Torrus on FreeBSD
Posted 9:28:17 PM on Fri, 23rd October 2009 by Dj-ZoRt!

There isnt a lot of instructions for how to install Torrus on FreeBSD. Fortunately there is a port, which is how i found Torrus in the first place.

Torrus is a monitoring framework in the spirit of Cricket - but unlike Cricket, people are actually maintaining it. It supports a large number of devices and works with either modperl1 or modperl2.

I will quickly step through whats needed to get things going. Everything else is available in Torrus' documentation...

1. Install & update ports,
2. Install apache2+modperl2 (ill assume that you can work that out)
3. Make Torrus with mod perl 2 support (unfortunately this port doesnt do make config)

cd /usr/ports/net-mgmt/torrus
WITH_MOD_PERL=2 make
WITH_MOD_PERL=2 make install

for reference, the files installed can easily be listed with

pkg_info -L 'torrus*'

4. Edit sample configs

cd /usr/local/etc/torrus/conf
cp torrus-siteconfig.pl.sample torrus-siteconfig.pl


Turn off ACLs and auth access (turn on later if you want)

vi torrus-siteconfig.pl

add this line

$Torrus::ApacheHandler::authorizeUsers = 0;

5. Copy more sample configs to proper configs

cd /usr/local/etc/torrus/xmlconfig
cp site-global.xml.sample site-global.xml  

6. Apache config, this is the lines youll need. Look elsewhere for apache details if you arent familiar with apache configuration. I set up a new vhost and included the following...

vi /usr/local/etc/apache22/Includes/torrus.conf

Alias /torrus/plain "/usr/local/share/torrus/sup/webplain"
      PerlRequire "/usr/local/share/torrus/conf_defaults/webmux2.pl"
     
        SetHandler modperl
        PerlResponseHandler Torrus::Apache2Handler
     
     
        SetHandler default-handler
        Options None
     

7. Restart apache...

/usr/local/etc/rc.d/apache22 restart

8. Add cleanup to crontab

echo "5    3    *    *     *       root    /usr/local/libexec/torrus/cleanup" | crontab -


9. Add some devices...

/usr/local/libexec/torrus/genddx --host=172.29.0.253:switchy --subtree="/main" --out=switch.ddx --version=2c --community=public --holtwinters 

Docsis
Posted 11:38:33 PM on Thu, 16th July 2009 by Dj-ZoRt!

(Note to self really) Page 384 describes the meanings of the tuples, page 421 also has useful info. Now to implement it in perl...

http://www.cablemodem.com/downloads/specs/CM-SP-RFI2.0-I11-060602.pdf

Zabbix on FreeBSD
Posted 9:26:00 PM on Wed, 15th July 2009 by Dj-ZoRt!

Its pretty straight forward to get Zabbix running on FreeBSD. Its worth noting that after install i wasnt all that impressed with zabbix so I continued my question for a monitoring platform. In any case there isnt any documentation on how to do a FreeBSD Zabbix install via ports.

Start off with going to ports and installing it

cd /usr/ports/net-mgmt/zabbix
make && make install

Then create the zabbix mysql database and users (note the user here is zabbix, password is z4bb1x.

echo "create database zabbix" | mysql
echo "grant all privileges on zabbix.* to zabbix@localhost identified by z4bb1x' | mysql
mysql < etc

Edit the zabbix_server.conf file as needed...

[root@batou /usr/local/etc/zabbix]# vi zabbix_server.conf

Enable the zabbix service in rc.conf

vi /etc/rc.conf

# zabbix
zabbix_server_enable="YES"

Start up zabbix

/usr/local/etc/rc.d/zabbix_server start

Configure apache for zabbix

[root@batou /usr/local/etc/apache22/Includes]# vi zabbix.conf

Alias /zabbix "/usr/local/share/zabbix/php"


    Options Indexes MultiViews
    AllowOverride None
    Order allow,deny
    Allow from all


Edit the zabbix web interface config...


[root@batou /usr/local/share/zabbix/php/conf]# cat zabbix.conf.php
/*
** ZABBIX
** Copyright (C) 2000-2005 SIA Zabbix
**
** This program is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify
** it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by
** the Free Software Foundation; either version 2 of the License, or
** (at your option) any later version.
**
** This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful,
** but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of
** MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE.  See the
** GNU General Public License for more details.
**
** You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License
** along with this program; if not, write to the Free Software
** Foundation, Inc., 675 Mass Ave, Cambridge, MA 02139, USA.
**/

global $DB;

$DB["TYPE"]             = "MYSQL";
$DB["SERVER"]           = "localhost";
$DB["PORT"]             = "0";
$DB["DATABASE"]         = "zabbix";
$DB["USER"]             = "zabbix";
$DB["PASSWORD"]         = "z4bb1x";
$ZBX_SERVER             = "localhost";
$ZBX_SERVER_PORT        = "10051";


$IMAGE_FORMAT_DEFAULT   = IMAGE_FORMAT_PNG;

?>


Make some changes to the php.ini file, you will need to tailor some of these to your region.

vi /usr/local/etc/php.ini


[Date]
; Defines the default timezone used by the date functions
date.timezone = Australia/Sydney

Restart apache

/usr/local/etc/rc.d/apache22 restart

Log in to the zabbix www server with user 'Admin' and password 'zabbix'

http://yourserver/zabbix/


Thats it.

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.