cat /dev/random > thoughts

Added support to change enable-edit-actions value from the Add-ons page. This enables you to edit the Privoxy configuration via Privoxy's Web UI. Download link: PrivoxyAdd-on_1.01.tar

Put up another guide to setup CUPS-PDF as a network printer to be shared to all computers on the network. Link to article here. Cheers!

I received my SheevaPlug this week. It's a teeny-bit smaller than I thought it would be from the pics that I see on the net. Probably because of my somewhat larger hands

Anyway, the SheevaPlug is a small device, probably the size of a laptop's power brick, that's very big in functionality. I've been looking for an upgrade to my NSLU2 for years and decided to go with Marvell's plug computer. Martin Michlmayr stated that he "believes the SheevaPlug is a killer replacement for the NSLU2" and I very much agree. The SheevaPlug is all over the web now so I'm not going to bother putting the specs here. If you want to see benchmark figures you can check out the wiki provided by pushbx here or you can go to Martin's journal and see what the guy of NSLU2 fame has to say about the SheevaPlug. If you enjoyed hacking your NSLU2 then you're going to love the SheevaPlug. Time for me to tinker with it. Top two on the list: 1) Upgrade uboot and 2) Replace Ubuntu, the distro that came with the plug, with Debian.

Good times ahead

Posting technology news was never the plan I had for my blog but the Google Wave demo was just so amazing that I wanted to share it here. This is going to change the way online collaboration and conversation is done. According to the developers, it's what email would look like if it were invented today, and it's going to be totally open source. Curious yet? Watch the demo and you'll soon be a believer as well .

Technorati is going to have a field day when this product gets released.

I wanted to move my Asterisk setup from my NSLU2 to the Xbox. After successfully compiling both Asterisk and Zaptel I get an error while trying to load the Zaptel modules:

FATAL: Error inserting ztdummy (/lib/modules/2.6.16.20/misc/ztdummy.ko): Unknown symbol in module, or unknown parameter (see dmesg)

and a quick check in dmesg shows:

modprobe zaptel: Unknown symbol crc_ccitt_table

Which tells me that my kernel wasn't compiled with CONFIG_CRC_CCITT support, great! Nevermind, check the repository for linux sources so we can recompile with CONFIG_CRC_CCITT support and maybe upgrade the kernel in the process:

lrdshaper@Corinthian~# apt-cache search ^linux-source
linux-source-2.6.18 - Linux kernel source for version 2.6.18
linux-source-2.6.24 - Linux kernel source for version 2.6.24
lrdshaper@Corinthian~#

Ok, so I need an Xbox kernel patch for either 2.6.18 or 2.6.24. Let's check sourceforge for the latest Xbox kernel patch: latest is 2.6.16. *sigh*

But wait! That doesn't mean someone else hasn't made an Xbox kernel patch yet based on a later kernel version. So let's check with Google...... and 45mins of searching later the closest that I can find is...wait for it... 2.6.22!. Aarrgh!

Still have a chance, use the 2.6.16 or 2.6.22 Xbox kernel patch as a template and make it work with 2.6.18 or 2.6.22. Decided to start with 2.6.16 first and after many hours of compile, installed the new kernel, reboot and...... it's alive!!!

Asterisk runs better now with no noticeable lags and dropped calls. For those interested, here're the 2.6.18 Kernel and 2.6.18 Kernel headers for Xbox running Xebian 1.1.4
Cheers!

Made my first add-on for the ReadyNAS sparc devices: Privoxy Add-on for ReadyNAS sparc devices - a non-caching web proxy with advanced filtering capabilities for enhancing privacy, modifying web page data and HTTP headers, controlling access, and removing ads and other obnoxious Internet junk. This add-on is based on Privoxy v3.0.3

Requirements: RAIDiator 4.1.4+
Platform: Sparc (NV/NV+/1100/Duo)
Addon Version: v1.0
Download link: PrivoxyAdd-on_1.0.tar
Privoxy Version: v3.0.3
Privoxy Homepage: http://www.privoxy.org


Usage: After installation Privoxy will start listening to default port 8118. Then in your browser, change the proxy to your ReadyNAS' IP Address and put 8118 in the port number.

