Some PHP and MySQL Fun

So at work we have an application that shows the hotel staff the status of their network. I wrote it a long time ago when I was first learning PHP, soooooo it sucked. I've finally gotten to rewriting it, and I must say its a whooole lot better. Before I wasn't even using MySQL because I didn't know how (I think anyway. I might have just thought it was better to use a flat file. . . man I'm an idiot). So now the status is shown kinda graphically and all pretty like!

I've learned some more with CSS and each thing is in DIVs. Kinda like modules. It looks pretty sweet if I must say. I've yet to make an admin interface for it, but it will be pretty good and easy. I'm actually going to make an admin interface for everything, but that might take a while. So we'll see how that goes.

Freemind in Ubuntu 6.10

So I'm installing Freemind on Ubuntu and it isn't perfect, but easy enough. Thought I would just make a quick mention on how I did it. Installing Java seems easier than previous versions of Ubuntu. Just go to Add/Remove in the main menu, search for "sun java" and install what you like.

To get Freemind to work, download the deb package and the libforms deb package. Install them with "dpkg -i pkg-name". I also got an error when I tried to run it:

123@123:~/dl$ freemind
Exception in thread "main" java.awt.AWTError: Cannot load AWT toolkit: gnu.java.awt.peer.gtk.GtkToolkit
at java.awt.Toolkit.getDefaultToolkit(libgcj.so.70)
at java.awt.GraphicsEnvironment.getLocalGraphicsEnvironment(libgcj.so.70)
at java.awt.Window.(libgcj.so.70)
at java.awt.Frame.(libgcj.so.70)
at javax.swing.JFrame.(libgcj.so.70)
at freemind.main.FreeMind.(FreeMind.java:107)
at freemind.main.FreeMind.main(FreeMind.java:647)
Caused by: java.lang.UnsatisfiedLinkError: libgtkpeer: libgtkpeer.so: cannot open shared object file: No such file or directory
at java.lang.Runtime._load(libgcj.so.70)
at java.lang.Runtime.loadLibrary(libgcj.so.70)
at java.lang.System.loadLibrary(libgcj.so.70)
at gnu.java.awt.peer.gtk.GtkToolkit.(libgcj.so.70)
at java.lang.Class.initializeClass(libgcj.so.70)
at java.lang.Class.forName(libgcj.so.70)
at java.awt.Toolkit.getDefaultToolkit(libgcj.so.70)
...6 more

So at this site I found the solution in a comment. Run "sudo update-alternatives --config java" and choose "/usr/lib/jvm/java-1.5.0-sun/jre/bin/java". Easy as that.

Google Reader

I use Google Reader for my RSS needs, which have just started. I never really read many blogs or anything before about two weeks ago. But with the Reader I now read plenty of blogs and it makes things quite easier. The Reader gadget for Google home page is really cool and I use that mainly really. Also podcasts are cool if done right. The great posts on the right is from my Reader shared list and you can also look at the complete list.

Its not complete yet (still in labs), like it won't do authenticated feeds, and the folders are really weird. You have to put the feed in a folder when you add it and can't change it again unless you remove and add the feed again. But otherwise, its great so go take a look at reader.google.com. Also the Reader blog is great too. There are some interviews of the developers and more!

I R Stoopid

I know this has been blogged all over the place now, but it is funny. Gave me a chuckle anyway.

VMware-player

I discovered the free VMware-player the other day and decided to try it by installing Windows on Ubuntu. I've used Qemu before, but it wasn't quite what I expected. It was pretty slow and I couldn't get the Qemu accelerator to work. So it worked, but I never used it.

I found this how-to with Google and worked just fine. I didn't do everything it says, like using qemu-img instead of wine with the windows version of Qemu. But you can use the same arguments and the image will be made. I also didn't make the ISO the way the how-to says. I saw this post and used this command to make the ISO:

dd if=/dev/hdc of=winxp.iso

I got rid of the floppy stuff in the vmx file and it installed just fine and worked. On my desktop the virtual net doesn't work. I can't figure out why, there doesn't seem to be anything in the log files. My laptop worked perfectly, even installed service pack 2. The speed isn't bad so I'm pretty happy with it.

