Recently I had the need to connect to a remote VPN server from my Debian box but as I don’t run ‘X’ it had to be done via the command line, after some experimenting I found this simple solution.
Running a script after inserting USB flash drive
I needed the ability to run a bash script after inserting a USB flash drive into a debian box. This can quite easily be achieved using UDEV rules.
Cooking and heating stuff
Looking at ways to heat food and boil water from my camping adventures I already have a Campingaz Bleuet Cv 300 Stove Pz and found it to be sturdy and reliable with the added feature of Instastart ignition saves the hassle of fumbling around for a lighter or matches. They on offer @ Amaon for £12.90 at the moment so might actually pick up another one. However the obvious problem with this and other like it is that they require gas cylinders for fuel the cheapest i’ve found them is £3.99 each @ Halfords.
I also have 2 Campingaz Camp Bistro stoves and while i’ve had no problems with these i’ve had some of the cheaper branded ones and found them very hit and miss whether they’ll actually ignite or even stay lit, also the canister locking mechanism can be rubbish causing it not to seat properly resulting in gas or even flames everywhere.
On a preppers forum I found a link to a Gelert Solid Fuel Stove complete with 24 fuel tablets for £4.59 these have got to be worth it for the tablets alone so will be buying a couple of these and seeing how they fair.
Although more expensive the Esbit 985ml Stove and Cookset seems to come recommended with the added bonus it comes with 2 pots and can run on solid fuel or methylated spirits. I think this option could be well worth considering in the long run.
Being prepared or overreacting?
I have been thinking about 'prepping' for some time and have decided i'm going to make a start on it. While i'm not expecting a Zombie Apocalypse any time soon, with harsher winters approaching and the likelihood of power outages etc I think it's best to be in some way ready for such events.
I've been reading various websites and forums and some people seem to take it to the extreme with Bug out shelters, action plan drills and armoured vehicles I think I will take a more sedate approach. The plan is to store enough food and supplies to enable my family to survive until a more permanent solution can be found. Â
I don't have a budget to speak of so will add small extras to my weekly shop to stock supplies.Â
NAS space getting low
Alas after 3 running for 3 years the space on my home NAS is running low.
Filesystem       Size  Used Avail Use% Mounted on
/dev/md0 Â Â Â Â Â Â Â 915G Â 905G Â 9.9G Â 99% /
So it's time to upgrade however due to budget constraints and the fact I need 2 for raid it will only be to 2TB drives.
Now comes the question of which disks to use. Currently I use 1TB Samsung HD103SJ drives and to be honest they've served me well in a 24/7 environment running for 3 years.Â
So do I stick with Samsung @ £70 a pop http://www.amazon.co.uk/Seagate-Barracuda-inch-Internal-Drive/dp/B006H32Q3S/ref=sr_1_3?s=computers&ie=UTF8&qid=1384171245&sr=1-3&keywords=samsung+2tb
Go with cheaper Toshiba drives for £60 each http://www.amazon.co.uk/Toshiba-DT01ACA200-7200rpm-Internal-Drive/dp/B009CPDI62/ref=cm_cr_pr_product_top however i'm a little cautious as I haven't used Tosh drives much.Â
Or for £77.96 each I can have the quality Western Digital "RED" drives http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B008JJLZ7G/ref=nosim but reading the reviews on amazon there seems to be an issue with warranty being 'out of region' which means they will not honour the warranty in the UK meaning you would only get the 1 year warranty from amazon and not the full 3 year WD one. It also appears the seller is shipping the 3 platter version instead of the 2 platter one which perform better with less noise.http://rml527.blogspot.ca/2010/10/hdd-platter-database-western-digital-35_9792.html
After some research and reading of reviews i've decided to stick with the samsungs and found them slightly cheaper here http://www.cclonline.com/product/72739/ST2000DM001/Hard-Drives/Seagate-Barracuda-7200-14-2TB-Hard-Drive-7200rpm-SATA-64MB-Internal-/HDD1317/
Add Wireless To The Raspberry Pi
I had bit of a nightmare getting wireless to work properly so I put together this howto hoping it will help others. This was done on a raspberry pi running raspbian (wheezy).
