Background
I have a FON router which allow anyone to connect to Intenet via my network connection. I like the openess and idea behind FON but I do not want to get in trouble if someone do bad things and using my network connection.
One solution is to connect the FON accesspoint to a separate network segment and let all traffic from that network go through TOR, the onion router.
Another feature is when I want to be anonymous on Internet I plugin my computer to that network segment.
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Background
It really annoyed me that the iowait at the cpu on the Dom 0 system was approximatly 50% when the 4 virtual system was doing more or less nothing.
I showed my earlier blogpost about VM virtualization to our sysadmin at op5. He gave me a couple of more hints that really make a big difference, the best part is that they are real simple to implement.
I also noticed that I forgot some parts in the previous article that was obvius to me.
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Background
As an it slave, I have the same problems as most datacenters:
- Running out of space because of more and more machines get into the datacenter
- Overheating
- Powerconsumption
Added to the "normal" datacenter problems, I also have to deal with:
- Wife acceptance
- Noice, my neighbours has complained about the noice outside my basement.
To address this issues I will run a consolidation project to get fewer machines by using virtualization. As virtualization engine, KVM is choosed.
This article will describe some pitfalls I run into and how I solved them.
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After a couple of weeks fiddeling I can prodly announce that my new internet connection is in full use.
The new access speed is 100 Mbit/s optical fiber, iperf tests show that I can get approx 97 Mbit/s in booth directions.
Changes:
- 100 Mbit/s internet access provided by Ownit
- Updated firewall to OpenBSD 5.0 running on an Astaro appliance
- Updated Webserver to Centos 6.2, virtulized with KVM
- Updated Mailserver to Centos 6.2, virtulized with KVM
Happy new year
News – Monitor v5.5
Monitor 5.5 - It’s always extra fun when we do releases. News in short are:
- Support for offline maps – no need to have online gmap connection
- Introducing IP traffic “weathermaps” i.e. a user friendly way to present traffic flows, being WAN or LAN traffic
- Display monitor data on external web i.e visualise and distribute the information to greater crowd
- Multiple of time saving tasks such as multidelete, free text filter, save searches etc.
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Nov 1, 2011.
We are pleased to announce the official release of OpenBSD 5.0.
This is our 30th release on CD-ROM (and 31th via FTP). We remain
proud of OpenBSD's record of more than ten years with only two remote
holes in the default install.
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The tech team at op5 have published a number of new How-To articles on the op5 Support
web. Here is a list of the most recent How-Tos:
Access op5 Monitor from your iPhone
Access op5 Monitor on Android Smartphone
How-to monitor a KVM installation
Secure communication with Cloud poller
Agentless Monitoring of Windows using WMI
How to monitor your application server with op5 Monitor and JMX4Perl
Please let me know if you have any suggestion for future How-To articles.
My internet connection is a crappy ADSL line.
I noticed that I did get alot alerts from op5 Monitor complaining about high error rate on the external network. After some investigation I noticed that UDP port 5060 generated approx 1.5 Mbps in traffic and that is more or less maximum my ADSL connection can handle. UDP port 5060 that is SIP.
A nice graph showing the errorrates, generated by op5 Monitor:
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Background
I have a long time looked at Telldus Tellstick that can control wall-plug socket recievers and other devices. Finally I got my hands on one that my collegue wanted to sell.
This article will describe how to get it up and running on a x86_64 CentOS 6 box, the procedure would be the same on RHEL or Feodora and similiar on other Linux distributions. Unfortunatly the only distribution that has pre-made packages is Ubuntu so I will describe howto download the source code, compile it and get the amazing Telldus Tellstick up and running.
Kudos to Telldus that has understood the power of OpenSource and opened up the device to let third-part vendors make solutions based on the device.
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Background
As a monitoring fanatic, I think that have mirrored disk without monitor the mirror is worse then not have a redundant disk system at all. If you think that you are safe and you are not, is worse then be aware of a risk and calculate with it.
This article will describe how I did monitoring my FreeNAS system mirrored disks status using Nagios or op5 Monitoring. I assume basic knowledge of Nagios or op5 Monitor and that a Nagios agent is installed.
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Background
My old NAS built on top of CentOS has some performence issues and the disks are quit old now. The hardware is leftovers that is approx 8 years old and not highend at that time either. The disks age has worried my for a time and I would like to have higher redunduncy with raid1/mirrored disks.
After some research I decided to run my new NAS on FreeNAS, which has all the features I use, like: CIFS, NFS, FTP, SSH, Rsync, Unison, iSCSI and also easy administration and disk management.
This article will describe how I did setup Nagios or op5 Monitoring on my FreeNAS system. I assume basic knowledge of Nagios or op5 Monitor.
