Some Sanity at last!

Well the last few days have been fun (to say the least) and I've started my planning on how to provide some redundancy for when the next failure occurs (there is always a next failure). Right now I have my WRT54G performing some DNS duties using dnsmasq and I can manually turn on the dhcpd as needed. Although the dhcpd functionality is a bit weak. I'll setup another machine as an identical server (except for IP address and a few other things). Eventually I'll try to use the NSLU2 I have for most of the daemon functionality. Right now I have too many things going on to properly dive into that project now.

So far I've managed to get Fedora 4 fully loaded on my new server. I have Firefox 1.5rc3 and Thundebird 1.5rc running but I don't yet have my email straightened out (lot's of email addressses). DHCPD, dns (tinydns & dnscache), and Apache are up and running. I still need to get Samba, printing and my cron jobs. The cron jobs are very critical as I had them setup to update my web pages soon after I made changes on my local machine. I didn't have to worry about publishing them.

My Linux HA page @Comcast is at it's 25M limit and I've also begun work on copying everthing over to my new Linux HA web site. This one is going to be a bit more complicated as I've been using it as a backup site for my various web pages. In the coming months (it's now 11/2005) it's going to be the main home of the Linux HA pages. I've also adopted Tymm Twillman's Bottlerocket (X10's CM17A) page and support. I guess it's a good idea to keep the a wayward home for Linux Home Automation section. That way some of these projects aren't lost for ever. Right now I have 500 MB of web space (I'm currently only using ~100 MB). When I renew with I'll have about 20 GB. I doubt I'll need that much (but I'm sure I can find a use for it ;-). The choice of the account is that it include ssh access.

Requiem for a server

Well, it's now official, my main server is dead. Looks like it may have been a power supply problem. The total damage so far:

• Keyboard (which I've had for about 6 years)
• 512 M ram SIMS
• Motherboard

My interim solution is to dual boot my Win2K box. I will have to put together a better server and get my battery backup working (need 2 large motorcycle size deep discharge batteries). I was surprised when my wife suggested I was going to spend the weekend searching for a new server but didn't give me a hard time about it. I'm not going get a new server right now as I've spent my budget for the month (The N770, a wireless PCI card and few other things). I'm now on Fedora 4 (I was on FC1/2) and I've begun the work of getting all the custom programs running again.

BTW, I've been typing this, on the N770. I've currently got the guts of 2 computers stretched out on the floor so the N770's small size is fantastic! While I'm busy debugging I can search the web for info.

Lots of little goodies

I've been busy with my book (which is not going well as the Asterisk chapter is eating up way too much time!). But in the mean time I found out I could get AT&T Call Vantage (I'm an employee) and I'm going to hook it up to my Asterisk setup. Wish me luck (through the SPA-3000). :-)

I also managed to get a Cisco 7960 phone working with Asterisk and my Apache server. I had to upgrade from the Cisco Skinny version 5.0 to SIP version 7.4 (I did it by upgrading to 6.3 then 7.4). The SIP setup is very easy, just like any other SIP phone. For some reason I didn't need to have multiple lines defined to receive more than 1 call. But I did define 3 lines just so I could have more lines. The XML files are real easy to build and I'm using the Cisco::IPPhone Perl module to properly generate various other messages (took the Asterisk Perl weather code and converted it from speaking to sending to the Phone). The XML seems to be a bit version dependent and only certain XML commands are available on certain versions (email me for further details). Cool phone, great quality (sound and feel) not sure if it's worth the cost (you need to purchase the phone and software separately) for hacking but it has high geek points when it's sitting in the living room of a automated home! :-)

Lastly, I ordered my Nokia 770 and it will be in by Monday or Tuesday. I can't wait to get my hands on this. Basically it's an Internet tablet and I'll be using it as a front end to MisterHouse. I'm not sure what it can do but I hope at least it has as many features as the Audrey. I guess we'll see.