The server has been up for 22 days now, usage is running low and there are no stupid services running by default to bog my server down.

I rewired my network with Cat6 and I am seeing some nice gigabit speeds.  Having multiple switch jumps is kind of a pain though.  I probably need a 24 port gigabit router so that the traffic could run at maximum through-put.

The server has also handled 55GB inbound and 37GB outbound traffic in last 22 days :P.

But 8.04 was fading out (not being a LTS version), so I thought may be I should dist-upgrade to 9.04.  Well I did and, to say the least, things have been pretty rough.

The server has not been as stable as I’d would like, my iptables rules don’t load well anymore, I just keep loosing internet connectivity at least once every hour, my ssh connections to the box just keep getting terminated and I need a restart almost once a week to bring my file transfers upto speed.

So I think its now time to abandon Ubuntu and move to my Linux of choice.

Arch Linux offers what I need from my server system.

• Rolling release cycles – So I probably wont need a system-wide upgrade, just an update once every now and then to get my packages updated.
• Minimal Linux – So I know exactly what is going on on my system.  Easy to configure, easier to find problems.
• Recent software releases - Arch Linux community is pretty good at keeping up with new releases, you almost always have the latest release of a software available through pacman or, if not, through ABS.  Not always good for server systems, but always good when bug-fixes are being pushed out.
• I use it as my primary operating system on my desktop and I love it.

Last time when I was here I was looking for the “Perfect Editor”.  Well, I guess there is no such thing as a “Perfect Editor”.  There is probably an “Editor which works for you”, but I guess that could be too subjective for some :).

I gave emacs a shot and I think I am in love.  I haven’t really looked at anything other than emacs at all. Took me a while to get used to those weird finger twister shortcuts but I think I am beyond that now and I don’t even realize when I do a C-x-s.

I have sort of personalized it a lot though.  Since I mostly program in C, the first thing I got was CEDET.  I probably just use 1% of what it really offers, but whatever I use, it makes writing code a lot easier e.g. It has these nice separators for functions so when you’re scrolling through the code you can easily figure where the functions start and finish; also, it has a status line on top which tells you the context you’re in (which function you’re writing etc.).  Well there’s so much it offers that I cannot possibly mention it all here.  If you’re curious its worth a shot.

I also got a couple of more plugins for managing collapsible scopes (like the +/- buttons next to functions in modern editors and IDEs) and languages like lua and php (support wasn’t there with the default emacs package on Arch).

Well, that’s all about it I guess, I’d be sticking to emacs for the foreseeable future I guess, but if I change my mind, I’d let you know.

/

On linux, there are a whole bunch of editors. None of them, right now to me I would say, sound as convenient as Visual Studio.  I am not saying Visual Studio is the ultimate editor/IDE, just that I am used to it and when I use a new editor that’s where my standard is.

On linux, I have been using eclipse lately. It was great initially, but now it’s turning into a nightmare.  Auto completion is painfully slow with it, and as the number of your library includes and source files go up, the more its failing to deliver.  It’s not that bad though, I’ve been using it for a while and so far I am getting my work done.

Another editor I’ve been using to edit single files is geany.  It’s simple, nice syntax highlighting, native (not in Java), and if you do a native compile on arch, you’re in for some serious speed surprise.

I started a thread on stackoverflow.com to discuss this.  I have a few things that I want my editor to do, and I have a few responses which I am going to try out.

Before getting into GUI editors, I will have to give emacs a try.  I’ve been putting it off for a while now and before I can make a choice, emacs deserves some serious thought.  I use vi occasionally, it hasn’t impressed me much to the point that I start using it as my regular editor. Not that its not great, its awesome.  The things people have been doing with it are mind-blowing.  Just that I don’t want that much hassle to setup my environment around. But I’ve got some nice scripts people are sharing on stackoverflow, so I will give it another shot.

But for now, its emacs’ turn.

In case you have a suggestion, I primarily program in C and python.  Occasionally in C++, C# and Java.

Its more of a euro-psy-progressive style, hope you like it. Feel free to leave feedback :).

/

I work from home and I often have to connect to my workplace network.  I work from several different machines from within my home network and hate setting up VPN on each of these machines.

