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Pogo Mobiles, SiliconDust HDHomeRun, and cabling

Posted January 10, 2015 By Landis V

Last night I finally got around to doing a little bit with the Pogo Mobile units I had installed Debian on.  Not much so far, just got dnsmasq loaded on the unit that will become my DHCP and DNS server (replacing the same functionality on my router, so the next time I swap out a router I don’t have to worry about transferring internal DNS or DHCP reservations).

Haven’t done much of anything with the unit that I will be configuring as a CA, but did run across a couple of good reads on how to do a CA “right”.  The OCSP article fills in a piece I’d like to have if I’m going to go to the trouble of setting up my own CA “for real”.

I stopped at Charter yesterday and exchanged one of my digital cable tuners for a CableCard, so I am anxious to get my HDHomeRun set up and start playing with it.  I don’t like the way my CATV cable is organized, and it’s also older RG-59.  Having purchased some RG6, I’m now in the process of centralizing that system, pulling new cable to at least a couple of locations, and will probably use the opportunity to put an ethernet drop in my garage as well.

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Filed in Entertainment, Hacks, Home, Links, Linux, Networking, Projects, Security, TV | Tagged:

Using git (and Puppet) to manage configurations

Posted January 5, 2015 By Landis V

http://sickbits.net/nagios-deployment-automation-tips-and-tricks/
Specifically with Nagios in the case above.

http://www.linux.com/learn/tutorials/431119:weekend-project-using-git-to-manage-config-files

http://www.networkassassin.com/foss-solution-for-network-configuration-backups/
Great use of EEM to backup config.  It would be interesting to integrate Puppet into this setup and have the system receiving the configs first diff to see if there were any changes, then check with the puppetmaster to make sure everything was kosher.

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Filed in Configuration Management, Links, Linux, Monitoring, Networking, Software | Tagged: ,

Recent mini-PC/router devices of interest

Posted January 5, 2015 By Landis V

RockTek RT-A1, priced at $65 on NewEgg Flash on 1/5/15.  Quad core, HDMI output up to 2048 x 1536.  Appears to be only a 10/100 ethernet, but has a couple of USBs to which GigE adapters could be connected for up to 480Mbit theoretical throughput.   Also has a composite video out, which could theoretically be paired with one of these 4.3″ LCD “backup camera” displays for a convenient method to apply updates, etc.  Caveat is that there does not seem to be much hackery on it to run Linux natively, but it is tempting to pick one or two up to play with and see what could be done.
Also ran across this Foxconn AT-5570 (manufacturer page here, also on sale at NewEgg Flash for $90, though it would need to have RAM and storage added).  Higher price and lower performance would make this somewhat less appealing.

The Foxconn was perhaps most interesting because it led me to the Jetway motherboards with multiport ethernet daughterboards.  This auction page had a six port GigE model.  The four port daughterboard is the Jetway ADE4RTLANG, and several of the Jetway mini-ITX mainboards include dual ethernet ports natively.  Quite a bit higher priced, but might prove useful at some time.

Also interesting was the Odroid-C1 currently selling at the same price as the RPi, and their intro/getting started kit with the required SD card as well as a breakout board and some basic electronic components to get familiar with the device is on sale for under $70 through January 7th when paying with PayPal.  The C1 is, I believe, almost pin-compliant with the header on the RPi.  It has a quad core 1.5GHz processor, 1GB DDR3, and a gigabit ethernet interface.

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Filed in Android, Electronics, Hobby Engineering, Links, Linux, Networking, Projects, Technology, To Buy | Tagged: , ,

Ringing in 2015 with 40 Linux-friendly hacker SBCs ·  LinuxGizmos.com

Posted January 3, 2015 By Landis V

http://linuxgizmos.com/ringing-in-2015-with-40-linux-friendly-hacker-sbcs/

Pretty good board list, including a couple with dual ethernets, which is something I’ve been wanting to have.

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Filed in Communications, Electronics, Hobby Engineering, Internet, Links, Linux, Monitoring, Networking, Projects, Technology, To Buy | Tagged: ,

U-Boot w/ MMC/SD-card booting for Pogoplug Series 4

Posted December 3, 2014 By Landis V

http://forum.doozan.com/read.php?3,7477,10982

Just bought one of the mobile units today.  This thread appears to have some instructions on getting Debian set up on the SD.  Will have to come back to it when the unit arrives and I have a couple of minutes.  Thinking this could make a great router/firewall.

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Filed in Communications, Hacks, Links, Linux, Networking | Tagged: ,

NfSen

Posted July 23, 2014 By Landis V

http://nfsen.sourceforge.net/

Need to do it.  And look at Linux flow exporting capabilities.

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Filed in Links, Monitoring, Networking, Software, Web Applications | Tagged:

Some updated LXC networking, plus Linux network namespaces

Posted July 18, 2014 By Landis V

Four very good articles I’ve encountered today regarding networking in Linux containers. This is a space that has blossomed and matured surprisingly quickly, and many of the frustrations I had previously encountered are gradually being solved.

I was initially researching veth’s and bridging a container network to the host network. I have a container inside a VirtualBox VM with a NAT network, and want to bridge the container so it retrieves an address from the VirtualBox NAT network. As I’ve dug into it further, this appears to actually be what’s happening, but I start to run into issues when I attempt to set up a port forward on the VirtualBox NAT to a service running within the LXC container.

A Brief Introduction to Linux Containers with LXC
http://blog.scottlowe.org/2013/11/25/a-brief-introduction-to-linux-containers-with-lxc/

Introducing Linux Network Namespaces
More interesting to me in the context of VRF lite a la Cisco than in the context of LXC, but definitely something I’ll be coming back to.
http://blog.scottlowe.org/2013/09/04/introducing-linux-network-namespaces/

Exploring LXC Networking
Gets into LXC testing using Vagrant, which is another tool I have been meaning to learn more about. Perhaps one of the most helpful articles in understanding just what I was encountering.
http://containerops.org/2013/11/19/lxc-networking/

Disposable Development Boxes: Linux Containers on VirtualBox
This was a second search as I started to look more into the issues getting the forwaring to work right. Egresss from the container seemed to work OK, I could ping Google and such, but I couldn’t seem to bring anything back in easily.
http://mike.teczno.com/notes/disposable-virtualbox-lxc-environments.html

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Filed in Links, Linux, Networking, Virtualization | Tagged: ,
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