Fettled any computer stuff today?

[Mr Larrington]

A bit of ping -f while frobbing the door might be prudent...

A cursory pinging of NAS devices in both locations shews “time<1ms”.  Not very helpful

That's where the -f comes in.  Spews packets as fast as unreasonably possible, prints a '.' for each packet sent and a backspace for each packet received.  If your terminal starts filling up with dots, you know something's leaking.

This is particularly helpful as the output can be squinted at from across the room while wiggling wires.

Does it behave thusly on Windows boxen?  Doesn’t look like it from here…. And I can’t see any screen from where the cable meets the door unless I use my laptop which is amazingly slow at everything, including networks.  I'll try rebooting the switch first, but not until tomorrow as it requires grovelling on the floor in a manner incompatible with This Time Of Night.

[Kim]

"Damn and blast Microsoft!" said Kim, the words coming easily through force of habit.

It appears not.  Too much danger of it being useful, I suppose.  Like the way it defaults to 3 pings only, like a garbled misremembering of The Hunt For Red October.

[Mr Larrington]

Runs backup of USB3 drive to NAS in Great Hall: 781 Mb/s

Turns switch in Chips Room off and on again

Runs backup of same drive to NAS in Chips Room: 834 Mb/s

Conclusion: cable is sound

[pumpkin]

Well the £100 kybds arrived today and v.nice they are. No doubt the heads of depts will be clamouring for them. There are 3 agendas running 're kybds. A sensible one, a in case of this one and a do you know how important we are? One. Guess whose winning.

[Mr Larrington]

Moved Mr Creosote back into TowersNet's Cupboard o'Stuffs and shuffled the various boxes and bits of string into tidiness.  Closed the door.  Expect string to be hopelessly entangled when next I have cause to delve therein.  Hopefully the switch will now behave itself as Bruiser McHuge will do doing his weekly full backup RSN and I don't want to spend the afternoon running up and down the stairs swearing.

[perpetual dan]

Mrs Dan was suffering from the printer complaining about paper size on each page and only printing odd numbered pages. I suggest she brings her laptop down to where the printer and I am. Printing works fine. She goes back up. Even numbered pages.
I blame windows. She blames WiFi. Bloody printers.

[SoreTween]

Spent much of the day reading up on VLANs and eventually came to the conclusion that the method I was attempting to apply to segregate my switch & router from other stuff was not going to work.  The only way is a separate management VLAN.  That meant an additional NIC in my desktop (the management device).  As my finger hovered over the Amazon order button on a £9 TP-Link I thought maybe I should spend a bit more on a server NIC that would be VLAN capable....
That led to a thought, could the NICs on my ancient Gigabyte mobo possibly be 802.1q capable?
inxi -Fxz told me the manufacturer and series (3 possibilities) for the driver.
Realtek.com told me the current offerings of all 3 series support 802.1q.
Grabbed the spare mobo off the shelf which told me the exact part including the generation.
Some cruddy spec PDF regurgitation website told me that yes, that generation of part is indeed VLAN capable.

Quick scan of a couple of Linux VLAN how-to sites and Robert's your mothers brother.  Dead easy.  Why did I faff down a blind alley so long?

[StuAff]

lots. I do some IT work at a Uni. Comedy gold at times. Currently replacing the covid ridden kybds of yesteryear with new ones covered in a plastic film (so they can be wiped) before those get replaced with medical grade kybds at £100 each and mice at a similar price. Pre covid,nobody cared about those kybds. Full of skin,bogeys, food etc. Now it's a frenzy. prob 2000 upwards being replaced. So 2000+ @100 pound plus o/t at time and a half or double for those who want it. Lots of these machines are locked down incl the peripherals so prob 5 mins at least per machine to unlock/replace/lock. Macs have a slightly different kybd layout but we havent bought Apple specific kybds so people are having issues with eg @ which is in a different place.

You can remap the keyboard- have a Microsoft (Windows layout) keyboard on my 2006 Mac Pro, works fine.

