FreeBSD Link Aggregation
Posted 12:55:22 PM on Tue, 16th June 2009 by Dj-ZoRt!

Details on how to set up either LACP or crappy Cisco EtherChannel are documented here in the freebsd handbook. Also worth mentioning is the lagg device man page. Link aggregation is also incorrectly referred to as 'trunking', which is of course the exact oppose of link aggregation in that multiple VLANs share the same physical link (a link aggregate group can also be a trunk). The Intel term 'teaming' also is in common use, although seems to refer to using multiple network cards without help from the switch. The linux term 'bonding' refers to the linux drivers which implement a number of multi-nic configurations, some with switch assistance, others without.

Useful Extreme Networks Documentation
Posted 8:01:15 PM on Tue, 7th April 2009 by Dj-ZoRt!

Here are some useful documents for Extreme Networks Switches. Extreme Networks makes the highest performance network equipment currently available. Benchmarks against Cisco clearly show them washing down the floor, mopping it up, drying it nicely, then waxing and polishing it to mirror shine. 

Fortunately for LANparty's, the push of carriers to 10gig in the data centre has meant a flood of very high capacity gig switching routers into the second hand market place. Of particular interest are the Extreme Networks Summit 'i' series, with relatively low port numbers and huge switching capacity making ideal core switches for bandwidth hungry lan events. Similarly Black Diamond chassis make for excellent cores for larger lans with tiered of fully collapsed networks.

The Consolidated Hardware Guide gives excellent detail for Summit 20-24, 200-48, 1i, 5i, 48i, 48si and 7i series Switches, as well as Alpine 3800 and Black Diamond 6800 series.  This will give you some idea of what these switches can do before you cough up your hard earned cash for them.

With your switch in hand, the ExtremeWare Command Reference Guide will show you how to actually use your switch. No their isnt really a GUI... but if you need one then this kind of hardware isnt really for you.

There is a handy walkthrough on how to reset the switches password (if you dont know it... chances are you wont) here.

Tinc. An open source Hamachi equivalent
Posted 8:51:15 AM on Tue, 17th March 2009 by Dj-ZoRt!

Hamachi is clever and neat but ultimately falls down because of its proprietary heritage.  Windows users don't really care because they are used to closed software, however the Linux and Mac versions are woefully outdated and lack a complete feature set. Further more, Hamachi really doesnt give you much control, even if you pay for the premium service.

So I have scoured the interwebz in search of an open source equivalent. Surely some crafty people have begun an orchestrated cloud VPN style project which can spare us from the follies of Hamachi, whilst still providing a work around for miserable network code in games.

Enter Tinc.

"Tinc is a Virtual Private Network (VPN) daemon that uses tunnelling and encryption to create a secure private network between hosts on the Internet."

Tinc is very nice because it does exactly what Hamachi does, but allows you to run it on any platform (ie Windows, Windows 64bit, Linux on almost any architecture including WRT routers, OpenBSD, NetBSD, FreeBSD, Solaris, MacOSX/Darwin). It supports IPv4 and IPv6, and allows you to chose your own IP scheme. It automatically meshes in the same way hamachi does, so that the server doesnt require huge amounts of bandwidth or data. Supports static or DHCP assigned IP addresses and allow you to run your own server. So availability is in your hands!

You can check it out on wikipedia or their website

How many PC's per house circuit?
Posted 10:52:40 AM on Thu, 5th March 2009 by Dj-ZoRt!

Huray a LANparty related post!

If you are looking to run a LAN at your house, an essential part of preparation is to make sure peoples PC's will have the power they need to run for a whole day of fragging goodness.

You should be aware that a computer power supply has a power rating in Watts (A Watt is simply the Voltage times the Ampage, or W=VA) which corresponds to its maximum draw, ie it doesn't draw 400W constantly, even though its rated at 400W. You will also notice that powerboards and so forth will have a rating of 2400W, meaning they are rated to deliver 2400W of power.

A typical circuit in your home is rated for 10Amps at 240VoltsAC which is 10*240 = 2400Watts.