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After a long wait CentOS 6 is here.
Before installing, read the release notes
Finally, the most important and useful widget to Ninja has arrived. As everybody in the IT industri today knows, the cloud is where we all want to go and nirvana will be accomplished. To get there it is a god idea to let your favorite monitor solution keep track of when you can read more about this holy graal.
The widget keeps track of how many times the word "moln" appear on idg.se webpage and displays it in a easy view in The Tactical Overview.
Screenshoots from the different modes:
Links:
Kudos to op5 support that has created this excellent widget
Background
It is very handy to have a temprobe attached to network devices like a Wlan router, if OpenWRT is installed it is easy to use 1-wire devices. By using this method it is possible to create wireless temperature probes that uses Wlan.
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To be able to administrate my OpenWRT router from Internet I need to open the ssh port on the Wan interface.
It is real simple, just add to following to /etc/config/firewall:
#open ssh on wan interface
config rule
option src wan
option dest_port 22
option target ACCEPT
option proto tcp
And restart the firewall:
#/etc/init.d/firewall restart
Background
After struggeling with my Linksys WRT-160NL to get OpenWRT stable I finally gave up. It ended upp with DD-WRT instead. Unfortunatly DD-WRT do not have the functionality I want like:
-rndis device so I could use my Android phone to connect to Internet
-1-wire device support
-Nagios agent
The solution was to buy another device where OpenWRT support is working better with USB and Gigabit interfaces. After some research I found TP-Link TL-WR1043ND for approx 50€.
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Background
I have a need of GPS tag my digital photos. Unfortunatly a GPS device to my camera costs approx 230 Eur. In my humble opinion I think that is way of, especially considering that with some software in the camera any standard USB GPS reciever would do the job. They cost approx 40 Eur.
I have an Android phone where there is tons of apps that could create a GPS log whenever I want to, however it drains the battery in just a couple of hours. I want to track my routes at least a whole day without the need to charge.
The solution is to buy a GPS logger and after some research I found Ventus GPS Route Logger G730, and it looked like it would work with Linux.
This article will describe my experience making the G730 Ventus GPS Route Logger and Linux.
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Presenting collected Nagios data has been cumbersome. But now with op5 added funtionality, storing the data in a database makes it much easier. Morten Bekkelund has created a nice dashboard typically used in NOCs.
The dashboard has been modified and improved by the community and an example can be seen at op5 sandbox dashboard and can be downloaded from op5 community.
The original project place is http://dingleberry.me/2010/04/our-new-dashboard/
News in op5 Monitor 5.3
-
Avail and SLA reports including performance graphs
op5 Monitor 5.3 introduce the possibility to include performance graphs in avail reports. This mean you can, for example, create a response time report and not only get the availability but a graphical representation of the actual response times. This will, for instance, help the user in capacity planing since the graphs may present trends that show when disks are full, response times exceed threshold etc. Read the rest of this entry »
And so it has come. The day when Merlin outgrows its infancy is at hand.
The rite of passage into adulthood was smoother than expected, but not
without minor bumps. As with people, those bumps made the code stronger.
Testing would be most welcome.
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As everybody knows, the answer is 42.
Today is the date 101010, translate that binary number to decimal, you get 42.
Background
When I was preparing a presentation about what op5 is doing and our contribution to the community, I went to ideas.nagios.org. When I browsed the list of the biggest issues with Nagios I found out that op5 has packaged and solved them all in op5 Monitor. I encourage everyone to take a peak at the list and judge for them self what platform you want to use for your enterprise monitoring solution.
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When there is summer and Scandinavia closes down it is hard to be a geek. Everybody, including me, moves out to small cottages in the forrest where 3G coverage is bad which gives low bandwidth a new meaning.
I have found one way of still doing geeky things combined with vacation. That is update OpenStreetmap. Take a peak at my updates at:
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Background
Finally it has arrived, Android 2.2 Froyo to HTC Desire. When I installed it I run into several problems and this is my guide how I solved it. It was a rather frustration experience and took a long while to solve. I ended up with a phone where almost everything was gone and I have to reinstall all my apps and configurations again.
I have not rooted my phone or changed anything that HTC or Google allow, so no rooted phone. I’m probably a poweruser but there is no obvious reason why I ended up with all these problems.
During this process I tried to find any information at HTC support site but I could not find anything that helped me. The best source of information is to use different user forums. My opinion is that HTC support web is crap.
This guide shows how I solved the problems I run into, I guess there is better way of doing it because this was a cumbersome and painfull process. I do not take any responsiblity if you end up with a bricked phone or loss of data.
Happy reading!
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