16 Aug 2017

Planck Firmware

As mentioned in my previous post I have recently started using a Planck keyboard. The Planck uses Open Source firmware and customizing the firmware...

01 Aug 2017

Planck Build

I have recently become interested in compact keyboards. In particular the Planck. The Planck is unusual in many ways compared to standard 104 key keyboard. In...

08 Jan 2016

Simple Isolated Builds in Docker

I needed a simple, automated way to build a Rust project for deployment to a Debian system. Docker seems to be popular for deploying though I'm...

01 Jan 2016

2015 Reading List Highlights

Here are most of the books I read in 2015.

Fiction

Seveneves by Neal Stephenson would be my book of the year. Amazing story split over 5000...

24 Oct 2015

Certificate Generation for OpenVPN using CFSSL

In the past when I have needed certificates for OpenVPN I have used easy_rsa. Another option would be to use OpenSSL directly. This time I decided...

12 Oct 2014

BeagleBone - Black and White

While the Raspberry Pi is the most well known of the ARM based single board computers there are other alternatives available. One such alternative is the BeagleBone....

21 Aug 2014

Pinger - A simple ICMP monitor.

When it comes to monitoring hosts, most people go with Nagios or similar. Nagios is great, can monitor pretty much most standard services out of...

16 Jul 2014

CentOS 7 and XFS

CentOS 7 has been out for a while now and brings a couple of notable new features. Two of the main changes to previous versions is...

26 Apr 2014

Enabling SPDY in nginx on Debian Wheezy

The default nginx packages on Debian Wheezy are 1.2.1 which don't include SPDY support. There are a couple of options here:

Options

Install nginx from source

This is...

01 Apr 2014

Octopress and the Eudyptula Challenge

I have been really slack with updating my Blog. Three posts last year and this is my first post this year. I have been quite busy...

10 Jun 2013

Slow network performance to KVM virtual machine.

I'm currently using a KVM virtual machine as my primary file/media server. Since I have been using a virtual machine as my file server I have...

01 May 2013

Upgrading Debian Squeeze to Wheezy on an ALIX2.

The last machine on my home network still running Debian Squeeze was my PC Engines ALIX2 based router. The ALIX2 doesn't have any video output...

15 Feb 2013

Installing bitmap fonts on Fedora 17/18

For the second time in a month I have had to go searching to find how to install bitmap fonts on Fedora 17/18. This is covered...

12 Jun 2012

BTRFS Fileserver

Introduction

For the last 9 months or so I have been using a HP N36L Microserver as a home Xen server running a mail relay for...

10 Jun 2011

Arch Linux net-tools depreciated.

Arch Linux has depreciated the usage of net-tools in /etc/rc.conf in favor of iproute2. The new syntax in /etc/rc.conf makes it simple to setup a single interface...

05 Jun 2011

SSDs

Picked up a OCZ Vertex 2 160GB SSD recently with plans to use it as a boot/system drive in my main workstation. Unfortunately things did...

30 Mar 2011

Nginx

Recently replaced lighttpd with nginx on Debian squeeze. Used spawn-fcgi to manage PHP as php-fpm is not in squeeze yet. Had a little trouble with...

14 Feb 2011

IPv6

Having recently watched a couple of talks centered around the current state of IPv4 address space exhaustion I decided to look into setting up an...

09 Feb 2011

GPT RAID1 setup.

My home partition hit 90% recently and I decided it was time to upgrade my storage. I had been running 4x250GB hard disks in a...

17 Nov 2010

End of Semester

Haven't had time to post much of late due to the end of semester madness. I have been micro-blogging on twitter as @mfsampson though....

21 Sep 2010

linux.conf.au 2011

I'm planning on attending the 2011 linux.conf.au in Brisbane and there is now a draft schedule online. There are some great talks on offer...

05 Sep 2010

USB 3.0

I'm currently in the process of encrypting my USB 1TB backup drives with LUKS. Part of this process involves filling the disk with random data. For...

02 Sep 2010

BTRFS, EXTLINUX and i3.