Simple maths will tell you that 2400W circuit / 400w PSU gives you 6 computers if they are running at max load and not including the monitor. This is a reasonable maximum, however in my experience 10 computers per circuit is usually safe, as most PSU's arent running at full power. Even with 500W PSU's, im still comfortable with 10 computers if the wiring in your house is relatively new.

The catch is that electricians will wire the points in your house sometimes seemingly randomly, especially if points are added later on - they will just attach to the closest wiring in the wall, which could mean the point from another room.

So you will need to spend a few moments and map out what points are connected to what in your house. This will save you face if a circuit trips, and you wont be called a douche bag and taped to the toilet.

To work out which outlets (called General Purpose Outlets - GPO's in Australia) are connected to which circuit breaker, and what other devices are attached to the same circuit. You should first look in the distribution board of your house. In Australian homes, this will be on the side of your house or sometimes near the door. It will virtually never be inside unless you are in an appartment. If you arent sure, ask your parent or landlord.

If you are lucky, there will be a diagram showing which points are connected to which breaker. If so, great! make a copy of that information and skip the rest of this guide, otherwise its time for some detective work!

Start by making a drawing of your houses layout, and then putting the location of each outlet. Remember that outlets lurk behind things like your fridge, your microwave and your tv cabinet. Find yourself a small easily moved lamp which will be used later for testing.

Then head to your Distribution Board and turn off the breakers for the GPO in your house, this may not be practical if life critical devices are plugged in. Use common sense and dont unplug your grandmothers life support! But also keep in mind that you may reset clocks and other things, so don't forget to ask your parents first if you live with them.

If you aren't sure which are breakers, which are safety switches etc. You should get a friend or electrician who does!

Having off'd all the breakers, turn on just one.

Using the map of your house, head to each outlet and plug in your lamp. If it turns on, mark on your map that this outlet is connected to the circuit that is currently on, and what other appliances are plugged in. Then head back to the Distribution Board and turn on another Circuit Breaker, repeating the process over and over untill all outlets are mapped.

With all the outlets mapped, make a summary of what appliances are on each circuit.

Now with this information you can spread out your guests computers on to the different circuits, and if a circuit breaker does pop, you will have good information for where to move one of the computers too before you turn it back on again!

NB. Its handy to make a nice copy of this information and put it on your fridge for easy reference during your LAN. You may even consider sticking another copy on the map in the cupboard that holds your Distribution Board.

Cisco CatOS - Native IOS Command Comparison Chart
Posted 9:42:36 AM on Mon, 2nd March 2009 by Dj-ZoRt!

CatOS	Native IOS
set vlan [vlan-id] [mod]/[port]	interface [gigabit/fastethernet][mod]/[port]  switchport  switchport mode access  switchport access vlan [vlan-id]
set port enable [mod]/[port]	interface [gigabit/fastethernet][mod]/[port]  no shutdown
set port disable [mod]/[port]	interface [gigabit/fastethernet][mod]/[port]  shutdown
set spantree portfast	interface [gigabit/fastethernet][mod]/[port]  spanning-tree portfast
set port speed [mod]/[port] [auto/10/100/1000]	interface [gigabit/fastethernet][mod]/[port]  speed [auto/10/100/1000]
set port duplex [mod]/[port] [half/full] (Note: Auto duplex automatically set with speed auto)	interface [gigabit/fastethernet][mod]/[port]  duplex [auto/full/half]
reset system	reload
show cam dynamic	show mac-address-table dynamic
show channel	show etherchannel summary
show port [mod]/[port]	show interface [gigabit/fastethernet][mod]/[port]
show spantree	show spanning-tree
show trunk	show interfaces trunk
show vlan	show vlan
show vtp domain	show vtp status
set system name [label]	hostname [label]
set spantree backbonefast	spanning-tree backbonefast
set spantree macreduction table	spanning-tree extend system-id
reset	reload

Popcorn Hour A-110
Posted 10:55:15 AM on Thu, 18th December 2008 by Dj-ZoRt!

I just received my Popcorn Hour A-110! So far I have been very impressed. It cost just under AU$400 including registered and insured shipping courtesy of the nice people at Media Players & More, and Australian online store based in Queensland who specialize in media players.

