20 years of amphetamines and failure.

Originally published at ScummBlog. You can comment here or there.

As hinted in the last post, Scummbox.org is running some new services.

To facilitate remote access to my network, OpenVPN has been installed. It was a cinch to install, and through some trial and error I have gotten additional routes passed through to access my home network range from any remote location.

Also installed was TinyProxy. This allows users connected to the VPN to (transparently!) access sites that may be blocked at their location.

A final new service running is GnuMP3d… A remote playlist/streaming client that is tucked behind the VPN to prevent rampant and unauthorized usage.

On the workstation front, I’ve gone from running Kubuntu to Windows Vista to Windows 7 Beta/RC. Windows 7 is running extremely well and has offered me no problems as of yet. A side effect of going back to Windows is that I’m playing World of Warcraft again, as well as EVE Online. And what’s the side effects of playing games on a PC?

Hardware upgrades. The workstation has gotten a new PCIe 2.0 ATI video card. A 4870 HD with 1GB of GDDR5, to be exact. And with that also came two 22″ widescreen monitors running at 1680×1050 for an amazing amount of desktop real estate.

It has been a frenzy of upgrades and updates and taking chances on new software, but it’s paying off big time!

Originally published at ScummBlog. You can comment here or there.

First, an aside: Today I am a real Blogger. I am posting this from a coffee shop in Toronto!

January 10th (or thereabouts) marks the 1 year anniversary of me getting bored with a Windows XP workstation and installing Linux for the first time in many years. Since then I’ve added a wee Ubuntu box and a PowerMac G4 running OS X Leopard (a topic for a different post) to my managre,  and I haven’t missed having a Windows OS machine yet!

The Gentoo machine (Rands) has been running like a champ for over a year, with only a couple foibles (all my fault) ruining it’s uptime. Since I posted about setting it up I’ve migrated to the unstable AMD 64 branch (~amd64) and had nary a problem. A memorable futz-up on my part was me un-emerging coreutils after a package blocking problem… leaving me with no basic Linux utilitys (like LS or RM!) Thankfully, some kind soul on the Gentoo Forums saved me with a tar of his AMD 64-compiled coreutils!

I loved my year with Gentoo, and look forward to many more!

Originally published at ScummBlog. You can comment here or there.

My network at home has been dependent on a Linksys Router with a 4 port switch built in for connectivity. It is the BEFSX41 Router with VPN Endpoint, and it has served us well for over two years.

Recently at my (now ex-) job, we’ve started testing IPv6 deployment to end users. I am in this test pool, and sadly the router we have doesn’t support IPv6 in any way, shape or form.

Enter the Linksys WRT54G Wireless G Router (Version 3, for those that care) and OpenWRT. OpenWRT was made possible by Linksys violating the GPL by using a linux distro as the OS on the WRT54G and not releasing the source code. Once the dust had cleared on that debacle, people could write and install their own OSes for the device.

OpenWRT is very easy to install (just flash the proper image to your router) and is package based, for easy expandability. Among those packages are IPv6 stack and announcement packages. It is theoretically perfect for my needs!

Now, you might be wondering why I put “theoretically” in there. The one problem with IPv6 being so bleeding-edge is that nobody has a tutorial on how to configure OpenWRT to handle a Native IPv6 connection. Plenty of information on tunneling IPv6 over IPv4 connections, but bupkis on what I need. If I figure out the proper way to configure it, I’ll be sure to post it here.

A couple quick hints about getting Wireless connections to work properly with the stock OpenWRT install. First: change the default wireless channel from 6 to Auto… Channel 6 is a popular one for many 2.4ghz cordless phones. Second: If you are going to use some sort of WEP security, be sure to install the nas package. You will have no end of problems without it.

I’m quite impressed with OpenWRT thus far… and the sheer number of packages available for it is just staggering. There is Asterisk (VOIP PBX software) packages, HTTP server packages, RADIUS (authentication) packages… too many to list.

If you’re feeling adventurous, and not afraid of potentially “bricking” a router, I’d highly recommend checking out OpenWRT