Lately I have been experimenting with some of the netbook specific Linux distros on my Dell Mini 9. There are several distos aimed at netbooks available. I...

10 Aug 2010

Easy Debian/Ubuntu chroots.

Until recently I had been using Adobe's 64 bit Flash Player plugin. Unfortunately the 64 bit Flash Player has been removed from Adobe's site with no...

26 Jul 2010

Native resolution console with the binary nVidia blob.

My first serious graphics card was a Canopus Pure3D which was based on 3dfx's Voodoo chipset. It was a strange beast as it installed...

18 Jul 2010

extlinux

I had been thinking about switching from grub to grub2 on my main workstation for a while now. Grub did everything I required however I...

23 Jun 2010

Exams over for another semester.

I haven't had a chance to post much in the last month as study has kept me fairly busy. My last exam was last Friday...

10 Apr 2010

linux.conf.au presentation videos

I recently came across some videos for 2010's linux.conf.au presentations. I haven't watched all of them however a couple of them look interesting. One that I...

05 Apr 2010

BTRFS/RSYNC based backups.

As mentioned previously I have recently converted my file server to Linux from Open Solaris and ZFS. I was using ZFS's snapshot capability extensively. My...

10 Mar 2010

Goodbye Open Solaris and ZFS.

As the title of the post states I have recently decommissioned my Open Solaris ZFS based file server. I have now combined my file server...

26 Feb 2010

Weird lvm2 issue.

Booted my machine today and it failed to find my LVM filesystems. Took a while to track down the issue. I didn't have lvm2 in...

12 Feb 2010

Postfix, reject_rbl_client and Google DNS

Just spent 30 minutes trying to work out why Postfix was not rejecting mail using the zen.spamhaus.org DNSBL. I finally found the answer in my...

09 Feb 2010

Book database status and MUAs.

Have felt like a little break from my book database project. It needs one more weekend of polishing before it is usable. Hopefully I...

17 Jan 2010

Nokia N95 on Linux

I'm currently using an Nokia N95 mobile phone. One thing that always bugged me was that when plugging it in to a Linux machine via USB...

10 Jan 2010

Book Database and Git

I haven't posted anything since before the end of year holidays as I have been busy with a project. I have always wanted a simple database...

22 Dec 2009

LVM setup and desktop virtualisation.

I have been running lvm on my laptop for a while now and have had no problems with it so decided to transfer my main...

15 Dec 2009

Configs and [testing].

As mentioned earlier I have finally put most of my configs into a public git repo. After using it for a couple of weeks...

09 Dec 2009

Pirate Latitudes

Just finished reading Pirate Latitudes by the late Michael Crichton. It was an action packed read and reminded me of his earlier work "The...

03 Dec 2009

Configs and status bars.

Finally have my configs online. Well a few of them at least. Was tossing up between GitHub or my own hosted git repo....

24 Nov 2009

VimOutliner

A while back I published a post regarding todo lists. It has been a while but I have finally found a todo list manager. That is...

18 Nov 2009

Lanyards!

Received my Arch Linux lanyards and they are pretty spiffy. Great value too. Only just realised I haven't posted an image...

17 Nov 2009

WTF?

What moron decided to do web development on the university student portal during exams and completely hosed the system?

FAIL!

Not ... happy ... Jan.

17 Nov 2009

End of Semester.

Have exams the next two days. Internet Security tomorrow and Knowledge Management the day after. Currently cramming for these and doing little else. Will be...

11 Nov 2009

sudo vim vs sudoedit

Normally when I need to edit a system file I use sudo vim <filename>. I was aware that there was a command called sudoedit that could...

07 Nov 2009

Macbook, EFI, GPT and Grub2

As mentioned earlier I am currently using a MacBook (3.1) as my main laptop. Everything is working fine except there is a noticeable delay...

03 Nov 2009

Chromium

Just installed Chromium from the AUR. So far it looks good. I have run Chrome in Windows but this is the first time I...

26 Oct 2009

XMonad 0.9

XMonad 0.9 has been released. While I have been using the Darcs version for a while there looks to be a few features in 0.9...