You can read other reviews (ones that are actually comprehensive, unlike this) at places like MacRecon who gave it a 9/10 and Cnet UK who gave it a 9.1/10.

I wont labor the features which are listed elsewhere. Except to say that this little unit is a Linux based "Networked Media Tank", which uses hardware decoders to play various forms of media from network, optional internal hard disk or usb media (be it usb stick, usb hard disk or even usb dvd/cd).

Video outputs available are composite, s-video, component and hdmi 1.3a upto 1080p (including audio through hdmi), Audio outputs are stereo, digital optical and hdmi audio. The device can decode DTS and AC3 back to pcm or can pass straight out to a receiver - like your big surround sound stereo.

Multimedia formats worth mentioning are AVI with XVID/DIVX video, mp3 audio or ac3 audio. My main motivating factor is its support of h264 MKV with DTS or AC3 audio. It supports a plethora of formats which include FLAC audio. Nice. For an exhaustive list, click any other review.

Physical media formats include USB drives and also USB cd/dvd players. The remote includes all buttons needed to attach a USB dvd/cd and have full DVD functionality. Not what I bought it for but neat nonetheless. And iso images are treated just like a dvd and use the same menu buttons. Internal hard drive is any SATA disk. It will format to linux native, so you will be boned if you try and take it out to use on Windows etc.  Why you would actually do so seems strange. Surely you would want to leave it in your A/V cabinet, using the various network methods available to copy files on and off

Network connectivity is via built in 10/100 ethernet, there is no wireless however wireless usb is supported (but i have no idea which devices, its linux based so ones that work in linux?). Wireless is not a feature I wanted so I'm happy that wireless is excluded . Some reviewers are concerned that the the wired ethernet should be Gigabit. Such an upgrade seems pointless to me as a 1080p h264 file is only around 6meg/sec, which is only around half 100mbit speed.

The A-110 can play straight from SMB and NFS! It can also play from UPNP. With an internal hard drive it can also share its media via smb, nfs, upnp, http and ftp. Madness! With an internal disk it can download from bittorrent and usenet on to the local disk (control via http and on-tv). Streaming off the internet is supported, including youtube and googlevideo, however I haven't had a chance to try it yet.

Menus are sharp, neat, professional looking and responsive. I don't like that you must decide the media file type before browsing, yick, very draconian.

Running a firmware update was quick and came straight off the net after plugging in the A-110's ethernet. Other players I have had required burning to CD and 30+mins of time to finish. I dont know if other upgrade methods are supported if for some reason direct download isnt a good option for you.

The included HDMI cable seems very high quality. I don't feel any compelling need to replace it (unlike the miserable HDMI cable you get with Blu-Ray players) however I don't have anything to test it and quantify my claims!

Good things so far

• Nice and small size
• Nice looking menus
• Comes with a seemingly very decent HDMI cable
• Can raw output the DTS/AC3/(etc) or convert to pcm, apparently my tv cant decode dts on its own. So I can use it with or without the stereo (which i can set to do its own dts decoding)
• Menus are good
• Somehow manages to browse unix nfs!? as well as windows smb
• Load times are excellent.
• Fast Forward works properly, although after the FF finishes sound takes a second to start again.
• Configuration is thorough but simple
• Hdmi audio! huray for neat simple stereo cabling!
• Remote is good, even glows in the dark!
  
• Laptop style power supply, should keep heat away from the main unit
• Youtube interface is quite good, although searching is difficult and the search box is very small (almost unreadable at a distance)
• Embedded images in MP3 are shown on screen (for better or worse)
  

Some gotchas (ie bad things)

• Doesnt seem to do proper anonymous smb. which sucks as i don't have guest enabled so i have to thumb in my u/p with the 0-9 button alphanumerics.
• No coax digital out. Although I'm planning on just using the HDMI for audio out
• Doesn't seem to have a unified file browser, you have to select which type of file you want to open before you browse the media. However you browse the share, then select the media type. Its a complete mess.
  
