Category Archives: Miscellaneous

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Miscellaneous

Internet Connection Speeds

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I figured I’d put this out so someone can read it all in one place.

Analog copper moved onto digital copper moved onto fiber optics. The best way to describe bandwidth and latency is to think of it this way:
Bandwidth is how much water can go through the pipe, latency is how much pressure. Or, bandwidth is how many lanes the road has and latency is how fast the cars are moving. Or (another car one) bandwidth is how fast the cars can drive and latency is how fast they can accelerate.
Narrowband references anything less than 56Kbps. Broadband references anything greater than 56Kbps.
FTTN – Fiber to the node – Connects the ISP to a street cabinet in your neighborhood via Fiber, and then copper to your home.
FTTC – Fiber to the Capinet/Curb – Connects the ISP to a cabinet within 300m of your home, and then copper to your home.
FTTB/FTTH – Fiber to the building/basement Fiber to the Home – Fiber comes all the way to a hand-off just outside of the living area of the home.

9600 baud modem. A whopping 1.2KB/sec. Still in use for null serial connections to many network devices.
14.4 modem. Analog, standard RJ11 phone line. 1.8KB/sec
19.2 modem. Analog, standard RJ11 phone line. 2.4KB/sec
33.6 modem. Analog, standard RJ11 phone line. 4.2KB/sec
56k flex modem. Analog, standard RJ11 phone line limited to 53kbps on the lines. 7KB/sec

64Kbps ISDN. Digital, standard RJ11 phone line. 64Kb in both directions. 8KB/sec
128Kbps ISND. Digital, standard RJ11 phone line. 128Kb in both directions. 16KB/sec

xDSL. Digital/Analog, usually running over standard RJ11 phone lines. Ranges from 128Kbps to 24Mbps. 16KB/sec to 3072KB/sec (theoretical max of 50Mbit)
Cable. Digital, usually running over RG59 coaxial cable. Ranges from 256Kbps to 50Mbps. 32KB/sec to 6400KB/sec (theoretical max of 400Mbit)

DS0 – Copper – 64Kbps. 8KB/sec
DS1 (T1) – Copper – 1.544Mbps.
DS2 (T2) – Copper – 6.312Mbps.
DS3 (T3) – Copper – 44.736Mbps.
DS4 (T4) – Fiber – 274.176Mbps.
DS5 (T5) – Fiber – 400.352Mbps.

OC1 – Fiber – 51.84Mbps. 6635.52KB/sec 6.48MB/sec 0.006GB/sec
OC3 – Fiber – 155.52Mbps. 19906.56KB/sec 19.44MB/sec 0.019GB/sec
OC12 – Fiber – 622.08Mbps. 79626.24KB/sec 77.76MB/sec 0.076GB/sec
OC24 – Fiber – 1244.16Mbps. 159252.48KB/sec 155.52MB/sec 0.152GB/sec
OC48 – Fiber – 2488.32Mbps. 318504.96KB/sec 311.04MB/sec 0.304GB/sec
OC96 – Fiber – 4976.64Mbps. 637009.92KB/sec 622.08MB/sec 0.608GB/sec
OC192 – Fiber – 9953.28Mbps. 1274019.84KB/sec 1244.16MB/sec 1.215GB/sec
OC768 – Fiber – 39813.12Mbps. 5096079.36KB/sec 4976.64MB/sec 4.86GB/Sec

Linux, Microsoft, Miscellaneous

Install Nagios on Ubuntu 9.x, Client on Windows

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This is how I got nagios to install on my Ubuntu 9.10 x86 server (LAMP):
***EDIT*** I’ve upgraded the 9.10 x86 server to 10.04LTS x86 and Nagios is still running like a champ. FYI.

This assumes you’ve already got LAMP up and running on the box and have at least a little common sense when it comes to linux commands. I still use putty to connect via SSH to my box. I also cheated and made it so I don’t do sudo (sudo passwd root, then su into root). If you don’t want to do that, just add ‘sudo’ in front of all the commands.

