Ok, so that ZoneMinder install I was hoping to do in the last post…yeah….not happening.
I’ve run into this before but I’ve decided it’s just not worth the trouble of trying to fix it. For some reason when you install the PV149 video capture card in older machines it likes to have problems with IRQs. I’ve tried this a couple of times and once before I got it to work after a lot of jockeying of IRQs in the bios and the OS. It sucks and it’s just not worth it.
The PV149 will be going in a slightly more modern and definitely more mainstream desktop motherboard. I hope I don’t have the same problem with that.
I’ve decided to repurpose the ML380 G2 for my new Trixbox. Should be enough horsepower and it’s already installed cleanly. Just need to make sure I can still apply the HPASM drivers so the fans will chill. Yar!
scott Cruft, Home and Hobbies, Networking
Installing Ubuntu on my DL380 G2 was pretty straight-forward but I did have a problem with the fans running at full speed. That high pitched squeal could be heard from our bedroom upstairs at the other end of the house. I had some real trouble finding a solution for this. It was clear that I needed the HPASM management tools but HP’s sight only shows RedHat and Suse installs. I finally came across this: http://jaxbeachtech.com/node/80
There are links there to some drivers that I think HP considers “beta”. You have to sign up to download them which is pretty silly. Oh well, it worked after I also had to manually download and install this lib from the Debian site.
All’s quiet now. Yes! Now on to installing ZoneMinder.
scott Cruft
I’ve been busy with work and haven’t been able to squeeze in much of anything else. I’ve done a couple of things like upgrading Unraid to my Pro key and swapping motherboards. In the process I discovered that at least my copy (don’t know if it’s the default behavior) decided to hang on to the MAC address from the old motherboard. That created a small problem when I put the old motherboard back into service on a different machine! Fixing it is simple, just modify the network settings on the flash drive. See my post here for the specifics.
Also, I’ve been working on getting Sage transitioned to a new PC that’ll have enough juice to run Comskip. Only problem is that it’s been flakey ever since. Random lockups, long seek times for folders. That’s what I get for running beta software. Gotta be on the bleeding edge though! On top of that I seem to have lost my meta information on the old Sage PC and all of my IMDB lookups for DVDs is gone. Argh. 300+ DVDs in there now, I think. I might have to break down and buy DVD Profiler after all. Only $30 I think.
scott Cruft, Home and Hobbies, Networking
Comcast managed to hose up my internet connection which I host this site as well as some forums on. They did this by assigning my static IP’s to another location in their network. The result was split routes at their peering routers with the majority of traffic going into a black hole and a trickle getting through to me.
Once I explained to them what they broke it was a relatively quick fix.
Then, we lost power after a storm last night. Batteries lasted about an hour but that was not nearly enough.
And traffic has really been sucky for my day job. 2.5 hours almost every trip this week. That’s each way.
Ugh. I’m tired.
scott Cisco Routing and Switching, Cruft, Home and Hobbies, Networking
I recently discovered this new Cisco AnyConnect Essentials license being touted for the 8.2 code for ASAs. It took me a little while to parse through the cryptic description on Cisco’s site but it seems that you can now get client based SSL for a couple hundres $$’s depending on the ASA model. That’s up to the platform supported max!
If you want the web portal “clientless” SSL VPN you have to pay the previous crazy pricing for the “Premium” license. For most people this won’t matter and what it means is essentially a cheap SSL client solution now. Woohoo!
This guy seemed to confirm my thoughts.
Dude stole my theme too! 
scott Networking, Security
Wow…I knew I had been neglecting the blog but I didn’t realize it had been over a month!
So, what have I been doing? Working too much! This time of year has gotten worse and worse over the last several years. It seems like the kids all get busy with activities, we get the itch to work on outdoor stuff and I feel the urge to work on the Cobra a bit. The result is I always feel overworked and by this time I’m telling myself to just let it be. What get’s done, get’s done.