• Runs quite hot (passively cooled)
• Doesn't buffer internet streaming very well
• Doesnt have CEC support.
• Feature support varies from format to format, I.e. Track details and seeking arent supported on FLAC, but are on mp3
  

Unknowns

• How how the actual device will get
• If the bitorrent or usenet clients are any good (I havent installed a hard disk)
• How well sharing files from the A-110 will go (as above, i haven't installed a hard disk)
• Internet streaming, haven't tried it yet!

Things I would like to see added

• Network API to control the device (perhaps implement the XBMC remote protocols)
  
• iPhone remote
• CEC
• Fix the file browsing mess
• More intelligent and configurable buffering on internet streams

So far im very impressed. price (under 400), size (smaller than a mini dvd player) and features (plays full hd mkv perfectly with hdmi out) having already exceeded my expectations. If you have a flat screen tv on its normal stand, you can sit it in the space between the table (surface) its sitting on and the tv without problems, its really thin.

Well worth buying over a Media PC or even XBMC.

(There are a lot of others using the same internals (which are from Sayabac apparently), all have very similar features, but have different form factors, different USB positioning, some have coax digital out and one even has SD card slot - there is lots of details here)

What webserver are Australian ISP's using?
Posted 3:22:02 PM on Sun, 7th December 2008 by Dj-ZoRt!

For no real reason except personal curiosity I did a fairly unscientific survey of the top 20 isps according to whirlpool (top based on http://bc.whirlpool.net.au/ which indicates this list is the top 20 based on provider disclosure of whirlpool membership, so clearly no the actual customer numbers). In any case I just needed a list of 'top' australian ISPs to survey.

My method was to simply put the main url into http://uptime.netcraft.com.au and then record it.

In a few cases servers have been moved behind load balancers (which were F5's in all cases), so I have assumed that the OS is still the same as in the entry before the move. Also some providers have changed platforms, so I have collected the most recent.

Here goes, remember that the numeric position is based on the above premise, not customer or revenue sizes.

#1	Internode	Apache/FreeBSD
#2	iiNet	Apache/Debian
#3	TPG Internet	Apache/Linux
#4	OptusNet	Apache/Redhat
#5	Telstra BigPond	IIS/Windows
#6	Exetel	Apache/Debian
#7	Netspace	Apache/Solaris
#8	Westnet	IIS/Windows
#9	aaNet	Apache/Debian
#10	Adam Internet	Apache/FreeBSD
#11	AAPT	IIS/Windows
#12	Amnet	IIS/Windows
#13	3	Apache/Unix
#14	Virgin Broadband	IIS/Windows
#15	iPrimus	IIS/Windows
#16	Comcen Internet	Apache/FreeBSD
#17	People Telecom	Apache/Debian
#18	Spin Internet	Apache/FreeBSD
#19	Dodo	IIS/Windows
#20	Vodafone	Apache-Coyote (Tomcat)

What surprised me is that FreeBSD showed up so many times (4/20 = 20%) and that Redhat was only present once. IIS accounts for (7/20) 35%. Debian comes in at 20% also (4/20). Solaris appears just once (although netspace does use solaris, but netspace strangely isnt on the list).

Apache accounts for (13/20) 65% of the total.

What I wanted to know, which I found from this little survey, is that the open source platform of choice is either Debian or FreeBSD.

Cisco Broadband Access Centre for Cable = Rubbish
Posted 10:23:45 PM on Tue, 28th October 2008 by Dj-ZoRt!

Recently I have had the opportunity to migrate cable internet services migrate from an existing ISC DHCPD + LDAP provisioning system to Ciscos Broadband Access Centre for Cable.

This is my warning to anyone considering forking out good money for it.

Whats my advise then? Dont.

Its pure and utter garbage. Ive found better software in abandoned projects on sourceforge.net, and fortunately they dont charge you!

Whats wrong with it?

There are a number of glaring issues which have meant I have spent weeks making massive massive hacks to get things to work right.

• The RDU (Modem/MTA/CPE database) is only accessible via Java API or gui. Seriously, wtf? This makes integration nearly impossible. Where are the command line tools? What about other languages like perl? python? anything? Making any form of autoinstallation is nearly impossible. Next to no actual documentation on the API and the gui is totally unsuitable for more than 20 devices.
  
