Monday, July 31, 2006

The Challenge!

Ladies and Gentleman! Boys and Girls! Gather round and hear about an incredible offer!

I've been a corporate whore for at least a decade now, pimping my skills in exchange for paychecks. Now it's your turn to use me like a disposable commodity! Cheap!

I will be happy to entertain any tech questions you may have. If I don't know the answer, it won't cost you a thing! Timely intelligent answers! Right here! From the kind of geek you typically need to navigate through three levels of coroporate beuracracy to talk to!

So, here's how this will work -

Click the link below to Paypal me some $$$. Whatever you think an answer to your question might be worth, $5 - $500 - whatever you like! Submit your question along with your paypal payment. I'll post your question and my response here on Techosaurus Rex and directly to you in email. If I refuse your question I'll return the funds and provide an explanation of why I can't or what I need to answer your question.

Here's a free one to get the ball rolling:

Q: I don't have paypal - but want to ask a question - how do I send you money?

A: Setup a paypal account - come on - it's the 21st century.



This weekend...

I managed to get a lot done this weekend...

The HP 6500 inkjet printer we've been using for about 2 years now has suprisingly started having fits - It's misfeeding, generating skewed images on the paper and sometimes taking too many sheets. Hopefully it just needs a cleanup.

This printer has hung on Lucy, a little PC sitting in my wifes office that also runs the flat bed scanner. I tried to remote into Lucy when this problem first occured, and also when I was rolling out the monowall and she wouldn't respond - seeing as lucy didn't have a monitor or keyboard plugged into her this required I pull the whole box.

I pulled her out and brought her down to the lab - managed to log in locally with no problem - only to find the FUCKING WINDOWS FIREWALL had been enabled on the LAN connection - I didn't do it, my wife didn't do it - fuck you microsoft!

Anyway - I was able to shut it down and remote in as usual with few modifications. I also blew out the hardware while I had it down just for good measure and configured all the new routing/IP stuff for the new network configuration.

I installed an HP 5500 printer I'd gotten from someone else and stuffed it all back into the corner of the office. Seems to be running great until MS decides how to configure their software on my machine again without telling me...sigh... Is it REALLY necessary to run a group policy to disable the firewall on my AD? I mean, c'mon!

While Lucy was purring away I saw an opportunity to get some more work done on the rack. I mounted the two new 8 switch/outlet power strips. It started getting confusing when I realized that Cricket plugged into LAN port 9, Power Switch 4 and KVM Port 1 - So I pretty much stripped the rack again - Now Cricket is on 1 - Magrathea on 2 and so on - they all match up and is much cleaner, I think, than my previous plan of printing out little labels for everything...lol.

I got the small hard drive swapped out of magrathea, grabbed a 4GB drive from the graveyard and got it up and running in short order - copied everything across. Got up the next morning and tried to connect to it - errors? Checked the application - apparently the Software RAID had failed. Could of happened for a couple of reasons:

1) I set the drives to power down after 30 minutes - I'm thinking they are slow to wake up and this caused a synch error.

2)The drives I'm using are just too slow and aren't capable of keeping up with the demands placed on them.

So, I wiped it...again... and reloaded FreeNAS - I set up the drives to be 'always on' I'll see how it works. If it doesn't work I'll have to make a decision...

Do I just add the individual 185GB drives and keep them as two seperate volumes in FreeNAS? This kind of defeats the purpose of being long term storage, without raid I'm prone to data loss. I don't want to cludge over any kind of disk mirroring, FreeNAS should be capable of that anyway, right?

I'm also thinking about picking up a cheap PCI IDE Raid controller of some sort, build the raid at the hardware level and just feed it to FreeNas as a single volume. This is the first software raid I've tried to configure in FreeNAS and it's a pain in my ass. Hardware raids have all worked flawlessly.

Anyway, I gotta get a fresh can of compressed air and find something that will soften up those rollers on the 6500 printer so we can get it back into service... I'm really getting tired of disposable printers. Of course having spent about 6 hours tearing down a HP 8500 laserjet at work on Friday to find a damaged sprocket on the developer feeder doesnt' make me too fond of HP at the moment either...

