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Configuring the Buffalo AP’s as a Bridge

Configuring the Buffalo WHR-HP-54G as a bridge is quite easy, given that you can get Tomato firmware on there. The default Buffalo firmware doesn’t support bridging or, I couldn’t find it. only thing I found was WDS bridging which is not what I want.

Install Tomato

You need to install an alternative firmware, fortunately most WRT derivatives are compatible, most notably Tomato and openWRT. I picked Tomato because it has a nice “out of the box” experience. It has an easy to use Web interface which is easy to use. OpenWRT is more powerful in the end, but harder to set up at first. I also assume we do not need the extra features that are possible.

Get Tomato from its website, its 7zipped so you might need a more recent unarchiver.

Flashing the AP is more trail and error then science, and it did not work for me, but did work for a colleague.

Here are the Tomato install instructions

Configure a Bridge

TURN OFF IT’S DHCP SERVER

Give it an IP address in an other subnet then you main one (this is for performance reasons).

Here are the settings you need to set to be able to bridge:

Tomato WLAN settings

Tomato WLAN settings

This is a nice addition:

Bridge LED

Bridge LED

And its done.

2009 05 05 Drakonen Uncategorized Comments (0) Permalink

Setting up Suse LTSP with DHCP on another server

At work, I have been tasked with setting up a Linux terminal server to lighten the load of our exsisting Windows server.

LTSP (Linux Terminal Server Project) is quite a nice piece of software. It makes good use of PXE netbooting, but it should also work with RDP.

Get Suse

Download the openSUSE-Edu-KIWI-LTSP-live-unstable.i686 iso from http://download.opensuse.org/repositories/Education/images/iso/

Why Suse? It has good support for LTSP and RDP.

Setting up RDP on Suse

Setting up RDP on Suse was very easy (compared to Ubuntu LTSP):
You can skip this if you installed from the live DVD.

zypper ar http://download.opensuse.org/repositories/home:/dreveman:/nomad/openSUSE_11.1
# nomad zypper in rdesktop xrdp xorg-x11-server-dmx xorg-x11-server-rdp

Now you need to edit /etc/sysconfig/kiwi-ltsp and add:

USE_NOMAD=”1″

Run to update the configuration:

kiwi-ltsp-setup -c

Now start the xrdp server with:

rcxrdp start

PXE booting

PXE booting is a nice feature of network cards. It allows the computer to pull the operating system over the network, and boot the pulled operating system. The user can start applications, but they are not run on the client, but on the server. This is done with several services.

DHCP to tell where to get the boot image from.
TFTP this actually delivers the boot image, based on UDP.
Xorg to display apps on the client side which are actually run on the server.
SSH to provide a secure connection between the Xorg server on the client and Xorg on the server (using option -X)

This should work out of the box when this is the only server in your network, and you do not already have a DHCP server on your network.

But we already have DHCP

LTSP assumes that you do not have an DHCP server yet and it runs one for you. This is quite bad if you already have a DHCP server running, which we have. Turning the dhcp server on Suse off is done with this:

insserv -r dhcpd && rcdhcpd stop

To turn it off forever you can remove the dhcp-server package:

rpm -e dhcp-server --nodeps

This should work until the next time you run kiwi-ltsp-setup, so I’ve been told.

You need to configure your original DHCP server (not the ltsp) , by editing the dhcpd.conf:

subnet 192.168.0.0 netmask 255.255.255.0 {
option routers 192.168.0.1;
range 192.168.0.1 192.168.0.254;
#add this and replace with your own LTSP server ip:
next-server 192.168.0.2;
filename "pxelinux.0";
}

If you try to PXE boot it now, it will fail somewhere at the startup. Press F2 to see the init messages.

You also need to edit /srv/tftpboot/pxelinux.cfg/default

The line (its under LABEL kiwi-ltsp):
append initrd=boot/initrd-ltsp vga=791 splash=silent showopts

should become:
append initrd=boot/initrd-ltsp vga=791 splash=silent showopts kiwiserver=192.168.1.231 kiwiservertype=tftp

Try booting it now, and it should work.

2009 04 16 Drakonen Uncategorized Comments (1) Permalink

G1, the review after usage

So, i have been using the G1 for some time now, and thought it was time for a somewhat more in depth review. I’m writing this post on my G1 with postbot.

