fouldsy.com

eBay is a naughty, naughty place. It draws you into buying stuff against your will. Well, not quite, but you get the idea.

The latest idea is playing around with some high-end network services under Linux. OpenLDAP servers maintaining an entire LDAP directory, with integrated Samba file + printer sharing on per user/group basis including virus scanning, e-mail solution containing virus + spam filtering tied into the LDAP structure, and of course Internet content filtering + Squid proxy cache complete with Intranet portalset all based off permissions from the directory. So, I needed some equipment.

Space being limited, and also wanting a decent challenge as opposed to running them off my usual testing machines based round PII 400Mhz’s with 128Mb-256Mb RAM, picked out some Sun Ultra 5’s instead. Since the Ultra 5’s are IDE interface based, they take standard hard drives and CD drives making them cheap to get parts for. These 4 cost £45 plus shipping - 3 x 270Mhz with 128Mb RAM + 6.3Gb hard drives, plus 1 x 330Mhz with 256Mb RAM and 6.3Gb hard drive.

What’s going to run on these? Gentoo Sparc64, of course. Support seems very good under Gentoo, with active forums, mailing lists and IRC. Although compiling will be slower compared to the other alternative, Debian, I’m interested to see how much Gentoo can harness the 64-bit processing, plus how well Gentoo actually stands up in a server environment. I’ve always ran Debian on servers due to ease of installation and updates, but since I’m not in the production environment, would try something else. Whilst this is purely for development and learning, the reasoning behind it is an integration of these technologies into our Windows network at work, or for future reference depending on employment status in a year or two.

Once the keyboard + mouse arrive, will make a start trying to install Gentoo in the first place! Hoping to simply create a base install, then image the remaining three drives, allowing me then give each machine it’s own roles without having to run through building each system from scratch.

Since I’m a good guy at heart, I set up a couple of old Compaq Deskpro EN’s for Belmont Parish Hall that had been donated by Phillips during their factory closure. The machines weren’t bad - PIII 1Ghz, 128Mb RAM, 20Gb hard drive with the usual on-board graphics, network + audio. Quite impressive little machines. I called them Bill + Ben.

Anyways, without the money (or rather the need) to pay for Windows licences, Office licences, etc. and without me wanting to constantly patch them and remove viruses + spyware, Linux was called for. Having toyed with Ubuntu and Edubuntu with a possible move of some school workstations to Linux, I decided to give Kubuntu a whirl for these computers. The reason for my switch away from Debian + Gentoo is quite simple - the computers needed to be as simple to use as possible, and resemble the look + feel of Windows.

Debian is a little too slow on the uptake with updates to KDE, and I didn’t fancy running them from testing without me taking control of them. Ubuntu runs Gnome by default which is a little too different out-of-the-box for a user coming from Windows. Edubuntu is too much for kids. Knowing the Debian base would hold steady and apt would make it easy to update stuff at the click of a button, Kubuntu rolled out painfully easily. Everything was picked up during install, only requiring Firefox + Thunderbird to be installed once the install was finished. A quick tweaking of KDE to remove the desktop pager, wastebin + KNote from the system try, and dropping desktop icons for OpenOffice.org Writer, Calc + Impress (turning off Java + setting MS Office default file formats) along with simple shortcuts to E-mail, Internet, My Documents, Floppy, CD-ROM, etc. meant sitting my mother down at the screen resulted in a smile on her face rather than puzzlement.

Actually, my mother is no slouch with computers now, but as with most people, doesn’t like change. For her to be comfortable using it hopefully means the other users at the hall will be too. I have another one to do tomorrow which will be the main office one, and looking at bringing another two older machines out of the garage to setup in the same manner giving them 4 machines for open access at the hall. With each of the machines setup to automatically download updates, along with a restore image created with partimage, shouldn’t be much that can go wrong.

Here’s hoping so!

So, I got bored at lunchtime. I always steal a newspaper from whichever nice person leaves one lying around. Inconsiderate sods that they are, didn’t leave it on the table where it should be, ready for me to half-inch whilst eating my sandwiches.

That lead to messing around playing uber-geek. Messing around with my Palm, I setup the Bluetooth connection into my Nokia 6820 to automatically bring up the o2 Active GPRS connection to use web-browsing and e-mail on the Palm. It’s never something I could be arsed to do as I never saw the point, but that’s what boredom does to me I guess.