23 Oct 2009

MacBook

As mentioned previously my main laptop died. I'm currently writing this on my MacBook runing Arch Linux x86_64. I mainly used this machine for...

28 Sep 2009

mplayer and vdpau

Just compiled mplayer with vdpau to make use of my nVidia 8600GT. On Arch Linux this is as simple as using ABS to rebuild the...

26 Sep 2009

RIP HP nx8420.

Bugger! Shut my laptop down last night and when I booted it up this morning it seems to be dead. It's locking up, usually in...

21 Sep 2009

Haskell. Far from a hacker but making progress.

Have been playing around with my xmonad.hs file and have come up with my first bit of original Haskell though I have seen something similar in...

20 Sep 2009

XMonad. Welcome to the Darcs side.

I have been using xmonad as my window manager for quite a while now. I use it on a dual screen workstation, my laptop and...

16 Sep 2009

Telstra separation, Quake 3 and an interesting pdf viewer.

In a move reminiscent of the break up of AT&T; in the 80s the Australian government has legislated to separate Telstra's retail and infrastructure divisions....

12 Sep 2009

Britain says sorry to computing pioneer Alan Turing

The British government has finally apologised to the late Alan Turing. For anyone not familiar with the name his achievements in the area of...

03 Sep 2009

Botan - an open source C++ crypto library.

Currently working on an assignment for my Internet Security unit and needed an open source crypto library. Had a look at a couple I already had...

24 Aug 2009

Quake Live and Rage (id Tech 5) Linux port unlikely.

The Ubuntu forums are carrying a post containing an email reportedly from John Carmack stating that a Linux port of Rage is unlikely at...

23 Aug 2009

Backups, more USB issues and Dexter!

With automatic snapshots working I spent time this weekend getting backups working. Initially I thought that a solution based on ZFS's send, receive commands would...

18 Aug 2009

ZFS easy automated snapshots

I have enabled auto snapshots on my OpenSolaris file server. This was easy due to the already installed SUNWzfs-auto-snapshot package. First step is to enable the required...

08 Aug 2009

Mail Issues.

Bugger! Recently noticed I'm not receiving email sent from my WordPress install. Password resets, comment notifications, etc. They work fine when sent to my ISP...

03 Aug 2009

Great Train Robbery

Stuck in a motel room watching The Great Train Robbery on pay tv. A great movie based on a great novel by the late...

01 Aug 2009

New Mouse

My main mouse died a while ago and in the meantime I have been using an old notebook mouse I had lying around. It doesn't...

18 Jul 2009

Semester results and testing repo.

Recieved my results for this semester and scored two HDs. Both units were enjoyable and I put a fair amount of work into them so...

16 Jul 2009

Poor ZFS send recieve performance.

Before installing OpenSolaris on my file server while I was running Linux I noticed weird behaviour with the on board USB 2.0 controller of my ASUS...

14 Jul 2009

Open Solaris and ZFS First Impressions

Managed to finally copy my data off my file server with no errors and install OpenSolaris 06.2009. Previously I was using an Adaptec AAR-1210SA...

08 Jul 2009

Firefox 3.5, Google Chrome OS, Open Solaris

It's been a busy week in the open source world.

Currently running the new Firefox 3.5. It is hard to be objective but it does...

02 Jul 2009

New Router, dnsmasq and Jeff Golblum!

I'm currently running a combined router and file server. In the interests of security I'm in the process of setting up a new router. I'm...

27 Jun 2009

Windows 7 Stickies and iKog

My work machine is currently running Windows 7. One of the features of Windows 7 I have been using is Sticky Notes. I believe there was a...

25 Jun 2009

Another semester done.

Sat my final exam for this semester. No surprises, think I did ok.

My main workstation pulled in 2.6.30 and the new nVidia driver yesterday but...

21 Jun 2009

Mine!. All mine!

Cool, my very own Arch Linux blog courtesy of crouse. Much appreciated. It has been a while since I have used WordPress. It...