Lets start with the keyboard. The keyboard is quite comfortable, and I can almost type blind on it. I can feel where the keys are because they are slightly elevated and there is a small empty space in between the keys. Typing for a longer time is quite doable, but of course not as comfortable or as fast as a normal keyboard.

The available applications on the android market is filled with most of my basic needs. The most important one is the ssh client, which the app connectbot does damn well. It remapped some of the keys of the keyboard to give some easy access to the ESC or ctrl key. It also has copy support but that a bit cumbersome but it works.

The email apps are doing their work quite good too. There is the gmail app, which can only read the email from your G1 associated account. It does the usual threading just like gmail. Then there is the normal email app with support for imap and pop. I don’t use pop, but I heard it pulls in all email, like all pop clients. Pop is also the only way to have your full email available offline. Imap support is good, and also works with your second gmail account. There is a very small cache for imap, everything else gets pulled in over the air. It would have been nice to have the option to save imap and to use 2 gmail accounts in the gmail app because the email app does not do threading.

Cell reception is good, and haven’t really had problems with that. Wifi reception is decent. In Cologne there is pretty decent 3g reception, and i have to admit, I’m quite amazed by 3g speeds and latency.

Media wise i haven’t really tried too much, the mp3 player was decent but the crappy ear plugs and the lack of a mini jack let it go unused. I need to order a converter cable to use my brand new headphones.

Overall the system is quite responsive, and quite stable. Ive had two spontaneous reboots, and a few crashing apps, but that’s way less than on my p900.

The only thing i dont like about the G1 is the battery life. At tops it has lasted me around one and a half day. Which is short for me. My previous phone (se p900) got almost one week. But i wouldnt trade my g1 for a p900.

2009 03 15 Drakonen Tech Comments (0) Permalink

The G1 Experience

Yesterday when I got home there was a nice present waiting for me. My G1 Phone arrived! I ripped open the packaging and found a phone that was smaller than I expected from the images from the internet.

First tries

Popping in the sim card and the battery was easy, turning it on was a bit harder… I did not have much light and didn’t see the on-sign on the hangup button. After some messing around it turned on and it was booting! Next thing it asks me is to unlock the phone, “Damn!” i bought a locked phone. Luckily I knew that it could be unlocked and that it was just a matter of going to a website, entering some details and your emei code, oh and you need to pay 20 bucks too. The rest of the evening I was waiting for the unlock code to arrive. It did not arrive before I had to go to bed. Darn…

The next morning I got up on my usual time and turned on my laptop. After some morning routine stuff, I checked my email and to great satisfaction I found the unlock code! I turned on the G1 again and entered the code, and my phone was unlocked!

Sign in with your Google account please

To be able to use the phone at all you need to log in to your Google account. I tried that but of course that was not working because GPRS/UMTS was not setup for my provider, FONIC. Yet an other “Damn!”. Off to work I went and on arrival I spent some time there researching on how to set it up for FONIC, to no avail, nobody had the same problem as me it seemed. But, I knew that my provider was the cheap-ass version of o2. I found the details for that on plenty of sites, but with that information in my G1 I could also not sign in, seemingly… Back to do some work!

Later that day

A few hours later I tried signing in again, and to my amazement it worked flawlessly! Off playing with it some more! (not too much Mr. boss!). But the battery was dying.. seemingly the provided usb cable didn’t work for charging the battery, i pulled out an other usb cable and plugged it in, and charging commenced! I also moved the most important contacts from my old phone, the trusty p900, to the sim card, and mass imported them onto my phone without any problem. I hopped onto the company wifi and synchronized with my Google account so my contacts show up in gmail. This is an awesome feature, and in my opinion the killer feature. At my workplace the wifi signal was not good enough to hold a connection to the wifi network, so it switched a lot between wifi and GPRS. This has costed me a few dimes I’m afraid… I was able to call and send sms’s with ease. The search button works in a lot of the standard applications and it is a blessing.

When I arrived home serious play time commenced. I installed a few aplications from the android market. It contains tons and tons of apps, some good some bad. Locale is nice, but is lacking a lot of options that it could really improve it. And the battery wanted to be charged again… I also used the IM client, and it worked pretty damn well! So far I absolutely LOVE it. it is fast and responsive, didnt crash on me once (knock on wood) and it is easy to use after a short learning period.