I also got called over to my in-laws house. A couple weeks back I helped Dave, my father-in-law, order a new DVD Burner and a bigger IDE HDD and they came in this week. I was pretty impressed, he had managed to get both drives installed and had windows formatting the new hard disk by the time I got there. He had a few questions about junk mail rules and address books in Thunderbird and some text size settings for Firefox. Quick and easy housecall.

Tuesday, July 25, 2006

Hosting...





I'm preparing to launch a hosting service where I will perform admin and technical services. Hoping y'all will look me up when the need arises. In the mean time might I recommend Hostgator.

I've been up and down the river of reseller and basic hosting packages and HostGator comes through on top. When I do start providing consulting and hosting services I will be using host gator for datacenter, hardware and OS management.

geek activisim?

Interesting list of ways to look at the world...

http://www.scienceaddiction.com/2006/07/23/95-theses-of-geek-activism/

And, if that's to deep for you - here is some classic python:

http://www.pelourinho.com/movies/GermanyGreece-1.swf

Wow, BBSPOT has been a very good link mine today - thanks guys!

http://www.stevepavlina.com/blog/2006/07/10-reasons-you-should-never-get-a-job/

Monday, July 24, 2006

and again and again and again and again...

Have you ever spent too much time on a problem because you KNEW you had a hardware problem but you didn't want to admit it, causing great delay by trying every possible remedy?

Well, I spent quite a bit of time this weekend fighting with a FreeNAS install.

It's on the machine Magrathea - it has a 20GB Western Digital PM - a 52X CD PS and two 185GB Fujitsu drives as SM and SS.

The first problem was the CD-ROM drive. Of course I mounted it in the rack without installing the OS first...duh... so it sat up there a week or two until I finally got Mrs Rex to help me pull it down. Once down I quickly got the CDROM replaced and got FreeNAS installed, RAID configured and dumped the 105GB of files/apps down from Zarquon.

Fast forward a week - I get a bug up my but and decide I need to rename the share points and volumes - but I can't log into it. I forgot the frickin password! Whenever I build a system or a group of systems I keep a sheet of rott/admin userid's and passwords - but none of them worked... So I reset the pass and tried again - but I was obviously not using the right userid because even with the pass reset I couldn't get in.

So...I nuked it. And while reinstalling found the OTHER sheet of paper that showed where I had gone in and reset the u/p on the machine for the new password scheme I've been using. DOH!

But NOW it's giving me even more headaches. On the first pass it refused to see AD0 for the install - it comes up with a list of drives to instlal to - and it's not there. Okay, reboot and go in with BootIt-NG -(GREAT app) - wipe the boot sectors and exisiting partitions and try the install again. Great, now it sees all three drives.

Got it installed and configured - went to add the disks to the NAS - the WD20GB works great. But now it's giving me headaches putting the mount point on the software raid on the dual 185's.

And back and forth and back and forth...either I couldn't see AD0 or it gives me errors trying to build the software raid...sigh...anyway, I think at this point it's a problem with one of the 185's - started a slow diag last night - we'll see.

BootIT is a great little app - I don't use the boot loader - I always cancel the install when I run it - just the partition tools make this app worth while - instantly create, delete and format whatever partition types you might want. Rex gives it a thumbs up.

Thursday, July 20, 2006

FoN HoM

So, I got my new Fon Social Router delivered yesterday.

http://en.fon.com/

It doesn't look like too bad a deal - for $13 you get a nice modified linksys 802.11G router.

You set it up and provide access to the internet over that router to Fon users that may have access to your hotspot. You can provide free service for Fon network members or Billable service where Fon gives you 50% of the revenue. If you setup the free service you then get free access to the thousands of Fon network hotspots around the world.

There's been a lot of hacking and mod talk about these devices. Apparently it's quite easy to setup a simple cron job to mimic the heartbeat signal the device sends to show Fon you're online (thus verifying you're actually providing access). It's also been stated that it's quite easy to flash the memory on the box back to factory defaults and just drop it into service.

This particular router is very popular with the hacking community because it's linux based.

Linksys WRT54GL

Which is probably why Fon picked it for their service in the first place. I'm not sure about the kit they deploy in europe.

I would recommend reading their use agreement before you sign up, and keep it in mind if you do decide to mod your router. They'll bill you something like $40 (the additional cost of the router I imagine) if you don't keep up your end of the deal. Keep up your end of the deal though, let's stop waiting around for governments to build wifi umbrellas for our communities.