[Afasoas]

Spent much of the day reading up on VLANs and eventually came to the conclusion that the method I was attempting to apply to segregate my switch & router from other stuff was not going to work.  The only way is a separate management VLAN.  That meant an additional NIC in my desktop (the management device).  As my finger hovered over the Amazon order button on a £9 TP-Link I thought maybe I should spend a bit more on a server NIC that would be VLAN capable....
That led to a thought, could the NICs on my ancient Gigabyte mobo possibly be 802.1q capable?
inxi -Fxz told me the manufacturer and series (3 possibilities) for the driver.
Realtek.com told me the current offerings of all 3 series support 802.1q.
Grabbed the spare mobo off the shelf which told me the exact part including the generation.
Some cruddy spec PDF regurgitation website told me that yes, that generation of part is indeed VLAN capable.

Quick scan of a couple of Linux VLAN how-to sites and Robert's your mothers brother.  Dead easy.  Why did I faff down a blind alley so long?

You could always have the switch tag untagged packets on the way into the port the computer is plugged into. The setting for this is usually pvid or Primary vLAN Id.
Or, you could setup a vLAN interface on top of your existing interface, and add the appropriate route so that your management PC can talk to both the default vLAN and the management vLAN at the same time.

[Afasoas]

Been trying to turn the Pinetab (Linux Tablet) I ordered into something useful*. It might be a couple of months before the developers have caught up with the hardware though. Just flashing mobian onto as I type.

*I thought a tablet with a keyboard running Linux might be an alternative to dragging a laptop around

[Mr Larrington]

Deleted 1,246,778 easily recreatable files off Bruiser McHuge's spinning rust thing, which should make copying its contents to the on-its-way SSD a sight quicker.  Assuming Yodel deign to deliver it, obv.

[SoreTween]

You could always have the switch tag untagged packets on the way into the port the computer is plugged into. The setting for this is usually pvid or Primary vLAN Id.

That was Plan A.  Office VLAN & Management VLAN were within the same subnet and the ports tagged & pvid appropriately.  The desktop port was tagged for both VLANs but but there can be only one pvid and whichever pvid I set that's the VLAN the desktop could see.  I was hoping having it tagged for both would magically make it work for both.

Or, you could setup a vLAN interface on top of your existing interface, and add the appropriate route so that your management PC can talk to both the default vLAN and the management vLAN at the same time.

I didn't need to manually set any routing.  Office & Management are now on separate subnets.  The desktop switch port is still tagged for both and has the office PVID so those packets are untagged between switch & desktop.  The management VLAN is added in the desktop config with the Office NIC as parent.  I have an urge to make the Office traffic tagged too and assign no IP to the parent NIC but I can't think of any reason, other than neatness/OCD, to go to that extra effort.

I still have two VLAN problems to deal with:
First, my guest VLAN.  On the router WiFi guests are isolated and on the switch wired guests are isolated (by PRVID & port isolation) but the wired guests can see the WiFi guests and vice versa.  I'll likely end up having separate VLANs for wired and wireless guests.
The second problem I have my doubts I can solve without hardware investment but I need to spend some time understanding VLAN assignment by MAC to be certain.

[Marco Stefano]

I have a 2007 HP Pavilion desktop with a Core 2 Duo CPU, shipped with 32 bit Vista Home Premium. A few years ago it became rather unstable, and I dabbled with a dual boot using Ubuntu. At the start of this year it all became even more shaky; I increased the RAM to the most it would take (6GB), but to no avail. I had an inkling that the HDD was in trouble (clattered like a bag of bolts sometimes, or just buzzed), and left it unplugged from the mains for several months, using my wife's laptop and my phone instead.

I have recently been looking at refurbished laptops to replace it (Thinkpad of some kind, HP Elitebook), but thought I might try the old desktop, just for fun. Plugged in, it booted up and performed chkdsk (one problem resolved, but cannot remember it). All fine, boots okay into Vista and Ubuntu. Email problems in Vista, but not in Ubuntu. Hmm. Toyed with the idea of Windows 7, but could not even get the upgrade checking tool to run. Sod 'em.

Several Youtube videos later, and after drive reformatting with a little trepidation (but if I bust it, so what) it's solely running 64 bit Linux Mint v20 (Cinnamon flavour), and the HDD is much quieter than it has ever been. Still having problems sending emails, but sure I can sort that out. Seems nice; saved from the skip for a while at least. Now to sort out which software to load, and might get an older Thinkpad to play with as well.

