Paul A. Luzzi

September 26, 2010

Lots of work over the last few days.

• Much of it was spent trying to build a new “vpn-router” box. I built the current one a few years ago, and its very stable and works well – but it seems to close connections after 7.5 hours. For my point to point stuff – that’s a real hassle because it often drops the link in the middle of something I’m doing. So I wanted to update everything and build a more modern version, on a faster box, hopefully stopping that. Well, its built after many many hours, and testing is under way on the timeouts. The old was a white box PII 450Mhz, 128Mb RAM, dual 4.3 Gb IDE drives, running knoppix 5.0.1. The new one is a Compaq Deskpro En, 1Ghz, 320Mb RAM, 9.1 Gb drive, running knoppix 6.2.1. Since these are just “routers”, they can be older hardware … obviously. But a big change somewhere along the line in knoppix was with the system startup scripts. The 5.0.1 used the familiar sysv-init style scripts like many other unix’s that I grew up with – using the /etc/rcX.d/SXXstartup type scripts. But in newer knoppix, startup scripts are done in /etc/rc.local instead, and work in all run levels – so that was a little different. Otherwise Im still sing the same apps as I used on the old knoppix. So, let the testing commence.
• Another change was that I put the dv9925nr into service this weekend. That’s the kitchen laptop and is the one I just put the new motherboard in, and got the drive for. So that’s now online and working. That free’s up the dv9207us for another task. That one will be interesting.

Lastly a new unix workstation in my office – and just like at work, I’m using Ubuntu 9.10 on this one. I’ve gotten to like that release so its getting another try. Besides, my sony vaio that I’ve been using for many years now was getting a bit slow to be my daily driver. So that was moved downstairs into the server room, and now sits on the desk down there. So at least I have a nice multi-workspace, multi-window client machine down there near all the servers – its way better than putty on the AthlonXP3 box