Living way out in the boonies the way I do I have little or no concern about sharing my connection - security through obscurity. I don't know how useful free access to their service will be now, and I couldn't make any money off it (no customers). But, being the geek I am I just can't turn down a little blinky box that does interesting things for $13.00.

I think I'll put it out in the open as part of the network, but I'm fairly sure I'll be pinching the bandwidth it uses through my firewall and logging its activity to make sure it's not being used for p2p and the like.

Wednesday, July 19, 2006

The care and feeding of geeks...

Top 10 Ways to Motivate Geeks

This is a good little article about managing, or as I call it "wrangling" geeks.

I'll manage your hardware, your software, your firmware and your middleware - but don't ask me to manage your meatware.

That's not really true - but I am most happy when I'm not responsible for blowing noses or wiping bums at work. Plenty of that at home!

If you're going to give me a team, then give me a team and let me manage them. Don't use my position as a way to protect yourself from the effects of your decisions. Several times in the past I've found my technical and trouble shooting abilities lifting me to the top of a team. This frequently comes with a title like "Team Lead" or "Senior Whatever".

In most cases it comes with nothing but headaches. Responsibility for the team with no real authority leads to everyone being unhappy. If you use team leads or senior techs in your group so you don't have to deal with the people you're actually responsible for managing you'll find they've carved out a special little corner of hell just for you!

I actually enjoy leading (notice I didn't say managing) a team or a group or an organization. Part of being a good leader is good managment. LOTS of people and organizations have this backwards - they think good leadership is part of being a good manager. If you don't understand the difference go read Ender's Game.

I have a very hands off approach to management. I don't like having the responsibility of moistening a chair for 40 hours a week and think it's a waste of any persons time. With professionals in any business measuring their performance by measuring how much time they spend sitting in their designated work compartment is a waste of time, but at least it fills in some of your own chair jockey hours. I set REAL goals for my team and the individuals in it.

As a manager I feel it's my responsibility to find the very best available individual to tackle a task alone or on a team. It's then my responsiblity to keep my team informed, equipped and prepared as well as acting as a liason between them and other organizations in the business. A good manager should be confident enough in the people on their team to do their job that beyond measuring their progress toward the teams goals there's no need to interfere with "how" someone does it. If you really hired a professional they already know "how".

I measure goals and progress toward them. If they are realistic and clearly defined and if you've selected the right people for the right tasks you will make them, but not if you're too busy demoralizing those individuals and groups by wasting their time and yours worrying about cookie-cutter standards.

Everyone uses the buzz words "Outside the Box" - how do you expect people to THINK outside the box if you don't let them OUT OF THE FUCKING BOX!?

Over React(OS)ing...

So I got a chance to play with ReactOS a little bit over the last few days.

The size and efficiency of their install is amazing and only leads me to believe more stongly that MS is killing it self by staying mired in the bog of "features" they try to ship with their OS.


http://www.reactos.com

The ReactOS® project is dedicated to making Free Software available to everyone by providing a ground-up implementation of a Microsoft Windows® XP compatible operating system. ReactOS aims to achieve complete binary compatibility with both applications and device drivers meant for NT and XP operating systems, by using a similar architecture and providing a complete and equivalent public interface.

At just over 15MB for the live or install CD you owe it to yourself to download a copy and play with it a bit yourself.

Sorry for the gap in updates, there's been a major shift in my life I'll be talking more about soon...

Friday, July 14, 2006

Wha?

-sigh-

I'm beside myself with fear - Why exactly is Ted Stevens sitting on the committee that controls e-commerce? Jon Stewart sums up my feelings much better than I do.

(Sorry, looks like DMCA pulled the video - just search YouTube for "Jon Stewart Ted Stevens")

Ya know, I don't get up in front of the world and make myself look like an ignorant ass about raping shareholders or the environment. Where does Stevens get off doing it about IT? At least I'm not in a position to actually change federal policy about raping shareholders and the environment...

Wednesday, July 12, 2006

When I'm right...

http://www.vmware.com/products/server/

Didn't I just get done talking about virtual servers managed on giant clusters? Then whaddya know - VMWare goes out and starts giving away their vmware server as....FLOSS!

