Author Topic: Fettled any computer stuff today? (Read 218663 times)

Afasoas · « **Reply #325 on:** 09 June, 2015, 03:22:39 pm »

Procured a RasPi 2 to run as a low cost HTPC.

Thus far, I've managed to install OpenElec/Kodi. And because things are slightly complicated in that this Pi will live on the WAN side of my firewall*, I've configured an OpenVPN end point with appropriate firewall rules to restrict access to DNS/NTP and Plex services.

I've still to get the OpenVPN client working on the Pi, as well as the Plex plugins. Hopefully the quad-core Pi will have enough grunt for streaming from the Plex server whilst encrypting/decrypting VPN traffic.

*I'm in temporary accommodation for a few months, with my network connected to the home network via a Wi-Fi bridge

woollypigs · « **Reply #326 on:** 09 June, 2015, 07:03:02 pm »

After a few years of meaning too I finally managed to set up bittorrent so that I can run it from the terminal. And now it automatically starts to download when saving a .torrent file to a folder on the remote/server/laptop.

Mr Larrington · « **Reply #327 on:** 03 July, 2015, 06:06:11 pm »

Brought Lt. Col. Larrington (retd.)'s desktop Babbaging imto the 21st century by replacing his Windows 98 box with my old XP one; also replaced his printer with my old Canon and connected my old monitor to his laptop.

Canardly · « **Reply #328 on:** 03 July, 2015, 08:21:13 pm »

Installed new mobo bundle and sorted all the associated software faffage. Must say Im impressed with finish quality of Novatech own label PSU, very substantial and something Corsairish about it, braided long cables etc.

Feanor · « **Reply #329 on:** 03 July, 2015, 08:31:19 pm »

Quote from: Mr Larrington on 03 July, 2015, 06:06:11 pm

Brought Lt. Col. Larrington (retd.)'s desktop Babbaging imto the 21st century by replacing his Windows 98 box with my old XP one; also replaced his printer with my old Canon and connected my old monitor to his laptop.

Boggles.

Are there really still Win9x boxen in the wild?
I thought they were extinct, and that XP was the historical base-line.

Mr Larrington · « **Reply #330 on:** 03 July, 2015, 08:35:43 pm »

The Win 98 machine hasn't seen much use since he got broadband an' wireless an' a Win 7 laptop but it did getbused for the odd bit of printing.

Mr Larrington · « **Reply #331 on:** 05 July, 2015, 04:08:03 pm »

Win 7 box can now access files and printer on XP one; latter can see former but can't get access

Afasoas · « **Reply #332 on:** 16 July, 2015, 11:47:13 pm »

Sharing permissions not right?
Are you using password protected sharing on the W7 box?

Afasoas · « **Reply #333 on:** 17 July, 2015, 12:01:15 am »

The home server has been built twelve months but I still have got around to implementing any kind of decent backup regime. And to be fair, few of the important files have crappy changed since I populated said home server from the now forlorn NAS box.

However, all that is about to change as one of the household is about to (hopefully) begin a degree course. That and I should be making more effort to backup scripts, configuration files and user home directories from the PCs.

I raided the graveyard at work and I have enough gubbins (if they work) to build almost two backup servers. One to be situated at home and the other (eventually) to be situated at the outlaws connected via a site-to-site VPN.

Both will be based on Core2Quad CPUs for now. That's fine for the local backup server which will be powered on once a week but for the remote server, that will be a filestore with backups coming in the opposite, sub optimal. So that means if this works, replacing the Q6600 with a modern Atom/Celeron or similar.

ZFS looks great for sending incremental snapshots back and forth.

Mr Larrington · « **Reply #334 on:** 17 July, 2015, 12:31:18 am »

Quote from: Afasoas on 16 July, 2015, 11:47:13 pm

Sharing permissions not right?
Are you using password protected sharing on the W7 box?

It didn't ask for a password when trying to acces the W7 box, but both are forty miles away on the opposite side of Londonton and I aten't back there until September.

I can't get my own XP box to play nicely with its 8.1 siblings either, but as it only exists as a device to feed music to the kitchen it doesn't really need to.