I will write about my other experiences an other time.

2009 01 27 Drakonen Uncategorized Comments (2) Permalink

Wichteln, aka, random christmas presents!

2008 12 05 Drakonen Uncategorized Comments (0) Permalink

Why i hate the apple mighty mouse

I’ve been explaining myself a lot lately for my deep hate for the apple mighty mouse, so here is are a few points on why i hate it.

  1. Scroll wheel gets dirty and is hard to clean
    I have never had a mouse with a scrollwheel before where the wheel needed cleaning. Apple doesnt give any better solution then to hold it upside down and scroll vigorously it with a moisty wet cloth.
  2. Accidental side scrolling
    I want to scroll up and down, not sideways… this messes with Firefox when I’m holding alt or ctrl.
  3. Accidental scrolling when middle clicking
    Makes pastes go wrong. It is also the hardest middle mouse button to press on any mouse I’ve had.
  4. Left click instead of right click and vice versa
    Apple cannot make a mouse which actually registers the right side I am clicking on? I like to hold both fingers on my mouse while clicking, and the mighty mouse uses some weird way of detecting with side is pressed. I have never had this problem with ANY other mouse. How can you fuck up this most basic function?

So, kill the mighty mouse, and use a normal fine working Logitech or Microsoft mouse.

2008 10 10 Drakonen Uncategorized Comments (2) Permalink

Default paramater values with python

Default argument values for functions are a nice shortcut in python. They save you from writing many wrapper functions and make the code more readable and also easier to use. They can be used wrong though:

>>> def foo(a=[]):
...     a.append('bar')
...     return a
...
>>> foo()
['bar']
>>> foo()
['bar', 'bar']

Like described in idiomatic python, using a value which is a refenence (like a list, dict or instance) can lead to odd results. This is because the arguments are evaluated at compile time, not at runtime when the function is called! Instead of creating an empty list as one (inexperienced) would suspect, the default value becomes a reference to a list.

This can be nasty when it is used like this:

>>> def bar(time=datetime.now()):
...     print time
...
>>> bar()
2008-09-26 12:32:23.598052
>>> bar()
2008-09-26 12:32:23.598052

Just like in idiomatic Python, this is a good fix:

>>> def bar(time=None):
...     if time == None:
...             time = datetime.now()
...     print time
...

>>> bar()
2008-09-26 12:35:02.258992
>>> bar()
2008-09-26 12:35:03.059305

Instead of the default argument datetime.now(), using None, and later setting the current time instead of None works fine!

2008 09 26 Drakonen Uncategorized Comments (2) Permalink

Removing the link boxes from Latex’ Hyperref (and color)

Aah Latex… A love hate relation ship. Working on my thesis I use the hyperref package for some nice linking support in my document. unfortunately this also causes them to get link boxes around them. Here’s the code to remove them:

\usepackage[pdftex]{hyperref}
\hypersetup{
    colorlinks,%
    citecolor=black,%
    filecolor=black,%
    linkcolor=black,%
    urlcolor=black
}

This makes the links use colors inststead of boxes/frames, and sets the used colors to black. Fixed! Although this should be a standard convenience option imho.

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2008 09 26 Drakonen Tech Comments (2) Permalink

HAR inspired Python Pygame fun

I have always wanted to do some stuff with Pygame. When i saw the logo on the HAR2009 wiki I whipped up a little python program that draws squares and fades between colors. It looks pretty cool!

Needed: Python, Pygame

Downloads: har_squares

[edit]Seems i have uploaded the wrong file… My apologies to the original writer. The right file is up now.[/edit]

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2008 09 09 Drakonen Programming
Python
Tech Comments (5) Permalink

Drakonen.com

Finally i had the impulse to buy my own domain: drakonen.com. I ‘moved’ my blog to this domain which took a simple symlink. Making Nginx do a moved permanently redirect was a bit harder though, and caused quite some frustration. But here it is:

server {
server_name     drakonen.digigen.nl;
if ($http_host = 'drakonen.digigen.nl' ) {
rewrite  ^(.*)  http://drakonen.com$1  permanent;
}
}

This can maybe be optimized a bit, but it generates a 301 status and redirects.

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2008 08 01 Drakonen Connectivity Comments (0) Permalink