Server Tuning

So there comes a time when you want that extra lil bit of wizz from your server. For me that was tonight so i ran through a number of tweaks and have to say i'm quite happy with the results.

Here they are:

1. apt-get install sysv-rc-conf

run sysv-rc-conf and remove any uneeded services from starting with the computer

2. Remove uSplahs from loading... Its headless so dont need it to be pretty on boot

3. Enable concurrency - Got a dual core for a reason.

4. Lower number of tty's to 3 instead of 6

After scripts to move files and provide notification as it goes

This is the script that runs after each nzb download has occured.

#Mount SMB Share to send files to:

mount.cifs //192.168.0.100/downloads /mnt/susdown -o user=xbmc,pass=xbmc

# Do the actual copying and notifications via growl/prowl

for f in /root/downloads/complete/*;do{

cp -v -R "$f" /mnt/susdown/

mumbles-send -g 192.168.0.148 "Copy Success" "Copied file: $f">/dev/null;rm -r -f "$f"

mumbles-send -g 192.168.0.148 "Deletion Confirmed" "Remove $f from Server">/dev/nul

prowl.sh 2 "File Moved" "File: $f has been moved off the server to SusansPC";

}

done

#Unmount share as we dont need it taking up resources

umount /mnt/susdown

Just need to work out how to make the script act based on result codes. Then i could really check if this are being moved... although seems like alot of fucking around to achieve something so simple. This small script lets me play with most things I find interesting about integrating my phone with EVERYTHING i do in some way shape or form.

Prowl for Linx

WOOHOOO... Finally a way to get Growl messages out of my linux box and onto the iphone.

After playing with Mumbles I'm now able to get notifications on the MAC once files have been downloaded, par2'ed unpacked and moved to the main storage server.

Now I can get those same notifications on the iPhone.

http://flx.me/prowl-4-linux/

Remember the link - Donate if you can... its well worth it.

Frikkin' file permission

I always thought I was pretty good at this linux stuff, there's usually nothing I can't work out how to do or at least get semi-working. But now I come to something thats screwing with my head. I know why its happening, I just can't be bothered screweing with it to fix it....

I use hellanzb now to download files, thats no big deal

When the file finishes the download it goes into a folder on the root partition.

Problem is, when its placed in the folder its not given high enough permissions so that its world readable as I want it to be.

I've currently taken the lazy way out and run a crontab every 15 mins to set this specific folder to chmod -R 777 every time it runs, but this isn't good enough

hellaNZB should be able to save th efile to this folder and not have me need to .......... wait a min.... add both to the same group and inherit premissions from that.... Well done me.. I'm a genious.... and yes i know.... one who can't spell worth shit.

Didn't work - Down with MythTV

After agnosing with the mySQL side of MythTV due to me wanting the database to bascially be the better mousetrap, I finally gave in, reinstalled the lot and tried to get a channel... guess what.. here in aus, for some reason the lil driver that could jsut can't get a dvb-t channel through the usb stick. Oh well strike that job from narnia, onwards and upwards to find something else for the little tyke to do.

Getting USB DVB TV to work FINALLY

So after aaaaaaaaaages of fiddling with this and that i finally got the usb tv card to appear in linux

Still dont know if it will get a channel, but i know at leas the device is installed.

# First we build v4l (Video 4 linux)

apt-get install mercurial

mkdir src

cd src

hg clone http://linuxtv.org/hg/v4l-dvb

cd v4l-dbv

make && sudo make install

sudo depmod -a

# Now we build the drivers/modules

cd ..

hg clone http://linuxtv.org/hg/~anttip/ec168/

cd ec168

make && sudo make install

sudo depmod -a

sudo modprobe dbv-usb-ec168

# Next we need some firmware for the card

wget http://palosaari.fi/linux/v4l-dvb/firmware/ec168/dvb-usb-ec168.fw

sudo cp dvb-usb-ec168.fw /lib/firmware

sudo depmod -a

restart the pc as sudo /etc/init.d/udev restart caused things to error.

And boom.. working usbtv adapter.

The Lion, The Witch, and the.. .... god damn it!!!

Why god damn I hear you ask??? (Yeah i know, no bugger reads this so i dont hear crap) well I finally got around to installing my server into the wardrobe.

I ended up calling it poison - as in it will no doubt poison my time while i constantly play with it. However considering its new home, i should have called in narnia... bugger it thats what i'll do.. pls hold.....

right after a quick hostname change and an update to dns/dhcp servers all is now good.

So onward and upwards.

So far I have installed the following

• HellaNZB <-- Usenet NZB downloader
• ZussaWeb <-- Web interface to HellaNZB
• Transmission <-- Torrent downloader
• WebMin <-- Figured I'd whack it on and play with it
• Asterisk <-- Who doesn't want a home PABX
• The drivers for my usbtv adapter <-- What a pain in the ass this was to install hence the guide to come
• Apache Web Server
• PHP
• MySQL
• OpenSSH <-- My favorite kind of access
• NoMachine NX Server <-- Remote access kind of like vnc, however its ssh so again i like it.. NERD!!!

