kennywest

The new Wyse machine should serve as a caching DNS for the internal network. This will enable us to resolve host names on the internet (e.g. www.google.com) and local hostnames (e.g. localhostname.earth). My old router used dnrd to accomplish this, so I will use dnrd again. You could use a full blown DNS server, such as bind but bind has always suffered some security issues and is harder to configure (but not impossible). So, first we need to download and extract dnrd: # wget http://downloads.sourceforge.net/dnrd/dnrd-2.20.3.tar.gz # tar xvfz dnrd-2.20.3.tar.gz Next, install a compiler: # apt-get install gcc # apt-get install g++ # apt-get install make Next, configure the package: # ./configure Compile and install the package: # make # make install Create a startup script ( /etc/init.d/dnrd ) #! /bin/sh set -e PATH= /usr/local/sbin:/usr/local/bin:/sbin:/bin:/usr/sbin:/usr/bin DESC= "Domain Name Relay Daemon" NAME= dnrd DAEMON= /usr/local/sbin/ $NAME PIDFILE= /var/run/ $N...

As already mentioned in an earlier post , I have bought a small Wyse thin client. The picture above shows the Transcend flash card with 40-pin IDE that comes with the Wyse terminal. The card can only store 512MB data and I am not sure how a flash card reacts on a live operating system writing log files to it every now and then. A flash card ages and has a limited number of write / delete operations. Since the Wyse has plenty of room, I decided to mount a normal 10 GB hard drive, recovered from an older PC. I also installed an extra network card, since this device will be used as firewall / router / proxy for my network. Most Wyse terminals' BIOS are protected with a password. The default password is Fireport (I had to look it up on the internet). You'll need this password and enter the BIOS to change the device's boot order. By default, it searches the network for a boot image ... which will take some time if you don't have a TFTP boot server running. The picture below...

Before I start telling about my new pet project, I must congratulate my 3 colleagues that joined me at the Ubuntu booth on this weekends Dipro fair. We managed to gather around €80 of donations from people collecting an Ubuntu (or Kubuntu) installation medium. Compared to an earlier fair I did, with roughly the same people, this amount of money is enormous. If everything goes well, this money will be transfered to the Belgium Ubuntu loco team for supporting their actions. Anyway, like any other Dipor fair, there were a lot of people trying to sell old computers and laptops for unreasonable prices, the most hideous cases, do-it-yourself-ink-cartridge-refill kits and mini keyboards only my kids can type on :) While strolling through the fair, however, a colleague showed me an interesting Wyse Thin Client. These terminals are normally used as a very lightweigt computer, accessing terminal services provided by some server running Windows or Unix. This particular device (a 9455XL ) was run...

Oh yes. I received another mail from a different girl, I mean woman, asking me for something totally different than love. Please read ... it's funny. Dear Friend, My name is Elena, I have 31 year and I live in Russian province. I work in library and after my work I allowed to use computer when it possible. I finded your address in internet and I decided to write you this letter. I have 7-year daughter Angelina, her father abandoned us and we live with my mother. Recently my mother lost job and our situation became very difficult. The price for heating our home is very high and we cannot afford it anymore. The winter is coming and weather is colder each day. We worry if the temperature will become cold in our home, we don't know how to survive. For heating our home we need portable stove which give heat from burning wood. We have many wood in our region, but we cannot buy the stove in local market because it cost equivalent of 193 Euro and very expensive for us. If you have any ...

... I guess not. Today I received the following mail on my very old Hotmail account. Dear User, We are sorry to inform you that we care currently working on securing our server. During this process, an account that is not manually verified by us will be deleted, Please confirm that you have an account and submit your information for manual verification by one of our customer care representatives Information that is be to provided is below: User Name: UserID: Password: Date Of Birth: Country (At Signup): Upon confirmation of the information from you, we will manually verify your yahoo account and, thereby, prevent it from being deleted, We are sorry for any inconvenience this might cause. Account owner "who" refuses to update his/her account after two weeks of receiving this warning will lose his or her account permanently. __________________________________________________________________________________________________ Copyright © 2008 Yahoo. All ...

A few years ago I bought an orange fluorescent rod, which, mounted behind my television cabinet, gives an orange ambient light. The other weekend, it broke down :( Unfortunately, the original manufacturer ( WOFI ) stopped selling these a while ago. Makro where I originally bought the rod doesn't sell them anymore either. So I had a problem. Velleman however has these rods in its products list, so I rushed to a local dealer, finding that he only had these in green and white (WTF?). So I still had a problem. There's no way to open these rods, since the black ends are glued to the orange rod at both sides. So normally, there's no way to open these rods without breaking something. Fortunately the black end with the power cord on the rod I own came loose a while ago. So I decided to take it apart to see if there was a way to fix it. Inside, there is a normal fluorescent tube of 56W (about 1.5 meters in length) powered by an electronic ballast. Normally, fluorescent lamps you f...

A while ago there was a series on the BBC on Heston Blumenthal's search of perfection. In the series, Heston tries to "perfect" 8 traditional dishes. About a year ago, a friend of mine brought these series to my attention, but in fact, I've never watched them. That's why I bought the books (in the meantime there have been 2 series) and yesterday, I tried to make Heston's version of Spaghetti Bolognese . I will not go into detail on how to make the sauce, it is a lengthy process that takes about 8 hours. Instead, I will talk about some of the modifications I've done to Heston's recipe. There were some ingredients I couldn't find: The star anise: According to Heston, this is the most important ingredient for the sauce, because combined with the onions, it enhances the flavor of the meat. Boned oxtail The coriander seeds The Thai fish sauce The sherry vinegar Apparently the star anise has a concentrated anise flavor, so I replaced it with 3 tablespo...