Tiernans Comms Closet

I have a Late 2008 MacBook Pro in the house, and SSH is enabled on it. I usually leave it on when in work. Anyway, SSH is enabled, but VNC access is not… I found the following command on Ryan’s Tech Notes allowing you to enable it though SSH:

** NOTE ** Change mypasswd to your own password!!!

If you need to disable it, use the following:

Also, of note, I am using RealVNC client for Windows to connect.

In house, I have been using Microsoft TMG 2010 Server for a while now. I use it as a firewall for some of the machines on the network, and also as a proxy for most, if not all, machines. When acting as a Firewall, all traffic flows though the machine, be it HTTP/HTTPS, SMTP/POP3/IMAP, or anything for that matter. You can also lock down ports on the box, which is a feature of most firewalls, but i like TMG due to its relitive ease of use…

I have been using a MikroTik RouterBoard RB750 for a while now, and i love it! Over the weekend, i upgraded it to a RB1100. Its the same software running the device, but the device is faster (800Mhz PowerPC chip VS MIPS-BE at 680Mhz), has more memory (512Mb upgradable to 1.5Gb vs 32Mb) and more storage (think its 512Mb on board, plus 4Gb MicroSD card vs 32mb…). It also has more ports (13 GigE VS 5) and 2 Switch Groups, which i have no idea what they do just yet…

I have a project which we are trying to automate the deployment system. The plan is to automatically deploy the project to a staging server anytime the build succeeds from SVN.

I have had a few problems with this, but here are some of the links which may come in handy for you.

• MSDeploy skip rules when using MSBuild PublishProfile with Visual Studio 2012
• Web Deploy : Customizing a deployment package
• How to set MSDeploy settings in .csproj file
• MSBuild target VSMSdeploy doesn’t seem to support skip with a skipAction

Still some tweaks to get this to work… If i find any more links i will put them here… The problem we are haivng is when a deploy happens, the WebDeployment tool cannot overwrite the log files directory, since they are in use… one option would be to restart IIS, which would be ok in staging, but we want to keep the logs in test and production, so, we need to figure out how to tell Web Deploy not to over write the files.

In my previous post on WANProxy, i did not really go into detail about what it actually was. The direct quote from their site is WANProxy is a free, portable TCP proxy which makes TCP connections send less data, which improves TCP performance and throughput over lossy links, slow links and long links. This is just what you need to improve performance over satellite, wireless and WAN links. This is something that has interested me for a while, so i have been looking into it, and so far so good. In my last post i mentioned i was proxying Squid traffic, in todays post, i still am, but with some tweaks.

[Updated 2016/04/09] I had to use this today to build on Debian 8.3 for 2 different boxes. So, making minor changes (url to git proxy, and where you build from) to make sure this works now.

I have been looking into WANProxy for a while now, but never successfully got it to build… I have been more successfull reciently, so here is what you need to do.

** NOTE **: I built this on Ubuntu 12.04, so these are the tips for that… Not sure about other Distros…
** Second NOTE ** : I am using the Digows GitHub Repo for downloads… There is also the WANProxy SVN Server and their official downloads page.

Some interesting links for the Raspberry Pi today:

• So, you just bought a new Raspberry Pi and need to enable SSH, but dont have a screen? Prepare for SSH without a Screen shows you what to do!
• How to Bring up WLAN0 on boot shows you how to start your Wifi adapter when you boot your Pi

Need to add GPS to your Raspberry Pi? How do i attach a GPS to a Raspberry answers your question!

Earlier on today, the Raspberry Pi Foundation announced that the Model B will now be shipping with 512Mb RAM as standard, with no price change. I posted the link up on Hacker News and its caused quite a lot of happy people!

So, with the news of extra RAM, its started making me think of more things the Pi could be used for…

• An Austrian hosting company are offering free Co-Location for Raspberry Pis with a 100Mb/s uplink and 100Gb bandwidth! FREE! with 512Mb RAM (or even 256Mb RAM) thats enough for a small site. or even a medium site (like this one) running statically.
• Since the Pi can connect to the internet using 3G, you could install a copy of Squid and use an SSH tunnel back to your main office or home, have have multiple levels of caching going on… It would also secure your browsing.
• Sending SMS messages though the Raspberry Pi could be useful for sending diagnostic info if the device is remote…
• [XBMC on the Raspberry Pi] would make your media center a lot smaller, use less power, etc.

just a note on the idea of using 3G and Squid for the Pi… This is something i am interested in, so its something i want to start playing with. The idea would be as follows:

A while back I posted about the Raspberry Pi, and in the post was a link to a Photographer who was embeding a Raspberry Pi into a Canon 5D MKII battery grip. Well, its been a while, and i have been thinking about the Pi and Cameras, so I went looking around… Here is what i found.

• HDR Photography with a Raspberry Pi and GPhoto2: It was linked at the end of David’s post, and i missed it completely. David mentions he was using GPhoto2 to take photos from the Pi, so its a good place to start.
• GPhoto2 and the Raspberry Pi: starters guide on getting the Pi to talk to your Camera.
• Not specifically Pi+Camera released, but the Stackoverflow Raspberry Pi Page is a handy resource for asking questions…

The one thing i have not been able to figure out is how to tell the Pi to take the photos out of the camera wihtout having a monitor plugged in. I was thinking either tell it, on boot, to start monitoring the camera and download everything. This way, if you have it plugged into a external power source, it will be monitoring and downloading to somewhere… USB HDD, USB Key, etc. If there is a Wifi spot around, try uploading them to a location, posibily manageable via web interface of some sort… Lots of interesting ideas can be done… its just a matter of doing them… 🙂