Still way ahead of the curve...

http://www.eweek.com/article2/0,1895,1983365,00.asp

Eweek has this interesting article - you probably saw it on http://slashdot.org

I like this little snippet:
"Based on our forays into user forums for many top open-source enterprise applications, there are many IT managers attempting to run open-source products on Windows servers--attracted, no doubt, to the benefits and efficiencies of using open source without having to become Linux administrators. The results of our WAMP stack tests indicate that these folks might be on to something."

How three years ago - in my opinion... I've been through that phase, we'll probably see an article in a year or two talking about "Slim single mission open source servers with low overhead and startup costs replacing more complex and expensive full OS servers running in a managed server environment."

I loved working with WAMP and homebrewed conglomorations of FLOSS (Free License and Open Source Software) applications running on Windows OS platform servers for the reasons listed above. It gives the flexibility and low cost of FLOSS in application deployment, allowing me to gain strength in management and administration of Apache and MySQL without also having to conquer the learning curve of installing and maintaining the base OS's typically associated with them. It's a natural stepping stone.

FLOSS solutions on windows machines isn't just limited to server applications either. There are a lot of great FLOSS solutions for the desktop environment like PaintDotNet and OpenOffice. Why steal, or worse pay for Photoshop or MS Office when FLOSS provides programs that are great replacments for the vast majority of users? System utilities like CD/DVD Burners, file management, desktop management, browsers, email clients, FLOSS has a lot of good solutions.

As far as server stuff goes, I forsee the enterprise environment moving to servers like m0n0wall and FreeNAS on small virtual servers managed on gigantic windows and nix clusters. With installation as easy as pie, resource usage as sharp as a knife and management as simple as a tall cool glass of milk we'll all be asking for seconds.

Tuesday, July 11, 2006

Sorry to be so bitchy...

One of the first things I did when I started this blog was promise it wouldn't be an MS Bash fest or a bunch of whining. Looking at the last couple of posts I realize it's not working that way.

I promise to try and avoid microsoft bashing like this and talk about some of the other technologies I work with. I really am a strong proponent of the Windows OS and a number of MS tools, I'm just frustrated by the direction they seem to be taking with a lot of their products.

There is no better working environment desktop OS in my opinion. There may be a work environment here and there that is particularly suited to Linux or BSD desktops but I'll keep turning to the swiss army knife of OS's and install windows. So long as the knife is small enough to fit in my pocket, that is.

Vista...oh boy!

So a few weeks back I got my hands on a recent beta version of Windows Vista at work. We're pretty sure we're not going to be migrating our 500+ workstations anytime soon because none of the workstations, even the ones recently purchased, meet the hardware requirements. The big problem being video card compatibility. Vista is very picky about what cards it does and does not support.

I've installed windows thousands of times, from my time as a bench tech working in 3.1 to 9x, working for a major pc manufacturer as the lead windows OS test technician for a line of high end engineering workstations with NT, 2k and XP in 13 languagees. I've worked on major migrations for telecomms, transportation and financial institutions for Y2k migrations to windows NT building workstation images for thousands of users.

And I'm here to tell you why MS has raised the bar so high on video hardware required for Vista...

Because they have replaced the dos style blue background installation screens with very pretty and high resolution graphics akin to what you see after first boot.

You know the part where you work with partitions and load mass storage drivers? Where the system copies files for the first boot from the HDD? The part that the end user 99% of the time NEVER sees? Yes, that part! So, chuck those fairly new P3 and P4 pc's out the window because the new windows OS needs a video card with native proprietary graphics support so the installation will LOOK PRETTY.

Fear not minions! I was able to fairly easily get it to install on one of our old Optiplex 260's with a PCI Matrox video card. It wasn't "pretty" but once installed sure enough, I was able to go back in and turn off all the resource hogging "look and feel" "features" and get the desktop back to a clean, slick usable interface very reminiscent of Win2k.

I haven't had too much time to dig into the newer features of Vista but here is what I have found.

IT Technicians will need to grow a third arm with an eye in the palm of its hand to use the full disk encryption they've been promising. Talk about a messy path, it's horrible. I feel fairly confident I can do it machine to machine but it makes the process of mass replicating a system image to multiple workstations quite a nightmare.