Update your box:
apt-get update
apt-get upgrade
apt-get dist-upgrade

Install the GCC compiler development libraries:
apt-get install build-essential

Install GD development libraries:
apt-get install libgd2-xpm-dev

Create a new user “nagios”:
useradd -m -s /bin/bash nagios

Make a password for the new user:
passwd nagios

Create a new group “nagcmd”
groupadd nagcmd
usermod -a -G nagcmd nagios
usermod -a -G nagcmd www-data

Download the nagios files – I use /home/username as my download point:
wget http://prdownloads.sourceforge.net/sourceforge/nagios/nagios-3.2.0.tar.gz
wget http://prdownloads.sourceforge.net/sourceforge/nagiosplug/nagios-plugins-1.4.14.tar.gz

Extract and compile the files:
tar xzf nagios-3.2.0.tar.gz
cd nagios-3.2.0
./configure --with-command-group=nagcmd
make all
make install
make install-init
make install-config
make install-commandmode
make install-webconf

Create a nagiosadmin account for the web interface:
htpasswd -c /usr/local/nagios/etc/htpasswd.users nagiosadmin

Restart Apache
apache2ctl restart

That should be it for the installation phase of the main application. You can verify that everything works by viewing the site: http://localhost/nagios (or http://ipofserver/nagios) and logging in using nagiosadmin/thepasswordyoupicked. But now we should probably put the plugins in place before actually going through any other setup.

Unpack the plugins:
tar xzf nagios-plugins-1.4.14.tar.gz
cd nagios-plugins-1.4.14

Configure and install the plugins:
./configure --with-nagios-user=nagios --with-nagios-group=nagios
make
make install

Verify that the sample nagios configuration files are fine:
/usr/local/nagios/bin/nagios -v /usr/local/nagios/etc/nagios.cfg

If there are no errors you can start nagios:
/etc/init.d/nagios start

http://localhost/nagios
Click on the Tactical Overview navbar link to see all that’s monitored right now. This may take a few moments to load as to not “kill” the machine with requests.

http://www.monitoringexchange.org/

INSTALL CLIENT ON WINDOWS MACHINE(S):
I’ve installed on WindowsXP 32, Windows Server 2003 32/64, and Windows 7 64bit without any issues.

Setting up for Windows Machine monitoring is a little more in depth:

Download the NSClient++:
http://nsclient.org/nscp/downloads
Extract to the C:\ directory
Open a CMD prompt and navigate to C:\NSClient++-0.3.7-Win32

Install the Service and System Tray:
The system tray gave me some issues on a Windows 7 x64 box. FYI.
nsclient++ /install
nsclient++ SysTray -install

Configure the NSClientpp Service:
Open up services (services.msc) and find NSCLientpp (Nagios)
Right-Click and select properties
Click on the Log On tab and make sure the Local System account can interact with the desktop

Edit the INI file:
Navigate to C:\NSClient++*\
Edit NSC.INI

Uncomment the following:

FileLogger.dll
CheckSystem.dll
CheckDisk.dll
NSClientListener.dll
NRPEListener.dll
SysTray.dll
CheckEventLog.dll
CheckHelpers.dll

Uncomment the hosts allowed file – either add the IP address of the Nagios server or just leave it blank and it will accept from all IPs.

Save the file, Start the service – I’ve had it work without interact with desktop, but it was recommended by Nagios to enable that feature.

Back on the Nagios server, edit the /usr/local/nagios/etc/objects/windows.cfg file to the liking of your windows machine.
You may have to add the host name/ip to your /etc/hosts file to rid yourself of errors

Verify your setup can run:
/usr/local/nagios/bin/nagios -v /usr/local/nagios/etc/nagios.cfg
Then restart nagios:
/etc/init.d/nagios restart

Now you should be done. Login to your http://serverip/nagios site with your nagiosadmin/passwordyouchoseearlier account information.

As a side note, I also edited /usr/local/nagios/etc/nagios.cfg for the admin_email= to send email to my account. I already have postfix installed from another project, so it *should* send me alert emails. AND I found that you have to edit /usr/local/nagios/etc/objects/contacts.cfg as well. After editing make sure you restart the nagios service.

***EDIT***

I was receiving the emails just fine, but they were coming from the “wrong domain”. Ubuntu/debian puts the domain name by default in the /etc/mailname file. Edit that file and then reload postfix.
nano /etc/mailname
postfix reload

If the file does not exist (you’re creating a new file with nano), type in your domain name (ie thelibrarie.com), and then save the file. Then edit the postfix configuration and uncomment myorgin.
nano /etc/mailname
nano /etc/postfix/main.c

myorigin = /etc/mailname

And then try it again. You can test it out by sending yourself some mail:
mail -s test username@domain.tld
body
Control + D
Control + D

I also realized that I put how to install the client on Windows machines, so I should probably mention that in the subject, eh?