Digg and Linux Don't Mix

I use Digg pretty often. I have a couple feeds on my Google home page. I most often check out the stories in the Linux/Unix section. Sometimes there are some great articles there, and I learn some stuff. But usually the comments left behind by the Digg Linux/Unix community just plain . . . . . suck.

Lets just say I've never seen or been a part of such a horrible Linux community. Most of the comments are just petty attacks on one another. The Gentoo fans ALWAYS complain about there being to many Ubuntu articles. Would you guys just shutup. If you don't like articles with Ubuntu in the title then don't read and comment about them! Yes there are a lot of Ubuntu articles , but thats because its very popular right now. Many new users switch to Ubuntu, and all of the Linux community should be happy about that. Means less people using Windows right? This is a good thing guys.

But so many of the Ubuntu users do the same. They bash the Gentoo guys about having to wait through hours and hours of compiling. These guys just know what they want and have the time to do it. Thats perfectly ok.

There is a time and place for every Linux distro. I've used many: Slackware, Gentoo, Mandrake, Fedora, Ubuntu, and some others. Each one has its strengths and weaknesses. I actually use to use FreeBSD as my desktop. It took a while, but I got it exactly how I wanted. But that was in high school, when I had time. Now I use Ubuntu, because I'm more productive on it. Things don't take forever to get to work, especially for my job. Although I'm thinking about switching my desktop at home to something like Gentoo, because I want more control. But my laptop for work would need to stay Ubuntu. I also still use FreeBSD on my little home server. Works great.

We should all be banding together to get more users to Linux. The distro should not matter. Maybe after the user has used Linux for a while convince them to switch to your distro of choice, but first things first.

So lets all get together and wipe out those Windows partitions (or at least dual boot them).

DHCP settings for Wanray

I've been using sunrays behind firewalls and routers for a while now using other DHCP servers to hand out the correct attributes. But, I've only found the right attributes in one place. Here at Notre Dame's site, an assistant professor named Aaron Striegal made a short how-to. Here are the main things you must put in your dhcpd.conf:

authoritative;
option space SUNW-NewT;
option SUNW-NewT.AuthSrvr code 21 = ip-address;
option SUNW-NewT.AuthPort code 22 = unsigned integer 16;
option SUNW-NewT.NewTVer code 23 = text;
option SUNW-NewT.LogHost code 24 = ip-address;
option SUNW-NewT.LogKern code 25 = unsigned integer 8;
option SUNW-NewT.LogNet code 26 = unsigned integer 8;
option SUNW-NewT.LogUSB code 27 = unsigned integer 8;
option SUNW-NewT.LogVid code 28 = unsigned integer 8;
option SUNW-NewT.LogAppl code 29 = unsigned integer 8;
option SUNW-NewT.FWSrvr code 31 = ip-address;
option SUNW-NewT.Intf code 33 = text;

class "vendor-classes" {
match option vendor-class-identifier;
}

subclass "vendor-classes" "SUNW.NewT.SUNW" {
vendor-option-space SUNW-NewT;
option SUNW-NewT.AuthSrvr XXX.XX.XX.XXX;
}

Obviously you want to replace the Xs with your server's IP. The link is also in my del.icio.us. The Think Thin blog also has some info on it. I also just put my feed on feedburner, check it out.

Webcam Fun

At work we've got a couple webcams for hotels being built. They are a new type of suites brand for Choice. Look here for the webcams. Managing the images for the webcams have been just "great"!

The webcam is a Toshiba network camera that records images to a FTP server onsite. We record one image every 30 seconds. That makes to be a LOT of images. Typically, about 1.5 gigs worth a week. I wrote scripts to move the last days images, tar them, then FTP that tar file to our main co-lo'ed server. Then every once in a while (months sometimes) I grab those tar files and then extract them and burn the images on DVDs. Burning 5000 images isn't cool. The longest part is waiting for Nero to load up the list of images so I can add them.