I recently setup a linux server/router at home.  To solve this problem I configured a VPN connection to my workplace on this machine by following the instructions here.  After playing around with my firewall settings and setting up the route so that all traffic destined for my workplace’s subnet is routed over the ppp interface, I was able to ping my workplace machines from the linux box.  I was, however, still not able to reach my work machine from other machines on my network.

To solve this problem I figured that I needed to NAT the address before sending the packet over to the workplace network.  This can be done very easily with iptables:

/sbin/iptables -t nat -A POSTROUTING -o ppp0 -j SNAT --to 192.168.23.0

Here ppp0 is the PPP VPN Link interface and 192.168.23.0 is the workplace’s subnet.  Once I did this all of my machines on the network were able to ping and connect to my workplace machines, which is sweeeeet!! :)

I configured my VPN connection to start on boot and setup all these routing and firewall settings on startup. So I will now have a persistent connection to my workplace from home.  With some DNS settings I can now easily access my workplace from any computer in my home network.

HTH

/

Now that I have a dedicated server with DHCP address assignment, I didn’t want the 665 to run as a router.  It would have created its own subnet (which its not really capable of doing unless the uplink is a WAN link) which could have complicated things.  I wanted all my computers on a single subnet.  Getting a different router was not really an option because DIR 665 is awesome IMO.

I therefore wanted the 665 to run as a wireless Access Point (AP).  After digging around on the internet for a while I found that the support for this router as AP was dropped in firmware version 1.04 (the current version is 1.21 btw).  However, there is a way to get this router to work as an Access Point:

In the router’s Admin web interface change the router’s internal IP to a valid static IP (this is the IP where you’d be accessing the router admin web interface; or not change it if there’s no conflict) and disable DHCP.  Then, reset all firewall/nat rules.  Once this is done, plug your 665 into your home network’s switch.  Important thing to note here is that when you plug your router in, plug the wire into one of the switch ports on the 665 and NOT the WAN port.  Leave the WAN port un-plugged. 

That should do it!

Now try renewing your IP lease on one of your wireless devices (if you’re using a mac, just restart it) and you should get the IP assigned to you by the DHCP server on your network and not the 665.  You can now ping the server, access the internet etc.  You’ve essentially turned your DIR 665 into an Access Point.

HTH

/

I have my router plugged into my cable modem downstairs in my basement, where it is hooked up to my PC.  Our notebooks and my Mac Mini connect to the network using WiFi.  I use Internet Network Sharing on my Mac Mini to forward my WiFi network to its ethernet interface which is then routed to a switch to which my devices in the living room connect (e.g. my Xbox).  

The problem is that for Xbox and similar devices to work flawlessly they need to be able to accept connections from the internet (my particular problem was with Xbox Live).  A simple resolution to this problem is NAT.  However,  Mac OS X Network and Security configuration doesn’t allow us to configure any NAT options at all.  So you have to go low level with Terminal and tweak the BSD guts of Mac.  

To solve this problem we’ll use natd to configure our port forwarding.  I will use my Xbox example here.  Xbox Live service requires ports 88 and 3074 on UDP and 3074 on TCP to be open.  I first configured my router to forward these ports to my Mac.  On my Mac Mini’s Terminal, I then killed any running instances of natd (Network Sharing does instantiate an instance for its purposes).

$ sudo killall natd

I then issued a command to setup port forwarding:

$ sudo natd -interface en1 \
     -redirect_port tcp 192.168.2.2:3074 3074  \
     -redirect_port udp 192.168.2.2:88 88 \
     -redirect_port udp 192.168.2.2:3074 3074

Here en1 is the WiFi interface on the Mac Mini.  192.168.2.2 is my Xbox’s IP address.

Once you issue this command, go to your Xbox system settings and test your Xbox Live connection. You should not get any warnings about your NAT configuration.

HTH

/

The radio station is also available in iTunes under the electronic genre.

http://www.danceradio.gr/progstream/

/

I am working on a euro-psy-progressive trance kind of a mix these days and its coming out to be pretty nice so far. Stay tuned!