I plan on picking up a 5.25″ -> 3.5″ 4-in-3 bay converter so I can migrate over the array on demon-xanth and have everything in one central location.  I’ll eventually replace the Antec (pretty sure it’s an Antec) power supply with a modular Corsair so I can clean up the case a little bit.  Right now, I have the extra cables tied together with a velcro strap and the SATA cables zip tied together.  It’s not a mess, but it could be cleaner.

If I had the funds, I’d love to get my hands on a Highpoint or Adaptec SAS card, that would improve performance and really cut down on the amount of cables I have going around.  If I ever snag that 4220, I’ll have to pick one up.  That’s for another day though.

Loading up the new case was a chore.  I had to move it a few times, and at 49.0 lbs (thank you bathroom scale!), it’s not exactly light.   The first time I pulled it down was because one of the fans was “clicking”  I found a stray cable was in the center fan rack, so I had to clean that up.  I pulled it down again this morning after I found my stash of right-angle SATA cables.   So that’s ~5 times I’ve moved it now.  Ugh.

At the same time that I found my SATA cable stash, I found a firewire bracket and discovered an additional port on the motherboard.  That means my plans of installing my old SoundBlaster card for an additional firewire port aren’t needed.  For the curious, the firewire is used for my MythTV input.  When I move the additional drives over, I’ll be able to retire the slave backend services and use my desktop as a proper desktop.

One of my spring projects this year is to setup a proper monitoring tool for my LAN and I’d like to include stats from my cable modem. Any suggestions that do not involve replacing the modem?

• The Demon X(A/N)^th is still in operation, but not in a server capacity.   It serves as my sole desktop and occasional gaming computer now.
• Arrakis has replaced Yggrasil and MaryJane (as detailed here).  It serves as a MythTV backend, file server, PXE server, VM server, Asterisk server and logging server.
• Genosha has replaced Númenor.  This is a MythTV HD frontend that serves up music, provides a backup service for my primary server, Arrakis.
• Weapon-X has replaced Atlantis.  This is also a MythTV HD frontend and is actually the most used frontend.  It’s a Mini ITX board in an industrial Mini ITX case that works perfect as a small frontend.
• Gotham is a NSLUG2 that is in the process of being retired. It has provided SNMP monitoring. This runs Debian.
• Bespin is replacing Gotham.  In addition to cleaning up SNMP monitoring, I have it running Samba for the occasional Windows use.  Next up is setting it up as a mail-server for the entire house.  Depending on the day, Bespin either runs Arch linux or Debian.  I’m getting used to Arch and leave it there most of the time now.
• Prometheus is my wife’s laptop.  Still in use from before. This is now running Ubuntu.
• Methusela is still alive, I managed to pick up a docking station for it from Goodwill.  I’ve opted to go for Debian as it’s easier to maintain on that machine.  This was also my first, full-time install of Debian.
• Kashyyyk is my PowerEdge 1650 that I’m still toying with.

I did get Gentoo (of course!) installed on it and it has worked just fine.  Compiling takes a while and I’ve been toying with the idea of installing Debian or Ubuntu-server on it as a change.  I thought about putting Fedora or a *BSD variant on it, but I don’t really have much experience with either.  Over the weekend, I wiped the drive and installed Windows Server 2003.  I had an old disc laying around from a trial I registered for and it worked.  This weekend, I think I’ll register for the Windows Server 2003 trial and run with that for a while.  Microsoft provides instructions on how to extend the trial up to 260 (?) days.

In my mind, I had originally picked it up to toy around with building a hardened web-server, but that hasn’t panned out yet.  Most other services that I need are being handled by my MythTV/fileserver or my PogoPlug.  I could throw FreePBX on it and get a pretty-GUI for Asterisk, but my current install of Asterisk is working just fine for my current needs.  If my basement had been designed differently or if I had a larger house/basement and the equipment was in an unfinished area, I’d throw it into use as a firewall/router.

At the end of the day, I still don’t have any big ideas for it and I just screw around with the idea.

I bought an APC Smart-UPS SU700RMNET, a 3U battery back up off of craigslist.  The guy claimed to have never used it and bought it second hand himself and that the batteries were dead.  I plugged it in this morning and heard it power on and saw a light pop on for a second on the back then nothing.  I grabbed my handy-dandy multimeter and tested the outlets, but no joy.

Thankfully, it’s fairly simple to take apart. When I did, I connected my probes to the connection right off the plug to confirm I had steady power there and I do.  When I checked from the motherboard leads out to the outlets, nothing.  In reading the manual, it’s not supposed to turn on without batteries for safety and the batteries may have sat for a very, very long time. And, to his credit, he did specifically state it needed new batteries.  In checking the batteries though, they are putting off 10 VDC.  I’ll wait until I pick up a new pack this weekend before I worry.

(The title is a quote from StarCraft.)

I had intended this to act as a replacement and upgrade from my aging NSLU2 (Slug) that I had monitoring my primary UPS and other trivial tasks.  My goal was to replicate the same tasks as well as move my Asterisk and create an LDAP+mail server.  The slug has worked flawlessly for me over the past few years, I just wanted something with more USB ports, more power and gigabit.  Aside from my cable modem and my (fake) PAP2, every wired piece of equipment I have is gig rated.

