!” I’ll sob, dripping listlessly into the bathroom the congealed mess of my tears and mucous.  “But I couldn’t!  Not for you, or anyone… please don’t ask.”  The bathwater staining red as I crawl in with my severed veins bubbling forth life’s liquid effervescence.

What I really mean is that it’s already forced me to install Outlook (2003, the latest copy I had) in order to use Active Sync for anything more than minor transfers.  There has to be a better way of getting contacts over… yet my technological prowess will admit no defeat, even when it steadfastly refuses to recognize or copy over the *one* thing I’m attempting.  I could enter all of my paltry 50+ contacts by hand in the few hours I’ve been listlessly slaving over this, but I shall never admit that it’ll break me.

Next week: Ruination!

“Upgraded” from Movable Type to Wordpress.  Pretty simple process.  Considering the output of my blog was a text file about 50K in size… pretty small for the collectively posted entries spanning, well, over a year now, isn’t it?

Have to see what I can do with it now – installing plugins and such.  Seems more responsive, and has a caching option to render pure html pages instead of forcing everything through PHP it seems.  Plugins for almost everything, really…