***EDIT***
OK, I had to add another user to be able to view the status of the systems.
Add the User:
SSH to your nagios system
htpasswd /usr/local/nagios/etc/htpasswd.users USERNAMEHERE
apache2ctl restart

Add the permissions:
nano /usr/local/nagios/etc/cgi.cfg
Search under GLOBAL HOST/SERVICE VIEW ACCESS
Change:
authorized_for_all_services=nagiosadmin
authorized_for_all_hosts=nagiosadmin
to:
authorized_for_all_services=*
authorized_for_all_hosts=*

Or you can comma-delimit the users. Either way, I win.

Restart nagios.
/etc/init.d/nagios restart

***EDIT 2***
Need more plugins? http://nagios.manubulon.com/

***EDIT 3***
There will be a new post regarding editing Nagios to add images to the map/new users/parents of configurations etc.

Miscellaneous

Helpful HTML

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Meta refresh to another page or document.
Meta Refresh (meta-refresh) is used to reload a page as another. Basically, if someone navigates to http://it.thelibrarie.com they will be automatically forwarded to http://it.thelibrarie.com/weblog.
In the of your page insert the following:
<meta http-equiv="refresh" content="0;url=http://url">
The content=0 part is the amount of time before refreshing, given in seconds. So 0 means zero seconds (instantly) and 5 would be five seconds of waiting.

Setting up a link to mail someone, even with a subject already typed out.
Create a link basically like the following:
<a href="mailto:email_address@domain.tld?subject=some_subject">

Open link in new window or new tab.
I’d like to think that all sites have any external loading websites load in their own window. I don’t want to click on a link and have the original page disappear (especially my computer help site :D). I know anyone can middle click (wheel click) on a link and it will automatically open in a new tab/window, but sometimes people are just lazy.
Welcome “Target=” links:
<a href="http://www.google.com" target=_blank>Google</a>
Shows up as:
Google – Go ahead and click on that bad boy to see for yourselves.
Target can equal _blank, _self, or _top. _blank is for new tab/window, _self is for itself, and _top is for if/when you use frames and want it to show up in a specific spot framed off. You can also make up your own variables as long as they’re declared in the framing html code.

Writing HTML Code In Blogs.
This probably affects me more than you, but I’ll put it here anyway
&lt;
Shows this: <
&gt;
Shows this: >
If you need any more of the special characters, you can always use This Site.

Playing with text.
Sometimes you just need an extra space or two between words. Other times you need the text to look the exact same as what you wrote. Welcome PRE and NBSP!
This is what NORMAL text looks like

This is what PRE text looks like

This is what NORMAL text looks like with several spaces

   This  is      what  PRE    text  looks  like          with several  spaces

Notice that the text will not wrap – all formatting is ignored with the PRE text.

This is what amp;nbsp looks like:
 Test
Two of them:
  Test
Three:
   Test
Ten:
          Test

Hope you find all this as interesting as I do. I may or may not keep adding on as I find myself using the same commands over and over.

Miscellaneous

New Theme

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For the first time in at least 2 years I’m changing up the theme of the site.  And, for the first time since I started it.thelibrarie.com I changed the home page index.html to meta refresh to /weblog.  I never got around to manually updating the index page anyway, so it’s not really a big loss.

I must, however, update the utilities/downloads section to allow for easier access. I’ve been slacking as of late, but if I have time in the next few days I’ll be sure to get that ball rolling as well.

So anyway, the old theme was called Phoenixblue, the new theme is called Hemmed. I was also looking at ShadedGrey, but I didn’t like how the images got chopped off and I am not the best with DIVs. Kramer on the other hand…

Linux, Miscellaneous

Desktop Background

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I had just finished installing Windows 7 Enterprise 64bit and Ubuntu Desktop 9.04 64bit on my laptop as a dual boot setup.

I am not really going to write about setting it up to dual boot, as it was entirely too easy. I installed Windows 7 first, but I partitioned the 320GB drive into a 40GB empty and a 280GB empty partitioning scheme. Installed 7 on the 280GB spot and then booted off the Ubuntu CD. Installed that on the 40GB. Grub was already setup for me.