So how did I go about installing all this, most if not all were easy as a quick apt-get so for fullness here goes.

sudo apt-get update

sudo apt-get dist-upgrade

sudo apt-get install webmin transmission hellanzb asterisk openssh-server screen mysql-server apache2 mythtv-backend samba

I didn't really do the dist-upgrade, however if i ever come back to this in the future it probably wont hurt to do.

Go make a cup o coffee while that all installs and come back a little later.

iPhone 3.1 Jailbreak - Comming Soon

Still waiting on the frikkin 3.1 iPhone 3G update. Have updated to iTunes 9 which seemingly allows me to rearrange springboards icons. I'm not about to start using it yet though, have to wait for the Jailbreak before i'm upgrading to 3.1. No point upgrading to loose all the apps I use very day.

Time to build a NAS

So I have a heap o computer crap laying around the house, a good few hard drives, none of which are used for anything any more. Perhaps its time I take stock of everything I have, Install freeNAS onto the fastest box I have, give it as much ram as possible and go from there.

UPDATE: ITS ALL CRAPPY AND TO OLD TO DO WHAT I WANT!!!!!

Although whatever NAS solution I do use it needs to fill the following roles all in one:

• WebServer
• SSH Server
• DNS Server
• Kai Server (For playing XBOX, 360 and PSP online without Live accounts)
• Some form of network monitoring
• Security Camera Monitoring
• Mumbles Support (OS X Growl notifications) - This one send notifications to my iPhone
• Obviously FileSharing
• Print Server
• Fax2Email wouldn't hurt
• CallerID Announcment to xbmc would also be nice
• Asterisk Server - Although this might go into its own box
• Torrent Server (Transmission will suffice here)

So thats the list - Time to find the possibilities.

iPhone Jailbreak - No Signal

What a pain in the arse this is! I've finally got Pwnage Tool running on my mac, and i went through the steps of creating what I think is a fantastic ipsw file containing not only the jailbreak software but a 1GB sys partition and some apps that I need installed from the get go such as OpenSSH and OpenSSL. The creation of said firmware worked without a problem, installed on the phone without a problem... Now I find the phone has No Signal. Testing this theory by calling my phone... VoiceMail... DAMN IT!!!!!!

So whats the problem all of a sudden... one frikkin tick box in PwnageTool I inadvertantly forgot to untick.

Theres an active phone option that I dont need to have ticked and well I left it ticked. So this morning I fired up the mac, re-created the firmware and when I goes home at lunch time i'll install and see what happens.

Peace Out!

Free IPv6 Usenet

So I was getting fed up with downloading torrents as the speeds are not always that fantastic. &nbsp;It was then that I decided to try out usenet utilising the mac with leo installed. &nbsp;I'd been using igrabnews whilst tiger was installed, however this doesn't seem to work all that well with leo. &nbsp;Tried Unison next, quite happy with it, but theres something lacking still. &nbsp;Time to pull out the big guns and finally get hellaNZB installed. &nbsp;I'll write up a howto and get back to you.

DVD43 Stuffs 360 Ripping

Well after making myself look like a douche in front of friends I now know why I couldn't get games to rip. DVD43 sits between the drive and the computer and blocks xbox backup creator from seeing the disc in the drive. Why does this ocur.. well derrr... (Can't believe I didn't think of this)... When the xbox disc is presented to the PC, the computer sees the video partition only. So of course DVD43 kicks in to be helpful and tries to unencrypt the video partition.. not gunna happen..... And of course because of this, the disc becomes invisible to xbc.

Useful only has one L

Who says you never learn new things. After many moons of incorrect spelling I learn today that useful only has one L. Now that I think of it and actually look at it, OF COURSE IT ONLY HAS ONE L...

Thanks R3Dux for letting me know.

Adding Sata port to xbox 360

<-- Here was my first idea at a sata mod - Run the cables out the side and just use a piece of an old PCICard as a female to female sata connector... FAIL that would be crap and who wants cables dangling out the box when you dont need to. There simply had to be a better way... Well I FOUND IT!

Note to self: The rubber tape to guard cables against the sharp edges worked a treat. Will use that in another project.

It's been a long time in the planning however I finally did the mod to stop me having to open the xbox ever again. What I did was splice a switch in between two sata cables and an eSata backing plate.

I pulled apart the xbox in the usual way, used my dremel to cut out some metal shielding, and some plastic that helps hold the 360 together. This however will make no difference to the 360 as the case still closes without issue

I flick the switch one way and the DVD drive connects to the 360 motherboard allowing game play. I flick it the other way and the drives output is switched to the eSata port and out to my computer.

List of parts and prices (AUD)

1. eSata Cable -$4
2. eSata external backing plates x2 -$5 each (needed one for pc as well)
3. 4PDT switch - $7
4. Sata cable x 1 - $0 (Came with data card)

Only needed one extra data cable as the esata plug can be cut to make another cable to connect to DVD drive.