With all the scripts now written, it makes it a lot easier though. I use to do a lot of crap (I don't feel like getting into it right now) to just keep from running out of space. Now everything is standardized and the files are centralized. Nice and easy, should be anyway. Burning still won't be cool, but oh well.

Oh ya, take a look to the right. I've got my shared google reader items up. I love google, just so cool.

Screw ITX Boxes

A long time ago, we got a bunch of ITX boxes for kiosks for hotels. I put Ubuntu on them and did some editing and made them kiosks. Firefox was the only application that came up and no one could exit it. Well, I had to do that in a week and I had no experience with it, so it sucked. We've replaced them now with sunrays (whew), and now we have some of these back at the office.

They SUCK! It seems that the hardware just dies. They were running, then I brought them back and formatted them and tried another install of Ubuntu (just the server part), and nothing will work. Some boxes won't even install it, some will but won't boot it. I've tried multiple versions of Ubuntu, differents drives, cdroms, nothing. It is so weird. I just want one box that is good for a transparent proxy I need to make. It doesn't take much for this, so I just need one good machine. grrrrrrr . . .

STTNG gone wild

Read Wil's review of this episode. It is freaking hilarious. I read it days ago and I'm starting to laugh again...

Solaris Virtual Interfaces and NAT

At work I use a Sun X2100 with a AMD dual core 64bit. We colocate it at an ISP. Its got Solaris 10 on it with virtual interfaces on the bge0 interface. The nge0 if connects to the ISPs router and the other is for our network. I've had it routing for quite some time. But now I needed to see if I could get NAT working too. Well it took a while (cause I'm stupid), but I got it. Sun's docs really aren't bad when you find it. I had heard that getting NAT to work on virtual interfaces wouldn't work, but I went ahead with it.

Using IPFilter obviously, I configured /etc/ipf/pfil.ap to load the modules (or whatever) for the interfaces. Then I configured /etc/ipf/ipnat.conf for plain old NAT. Heres my ipnat.conf with some edits.

map nge0 192.168.1.0/24 -> 1.2.3.4/32 proxy port ftp ftp/tcp
map nge0 192.168.1.0/24 -> 1.2.3.4/32 portmap tcp/udp auto
map nge0 192.168.1.0/24 -> 1.2.3.4/32
rdr nge0 1.2.3.4/32 port 70002 -> 192.168.1.2 port 80

So the first three lines are for NAT. It maps the private subnet to one of our public IPs on nge0. The first one is for something that goes wrong with FTP when using IPFilter for NAT. I'm not quite sure, but all the docs say to use it. The second one is for using the higher ports or something. The third does the real thing. That last line is for portmapping. All the data that comes in on our public IP on port 70002 goes to 192.168.1.2 on port 80. Pretty simple.

Now you must restart pfil. Then unplumb your interfaces then replumb them. Last is to restart IPFilter. I found I had to disable and enable it to work.

svcadm restart network/pfil
ifconfig nge0 unplumb
ifconfig bge0 unplumb
ifconfig nge0 plumb up
ifconfig nge0 1.2.3.4 netmask 255.255.255.248
ifconfig bge0:1 plumb up
ifconfig bge0:1 192.168.1.1 netmask 255.255.255.0
svcadm disable ipfilter
svcadm enable ipfilter

Then you should be good. I'm not quite sure, but I think it may not work if you have your gateway interface (the public IP, or nge0 in this case) as a virtual interface. I'd have to do some more testing, but I think thats right.

The Beginning

Just started using blogger.com because I'm kind of tired of maintaining my own site. No one reads my blog now anyway, but hey its kinda fun. My site is nahun.ath.cx. I mostly blog about my job, network admin, sys admin. Mainly with Solaris now, but plenty of linux too. We'll see how much I can get into it.