But I had the issue of not being able to find a good high-quality desktop background image for my Ubuntu side of things. I didn’t really want to use one of the generic “Linux is life” ones. So I searched for a few minutes and ended up finding a neat site:

http://interfacelift.com/wallpaper_beta/. Hopefully their site stays up for quite some time. Otherwise I may have to take one of mine and create a “wallpaper.thelibrarie.com” or something.

Microsoft, Miscellaneous

Windows 7

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If anyone out there knows me, they know that I’m not really the biggest of Windows fans. Heck, I’ve probably been anti-Microsoft for most of my life thus far. I grew up on Apples (Macintosh) and then slowly attempted to gain knowledge of Linux systems (I still have a FreeBSD 4.1 CD somewhere). I didn’t actually own a Windows system until 2001 – at which time I was running a 1.4GHz AMD Athlon with 512MB RAM a 20GB HD and Windows 2000 Professional.

Then I moved onto building a crap-load (technical term here) more systems and slowly making my way up the chain. Heck, here’s a timeline if I can remember them all:

Mac OS 6.1 (Finder 4.5 I believe) was running on my first computer a MacSE (Retired)
8.9" BW Screen, 8MHz, 1MB RAM, 20MB HD, 720KB Floppy

Mac OS 7.5 was my first color computer on a PowerMac 7100/80AV (Retired)
14" Samsung CRT, 80MHz PowerPC, 16MB RAM upgraded to 48MB, 700MB HD upgraded to 2.1GB, 2X CD-ROM upgraded to 12X CD-ROM, 1.4MB Floppy, 10Base-T

Mac OS 8.1 was our first internet-enabled computer on a PowerMac G3 233 (Retired)
15" ViewSonic CRT, 233MHz G3, 128MB RAM upgraded to 384MB, 4GB HD upgraded to 20GB, 16X CD-ROM upgraded to 4x2x24 CD-RW, 1.4MB Floppy, 100MB Zip, 100Base-T

Mac OS 9.1/OSX 10.1 was my college computer on a G4 450 Gigabit Ethernet (Retired)
15" no brand LCD, Dual 450MHz G4, 256MB RAM upgraded to 1.25GB, 20GB HD upgraded to 3X 80GB, 8X DVD-ROM upgraded to 12X CD-RW/DVD Combo, 1000Base-T

Mac OS 9.1/OSX 10.1 on my first portable system – an iBook G3 (white one) (Retired)
13.1" LCD, 800MHz, 256MB RAM upgraded to 768MB, 20GB HD, 24X CD-ROM, 100Base-T

Redhat 6? on my first non-Mac system repurposed Sony unknown Model (Sold)
14" Samsung CRT on KVM, 233MHz Intel Pentium II, 32MB RAM upgraded to 64MB, 2.1GB HD, 100Base-T

FreeBSD 4.1 on my first non-GUI computer home built system (Retired)
No monitor, 350MHz AMD K6-2, 128MB RAM, 20GB HD, 12X CD-ROM, Dual 100Base-T

Windows 2000 Professional on a home built system (Sold)
15" no brand LCD via KVM, 1.4GHz AMD Athlon, 512MB RAM, 20GB HD, 24X CD-RW, 1.44 Floppy, 100Base-T

Mandrake 8 on a home built system (Broken/Trashed)
No monitor, 450MHz AMD K6-2, 512MB RAM, 40GB HD, 100Base-T

Windows XP on a home built system (LAN Source Server)
17" ViewSonic LCD, 1.6GHz AMD Athlon, 512MB RAM, 40GB HD, 24XCD-ROM, 100Base-T

Windows XP on a Compaq V5000 CTO laptop (Sold to Family)
15" LCD, 1.8GHz AMD Athlon, 256MB RAM upgraded to 2048MB, 20GB HD upgraded to 120GB, 12X DVD-ROM, 100Base-T

Windows XP on a home built system (Repurposed – see next)
17" Viewsonic LCD on KVM, 2.6GHz Intel P4, 512MB RAM upgraded to 2048MB, 120GB HD upgraded to 2x 120GB and 400GB, 12X DVD-RW, 1000Base-T