One feature I do like is the clickable full path header in the explorer windows. One of the first things I do in XP is go into the folder view options and enable "show full path in the title bar" so I can actually tell where I'm browsing. In Vista it's default and each directory in the path is hot linked. Say you're in C:\documents and settings\rex\desktop\download\torrents\completed - up in the title bar of the explorer window I could click on "rex" in the display and it will navigate me there. A bit simpler than clicking "up,up,up,up" and more reliable than "back,back,back,back" which may not take you where you really think you're going.

I'm sure there are some other good features, and some really bad ones I'd imagine as well. I may be wrong about the video requirements but have had NO problem with an old spec video card once I struggled through the nearly unusable installation. I wonder how much longer the Vista install is because of all the graphics and shit that load during those initial boot from CD setup stages - and I wonder who at microsoft thought ANYBODY would want it.

Maybe they're just trying to make the Vista OS easier for end users to install by making it less cryptic. That's all well and good but takes me back to the loss of flexibility and performance that seems to be Microsoft's common practice. I'm tired of having to work around "usability" features installed for stupid people when 90% of windows installations are going to be handled by technical professionals. I think these features should be available for OEM's to include on their systems for when they ship em off to the end users.

Here's an idea - maybe someone at Microsoft will listen some day.

Instead of trying to pack every feature, every compatibility, every option into a single package you should sell windows as a clean, efficient stand alone OS. Provide those usability, compatibility and feature tools as downloads to people that purchase it. Don't ship us a resource hog that we have to strip to meet our needs. SIMPLIFY THE OS - it will do more to decrease install time, drive users to your website and spark innovation in your user base.

Instead of IT teams getting new windows PC's and spending time removing useless features that may or may not conflict with the utilities and applications we need to install for our business that are one step outside of the "microsoft experience" we should be able to put together a package of add on's downloaded from the site and install it manually or through group policy.

Clean, efficient, crapware free Windows - out of the box, with all the bells whistles and add-ons available from your site where you can control access (genuine advantage does it pretty well) and reduce piracy.

Someone is always going to find a way to pirate your OS, but at least you control access to add ons and features now. Stop trying to cram 50 pounds of crap into a 20 lb bag - give us the 20lb bag 10lbs full and a shovel. We'll take it from there.

One Care? Who Cares?

Okay, so I am trying OneCare. I installed it on Zarquon and Lintila. Microsoft is now responsible for virus and spyware detection on my pc - as well as giving me lots of annoying popups.

Amazing, isn't it? What's the best way to deal with pop-ups? By popping up frickin system messages! Give me a damn break. Microsoft could probably pay for the windows license if they sold advertising space on their firewall, backup, tuneup, desktopcleanup type messages.

Vista is just rife with annoying popups -built in-, but I'll talk about that later.

Here's my idea - I'm thinking about making a little potentiometer knob labeled one through ten that connects via USB to the computer. If I'm a dipshit and need MS to hold my hand through every little thing, or if I'm doing something REALLY tricky (like migrating SQL databases or migrating a mail storehouse from exchange 2000 to 2003) I turn the knob down to one. The computer prompts me with things like "You have chosen to delete this file, do you really want to delete it, like forever? Are you sure you don't just want me to stick it somewhere in case you decide you really do need it someday?"

Turn it all the way up to ten and you can make a little curlycue mouse gesture over the file and it just actually deletes it with no prompts, no recycle bin - you tell it what action to take and what file to take it on and it just does it.

One of my biggest beefs with MS is their usability. They bend over backwards to make sure anyone can walk up and use the PC - but this means time, valuable time, I have to spend configuring the machine. At least in Win9x and 2k you had SOME control over what features and applications were installed on you PC during windows setup, with XP it's set the time zone and tell me your name, but they are so wrapped up in "creating an experience" that they don't realize most of us just go in and reset the view defaults to 2000 standards!

Which brings me to my point about one care. I've put a lot of time effort and energy into protecting my home network and this workstation. I don't use the built in MS firewall for a reason - If the firewall is on the machine when someone attacks your firewall they are still attacking YOUR MACHINE... Spyware, virus, all kinds of things can poke holes in that. It's like using saran wrap for a condom - the logic is sound but the result is always messy.