So, what have I been able to squeeze in? Got a new 4 post cabinet. Did I mention that already? Got it for free! Steered it away from the dumpster. I’ve been slowly migrating all my gear over to this thing and I think it’s coming along nicely. I just need to get it finished. Part of what I want to do is move more of my devices into rackable cases. I’m getting there.
As of now I have the following in separate chassis:
-DMZ VMware Server on Ubuntu for web sites
-Unraid (currently 4tb usable, got another 1tb drive ready to go in, just need more SATA ports)
-Compaq ML380 G2 that’ll probably become my video surveillance recorder
-SageTV
-TrixBox CE (needs a rackmount case)
Also sporting a couple of switches, couple of routers and a couple of UPSs.
Once I’m done with the migration I’ll post some pics.
scott Cruft, Home and Hobbies, Networking
A couple of years ago I got a Dice Electronics adapter for my Audi A3 so I could listen to my iPod and then iPhone while also charging it. It’s worked pretty well with some caveats that I knew about getting into it. That is, until I got the 3G iPhone a couple of months ago.
The good news was that I could play music through the cable. The bad news was that it wouldn’t charge. Apparently Apple changed how they charge devices through the iPod dock. I’m certain it’s the case with the 3G iPhone but I think it might also be a problem with some of the newer iPods too. Perhaps not. Regardless, I wasn’t happy with Apple about that.
So, I sent an email to Dice asking about how to fix this problem and lucky me, they had a new cable that would do both. Now, keep in mind the original adapter with the original dock cable was about $180 IIRC. For the new adapter cable? $40. Yep. I just figured it had magic fairy dust sprinkled on it or something. Then when I go to check out (grumbling all along) the system tells me it’ll be $15 for shipping.
Now wait. I wasn’t sure exactly what I was getting because there’s no picture, but….it’s a cable. $15 can’t be right. Send off another email, laying in a jab about the $40 price tag already being high and then to add $15 for shipping is insane. Yes, I said insane in the email. Response was to call in the order and they’d take care of me. Now, here’s the one cool thing I’ll give Dice credit for. When I called in to order it the very nice lady gave me free shipping. Alright, so I’m happy again but in the back of my mind I’m still thinking $40 != simple cable.
It’s arrived and yep, it’s a very simple cable. So, I figure I paid $15 shipping after all because $25 for this cable still seems steep. Yay me!
scott Cruft, Home and Hobbies
No, I don’t think we’re done with the downturn. I finally finished Atlas Shrugged
two nights ago. I’m proud to say that I read every word…all 1200 pages!
It certainly was a long book and at times was tedious. The final speech by Galt was a bit hard to get through, not because it was boring but because it was important, deep and very long. 70 pages long! One speech!
Still, while reading it I found some eerie parallels to modern day politics and the state of the country. I just hope we don’t go down the full path they took in the book. That’s a lot more pain than anyone needs.
On to more lite fair. I’ve started reading The Postman
which, yes, is what the movie is based on. Supposedly the book is better although I’m already a fan of the movie. Time will tell.
scott Cruft, Home and Hobbies
I had sync’ed my iPhone with my previous OS install some time ago and it’s been ok for me for a while. However, since rebuilding to Windows 7 I haven’t gone back and set up sync again. Just didn’t need it. Podcast’s and app’s I could get directly from the iPhone. I’m running out of space now though and I’d like to modify the play list a little. As I’m sure everyone knows, when you sync to a new PC it says it wants to associate to that PC and erase everything you have on the iPhone. I don’t really care about the music or the podcasts because I can get all of that back pretty easily. However, I still have the Netshare app that was removed from the App Store and I didn’t want to lose that.
I did some googleing and suprisingly found little help for this. All kinds of comments about sync’ing to 2 PC’s but none that addressed my specific problem. Probably because it’s pretty simple.
Right click on the iPhone in iTunes and “transfer purchases”. It’s as simple as that.
scott Cruft, Home and Hobbies
