January 23rd, 2010
I really like the design of the Lacie iamakey and related USB flash memory sticks that look like actual keys. I was thinking about moving off the consistent performers I issue to employees, faculty and staff from Sandisk. So, I got an 8 gig and 32 gig to test over the last couple of months.
I am constantly moving files between Macs, Windows and Linux workstations and servers, so they really can take a pounding. The Sandisk Cruzer models are really solid once you get rid of the software that comes with them through their uninstallers. Initially, the Lacie iamkey USB drives have given me a lot of problems. I need to format them as FAT32 so I can have read/write on on the operating systems I am hitting.
The crazy thing is when I would copy large amounts of files (say many software installers for Office, Adobe, etc.) they would take the write just fine, but when I brought them to another Mac or Windows machine, the partition/format would not be read. I reformatted many times on the Mac and over the course of a few weeks still have constant issues with all operating systems.
It wasn’t until I did a low-level format of the drive on Windows (not a quick format) did the FAT32 partition stick. I have been using now for a week or so without problems between OS X, Windows XP, Windows 2003, Windows 2008, CentOS and Ubuntu. Performance is great now.
So, if you are having issues, try a solid low-level format and I think you will have better results. It will take some time. the 32 gig took an hour or two I believe, but you will be happy you did.
Tags: format lacie iamakey, iamakey format, lacie iamakey problems, partition issues with iamakey
Posted in CentOS, Hardware, Linux, Mac OS X, SysAdmin, Windows | Comments Off
January 9th, 2010
Doesn’t get easier than this to get a Friends of the Urban Forest tree in San Francisco. I will be using this as I continue my quest for a planting event in Miraloma Park, SF.
GETTING A TREE WITH FRIENDS OF THE URBAN FOREST
WHAT YOU DO:
- Point to a spot on the sidewalk
- Signing the document called “Forms of the Urban Forest” and a check for 75 bucks.
WHAT FUF DOES:
- Acquire the permits from the city
- Perform utilities checks under your sidewalk
- Provide you with a list of arborist approved trees in your microclimate
- and a chance to meet and talk with our arborist
- Mark where the trees will go
- Cut the concrete in front of the house
- Show up with a team of volunteers and plant your tree
- Supply all the stakes, arbor ties, and watering buckets for your tree
- Provide 18 months of arborist-led tree care after the planting.
Tags: Friends of the Urban Forest, Friends of the Urban Forest in Miraloma Park, Miraloma Park FUF, Miraloma Park FUF 2010, Miraloma Park Trees, Trees in Miraloma Park
Posted in Uncategorized | Comments Off
January 8th, 2010
I shutdown the ISTN group on LinkedIn. There was really no niche that made sense to have it for that didn’t duplicate existing tech professional groups. Moving on!
Tags: ISTN
Posted in ISTN | Comments Off
January 1st, 2010
Seems like they are just starting out, but when I wanted to get information about police activity in my neighborhood, I spent some time looking at all different places. Everyblock.com seems to stand out on the way they are trying to aggregate the information and report it. They are pretty much only working with police reports now it seems, but hopefully they can grow into something more.
They are live in some other major cities across the US and seem along the lines of Yelp in the type of value they want to bring. The iPhone app is also a nice addition and actually has a better interface to what I want to see then the website itself, but that is another matter.
Tags: san francisco crime reports, san francisco crimes by neighborhood, san francisco neighborhood info, san francisco neighborhood information, san francisco police, san francisco police reports
Posted in San Francisco | Comments Off
December 27th, 2009
Walking home the other day, I saw a bunch of freshly planted FUF trees on Joost near Foerester. Pics attached. It really makes a difference on the street. I know there are many streets in Miraloma Park that could get this sort of treatment and people would be happy.
I added a Google map overlay with the current interested addresses so people can see progress and status. I will be getting information from FUF on Miraloma Park residents that gave inquired to FUF they have on file, so I can follow-up with them and get some more people on-board
Posted in Miraloma Park FUF | Comments Off
December 13th, 2009
Jonathan Mergy, Greg Harrell-Edge (FUF), Mike Peters (FUF) and John, another organizer
Headed down to the FUF Main Office in the Presidio to meet with other organizers on the initial phases of the tree planting project for Miraloma Park. Got a packet and overview of what this will entail and how they are trying to make this whole process easier and more community-focused throughout (not just at the planting party phases).
Here are some pictures of the small tree garden and areas around the FUF offices.
Tags: Friends of the Urban Forest, Friends of the Urban Forest Miraloma Park, Miraloma Park FUF, Trees in Miraloma Park
Posted in Miraloma Park FUF | Comments Off
December 12th, 2009
I am going to try and assist in helping the Friends of the Urban Forest in an organized planting in my neighborhood of Miraloma Park in San Francisco. I created a dedicated page for people to link to and will try to get 30 or so trees sponsored in our area.
