ubuntu and snmptrapd

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Jul 162009

For the past month or so I’ve been working on a really time consuming project for work. Not only that it’s also a tricky one that has a lot of eyes on it from the upper ranks.
While we (the team I’m on) were busy trying to pinpoint the location of some random packet loss in the network, the vendor recommended that we enable some snmp traps to get alarms when the issue begins. The only other way to see any issues was via command line interface, which involved a whole lot of sitting and staring at a screen.
Well it took me a few days but I manged to instal an snmptrap viewer on my windows box real quick, but the down side is I still had to sit here watching it to let them know when it was occuring. Then it occured to me that most unix distributions probably have snmp installed or available. So I upgraded my test box to Ubuntu 9.04 and installed snmptrapd (which is really easy on ubuntu….just type snmptrapd at the terminal and you’ll get directions on what to do….doesn’t get easier). After a little research I made a few updates to the /etc/snmp/snmptrapd.conf file:

logOption f /var/log/snmptraps.log
disableAuthorization yes

That way it logged it locally, and by disabling auth I didn’t have to specify any community strings or anything. The only thing that tripped me up was when I installed ssh I locked down the hosts.allow file and totally forgot to put snmptrapd in there. Took a good 45 minutes for me to figure that out.
Now if I really wanted to I could install sendmail (or postfix or ssmtp) and write up a shell script to email me if any alarms came in that I needed to know about.

Posted by admin at 4:51 pm

samsung hd502hi and SATA 3.0 fun

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Jul 152009

I ordered a new hard drive for Jen’s computer last weekend from NewEgg. It was the Samsung HD502HI (500GB) which I thought was a pretty good price for that size of a drive. At the time I ordered it I didn’t really pay attention the SATA speed and that it was 3.0 while Jen’s older Dell Dimension 3100 only had a 1.5 SATA chipset on it. No big deal though because I figured the spec had to be backwards compatable…..which it is supposed to be.
Well it wasn’t doing a very good job of being backwards compatable. I installed it into her computer today and although I saw it in the BIOS just fine I couldn’t find it in windows XP at all. I eventually found it in the Disk Manager under Computer Management but it wasn’t intialized. No big deal I thought so initialized it, partitioned it and then formated it.
By the way formatting a 500gb hard drive takes some time….
Anyways when it was done I rebooted and *poof* it was gone. I did some digging and found a similar person having issues with samsung drives and tried some of the same steps he did with no apparent luck. Sure the Estools boot CD I created said that it set the bandwidth to 1.5 but windows still wouldn’t see it.
As a last ditch effort I flashed her BIOS from A03 to A04 (last release from Dell) and so far it seems to have done the trick. The real answer probably lies somewhere between manually setting the drive to 1.5 mode and the bios update, but for now all I care about is it’s working so now I can clone her OS over to it.

Posted by admin at 4:58 pm

One more thing about the iPhone

Uncategorized 1 Response »
Jul 072009

Almost four years ago Jen bought me the best MP3 player I’ve ever owned, a creative Zen, and let me tell you that I have used the ever living hell out of it. House work, while at the office, mowing the lawn, shoveling, etc. The only real problem I’ve ever had with it is snagging the headphone cord on something and ripping the ear buds out of my ears. It honestly happens a lot more than I wish it did….so when I picked up my iPhone I realized something. Thanks to firmware 3.0 the iPhone’s iPod feature now supports bluetooth headphones. That means no wire to rip out of my ear all the time.
To be honest though I really like my creative Zen so I’m thinking about keeping my eyes open for a to only use with activities that really cause a problem when having a cord dangling from my head. I wish the so I wouldn’t have to mess with iTunes.
One last thing about this would be getting ahold of me. If I was mowing the lawn and Jen needed to get my attention all she would have to do is call my cell phone. Since the iPhone automatically stops playing music and cuts to your ring tone I’d know she needed me without her having to abandon the kids or drag them out.

Posted by admin at 11:36 pm

Hitler finds out Michael Jackson died..

Uncategorized 3 Responses »
Jul 032009

saw this on my BIL’s facebook and had to post it:

Posted by admin at 5:21 pm

So a used 2g iPhone walks into a bar...

Uncategorized 1 Response »
Jul 032009

My work cell phone stopped functioning last week and since I depend on it for on call duties I needed to replace it very quickly. Aside from receiving calls I also had it setup to get email alerts from various scripts I had written for certain outage types and such….so I wanted something at least capable of that.
After the trip I took to TX last month (where it seemed that damn near everybody had a iPhone) I really wanted to get an iPhone but the company doesn’t have any system in place for using it as an on call work phone. Anyways long story short is that I knew somebody upgrading from an original iPhone (also known as 2g) to a 3Gs, so they were willing to sell it to me.
So here I sit today with a used 2g iPhone that I’m using for work and I have to say that so far I am totally impressed with it. I’ve used various palm pilots over the years but the engineering behind the GUI integrated with the touch screen concept is genius. Even after the honeymoon wears off I still believe that this phone proves that you can design complex things easily. There was a little bit of a learning curve with silly stuff like how to make an MP3 ring tone and iTunes in general but so far there hasn’t been any show stoppers. Heck I’m even using safari to help while playing GTA 4 by pulling up maps and walk throughs.
Going to have to get Jen a 3Gs here soon, this thing is just that cool.

Posted by admin at 7:08 am

Cross Stitch by Jen

Uncategorized 1 Response »
Jul 022009

So when Dennis and I got married almost 3 years ago, I cross stitched this piece. Well, when my mom came to visit, she was so generous to get it matted and framed for Mother’s Day/my birthday! I think it came out great! Here are some pictures:

At least now the date will be hung about the fireplace in the room with the gaming systems so Dennis doesn’t need to be reminded of our anniversary of when we got married and the day (August 12) of our first date! Both exactly 4 years apart so this year is our 3/7 anniversary!

Posted by admin at 7:08 pm
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