If you have the Squid Add-on installed you can chain Squid to Privoxy. The main benefit of chaining Squid and Privoxy is you decrease the resource usage of Privoxy because of the local web cache provided by Squid. What this gives you is increased web performance because of Squid's local web cache plus the ad and banner filtering feature of Privoxy. To chain Squid to Privoxy you just need to add the following line in Squid's configuration file (squid.conf)

cache_peer localhost parent 8118 0 no-query no-digest
never_direct allow all

The first line assumes Privoxy is running on the same machine and listens to port 8118. If Privoxy is running on a different machine then change localhost to the IP Address of the machine running Privoxy. The second line forces squid to forward all requests to Privoxy.

Next will be creating an add-on for Tor. Cheers!

The King of Pinoy Rap, Francis M, passed away today at 12noon after a long battle with leukemia. We will all miss you Kiko. It is a very sad day indeed...

Lenny became stable today and so I decided to upgrade my XBOX running Xebian Etch to the latest and greatest version of my favorite distro. After adding the keys using apt-key, I ran apt-get update and halfway through encountered the following error:

Errhttp://ftp.tw.debian.org stable/main Packages
Sub-process gzip returned an error code (1)
Fetched 867KB in 5s (173KB/s)
Failed to fetch http://ftp.tw.debian.org/debian/dists/stable/contrib/binary-i386/Packages.gz Sub-process gzip returned an error code (1)
Reading package lists... Done
E: Some index files failed to download, they have been ignored, or old ones used instead.

Although I very rarely ran into this problem (this is only the 3rd time), I remember when I first got this error and how much time I spent trying to solve it so I thought I'd post it here. The solution is very simple actually but proved quite difficult to figure out and even my good friend Google failed me (at least it was 5yrs ago). So to fix the issue just go into /var/lib/apt/lists/partial directory and delete everything inside then run

sudo apt-get clean
sudo apt-get update

again and you should be good to go. Cheers!

Managed to finish most of the migration as scheduled. Installation and configuration took roughly 8-10hrs including a few power naps here and there and native compilation of some of the packages mostly because the newer version is not in the repositories. NTP server is up, so is the WINS server and obviously the webserver. Currently compiling libtorrent, rtorrent and XLink Kai.

Pondering whether or not I should setup a cross-compilation environment for the NSLU2 on the XBOX for faster compiles but that'll be for another time.

I'll be replacing my NSLU2's HDD this weekend and moving from uNSLUng to Debian Lenny RC1. Since I also have quite a list of services that I have to migrate to Debian, the site may well be down the whole weekend.

The NSLU2 currently runs on a 160gb 3.5 Seagate drive which I'll be replacing with a 40gb 2.5 Seagate drive I have lying around. Mainly because I plan on using the bigger drive on another PC and secondly so that I don't need to plug in the drive to my UPS and thus freeing a power socket in the process. Here's hoping everything goes as planned

Finally finished moving most of the services from my NSLU2 to the XBOX running XebianV1.1.4. It was a slow process setting up the XBOX just the way I want it with what little spare time I have but now I'm quite happy with it. XBOX now runs:
o Subversion as my version control software
o Postfix + Cyrus-imapd + Sieve + SpamAssassin for my email server
o Tor + Privoxy for online anonymity
o Nagios for monitoring my other devices
o Cross-compilation environments for PSP, ReadyNAS x86 devices, uNSLUng, DD-WRT and Openmoko
o RSSDler for downloading podcasts and vidcasts which are then automatically transferred to my ReadyNAS after download is complete
o and CUPS-PDF for PDF printing over the network

Kernel image has also been upgraded from 2.4.31-xbox to 2.6.16.20.

Services that remained on my NSLU2 are:
o OpenVPN server to give my friends access to my network. Planning on moving this to my WRT350Nv1.0 so I can switch to Tap (bridged) mode
o NTP server to keep time synchronized on my local network
o rTorrent
o OpenSSH + a pass-sentence protected private key for securely accessing my network from any internet-connected location.
o WINS server for Windows name resolution on the local network
o XLink engine for internet gaming
o and lighttpd + nanoblogger for running this blog

Next step will be figuring out how I can maximize my WRT350N router. Cheers!

Finally ran out of excuses procrastinating about fixing the alignment issues this blog has with IE. Turns out the problem was in Microsoft's browser and how it interprets cellspacing in CSS. So there you have it. Alignment is working ok now so I put back the comments in the main page. Cheers and happy commenting!

So, the guilt of global warming is starting to weigh more and more heavily on your shoulders or you're like me who just want to save on electricity to cut on cost but you're also a heavy torrent downloader who wants to own a copy of every linux distro and DRM free music as soon as it gets out.

