Known Element Enterprises Corporate Blog

So I have two wireless access points at the appartment. Notice I didn’t say my appartment. I share it with my wife. No DSL/Internet at the moment, but that should be taken care of fairly soon. No fiber option yet.

So I have:

1 Linksys WRT54G running Sveasoft firmware.
1 D-Link something running stock firmware.

There are several things I want to do:

1. I want to play with wireless bridiging (both WDS and real (read layer2) bridging). On the wireless intefaces. Wired bridging doesn’t interest me at this point.
2. Setup a network to network VPN. This way at home and work I can access all resources I have access to. Printers files scanners etc.
3. Install Snort so I can make sure no one is getting into my network. Put anti spyware/virus abilities at the perimiter.
4. Setup a cluster. That way if one of the routers fails the other takes over. Using heartbeat. I need to add a serial port to both routers. Which involves
soldering and taking the beasts apart.
5. Monitor the devices with SNMP.

The point of these exercises is to increase my networking knowledge/experience with hands on experience.

So the question is how do I hack the Dlink? It already has much much funcntionality out of the box. Even more then the WRT54G did. But it doesn’t have VPN or IDS abilities. I found some references to projects.
So its a matter of taking those and running with them. Should be fun.

World: We want to control the internet.
USA: No.
World: Come on!
USA: No.
World: Will you at least think about it?
USA: No.
World: If you don’t we will be forced to make our own DNS systems.
USA: OK.
World: But that will break the internet.
USA: OK
World: But that would be bad.
USA: Then leave it alone.
World: OK. But we’re making a committee.
USA: That’s cute.

http://internetnews.com/bus-news/article.php/3563396
http://yro.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=168016&threshold=1&mode=nested&commentsort=0&op=Change

How does Amazon get the gull to patent something like visiting a website and filling out a form to leave a comment/feedback?

Arrrrgggh!!!! Why oh why do people need pretty guis to do backups? Why?! Give me a shell script and a nice clean commented config file anyday! And who uses the dump command? That is so 80’s! And why didn’t my oracle backups work last night? Doesn’t this backup software have any idea how important my data is? And why was it prompting me for a password? Mmmm…… much strangeness and lack of documentation.

And why do I have to look at a blasted gui for status? Why can’t I get e-mails when things don’t work.

*whines* I want my Veritas! *whines*

*sighs*

I think I need to see someone about all this guiness. Its…. disturbing. Or at least perform several hours of hard core script fu. In assembler. Wait. I don’t know assembler. Well. I kind of do. The basics anyway. Like mov and jmp

*evil grin* Mr system programmer what happens if I write a little shell script that generates random numbers and then use mov random var to random number location?

Heh.

I am off to reload two servers for the data warehouse.

*goes into a trance chanting: Data is king. Data is king. More Storage. More Storage. Give me more!!!*

Very intriguing:

http://www.dn.se/content/1/c6/48/44/89/Fagelvirus.swf

Yes the text is in sweedish. The pictures are the important thing.

http://www.linuxelectrons.com/article.php/20051107092244727

Well after spending all afternoon on a conference call with the dev team in NM and configuring the new MySql box for Innodb we are on the right side of recovery. We did a mysql dump across the network ( mysqldump –opt -uroot -hsystem db | mysql db) and are now proceeding to insert several million records into the new system. And thats just for a month!

I finally took some downtime and had a bite to eat. I needed it. I watched the setting sun. And all the people leaving work a few minutes early (it is Friday after all). It was nice to just stop and re orient myself. And I had to stretch. My back and sides were aching. Sitting in one place for most of 3 hours will do that to you.

I leave soon. Let the insertion process run over the weekend and keep an eye on it. Keep my cell phone close and my car keys closer
Then I come back Monday and save the world all over again I love this job! Working in Information Technology as a sysadmin/programmer you get a real sense of accomplishment. I am convinced that the only non millitary/public saftey jobs that will give you the same sense of accomplishment are to be found in I.T. When problems happen you are who the people turn to. I can’t count how many times I have been thanked for a job well done. How many times I have saved a system. Fixed a problem. Recovered data. Its all in a days work.

Well I am off. Going out for a romantic evening at the beach with my wife. A perfect way to end what has been a hectic but intensely satisfying week. I won’t get tired of it. If I ever call it routine…. well then I’ll go dig ditches or be a medical assistant!

Well I finally have some time to sit down and write a post about my new job. I work in a fairly large shop (50+ servers). We run a mix of MySQL/MSSQL/Oracle on operating systems ranging from Dos 6.22 running deskview to Red Hat Enterprise Linux. There are about 40 programmers and a dozen datbase administrators. As you can imagine things are a bit hectic. Always something that needs to be done. I have already fixed half a dozen Oracle server problems. The Oracle people (I can’t say guys cause they have at least one female DBA) love me to death. Its good being popular!

My new boss is already comfortable delegating tasks to me. No trial period needed! Of course I am very good at what I do
(namely fix problems very rapidly). He seems to trust me. A lot of what needs to be done, he and his existing staff didn’t know how to do.
So that makes them somewhat dependant on me I suppose. Which is somewhat scary. I mean I know my stuff and all. I just don’t like having people more senior then me not being able to do my job. I need someone to keep me honest and catch my mistakes.

I was immersed in working the first day. A mysql server crashed due to a power failure on the RAID array. So much for RAID5! My boss joked and said maybe it was only RAID4. Its a nerd joke. So if your not a sysadmin you won’t get it. Anyway the group that the server belongs to (QA) didn’t want it backed up. If a backup existed it would have been a simple matter of reformatting/rebuilding the system and doing a restore. But nooooo. They had an attitude of “its just a dev server. Its not production. It doesn’t need to be backed up.” Grrrr!!!!! And of course the server isn’t on a UPS. Its dev right? Who needs it to be on a battery backup? Bah!

So I tried doing a mysqldump. That failed. Corrupted tables. So I tried to repair the table with myisamcheck. No good. The system keeps crashing if you do much writing on the corrupted raid volume. So I am copying the files (a read only operation) and placing them on a brand new server. Brand new as in it-arrived the-day-I-started-and-I-loaded-it-from-scratch new. Then I have the fun task of reparing the tables. 1 by 1. All this effort for data that supposedly isn’t important. Heh! And if the data is hopelessly corrupted?

I wanted to copy the files over the network and do the dump on the new server from the get go. Its the only non production system with enough disk space (1/2 a terrabyte). But the QA system was to unstable until today to perform that task. Hence the reason for the delay. Afer isolating the fact that the RAID array was fine for read only ops I was good to go.

I still haven’t had time to setup all the e-mail rules I need to sort the automated e-mails. And I have several hundred e-mails coming in on a daily basis. I have some of it under control. I will be coming in tomorrow to setup voicemail and get a handle on e-mail. At least its overtime! I have no restrictions on access to the building. I can go where I want when I want. Well except into accounting. But thats fine with me.

I tried using the Microsfot Quick Desktop switcher. Its worthless. Nothing like the stuff in every window manager under Linux. Icewm/twm/fvwm95/. It uses the default theme background instead of the one I set. It shares icons/taskbar items across workspaces. Maybe I can turn that off maybe I can’t. But I don’t like it. If I install virtual desktops they should be independent. Grrr!!!! However I do like the alt+tab enhancement. Very nice.

I just downloaded one of the XP Power toys and it wants me to do a “Validation Check” Grrr!!!!!!! Anyway if you need a valid code use BJYT4WF