More to come on this. I am hitting a meeting at FUF headquarters Sunday, Dec 13.
Tags: Friends of the Urban Forest in Miraloma Park, Miraloma Park FUF, Miraloma Park FUF 2010, Miraloma Park Trees
Posted in Miraloma Park FUF | Comments Off
November 21st, 2009
IPCop is a great little Linux-based firewall distro I use for many reasons. It is really easy to work with and some modules are really great to have around for minimizing bandwidth waste and handling content-filtering as needed. The distro is designed to work on older, basic hardware and it does a great job with that. I remember a few years ago, I had it running on an old Gateway 500 mhz pentium and it ran like a champ.
But, as you get more and more users, it is nice to get some decent hardware for it. The new version if IPCop is around the corner, but until it arrives and because it is currently still based in the 2.4.x kernel, nicities like SATA and some more complex hardware options like SATA RAID, SATA CD-ROMs, etc. are not super easy to deal with. This is a distro that works well with an old PC, a bunch of PCI Intel nics, and some RAM and away you go. Well, when I bought a basic HP Proliant DL 120 1U server with native SATA and a PCI-X slot and the Intel Quad PT nic with the hope of getting a slick firewall box going, it was not a breeze.
The HP DL 120 can do SATA RAID via software but that is kind of off the table if I you want to do a hardware install. Getting IPCop running in a virtual image with VMWare Server or VMWare ESX is fine, but really I was not going to use those boxes for anything more than dedicated firewalls and routers and needed at least the four interfaces and didn’t want a huge 5U box in the server room, much less a few of those 5U PCs on their side.
So, enter the Intel Quad PT nic. IPCop sees and understands it just fine after you can get 1.4.20 to install. I had to hard-set the drive in the DL 120 BIOS to manual settings since it really didn’t have a legacy mode so IPCop’s 2.4.x kernel could easily deal with it. I also had to boot off the IPCop CD and have the IPCop installer media on USB to get things going, but once I did, I was able to see my 1U firewall on modern hardware running nicely. Except, I noticed a real problem on network latency.
My first idea was that the IPCop drivers for the Intel quad pt nic was just crappy. I started to go down the road of posting to the IPCop user list on whether it made sense to recompile the drivers from source available at Intel site. But, REALLY didn’t want to go down that road if I could help it. I was able to limp along on the system to be able to get the IPCop 1.4.21 update. I also played around with all teh various settings in the bios thinking perhaps the IRQs were more complex so perhaps the BIOS could better and more effectively dish the IRQs to the kernel.
None of that really did anything. It was only after I chose the kernel with ACPI did it really perform like it should. I then went through a bunch of high volume transfers to make sure the quad nic was going well. So, if are you going to try and build something like this and have performance issues with your Intel quad nic, ACPI is probably your friend on this.
Tags: DL 120 G5 and IPCop, Intel Quad PT, IPCop and Intel Quad PT, IPCop and quad nic
Posted in Linux, SysAdmin | Comments Off
October 10th, 2009
Recently, we had an issue with our Kerio Mailserver where we had to restore data for a couple of users from a backup and kmsrecover worked well. Kerio Support directed me to the manuals. A direct link is here. The server does need to be shutdown prior to the restore. I recommend using the flags to redirect the restore to a directory different than the one for the user in the default store.
As root, here are some example restores I did. I am currently running Kerio Mailserver on OS X.
# cd /usr/local/kerio/mailserver
# kmsrecover -d mydomain.com -u jmergy -f “INBOX” -s /Volumes/restore-dir /Volumes/backup/keriosnapshot
The -s flag redirects the restore to a different directory.It actually goes relatively quickly. You need to have the Kerio-generated backup files (both full and incremental) for the day you want to restore from. The example above is pointing kmsrecover to look for the INBOX for user jmergy in the domain mydomain.com in the directory of the Kerio backup files located in /Volumes/backup/keriosnapshot and will put the files in /Volumes/restore-dir. In my case, I wanted to restore a folder and then bring that folder back into the user’s mail directory as a sub-folder. After the restore is done, you can move the restore directories and files back into your user. I would recommend NOT displacing existing files unless you don’t case about what is already there.
If you are in need of using this, work with Kerio support to make sure this is the best way to go. Also, this is relatively new tool so probably was brought into the product in version 6.7, so earlier versions do not apply.
Links of note:
Kerio Support
Kerio Manuals
Kerio Mailserver Product Page
Tags: kerio mailserver restore, kerio recovery, kmsrecover, restore from kerio backup, restore kerio data
Posted in Kerio, SysAdmin | Comments Off