Which brings me back to my point about One Care (again, sorry). If the ADMIN of the machine decides to disable an onboard service you need to be able to disable the alert from the multi function console. Because I have disabled the windows firewall my OneCare icon glows a steady RED - indicating a horrible problem, so long as I leave their, in my opinion, worthless firewall deactivated it will be red. Which means the system tray icon is USELESS because if one of the other features I AM depending on OneCare to provide should have a problem it does NOT change state and alert me to a problem.

Pretty simple, eh? But a perfect example of someone (usually marketing) directing developers to write code that works well if you're fully immersed in the microsoft "experience" but provides no flexibility for someone working 1 step outside their environment. I'm telling you guys, it's that mentality that will kill your product.

Remember all those single use banking and mainframe systems you were SOOOO happy to replace with flexible PC's? No, I'm guessing those guys are all retired. Okay, ditching the dinosaur and getting a pile of options in return is what MS did to get where it is? Who's providing that now?

I think MS would be much better served if they applied their resources to create applications that could be used on any PC without inter-dependency on other MS products. Developing to bring people back into your system and back into your system and back into your system instead of trying to co-exist with any other kind of system your user may be involved in does not WORK. Your consumers are paying big bucks for a twenty cent sliver of plastic and the potential of a tool set.

Give us a tool set the will work in any weather, any environment, any condition, not just in MicrosoftLand where the hills are rolling and green and the sky is blue and the taskbar and start menu are all bright happy colors. Sometimes it rains, sometimes it pours. Give me a tool I know I can turn to quickly and easily when I need it and I'll buy it and use it and make my users use it. Stop worrying about the "out of the box" experience and help us by building tools that are fantastic to use EVERY DAY.

Monday, July 10, 2006

Hang em on the rack!!!

So, I've got this rack... - 19" equipment rack about 7' tall circa 1975. My father in law gave it to me when they moved to their new house. It's beautiful. Chipped instituional brown poo colored paint - a little fake wood sign that says "Rack #2" up at the top and something like 64U space. No sides, no back, no door, just a big steel mother.

It's lived in my basement a few years now. It sat for nearly a year with only a couple of UPS's hanging in it, but over the years I've gotten more and more rack mounted hardware. You can really get good deals on old big iron servers on ebay and elsewhere. To most people a dual P3 500 with a GB or RAM in a big old 5U rackmount case is an eyesore and a doorstop. To me it's gold, to each his own.

Weekend before last I finally decided to get some of my rackmount computers actually *in* the rack, instead of just piled atop one another and sitting on shelves. Now my rack doesn't have any fancy "rails" or anything on it. You stick the server where you want it to go and you bolt it in.

I fought with that thing for a good hour and a half. I had about a 2 foot gap below where I wanted to mount the server, I used everything from books to old DAT drives lifting it in incriments till I got it where I wanted it.

One computer - sore shoulders and elbows and wrists...ugh. Looking at the computers I had and the equipment already in the rack (network switches and stuff) I decided I'd needed a better tool.

So I spent another hour on the internet looking for a rack jack, scissor lift table, whatever you want to call it. A little cart I could stick a server on, roll it up to the rack, jack it to the right height then slide back into position...

What a waste of an hour. Harbor Freight (www.harborfreight.com) had a nice little hyrdraulic lift table on sale for $199 in the store $249 in the catalog - that lifts to a whopping 34 inches! Too short, I could mount the sicssor lift part on a different cart and frankencart it all together, but then I couldn't move lower stuff.

Seems my only other option is a $5000 professional solution that you drive around like a standup forklift - quite a ways out of my budget with all kinds of buttons and electric motors and stuff.

Anyway, didn't find what I was looking for - if you have make/model/where to buy info on such a little rolling lifting table I'd sure like to hear about it. But in the mean time...I have Jer!

Jer is one of my minions, in exchange for helping him try and resurrect a dead dell precision motherboard he was my whuppin boy - We managed to get the whole rack re-organized in a couple of hours, would have taken me all day and part of the next without his help. So, a person, in this case was the right tool for the job - cost me a couple pepsi's.

