I'm in the middle of the desert right now, on a Macbook, and I'm not sure what my speed is - but I bet it is "broadband fiber". My wife and I were both having a video conference and VoIP call today at the same time while also doing our "regular" PC stuff... 

On Starlink. In the middle of nowhere. It is a little expensive - but man it slays. 

Yeah.  T-Mobile is more interested in showing me Snoop Dogg than in giving me a usable network.

I signed up for Verizon's "crap tier" which caps out at 25 Mbps, and to be honest, I'm completely fine with that.  I just need to get email and messages through, and for my GPS to work, and listen to podcasts in the car.  I don't need to watch a 4K movie on my 5" phone screen while wifi is turned off.   Seriously, I really don't understand what people are doing with >1Gbps mobile speeds.  5G was supposed to be about density, not speed.

The other problem with t-mobile now is that they're selling fixed wireless as "home internet" for ghetto prices, and jamming up the network, which still hasn't worked right ever since the Sprint merger.

Interesting fact: at the crap tier, Verizon will "traffic engineer" your data stream.  They'll jump in there and see if you're using youtube, for example, and make sure they throttle your stream so you only get 360p or whatever.  I'm looking at a sample now and it seems fine.  But apparently the workaround is to run a VPN, and I might just tunnel back to my home network for the lulz to see what it does.

At some point, Verizon actually became a "Do Less Evil," brand. They're not saints - but they're not as bad as they were when they had a "GPS is free, text is free, but we're going to charge you to activate it and every time you use it," policy. 

My phone will try to automatically reconnect to a name its used before.  Perhaps its just that?

Sat Jan 10 2026 19:38:21 UTC from IGnatius T Foobar Subject: Re: I did it again :)

I like that.  Gotta mess with people, right?

A few weeks ago I was in an airport and couldn't get the wifi working so I launched a hotspot called "Starbucks Free Wifi" with no password and a connection limit of 1 client (which I immediately consumed).  It was fun to listen to the alert beeps every time some poor sod tried to connect to it and got rejected.

 

I like that.  Gotta mess with people, right?

A few weeks ago I was in an airport and couldn't get the wifi working so I launched a hotspot called "Starbucks Free Wifi" with no password and a connection limit of 1 client (which I immediately consumed).  It was fun to listen to the alert beeps every time some poor sod tried to connect to it and got rejected.

It was even more fun because there wasn't a Starbucks anywhere in the terminal.  In fact, there was a different brand coffee shop right there so it should have been clear that there wasn't going to be a Starbucks Free Wifi.

Now I do love my suburban raised ranch on a full acre of land, and the fact that I'm basically on a wifi island.  But if I ever lived "in town" I'd love to have an apartment directly over a real Starbucks.  I would put a ceiling access point on the floor, offer a network with the same name as whatever SSID the Starbucks was using, maybe even clone their MAC address, and just mess with people's heads all day long.  Maybe serve up pr0n sites when they asked for Instagram.  Maybe insert hidden messages into their web pages.  I'd have a welcome page with the Starbucks logo that made their browser accept my SSL certificate for "*.com" when they clicked to accept.  

After all, if they came to Starbucks in the first place, they have an appetite for bitter, and that's what we'd serve up, hot and fresh all day.

Well, mine is insulting AF - so... they have to type it in with shame, anyhow. Might as well make them regret it. 

Wed Nov 05 2025 14:31:02 UTC from IGnatius T Foobar Subject: Re: I did it again :)

But yes, if you give an android device a wifi password you're giving it to Google, and by extension the US and China governments get it too. I think we all know by now that such devices are not trustworthy in that sense.

Sure. But there is no FCC law that requires you to reveal your WiFi password to the federal government. 