Vince · « **Reply #335 on:** 21 July, 2015, 09:24:49 am »

I resurrected an old Samsung Netbook by installing Linux Mint. BN, it looks like the battery is dead so only mains operation.

Technophobe Mrs Wunja is currently using it to browse Guiding websites, so a successful operation on more than one front.

Afasoas · « **Reply #336 on:** 23 July, 2015, 11:04:49 pm »

I've got an old Netbook running Mint that I've been using recently. It's okay but not as spritely as CrunchBang which is unfortunately no longer maintained.
I might switch out the window manager for open box and strip out anything I don't need to be running on the box. ...further down the line.

Tonight I've switched my VPS from CentOS to Debian. This was so I could use EncFS to encrypt specific folders used by Postfix etc. It's destined to be an external mail server. I want to make it as secure as possible, however I realise being a virtual machine, the memory could be dumped and that will contain any encryption keys. Thus, I will use fetchmail to continually download email to my internal mail server, which I'll then access using a mail client over VPN.

Once the internal mail server is up and running, I need to migrate old emails from the Synology NAS. That will free up a pair of 2TB disks.

There's an additional pair of 2TB disks in my desktop PC that were just hosting pictures, personal files and encrypted Linux home folders. I've moved the pictures and files to my file server, and the Linux home folders to a new partition on the boot SSD.

So, the 4 2TB disks will go into a new case, along with other bits acquired from the 'graveyard' at work. This will be the basis of a new backup server. Hopefully the one of the MOBOs I've got will sport a NIC that can do wake-on-lan. The primary fileserver can then start it up with a cron job, initiate a snapshot of it's filesystem, restore it via SSH onto the backup server and then shut it down again.

And if that's not convoluted enough, there's more to this mad plan. I mentioned sometime ago the prospect of scanning and archiving a metric shed load of documents - so next year a third remote server maybe commissioned for storing those, as well as any documents the pseudo outlaws add to it. Cue second firewall (already built - had intended to sell it) and backups going in both directions.

Hopefully I'll find some power-efficient hardware for the remote server, the last thing I want is electrickery bills going through the roof.
I've a YACFers website to finish off - which has been delayed again along with all my own learning/projects due to some turmoil in the family and long shifts at work. Thankfully all that's coming to an end and I'll even be able to host his website and email complete with sturdy and secure backups in the very near future.

Tim Hall · « **Reply #337 on:** 03 August, 2015, 04:44:22 pm »

Quote from: Afasoas on 09 June, 2015, 03:22:39 pm

Procured a RasPi 2 to run as a low cost HTPC.

Thus far, I've managed to install OpenElec/Kodi. And because things are slightly complicated in that this Pi will live on the WAN side of my firewall*, I've configured an OpenVPN end point with appropriate firewall rules to restrict access to DNS/NTP and Plex services.

I've still to get the OpenVPN client working on the Pi, as well as the Plex plugins. Hopefully the quad-core Pi will have enough grunt for streaming from the Plex server whilst encrypting/decrypting VPN traffic.

*I'm in temporary accommodation for a few months, with my network connected to the home network via a Wi-Fi bridge

I see that XMBC/Kodi has moved on a bit since I last installed it, in that it's end of life. OSMC is where it's at, apparently. But that seems a bit too resource/power hungry for my Pi and 1A psu, so I found the last ever Raspbmc image and jiggledd my Raspberry Pi so that it talks Wifi to the rest of the network.

The other thing I fettled was switching on Windows media streaming (on another box) and finding which button on the tele to push to receive UPNP stuffs. Result: large collection of photos can be viewed on TV screen.

Phear mi l33t haxor skillz.

Afasoas · « **Reply #338 on:** 03 August, 2015, 08:09:52 pm »

Quote from: Tim Hall on 03 August, 2015, 04:44:22 pm

<snip />
I see that XMBC/Kodi has moved on a bit since I last installed it, in that it's end of life. OSMC is where it's at, apparently. But that seems a bit too resource/power hungry for my Pi and 1A psu, so I found the last ever Raspbmc image and jiggledd my Raspberry Pi so that it talks Wifi to the rest of the network.

Kodi is very much alive???
15.0 was released late last week and 15.1 is in test.