So, with no further ado - the current state of The Rack:

(top to bottom)
"DSL Modem / Motorola WAP - 1U (Actually sitting on top of "Cricket")

"Cricket" Generic Intel PII 450 256MB RAM 0GB HDD - m0n0wall BSD Based Firewall - 4U

HP 100TX 12 Port Ethernet Switch - 1U

Gap for network cables - 1U

"Magrathea" Generic Intel P3 866 512MB RAM ~160GB RAID5 - FreeNAS - BSD Based Fileserver - 4U

Gap - I'll probably put a monitor in here eventually, maybe a shelf. - 10 U

KVM - 8 Port PS/2 Switch - 1U

AC Power - One switch - three jacks - older than dirt 15AMP - 1U

"Heart of Gold" Dell PowerEdge 2400 Dual Intel P3 933 2GB RAM 50GB RAID5 - 2003AS Active Directory Controller - 5U

APC SmartUPS 3000 - 5U

"Bistromath" Dell PowerEdge 2300 Dual Intel P3 550 256MB RAM 120GB RAID5 - FreeNAS BSD Based Fileserver - 5U

APC SmartUPS 3000 - 5U

And that's it! I've got a couple of swanky new 8 socket 8 switch rack mount power strips coming in shortly that will go above and below the KVM.

"Heart of Gold" is not currently up and running in the rack. It's actually currently handled by a little Compaq proliant Dual P2 400 desktop case unit. I need some time to get the new system setup and configured, then I'll break all my domain trusts and move the AD to the box mounted in the rack listed above.

"Magrathea" is a new build for me, and is currently doing nothing. It wasn't until after I had it mounted up in the rack that I found out the CD drive is dead so I can't get FreeNAS to install. I'll need to pull it down, swap out the drive, LOAD THE OS BEFORE I MOUNT IT BACK ON THE RACK THIS TIME - then mount it back in the rack...haha. Once it's up and running I'll be moving a bunch of files from my workstation - "Zarquon" to it and setting up a FTP server for Rex's Private Reserve.

Once we got this all mounted I spent about two more hours getting "Cricket" running correctly, should have taken 45 minutes but it uses a floppy disk to store the system configuration file (no hard drive necessary) and I had a bad piece of media - Five cents of media cost me an hour and fifteen minutes...sigh. Then I switched over and pulled the Siemens single port router I'd been using for NAT firewall. M0n0wall gives me a lot more control and options over things like traffic shaping and PTP VPN stuff.

Getting "Cricket" installed meant it was time for a big change in the IP network I run in the house. Sooo many systems and multiple DNS servers/DNS visibility issues - it was time I do have a DHCP pool available from cricket for new systems or people that might visit, but I hard coded most others:

Techosaurus LAN configuration (House) 192.168.123.1 /24

Cricket 192.168.123.1
WAP 192.168.123.2
PrintServer 192.168.123.3
.4 ->.9 are reserved for other access devices/routers and such.

I had to reset to default and reconfigure the Motorola WAP and the Linksys print server, updated firmware while I was at it too. Then had to remap the Brother 1440 laser in my wifes office to the workstations.

.10 Zarquon XP P4 3.0 2GB RAM 1.2TB SATA (My machine)
.11 Lintila XP P3 1000 1GB RAM 40GB (My wife's box)
.12 Fenchurch Win2k P3 500 512MB 20GB (my kids machine )
.13 Lucy Win2k P3 500 512MB 20GB (this machine sits without a monitor, keyboard or mouse, we use VNC to remote into it and run the scanner tucked away in my wifes sewing room)
.14 Benjiemouse XP Dell P3 700 Laptop
.15 Frankiemouse XP SonicBlue Tablet PC (400Mhz Transmeta)

.16 -> .49 reserved for future workstations
.50 -> .99 DHCP Pool

.100 Heart of Gold (reserved for new PowerEdge box)
.101 Heart of Gold (old) - I decided not to change the IP on the Compaq and will make this change when I move HoG to the newer machine.

.102 -> .199 Reserved for future windows servers

.200 Magrathea
.201 Bistromath

.202 -> .254 Reserved for future unix/bsd servers

Have you noticed a naming convention?
Workstations: People from HHGTTG
Win Servers: Ships from HHGTTG
Nix Servers: Plaents from HHGTTG

Except Bistromath, which was a windows server then became my first FreeNAS server, it's where my wife keeps her backups and we have shared files (drivers, pictures and what not). She runs an at-home web design business - FYI. She's gotten attached to the name. That's ALL it was used for as a windows box and the overhead/time of keeping a 2003 box up for just that was ridiculous. FreeNAS setup took 20 minutes, no license stuff to worry about. Kicks ass!