Unfortunately, my plan on installing Debian didn’t work out as well as I intended.  The Pro version is using the OXNAS SOC/chipset, rather than the more prevelant Kirkwood platform and there isn’t a real Debian installer like I found with my slug.  Instead, Arch Linux has taken the lead on this.

I’m honestly not that familiar with Arch, I’ve read a bit about it on Wikipedia, but that’s it.  I tend to stick with Gentoo on x86/amd64 or Debian on ARM.

The install guide is well written and includes detailed instructions on how to recover from a stupid move. Their main wiki has proved very helpful so far.  Particularly, I’ve referenced pacman, AUR and the makepkg multiple times.  Their user repository is also helpful for tracking packages down that aren’t in the main repository.

However, I did have a few issues in trying to get Asterisk to run.  The Asterisk server would run then just completely die.  I managed to get it to run, but it took several re-installs before that occurred.  I believe the problem was in the fact that I didn’t have all of my packages updated on the initial installs like I thought I had.  Now, all I have to do is correct my config files to get it talking properly.

Because OXNAS support apparently hasn’t landed in the mainline kernel, I’m stuck using a custom 2.6.31 kernel.

I am trying to get Debian loaded on it, but I haven’t had much luck thus far.  I’ve downloaded the image, followed the instructions, but the damn thing never connects to the network.  I haven’t tried seeing if I can get serial access yet and I don’t have a USB monitor to see what it’s doing.

At the end of the day, I have this to say about the whole thing:  Arch is okay, but not something I’m familiar enough with right now or really have an interest in getting all that familiar with.  Had I known in advance that this iteration would be such a pain and not completely supported by Debian, I would have picked up one of the pink models instead.  I am thoroughly impressed with the work the Arch devs have done thus far to get their distro running and I’ll continue using it and learning about it in order to accomplish my evil needs. 

The dark side, in this instance, is KDE.  I’ve used Gnome as my desktop environment for years now.  Before that, it was Openbox.   With the Gnome team’s great leap forward, I’ve decided the time is right to jump ship.

I’ll be honest, I was happy with Gnome 2.32.  Everything worked to my satisfaction. And while it’s true, I could have blocked the packages in Gentoo to remain on 2.32, it would only have been temporary.  The Gentoo team can’t continue to support old/legacy packages if there isn’t any support upstream.  I get that.   I made an honest effort to run 3.2 for a good month.  The fallback mode is good, the new shell is “okay.”  Even with the add-ons, it’s just not what I want.  I am sincerely disappointed in it.

I’d love to go back to using Openbox completely, but I need to keep options open for the rest of the family that uses the computer.  I feel lucky enough to have a wife that allowed me to move her laptop over to linux and that’s all she uses now.  My goal is to find something familiar enough for her that I won’t get my rear in trouble.

Thus, the switch to KDE.  I’ve read the reports of Gnome detractors claiming that the environment had been dumbed down and options removed or hidden.  I didn’t put much thought into it because for me, everything just worked.  Now into KDE, it sure seems like there are a ton more options available to me that weren’t before.

So far, it’s working out well.  The wife is apparently happy.  I’ll probably switch back to Openbox for my login, I’ve missed it.

While I recently switched my wife’s laptop over to Ubuntu to make it easier for her to manage, I haven’t tried running another distro full time on anything save one.

I’m the proud (?) owner of an NSLU2 aka SLUG that I occasionally power up for random nonsense.  I’ve finally gotten around to upgrading it from lenny to squeeze.  While I could cross-compile everything on another computer, I find it just easier to use Debian’s precompiled ARM binaries.

watch -n1 “asterisk -vvvvvrx ‘core show channels’ “

This will show the channels/calls in progress.

In another window (just because it’s easier), log into asterisk using “asterisk -r” and run

mixmonitor start ${CHANNEL} ${FILENAME}.wav

This will save your recording under /var/spool/asterisk/monitor.

I’m still trying to figure out what I’m doing wrong that the *3 command isn’t working (Following http://answers.oreilly.com/topic/2741-how-to-record-phone-calls-using-asterisk/)

[ebuild R #] media-libs/mesa-9999 USE=”egl gallium gles llvm motif nptl openvg* -bindist -classic -d3d -debug -pic (-selinux) -shared-dricore -wayland” VIDEO_CARDS=”r600 -i810 -i915 -i965 -intel -mach64 -mga -nouveau -r100 -r128 -r200 -r300 -radeon -savage -sis -tdfx -via -vmware” 0 kB [1]

this is because of this:

http://www.mail-archive.com/mesa-dev@lists.freedesktop.org/msg08552.html

http://cgit.freedesktop.org/mesa/mesa/commit/?id=1251e1df0f5d4bc81c80c4c2d61c0a5f9b8b759a

This was updated in the X11 overlay, but the EXTRA_ECONF trick can come in handy later.