Anyway, that all ran fine, so then I configured the e-mail client on my Nokia to grab my o2 e-mail, which I never used. It downloaded my welcome message from January… But, it got me thinking about moblogging.

Like accessing the Internet off my Palm, I’ve never really seen the need for posting crap on here from my mobile, mainly because pMachine can’t do it. A minor setback. Newer weblogs can, or at least posting via e-mai which most mobiles can do easily, and there is stuff floating around about adding in functionality to post via e-mail, but the couple of scripts that were done a couple of years back aren’t available anymore. So, I grabbed the WordPress wp-mail code and the SquirelMail POP3 class and knocked up some code.

So long as this appears, it works fine! Not that hard, fairly basic stuff, and includes basic authentication to ensure every Tom, Dick + Harry can’t post via e-mail. Nicely cleans things up by deleting e-mail after processing, though doesn’t include posting images. If I can be arsed, might include that at some point. Probably won’t even use all this anyways!

Of course, this might not even work…

So, the idea was to make my main computer a bit quieter. Sounds easy. I also wanted something to cut my teeth into, literally. I do like my power tools and hadn’t played with them much recently. For a few years have toyed with the idea of water cooling, not really for overclocking purposes as I’m not a PC gamer and don’t want to eek out a extra few Mhz. I just wanted something that kept things cool, was quiet, and looked good. Couldn’t be that hard, could it? Well, no, except for the company all the gear was bought from.

Anyways, this how the machine looked before it all started. A bit messy, but it was tucked away under a desk so it didn’t matter much:

First came marking out the location of the radiator mounting and cutting it to size. The fun stuff. Out with the jigsaw and makin’ some noise! Was fairly straightforward, though drilling the holes still caused the drill to slip a little due to the upper casing being shiny, but nothing a bit of downwards pressure didn’t fix

Done and dusted, the radiator was installed, and the water block, radiator and pump connected together. Once topped up and left for leak testing, all seemed to be going smoothly. Not so. The self tapping screws the radiator ships with are too long, meaning when installing into the case, the screws run straight through the radiator casing and into the radiator itself. Not so smoothly then… Wasn’t having any of it trying repairs and I wasn’t too keen on having a patched up radiator sat at the top of the computer, so had to order a new one. Whilst waiting for this, on with cutting out the side window:

At the point of ordering the replacement radiator I also decided that due to space restrictions I should use angled barbs out of the radiator which were now in stock having been out of stock first time round. 6 days later, 3 replacement barbs, and finally I get the right barb sent through after the wrong ones constantly being supplied and delays in the postal service. But, eventually they came through so back in it went, including drilling and installing a switch to the side to control neon lights to be installed later:

The inside of the case all got a nice coat of black paint to get rid of the ‘orrible silver shine caused when people install neons into cases that just bounces off the finishing of the case. With the radiator and exhaust fans installed and water dye added, this started looking pretty cool. The exhaust fans are needed to get rid of the heat pushed out from the radiator, which although not huge, I wanted rid of. They’re about 18dB a piece running at 2000rpm so they’re drowned out by the power supply anyway:

With the rest of hardware installed back into the system, lights installed, and put back in place, the ‘On’ switch was tentatively pushed and a little whisper told me it was on. The power supply is the loudest thing, which is pretty quiet anyway, and a massive improvement over before. The side window, lights and water dye set it all off quite nicely - may as well make it look good even it is a little sad + geeky (before someone comments on it!).

As for how the computer runs, the system temperature is about 2-3 degrees celsius warmer than before due the radiator heat, and the processor itself is about 10 degrees celsius cooler. Quite happy with that, as the fans on the radiator move very little air across the radiator, but are very quiet. More powerful fans will move air, thus cooling the water passing through it more and dropping the CPU temp more, but I’d rather not have the extra noise that goes with it. Think I’ll stick with these for now.