Sooner or later the inevitable happens: You don't want to shutdown your PC anymore because you've just hit the highest seed ratio yet on that torrent that you've been downloading for days, but you're scared that your electric bill will hit the roof because your 1000Watt gaming rig consumes half the electricity of an average household. So what's a man to do?

Well if you own a hacked ( NSLU2 or XBOX), rtorrent and screen/dtach can prove to be your new best friend. It's lightweight, fast, stable and uses less memory than a goldfish.

So what can rtorrent do? Well for starters it can:

1) Watch directories for new torrents. So all you have to do is drop the torrent file into the specified directory and rtorrent will start downloading immediately

2) You can tell it to stop seeding after a specific ratio has been reached

3) Set your download rate to change as per schedule (ex. you want the download rate to be 100Kb between 12:00am to 9:59am but change to 10Kb from 10:00am to 11:59pm)

4) Move completed torrents to different directories depending on the watched directory (ex. torrents in /download1 directory will be moved to /downloads/apps when finished and torrents in /download2 will be moved to /downloads/freemusic)

Itching to try it out? Then start clicking to find out how to compile and configure rtorrent

If you're running uNSLUng on your NSLU2, just run ipkg install rtorrent and you're good to go.

I read a post last night in the ReadyNAS Forums asking about how to securely access the Bittorent Client Web UI in his ReadyNAS from a remote location. I made a step by step guide in their forums on how to go about doing that thru SSH Forwarding and I thought I should write it here as well.

It's too long to post as a blog entry so I posted it as an article instead. I also changed it so it's not too specific to the ReadyNAS and can be applied to other linux machines.

Read it here. Leave a comment and tell me what you think. Cheers!

It's another day to be jolly. The WRT350Nv1.0 donated by (edit: names removed as requested) arrived Friday in all its glory which will replace my bricked WRT54GL. It's a shame OpenWRT doesn't support it yet. Still good though as I've always wanted to try out DD-WRT and maybe Sveasoft. Let's get started then

Update: Or maybe not Sveasoft (check it out and have a good read). Link to Sveasoft also removed.

Well, sort of. It's not really new and it's also not mine. My friend lent me an XBOX to play with since he's no longer using it seeing as he just recently bought an XBOX360. Now let's see if I can get linux working on this baby, something to keep me busy while I wait for my main PC's power supply to arrive.

Also on a sidenote, the JS-Kit script was messing with the alignments on this blog's main page in IE6 so now comments can only be added or viewed from the Permanent Link and the archives.

Yep it's up and running. I decided to use javascript so the fortunes are dynamic 'on every pageload' as opposed to 'on every new post' if I used bash.

I think I'll be sticking with JS-Kit for a while. I like how it's so easy to add to any part of the page you want and moderating the comments is also a breeze.

So tonight I'll be adding a random fortune routine to add some flavor to the site. I'm thinking of using either bash or javascript. Here we go...

Decided to try JS-Kit Comments first and got it up and running in less than 10mins! I literally had to add only one line of code in some of the nanoblogger templates.

For those wanting to try JS-Kit to add comments in nanoblogger you just add the line

<br/><div class="js-kit-comments" path="/comments/$NB_EntryID"></div> 

in entry.htm and permalink_entry.htm templates after the Permalink or the Categories link and then add the line

<script src="http://js-kit.com/comments.js"></script>

anywhere in the body section of main_index.htm, month_archive.htm, permalink.htm and day_archive.htm and you're good to go.

Follow the instructions in the JS-Kit Comments website on how to manage the comments on your blog.

Next I need to figure out if I can actually make a backup of the comments using their RSS functionality. Cheers!

Boy when the nanoblogger website mentioned slowness as one of the "cons", they weren't kidding. But after all the processing are complete, everything is in static html which is just the way I wanted it.

Getting comments to work is getting longer than I expected though. Both NBCom and blogKomm rely on PHP which I try to avoid. Using static html to reduce CPU stress on my NSLU2 was the reason for choosing nanoblogger in the first place so in the next few days I'll be looking into cgiComments, JS-Kit and haloscan to see how they size up.

By the way, RSS and Atom feeds are up for syndication.

Well after years of always coming up with an excuse not to start a blog I finally decided to take the plunge and play around with nanoblogger. The fact that my main PC's power supply broke down last Thursday and not having a way to get some projects done during the long weekend did play a big part though. Not much to say at the moment except to write a test post and make sure the smilies are all working perfectly

Tonight I'll try to add support for comments after watching Prince Caspian with my friends. Time to hit the sheets.