sudo apt-get install wireless-tools wpasupplicantget your psk using the following command where yourssid is your SSID’s name ie HOME and where passphrase is your wireless password ie PASSWORD123 wpa_passphrase yourssid yourpassphrase
Using my examples above this should output the following
network={
ssid="HOME"
#psk="PASSWORD123"
psk=57d9fbb3d0e8eed3bd17d76a61805e2c4b73a81d1686debeaf44559d8bc15800 }
From this copy the psk string then
sudo nano /etc/wpa_supplicant/wpa_supplicant.conf
and insert it onto the psk line and edit the SSID name, save and exit.
ctrl_interface=DIR=/var/run/wpa_supplicant GROUP=netdevupdate_config=1network={
ssid=”HOME”scan_ssid=1
psk=57d9fbb3d0e8eed3bd17d76a61805e2c4b73a81d1686debeaf44559d8bc15800
proto=RSN
key_mgmt=WPA-PSK
pairwise=CCMP
auth_alg=OPEN
}
sudo nano /etc/network/interfaces and add the following (obviously adjust it to your network setup ie static etc), save and exitauto loiface lo inet loopbackiface eth0 inet dhcpallow-hotplug wlan0iface wlan0 inet dhcppre-up wpa_supplicant -Dwext -i wlan0 -c /etc/wpa_supplicant/wpa_supplicant.conf -BNow I had a problem whereby wirless was only bougth up when the wired conneciton was plugged, obviously this defeats the whole object of wireless so I managed to come up with this fix
sudo nano /etc/default/ifplugd and add the following # This file may be changed either manually or by running dpkg-reconfigure.## N.B.: dpkg-reconfigure deletes everything from this file except for# the assignments to variables INTERFACES, HOTPLUG_INTERFACES, ARGS and# SUSPEND_ACTION. When run it uses the current values of those variables# as their default values, thus preserving the administrator's changes.## This file is sourced by both the init script /etc/init.d/ifplugd and# the udev script /lib/udev/ifplugd.agent to give default values.# The init script starts ifplugd for all interfaces listed in# INTERFACES, and the udev script starts ifplugd for all interfaces# listed in HOTPLUG_INTERFACES. The special value all starts one# ifplugd for all interfaces being present.INTERFACES=""HOTPLUG_INTERFACES="wlan0 eth0"ARGS="-q -f -u0 -d10 -w -I"SUSPEND_ACTION="stop"Save and exit then reboot and hopefully your wireless interface will be bought up and connect successfully.
Cam
Pogoplug
I've decided my next hardware hacking project will be the Pogoplug by cloud engines. As soon as i've obtained one i'll do a little review, watch this space.
Thecus Woes
Well I have battled long and hard with my Thecus N2100 and basically i've had enough of it.Â
I installed the debian firmware image via the stock gui and rebooted. I was able to login into the installer via SSH. After setting up the disk partitions the next step was to format them. Now what would happen was it would get up to 33% and and not go any further (depending on the size of the disk it can can a long amount of time for the progress bar to go beyond 33% and this is normal) however a ping I would have running would fail to respond after a couple of minutes and the SSH connection would finally drop. I tried this numerous times raid/no raid etc and always the same result.Â
Faulty hardware I though so bought another with different disks etc and guess what? yep same problem.Â
Next step was a serial connection so after a lot of messing around 9took days) with different cables/connectors etc I finally got one working.Â
Now i'm left with one I managed to return to sotck and another which is bricked and says 'No network devices found' the top NIC doesn't even light up when plugging into it so either the chip or ports are toast.
Debian on Thecus N2100 NAS
I bought a Thecus N2100 NAS a while ago with the view of putting debian on it however what I found was that no matter what combination of disks and hardware I used the process always failed during partition formatting. The progress bar would go up to 33% and after a minute or so all hard disk activity would stop and a few minutes later the ssh connection would drop and the IP being un pingable.Â
Now it's common for the progress not to go above 33% for what can be hours depending on your hard disk size however the dropping of the connection is fishy indeed so today i'm going to install a serial header and see what that tells me.