Tim Hall · « **Reply #339 on:** 03 August, 2015, 08:22:09 pm »

Quote from: Afasoas on 03 August, 2015, 08:09:52 pm

Quote from: Tim Hall on 03 August, 2015, 04:44:22 pm
<snip />
I see that XMBC/Kodi has moved on a bit since I last installed it, in that it's end of life. OSMC is where it's at, apparently. But that seems a bit too resource/power hungry for my Pi and 1A psu, so I found the last ever Raspbmc image and jiggledd my Raspberry Pi so that it talks Wifi to the rest of the network.

Kodi is very much alive???
15.0 was released late last week and 15.1 is in test.

Oops, my mistake. Raspbmc is end of life. Kodi, as you rightly say, lives on.

Quote

Kodi is a media center application and OSMC is the operating system that runs Kodi and brings it to your device. OSMC is not a fork of Kodi but rather a Linux distribution that ships Kodi as the main application. This is a similar concept to Kodi running on top of Windows or Android.

Afasoas · « **Reply #340 on:** 04 August, 2015, 09:53:21 am »

Take a look at OpenElec if you want Kodi on the Pi.

CommuteTooFar · « **Reply #341 on:** 06 August, 2015, 01:15:45 pm »

Two weeks ago. My fathers computer was crashing intermittently. So I bought a new power supply. Good guess the problem disappeared.

woollypigs · « **Reply #342 on:** 06 August, 2015, 02:11:42 pm »

Needed a change so tried out Ubuntu 15.04, in hope that my laptop would like it. Naa nope, stuff still freaked out my CPU for no reason and eat RAM. So back to Debian 8, openbox and tint2 for a much cooler CPU and more RAM. Still slow by today's standards but fast enough to not drive you nuts. And I think I can stretch the life span a bit more on the laptop before upgrade is needed.

mcshroom · « **Reply #343 on:** 06 August, 2015, 03:10:56 pm »

Today has been a day playing with Macros in Excel. I'm trying to automate a process that minimises Excel, takes a screenshot, saves that screenshot as an image and then places a hyperlink to that image into a cell.

Getting there, but it's been a long time since I last did any serious work in VB

Tim Hall · « **Reply #344 on:** 06 August, 2015, 05:23:26 pm »

Quote from: Afasoas on 04 August, 2015, 09:53:21 am

Take a look at OpenElec if you want Kodi on the Pi.

I may well do. Rasmbmc with Kodi keeps disconnecting the external HDD. Although the HDD has its own power supply, I suspect the disconnects are down to power supply issues to the Pi. Is OpenElec any less power hungry?

Of course a better way to fix it is run the Pi off a 2A supply.

Kim · « **Reply #345 on:** 06 August, 2015, 08:30:43 pm »

I wouldn't piss about if you suspect power issues on a Raspberry Pi with USB stuff attached. They seem to work admirably well from a decent 5V supply, but can become quite flaky when powered by random phone chargers that are a bit more droppy-outy than they ought to be.

Tim Hall · « **Reply #346 on:** 07 August, 2015, 04:20:40 pm »

Quote from: Kim on 06 August, 2015, 08:30:43 pm

I wouldn't piss about if you suspect power issues on a Raspberry Pi with USB stuff attached. They seem to work admirably well from a decent 5V supply, but can become quite flaky when powered by random phone chargers that are a bit more droppy-outy than they ought to be.

You right. I've ordered 2A 5V usb goodness from 7 day shop.

David Martin · « **Reply #347 on:** 07 August, 2015, 05:04:47 pm »

Definitely the way to go. Pi's can be flaky.

Kim · « **Reply #348 on:** 07 August, 2015, 09:39:24 pm »

This is doubly annoying, because when you *do* experience some spurious issue, everyone on the forums starts suggesting voodoo power supply fixes, rather than addressing the actual problem.

Obfettle: Diagnosed and removed a dodgy RAM stick from barakta's desktop. Hopefully Windows will BSOD less now. Replacement to come later, but it will run fine on 4gig for now.

phantasmagoriana · « **Reply #349 on:** 07 August, 2015, 09:54:39 pm »

My laptop appears to have gone Windoze update-crazy. It's been installing updates since about 4pm, and is currently on 161 of 209...