This And That.

I had two simple goals for the weekend: Get a decent haircut and set up a new LAN in our* apartment. As you know I failed miserably with the latter thanks to Linksys. My theory is that Cisco take all the hardware that fail internal testing, slap a Linksys sticker on it and sell it to the common man. If the quality of the Cisco equipment is the same as their Linksys gear I’ve been struggling with you should sell any Cisco shares you might have right now. Actually, you should sell them anyway before the American economy goes tits up, dragging the rest of us down in same black hole.

That’s my macro economy commentary.

As for the former, getting a decent haircut, I think I did OK. Not that anyone have noticed. That they haven’t is a bit strange, because I basically look like another guy when I cut my hair. Even though it seldom takes any more than ten to fifteen minutes, getting a hair cut is one of the most boring things I do. I don’t like doing things I find boring, so naturally I don’t do it too often - if I’m not mistaken I’ve had four haircuts over the last twelve months - and when I eventually get a haircut, it’s not that much hair left.

Interesting.

Now for something completely different. I’ve got 6 invites to Pownce. It’s probably one of the most useless sites I’ve ever seen, but I wouldn’t be that surprised if it gets as popular as Facebook. Is that fad over, by the way? Drop a comment if a Pownce invite will make your day.

*It struck me that I always wrote about “my network” and “my apartment” in the previous entries, but it’s strictly our network and our apartment since Gine is also living here now.

Die Linksys, Die!

Warning: Long, technical entry with frustration venting ahead.

I spent most of yesterday trying to set up the new network configuration: A wireless router in the hallway and a wireless repeater connected to a switch in the living room. First I connected my trusty 3COM wireless router to the DSL modem in the hallway and got a basic SMC switch and a Linksys WAP54G wireless access point for the living room. The idea was that the access point should be used as a repeater in the living room, a plan my local hardware pusher also supported.

Connecting the 3COM router to the DSL modem and getting a connection was a breeze. Even if I’m supposed to use a static IP (my new ISP has failed to send me the necessary information), the 3COM router connected using DHCP, got an IP address and internet access. But as soon as I touched the god damn Linksys access point, the trouble started. Continue reading "Die Linksys, Die!"

Hardware For Sale.

Now that the new VBOX is working as expected, I’m getting rid of the old one. I was considering selling it through some auction site, but decided it was a greater chance that someone who visited this site might put the cash on the table. Here are the specs:

• VIA Technologies EPIA-800A motherboard.
• 800MHz VIA Technologies C3 Processor
• 2x 512MB TwinMOS PC133 SDR/CL3 RAM modules
• Sony CRX100E CD-RW drive (24X4X2X)
• 80GB Seagate Barracuda ST380021A
• A GigaByte PCI GN-WP01GS 802.11 b/g wireless card
• I don’t remember the name of the case, so here’s a picture of it. The
  measures are 190mm (W), 270mm (D), 165mm (H):

It’s certainly not a power house, but perfect as a small home server, fileserver, dev box or wherever your imagination takes you. When I lived in a shared apartment we used is as the resident computer and it played happily along when used for surfing, e-mails, writing text documents and other home office related tasks, everything on Windows XP.

The old VBOX can be yours for just NOK 1000; that’s about USD 174 at the time of writing. If you’re located so that you can’t pick it up, you’ll have to pay for P&P and please note that I’m selling it with no operating system installed and that there is no warranty on any of the parts. Please leave a comment if you’re interested.

The Assembly Continues.

This is the second part of an entry that was way too huge to post as one. The first part was Building The New VBOX.

After I was finally able to configure my RAID setup in Ubuntu, I halted the system to assemble everything. Shock and horror! Just before the screen went black, two large FAILED error messages appeared, informing me that an error had occurred when stopping the RAID arrays. Was I surprised? Not really.

Once again I consulted the Great Interweb Oracle, a.k.a. Google. From what I gathered when reading the Ubuntu forums and bug reports, the posters considered it to be a bug that resulted in the RAID array being dirty on every boot. This, in turn, meant that one of the disks would be rebuilt on every boot. A rather useless RAID setup, in my humble opinion. Continue reading "The Assembly Continues."

Building The New VBOX.

All the parts that I ordered for the new VBOX arrived on Monday, just one day after I placed the order. I didn’t have to wait for the parcel to arrive at the post office or stay at home all day to wait for a courier to deliver it to my apartment; I picked up the box at an automated machine at the central station. I entered a eight digit code the postal service sent to me in a text message, then a small door in the machine opened and my computer parts popped out. It was all extremely convenient. Almost like magic.

The first part of the assembly went more or less according to plan, I had to go out and buy a power connector for the SATA drive, but that was the only unexpected event. To get all the parts to fit was a bit of a challenge, the box is quite small and the heat sink on the motherboard is enormous, at least compared to the size of the motherboard itself. On top of this, the shortest SATA cable I could find was half a meter long, which was more than twice the length I actually needed.

As for operating system, I went with Ubuntu because it’s the new hot Linux distro and it also has a very active community. That’s a good thing for me, who know very little about Linux. Ubuntu installed as planned, LAMP, was set up by the main installer and everything generally worked like a charm until I got some ideas. Some crazy ideas. Continue reading "Building The New VBOX."