About stuff people couldn't care less about!
Computer and IT stuff
Well if you are reading this you’ll be pleased to know (at least I am) that I have migrated two machines to the new ESX box.
Its busy hosting the classic motorcycle forum on one VM and now my webserver etc in another VM. Swweeet! I can hear Western Power gasp as a large revenue stream starts drying up, namely me.
I am lucky enough to have a mate that from time to time gives me some of his old computer hardware. Recently he gave me a dual P4 2.4 Ghz XEON system along with (from memory) 5GB of RAM.
He installed ESX on it for me along with XP to only run the VI client – I feel a bit dirty running XP.
I am as happy as a pig in shit. Will slowly move my physical machines across to the new lump of hardware as VM’s using VMware converter.
Have already run into a problem getting an old Ubuntu 7.10 server install into ESX. It would appear that Ubuntu binds the NIC to a MAC and hence to an interface (eth0). ESX gives the VM NIC an new MAC address so its not getting on the network at the moment.
Looks like udev needs to be fooled into reassigning eth0 to the virtual NIC’s MAC address. Stay tuned (I’m sure you are all bursting to know what happens).
Ah bugger it all!
I just found this wonderfull site which has been around for year and now its gone. Anyone have any idea what is going on or should I swap to showRSS?? The site says
Looks like mininova is doing some strange things which may have an impact on my ability to get my favourite Intl. TV shows. I came across tvrss.net the other day – it will nicely fix any problems by being an independent RSS feed source. Nice one.
We getting the DNS-323 to run the bashpodder script for the RSS feed to be used in rTorrent turned out to be trickier than I thought.
It basically boiled down to environmental variables in cron being different than for my user on the NAS.
I have solved this issue now, my post on the DNS-323 hack forum will help you here.
I have finally been able to get rTorrent and bashpodder playing together on the DNS-323 NAS. In short bashpodder acts as the RSS feed reader and downloads the torrent file to a directory that rTorrent watches and then rTorrent kicks off the torrent download. Its light and NOT a resource hog (which is important for the DNS-323 as its got little resources to start with).
Please see my write up at the DNS-323 hack forum.
Well at long last the folks figured out how to call me using the SIPbroker PSTN gate way in Milan last night.
What is it about old people, you try to be very very clear on what they need do but they get it wrong.
To start with they couldn’t get through to the SIPbroker PSTN number correctly – I have no idea why.
Eventually they got through to the Milan SIPbroker PSTN gateway number fine, however, when they entered the number in for me at the prompt (by the way my SIPBroker alias is *011612409) they would then press the ‘send’ button on the mobile they were using, this would mess it all up as SIPBrokers DTMF would recognise the ‘send’ key-press as well. You see what I mean!
Eventually, after they called me the old expensive way I finally told them of the error of their ways and after a few more tries they got through.
I must say the quality of the conversation was very good, good clear voice and very little lag. This is extremely good given the lack of $$$ you pay for the service.
Good one SIPBroker! Well done Mum & Dad!
Wow, this is a very cool extension for firefox, check it out if you get the chance.
My wife has been bothering me for some time about her eeePC not working with our printer. Today I finally got around to fixing it. Thanks to this blog I was successful. Having learnt from Adam’s experience I first created the directory…
mkdir /etc/printcap.local
then copied /etc/printcap to /etc/printcap.local by…
sudo cp /etc/printcap /etc/printcap.local
After that I also created the directory…
sudo mkdir /var/spool/lpd.
Passing the command…
dpkg -i --force-all --force-architecture mfc440cnlpr-1.0.1-1.i386.deb
installed the lpd without a hitch. I then installed the CUPS driver using…
dpkg -i --force-all --force-architecture mfc440cncupswrapper-1.0.1-1.i386.deb
and this to was successful.
I then went into the eeePC’s printer setup and added a new printer.
It worked. Wohoooo!
My wife loves me again, she is now busy making up for lost time and furiously contributing to the deforestation of Indonesia.
My father has just traveled to Italy and will be there for about 2 months, while he was there it would be handy for him to call me cheap, enabling IP dialing on the SPA3102 will achieve this along with the usage of SIPBroker. In effect he will be IP Dialing my ATA (seem as though Mynetfone doesn’t allow other VSP interconnection).
I followed the instructions set out in the very helpful website http://www.voipstuff.net.au/IPDialling.html.
Fortunately I have a static IP so the requirement to use dynDNS was not needed. Due to the network I run at home the STUN server method didn’t work. To get around this I entered my IP number in the EXT IP option on the SIP Tab. For the option “Send resp to src port” I marked it YES. The rest of the instruction at voipstuff were followed.
At first I could call my phone and I could hear but the receiver could not hear me. I eventually tracked this down to be a port rule problem so opened and forwarded the appropriate ports to the ATA.
I’m pleases to report that it all works, now I just need to have Dad call the SIPBroker PSTN number in Milan and try it out!