[Afasoas]

whacked the

Code: [Select]

ntopng package onto pfSense. Once you get over how largely useless the default view is, it's not half bad. Drives up CPU utilisation on the Firewall somewhat though - I reduced the number of interfaces it was monitoring and turned off some features. That has tempered it somewhat. The community edition is somewhat neutered - does give a useful view of what is going on in realtime, which is fine if you have a problem right now. And although there are some historic stats, there is not nearly enough historic information without paying for a licensed version. Which I am sorely tempted to do - the Raspberry Pi Pro license is 50 EUR. But as nice as it is to see what hosts on the Internet machines on my network are talking to, it is not needed and I'll probably remove it from the Firewall in a few days.

Also, currently benchmarking Windows AV products for work.

[T42]

Finally got around to swapping out the noisy-fanned power supply in my tower PC for a new one, by dint of laying the old one, still hooked up, on top of the disk bays, putting the new one in its place and then disconnecting/reconnecting the cables one by one.  Finally lifted the old one out and set it triumphantly to one side.

MrsT: are you going to send it for a biopsy?

[Mr Larrington]

Ebuyer have confirmed that last week’s fresh'n'shiny SSD was indeed DED
I'll probably have to get up at stupid o'clock on Wednesday for Yodel to try to deliver the replacement

[Mr Larrington]

So having persuaded the wretched thing to stay connected via USB long enough to copy the files across, removed the new SSD from its caddy, dived under the desk with a torch between my teefs and extracted the spinning rust.  Found some screws in a box of Stuffs that came with the PC downstairs, attach SSD to pop-out plastic tray thingy without dropping even one black screw onto dark-coloured carpet.  Bung plastic tray thing back in machine, connect cables, switch on power supply, take deep breath, switch on PC.

You bastard, Gates!  Where is my New Shin... oh, there.  Calling itself "J:".  We'll soon fix that.  Dropbox works.  Thunderbird works.  Backup works once I'd poked the script with a stick to tell it that there is no longer a mystery 128 MB partition on Disk 2.  In fact, everything works.  Hurrah!

[Chris S]

BN: Yet another cooker-related RCD trip finally killed the Rasp Pi that's running DHCP/DNS for the house.
GN: Thanks to the awesomeness that is Raspberry Pi, I had Raspbian re-flashed and dnsmasq back online with minimal swears. OK quite a lot of swears, but they were mostly directed at the cooker.

[Chris S]

Ha! Happened again. Back to burning SDs and restoring dnsmasq config. WHERE'S OUR NEW COOKER???!!

Sent from my SM-G930F using Tapatalk

[Kim]

Got a USB powerbank that allows through charging?

[Chris S]

It's clearly had enough - I guess tech can only take so many outages and restart surges. I don't think any of our chargers are through charge, but that's a sound idea - I'll have a look around.

Sent from my SM-G930F using Tapatalk

[Chris S]

Looks like it killed something in the router this time - all the radio has disappeared, and there are no wired connections. TBF, the RCD trips this evening seemed worse than on previous occasions, and there was a definite smell of hot electrics from the cooker, so looks terminal for both cooker and router. Yaaaaay!

Sent from my SM-G930F using Tapatalk

[SoreTween]

Further fettling my solar panel controller.  It is every bit as frustrating as you would expect for an Internet of Shit device.  One bit is particularly satisfying, my location.  Thanks to the magic of Fake GPS it has my location recorded as a couple of km North East of Chepstow

I wonder if it'll turn up on the installation map.

Still work to do, the damn thing won't connect to my whiffy, well it did for about 6 hours and since then point blank refuses.  It also appears to be borking my PowerLine kit. It uses powerline comms to communicate with the microinverters and separate 1901 systems are supposed to co exist.  The evidence suggests they don't.  Worst case I'll have to move the solar kit to a separate consumer unit and fit chokes to keep it out of the main board which would be a right PITA.

[Chris S]

Got a USB powerbank that allows through charging?

Router was OK after all.

I found a through-charging power brick - so stuck it inline on the Pi. Works a treat  . Several cooker-induced power cuts later, and Pi hasn't missed a beat. Poor person's UPS FTW 

[Feanor]

Speaking of Po' Boy UPS, I've been looking at the various servers here.

There are several HP microservers, which are low-powered CPUs with small memory and several drive bays.
I think I'm going to consolidate them to a couple of older laptops which have way more horsepower and have built-in UPS by way of their battery.