• DHCP extensions are written in in TCL or C. um. genius.
• DPE, CNR, KDC and RDU all have completely different configuration methods. Yet they are all part of the one product. DPE at least has a cisco like telnetable interface, and the cnr has a clumsly but scriptable cli interface.
• Only runs on solaris
• Only runs as root! (all members of the system)
• Device config templating has no flow control, only variable substitution.
• Home grown file system layout (this is unix, get with it)
• Doesnt support ZFS on solaris
  
• Doesnt officially support Solaris 10
• Doesnt support non-sparc solaris
• No firm metrics on performance
• No firm metrics on database growth
• No revision control in the templating engine, or any aspects of the configuration
  
• Lacks cohesive back up strategy
• DPE fails to install properly
• Manual installation only, no install config file etc (great for disaster recovery)

So why on earth anyone would want to buy it is beyond me. You can do much more with ISC-DHCP and LDAP, going home each night not hating your job. As for support? Call the cisco hotline and they have never even heard of the product before.

Youre going to have to attach bacc to your user db anyway, so why not just hook ISC straight to it rather than having to copying users in and out of BACC from sql or ldap (etc).

There are even companies you can pay to support your ISC if the massive wealth of information on websites, newsgroups and forums, plus printed inside paper books isnt enough.

BACC wont give you peace of mind, it will just give you a clunky cable provisioning system.

Bug in Max OS X Leopard installer for iMac G4
Posted 8:59:59 AM on Tue, 5th August 2008 by Dj-ZoRt!

I found that the MacOSX installer will fail if the iMac G4 sleep functions kick in. For some reason the installer doesn't disable any of the power saver functions for the screen, hard disk etc so when (i assume) the hard disk or cd/dvd-rom (not sure which) powers down the installer will fail with an big orange error saying installation component not found.

My wife and I took our first DVD back as we thought it must be faulty. However after seeing the same error again, we watched carefully (rather than just walking away for long waits in the installer) we noticed that the failure varyied as to when it occurred i suggested that my wife sit there and hit ctrl ever minute or so throughout the 90 odd minute install (as ctrl has no impact on the installer, but will wake this system. this is an old unix best practise). So with a novel in hand she diligently tapped ctrl throughout the installer. It then worked nicely.

In my defense the upgrade of OS was to allow her new iPod nano to work. Panther was perfectly suitable for all other purposes, even if a few new apps were starting to not support it, it worked fine for browsing, watching files and dvd, and up until the new iPod nano - for syncing ipods.

As the install would start upgrading the system then fail, I was unable to get back into 10.3 to turn off power saver features. So the machine was basically a brick without sitting there tapping on the keyboard for an hour and half.

Good news is that despite the numerous upgrade failures, when things finally did install properly we didnt lose anything. All the user data and installed apps from 10.3 were where they should be and the upgrade is as you would expect. Ie everything is the same when you log in except the version is now newer and there are more bells and whistles.

Our iMac G4 is 1ghz with 768mb ram and Leopard seems to run just as well as Panther. There are a few effects that are slower and surprisingly some that are faster. For the skeptical windows user, you cant boast that sort of experience when upgrading windows ever. Although i will admit that moving from NT4 to Windows 2000 was actually the first time that upgrading windows seemed to make life better.

Perl Modules the Debian Way
Posted 1:19:31 PM on Fri, 13th June 2008 by Dj-ZoRt!

For some strange reason I had never previously needed to install a perl module in debian. Its baffling, considering I am staunchly Debian in the face or the Fedora and Ubuntu hoards, and similarly i am a Perl-is-best system administrator who finds php, java, ruby and even python to be unnecessary uses of my hard disks sectors.

So with that rant out of the way. Here is how to install perl modules the Debain way :) keep in mind this command will make a .deb file in the current directory

So firstly (only need to do this once), install dh-make-perl with...

apt-get install dh-make-perl

Then for each module, just run

dh-make-perl --build --cpan Module::Name

the --notest option may help you if you are lazy like me and just assume things will work right

then you will want to install the .deb package with dpkg -i etc