Windows Server 2008 on a home built system (Primary Domain Controller)
No Monitor, 2.6GHz Intel P4, 2048MB RAM, 2x 500GB and 2x 750GB, 12X DVD-RW, 1000Base-T

Windows Vista Ultimate 64bit on a home built system (Gaming Rig)
19" Samsung LCD, 2.5GHz Intel Core2Duo, 4096MB RAM, 500GB HD, 24X CD-RW, 1000Base-T

Windows XP on a home built system (Media Center)
42" Toshiba TV 1080P, 2.5GHz Intel Core2Duo, 1024MB RAM, 1TB HD, 24X CD-ROM, 1000Base-T

Windows 7 Enterprise 64bit on a home built system (Work Computer)
21.5" Acer LCD and 19" Dell LCD, 2.5GHz Intel Core2Duo, 8192MB RAM, 500GB HD, 24X DVD-RW, 1000Base-T

Windows 7 Enterprise 64bit and Ubuntu 9.04 64bit dual boot on an HP NX6245 (Primary Laptop)
14.1" LCD, 2.2GHz AMD X2, 3072MB RAM, 120GB HD upgraded to 320GB, 16X DVD-RW, 1000Base-T, 802.11g

Windows XP on an Asus eeepc (Family Laptop)
10.1" LCD, 1.6GHz Intel Atom, 2048MB RAM, 160GB HD, 100Base-T, 802.11g

I know there’s at least 2 more that I’m missing, but one I sold and I am pretty sure that the other one broke and I chucked it away.

Oh, now that I read my title I see the point I was trying to make: I’ve had a lot of computers and a lot of experience with computer operating systems. That being said, here is how I would rate them:

Gaming:
1.) Windows XP Pro
2.) Windows Vista/7
3.) Windows 2000 Pro
4.) MacOS 8-9
5.) MacOS X
6.) Any Linux

Business (No issues connecting to AD or a domain):
1.) Windows XP Pro
2.) Windows 2000 Pro
3.) Windows Vista/7
4.) Linux
5.) MacOS X

Entertainment/Movies:
1.) MacOS X
2.) Windows Vista/7
3.) Mac OS 8-9
4.) Windows XP Pro
5.) Linux
6.) Windows 2000 Pro

Battery Usage/Portability:
1.) Windows Vista/7
2.) Linux
3.) MacOS X
4.) Windows XP Pro
5.) MacOS 8-9
6.) Windows 2000 Pro

Speed (Startup/Apps loading/Internet usage):
1.) Windows 7
2.) Windows 2000 Pro
3.) Linux
4.) Windows XP Pro
5.) MacOS 8-9
6.) MacOS X

Some of these results are skewed as I haven’t been able to play with the latest and greatest. The last Mac I used was a dual 1.25GHz G4 with 1.5GB RAM. Nice machine, but no comparison for gaming to a Windows machine. Overall it depends on how you want to use your computer.

Server:
Linux

Gaming Station:
Windows

Graphic Design/Video Editing:
Mac

Business Computer:
Windows

***EDIT***
Windows 7 was installed on my work system September 10th 2009 and thus far has exceeded all of my expectations. I have yet to have the system crash and almost all of my applications continue to function correctly under Windows 7 64bit. I’ve had to reboot the system 4 times total – and three of them were after installing software that required a reboot. The fourth was rebooting for an extended weekend (I can just hear a greenie now…) Otherwise, with 8GB TAM this thing is flying.

Microsoft, Miscellaneous

Cisco Unified Messaging 7 Voicemail Alerts

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We recently upgraded to CUM 7 from Unity 4. Big difference.

In doing so, we also get our voicemails sent to our Exchange 2007 inbox as well as having the red light show up on our IP Phones. I recently, for the first time in about 6 weeks, rebooted our primary Exchange server. Unity did not like this, and all voicemail alerts (the red light) failed to work.

The fix for this is:
RDP to the UM server as a Unity Administrator – make sure you don’t allow sounds to go back and forth over the RDP connection as this would make all voicemails fail.
Start, All Programs, Unity, Manage Integrations
If you get an alert that the services cannot be found, then you are probably not logged in as a Unity Admin (or the services really are off, in which case you would have a much larger problem)
Now navigate down to the Properties of your CUCM/CCM server.
In the lower right corner there should be a MWI Resynchronize Now button. Press this button.

Depending on the size of your organization this could take up to a couple minutes.