Magrathea is actually replacing itself, the machine becoming HoG was called Frogstar7 and was a 2k3 machine. I was able to shuffle the drives between the PowerEdge boxes with ease. All of Frogstar7's content is stored on TB on my workstation until I get it running.

Pretty complicated, eh? And I do this shit for FUN! HA!

HoG also currently runs my Symantec AV server (deployment and management console) which I will be retiring. I'm moving my XP machines to OneCare so I can tell you all about that. I'll probably move the 2k machines to some Free License or Open Source (FLOS) AV solution, but I'd really like to find one that has a management console, works on both MS and Nix boxes so I can tie the management of antivirus (def and app updates) to a single location instead of managing them box to box.

Also, the two freenas and single m0n0wall boxes are all standalone currently, I think I might toy with Sun's Enterprise Management Suite (which they give away for frickin' FREE nowadays) to see if I can centralize user and access management from a single console. FreeNAS does have some support built into it for windows domain and active directory authentication. I'm hoping to get that squared away when I move HoG, if I can't get it working then I'll probably see what's involved in getting the Sun solution running.

Type at ya later!
Good morning boys and girls! I'm so happy you've decided to stop by and take a peek, thanks!

I'm Rex - kind of a dinosaur, but a force of nature, I think, in the IT world. There are a lot of smart geeks out there. Young, old and in between. People that don't just do IT for a living but live breathe and eat the stuff.

I've been building computers, hosting online communities, and just generally tweaking computers since I was a kid, back in the dark days of acoustic couplers, the pure green glow of monochrome dumb terminals and the clackity clack of line and dot matrix printers. I've been up and down the IT river a number of times.

With more than a decades experience doing IT stuff for work and a decade before that doing it for fun I'm fairly certain I qualify for the rank "Uber-Geek". But at the same time I'm experienced enough to know that there are huge swathes of knowledge I don't have. Complete dark areas that I kind of know exist but have never ventured in to. What I love most about this world of technology are the ever growing new grounds yearning to be exploit...er explored.

I don't just *use* other technologies. I carve out spaces and chunks and resources and setup systems and support and maintain them. I blend technologies and systems to accomplish tasks or serve a need (real or imagined).

I'm going to try very hard to not make this a real whiny blog - so many people come out and write a blog to bash apple, or bash microsoft or to hold up one particular variety of linux over all others. It is to separate their technology as superior and reinforce their decision to purchase it or invest time in it by garnering support from like minded people. Bullshit.

Now I admit that I do have some strong opinions. They are just opinions and nothing more. When I make decisions about what kind of software or hardware I deploy please understand it's from my personal perspective that I'm making that decision. Sure - There may be a great ABC solution out there for just what I'm trying to do but it may not be compatible with T..Z that I already have deployed. Please respect my decisions and I will continue to respect yours.

I won't be doing any *Nix vs Windows bullshit here but I will try to explain why I choose the OS or component I use for a specific application. I always reach for the "best" tool in the drawer. May not be the sharpest or the shiniest. I don't always have time to check each new tool that comes out. So, a lot of the time I grab the tried and true ones that I know the best.

What this blog is going to try and do is give you a peek into some pretty hard core computer geekness. I'll be talking about the projects I'm working on, thinking about and involved in. Since I do a lot of IT work for other people I will be changing names to protect the innocent and all that good stuff.

I thought long and hard about security issues and blogging. I can't just go out and tell you the exact layout and configuration of say, my firewall. Or the server and access configurations for my remote hosting services...or the configurations where I work. Especially when you consider that one of my mantra's is "Security Through Obscurity".

Why password protect a system that is invisible, unreachable and nobody knows anything about? Well, because someday someone will find it and it's only a matter of time, and if they really want "in" all the passwords in the world won't stop them. So, for the sake of argument and obscurity I will not be releasing my own name, I will setup some kind of email address for people that do want to contact me and I'll host my blog here out in the open. One blog among thousands (it's own kind of obscurity) even thought I have servers and bandwidth and expertise to run a completely custom blog of my own.

Okay, that's about all the small talk I have a stomach for today. Now on with the technobabble!