So it's basically, cut all sata cables in half,
Strip wires back a little, solder wires to switch contacts
Dremel case and shielding, drill hole for switch, coat switch in hot glue to provide shielding.
Install switch and esata portto top case
Instal cables to motherboard, middle cable to DVD rom, top to esata port.
Close it all up and enjoy.

Here are some finished pics, will upload some more soon. (These look crap and make the mod look untidy. GRRrrr - Will Get some good ones soon)

Installing OSx86

This is the second attempt - after getting fed up with things not working out of the box thought i'd try two different distro's to see if it makes a difference to the out of the box experiance.

Installing now should take 15 mins, will see how we go.

First was iakos7 - Install went fine, rebooted and then:

Boot - Reboot Loop on the Grey Screen

Turn off Hyperthreading... Boots to a blue screen with music playing - Sounds like the audio drivers work - Grahpics drivers - Not So much, Time to try Kalayway as I dont want to spend the vening working out the correct .kext etc to use to get it to function and who wants to use it without hyperthreading :d

Kalaway's Turn

1. Turn hyperthreading back on - I want this out of the box.

2. Boot from Kalaway DVD without the use of boot options

3. Installer startup is taking a while longer than iAktos, although its scanned the NTFS partition for some reason for consistency.

5:31pm greeted with northen lights background and welcome to installer text.

Use English for main Language.

Mac OSX - Barbers Pole - Preparing Installation

4. Utilities Menu --> Disk Utility --> Erase OSX Partition from previous install

5. Select newly erased partition to install to

6. Press Customize - And go through options keno'ing answers :D

7. Leaving Graphics Drivers Empty.

8. Unselected Language translation - My english is pretty good so i'll stick to that

9. checked to install additional 3rd party apps - removed network drivers that i dont have such as marvel etc

10. Click Okay and then Install

11. OSX would now "hypothetically" be installing :D

6 Mins to go :)

Boots up with grey apple boot screen - Wont load past that

Okay - check the manual... need to run a few commands to get it to boot past the grey apple logo - Seems this is the same as the blue screen fix

Boot as normal, press F8 to enter boot options,

enter -s as boot option to go into single user mode

Once it boots and presents with a command line enter the following:

mount -uw /

/movevideo

Go through and say yes to the correct chipset and no to the others

once its all done, type exit and BOOM into OSX we go.

Next comes sound...

No sound has been installed it would seem, time to start with the drivers (Called .kext's in OSX)

I have a sigmatel AC97 sound card that shows as Intel HD Audio in windows.

So time to go diving for a driver. ... meh.. can't be bothered - I'll do it later.

Haze - you've got to be kidding

Ohhh great. Now the game wants to quit and update itself. Grrrrrrr


-- Post From My iPhone

Ps3 Game - Haze

My seond game ever. Haze from ubisoft. Talk about snore fest. I've started the game only to be greeted with this...


It's now 10 minutes later and I'm at 82%. Surely I could have decided if I wanted to install to my hard drive. Game better be worth the wait.

-- Post From My iPhone

1ST Blog from iPhone

Figured I'd try a few apps out and see how well they work. This ones blogpress. Now to add a photo :)




-- Posted On The Go

iPhone 3.0 - MMS

Yes its true - After 2 years of waiting for a feature every other phone seems to have been capable of since late '03/early '04 we can finally send and recieve MMS using the iPhone.

I have to admit, the implementation has been done very well, however there seems to be a small bug, well at least with my phone there is.

When a contact sends an MMS regardless of if their name is stored in the contact list or not, I am shown the phone number of the sender and not the actual Contact Name.

All good if I'm expecting the mms, not so good as I havn't yet memorised every persons contact numbers. Nor do I have any intention of doing so. Would be interesting to know if anyone else is experiancing the same problem.

iPhone 3.0 - Now With Extra Tethering

Bye bye PDANET - By bye SmallProxy for iPhone.

Gone are the days where you needed to download and install extra apps to use your iPhone as a portable modem. Now you can use the inbuilt tethering option via either a usb connection or Bluetooth.

After having just updated my iPhone to 3.0 and finding the tethering option was disabled with Optus Australia and that I needed to contact them to enable it.. Bugger that I thought.

So I did my usual and found a very very helpful site that lets you download mobile configs straight to your iPhone without ever needing to go near iTunes or your mobile phone carrier to ask for permission *(ITS MY PHONE ANYWAYS)*

Follow these steps, and you too could be using Tethering on your iPhone.

1. Open Safari on your iPhone
2. Goto the following url: http://www.iphone-notes.de/mobileconfig/
3. Click the Mobile Configs Download Button
4. Select your Country
5. Select your carrier from the list
6. Press the Install Button that appears
7. Press Accept or Replace depending on your previous settings.
8. Press the Done button
9. Goto Settings --> General --> Network --> Tethering
10. Change the options as required

And there you have it, nice easy way to enable Tethering withotu needing to play with iTunes and downgrading and reflashing etc.