I’ve also had some people asking about my other machines, so here goes:

Main computer (homer): Athlon XP 2800, 1Gb Crucial DDR3200, 1 x 160Gb Maxtor SATA hdd + 1 x 80Gb Maxtor IDE hdd, Sony CD-RW, NEC DVD-RW, Creative Audigy 2, 128Mb nVidia GeForce4 4200ti, Netgear 54g wireless adapter
Webserver (marge): Pentium II 400Mhz, 192Mb Kingston PC133, 30Gb Maxtor IDE hdd, Sony CD-ROM
Test-bed machine (bart): Dual Pentium II 400Mhz, 256Mb Kingston PC133, 80Gb Maxtor IDE hdd, Sony CD-RW
Media Center (lisa): Shuttle SN45G XPC, AMD Semperon 2400, 512Mb Crucial DDR2700, 160Gb Maxtor SATA hdd, Sony DVD-RW, Creative Audigy 2, nVidia GeForce4 4200ti + TV out
Laptop (barney): Toshiba Satellite Pro L10, Intel Celeron 1.5Ghz, 512Mb DDR, 60Gb hdd, DVD-RW

And yes, for the observant of you, all named after Simspsons characters, which goes back years - the machines have all had numerous hardware changes but keep the same roles, and I can’t be arsed to modify the hosts + DNS settings (the router is called maggie, just complete the family…). From left to right - homer, marge, bart, lisa:

Well, the car still hasn’t blown up or worse, caught fire. Sitting in traffic trying to get to work on a morning is so much more fun when you can just turn the bass up and annoy all the other drivers stuck in their cars listening to Classical FM or Radio 4. Doesn’t even have to be loud, the bass just rumbles through anything like a knife through hot butter. Love it.

Anyways, maybe all the in-car audio made me old brain go all funny, but I’ve also agreed to have a bit of jam tomorrow afternoon with a couple of friends that have been trying to get a band going. Not sure it’s my kinda music (they wanna try playing Paranoid by Black Sabbath so I’ve dug out the tabs for it, is pretty easy) so this could be an experience…

So, distortion pedal at the ready and hope their neighbours realise how loud my guitar amp goes. Think I’m starting to develop an obession with noise pollution.

What happens when you get bored and throw money at a sound system that has the clarity to rival that new opera thingy built by the dirty river running through Newcastle that’s also loud enough to wake the dead and have the burbery-cap totting boy-racers down the Arnison Centre shaking whilst sat in their car due to bass pumping out as you drive past? Click images for larger photo (still as crap quality though…):
Well, you start off by trying to tie yourself into the drivers seat. This was good fun. I didn’t mind this bit, and was pretty straightforward. I nearly forgot to run the audio bus for the cd changer, but I ended up with cd changer control, cd changer bus audio left + right, amp remote power on, amp audio left + right, and front components audio left + right cables running around the place. Not that many really.

After that, it was just a case of plugging it all into the back of the head unit and sliding back in. Suprisingly, this all worked straight away and didn’t require and cursing or hitting. Dissappointed in a way, but at least I got to sit looking at the pretty movies running through on the head unit itself. Reckon an indash 6.5″ screen is next.

After a right royal cutting of fingers and kicking and cursing, obviously making up for the ease at which all the audio and control cables installed, the amp cable wound it’s way down from the battery into the boot. How people manage 0-gauge power cable running through the door sills of a Focus I don’t know. This 4-gauge was thick enough. Once connected into the battery and fuse installed, the amp powered straight up and the sub kicked in. Literally.

The components were installed next. Off came the door panels, into the bin went the old 5×7’s and in went shiny JBL components. Easy peasy. No trouble whatsoever, and the clarity is impressive. May end up running these through a separate amp, but the head unit seems more than capable of handling them at the moment.

And as I took the car down to the industrial estate to actually sound test this mass of equipment (I’m very glad the system comes with a wireless remote so I could get out of the car whilst trying to find out how loud it goes before distorting (very loud, if you’re wondering…)), the way the sun caught things brought a tear to my eye. Not really, but as I’m not much of an artist, this is as good as it gets!

Also, a nice little monologue that took place whilst installing the amp cable was:
Dad: “How big is that fuse?”
Me: “30amp, why?”
Dad: “You do realise electric oven’s run off less than that, you’ll blow yourself up!”
Me: “Probably. Will sound good though”

If I don’t know what I’m doing with electrics, then may I die some horrible death via a bizzare electrocutioning accident…

but fouldsy can make this:

To get some kinda perspective, this is nearly four foot long and the same high, with a lower section over two foot in height with a ramp leading to the upper section and sleeping area. £120 in the shops for something that size, £25 worth of materials to do it yerself. Easy peasy. Bugger to lift though….