Just for the record, my home WiFi is ClintonEmailServer
And my Starlink is ClintonEmalServerBlackVan

If you ever need the password, just IM me. It is hilarious. Ask anyone who knows it. I'm a jackass. :) 

Wed Feb 01 2023 00:55:14 UTC from IGnatius T Foobar Subject: I did it again :)

After realizing that it's been two years since I "cut the cord" and prompted by a flyer from The Cable Company claiming that now "they" have fiber too, it was time to call Verizon and get my deal sweetened again.

I will be getting the same 1 Gbps fiber service, a lower per-month cost, and *finally* rid of the landline service I don't want or need. Plus they're sending me a $200 gift card for re-upping.

Now I can finally get rid of those damn cordless phones that the family insists on keeping around.

Remind me to tell you about Google Fiber moving into my area, the door to door salesman being a hard push ahole. So a long time ago I wrote an article for Tech Republic where I took an ASUS tablet into my work and because I had logged in onto my corporate WiFi before on a Droid 1 and 2, the ASUS instantly found the Wifi and knew the WiFi password and connected and started downloading updates - before I gave any OK to go ahead. The story made it to Germany overnight, got translated... and then David Horowitz picked it up on ZDNet Threat Assessment about 6 months later when the Feds hacked Google's network and basically - if your Android device had connected on a corporate network, the Feds had the WiFi password - and the same for your home hotspot. It was pretty big. The Google Fiber guy was like, "That is old news, the FCC passed a law where they have to know your password." I told him that was a lie, he made fun of Horowitz and it was just... annoying. "You sell Google fiber door to door - I'm ACTUALLY a

Maybe that's a sign of hope for the western world -- that the way those people want to rule the world is incompatible with civilization.

Will leave the religion/politics of this for another room and another time...

Heard the Taliban cut off all internet access in Afghanistan this week.  Cut the fiber, cut phone lines, jamming TV, radio, satellite signals.  "Internet is 'evil' so you don't get it."   I guess business are going to collapse as well, no way to do payments, order stuff.  Im sure not a lot of "modern" business out there in that hell hole ( and who has a 'regular' job, or money? )  but heard there are a few.

Wont get into details and its work related, but stupid stuff my ISP does, is why i am pretty much forced to use a VPN.

Most of the unwashed masses, wont even know that is an option.

Sat Jul 05 2025 17:03:01 UTC from IGnatius T Foobar Subject: Re: Comcrapst

Obviously, all of this comes to a screeching halt the moment you remove their equipment from the wire and install your own.

Odd, i thought that needed antennas in more then one 'spot' to 'mesh' signals and do room mapping via the 'interference'. ( or a mobile antenna. )

Simple detection "a body in the area somewhere" out of a single device, sure i can see that, but complex mapping seems off to me.

Might have to read into that some.

"Comcast announces big change to win back frustrated customers"

The are going to raise prices..  lol.  idiots     ( really.. not kidding ) and "we will remove data caps"  wtf? they were still doing that? Again. Idiots. 

Super.  Looks like my fiber company just got bought out by T-Mobile. So we can expect even higher prices and poorer service.

Ours constantly increases. Little by little..    After the tornado that leveled a big chunk of our town, it jumped like 20 bucks...

Everyone here complains. "its just like Comcast when they screwed us"

Wed Sep 18 2024 18:50:47 EDT from IGnatius T Foobar

My bill hasn't gone up in the 15 years I've had fiber. 

The theory is nice, but the reality ( around here anyway ) is that prices are always about the same in the various markets, and always rising. Its sort of a wash what you choose, if you have more than one choice. ( like cable, you get ONE choice..  For local land line, ONE choice )

I'm not saying they are actively colluding, but i think there is an unwritten rule or something.

Mon Sep 16 2024 15:38:44 EDT from IGnatius T Foobar

More fiber providers is better; it makes them compete for your business. 

They have been running new power lines in my area the last few weeks, though they were starting on my block this morning. But no, there is a 2nd fiber company also running lines... 

Just what we need, MORE lines on the poles...  And more lines to break when the trees fall from wind.

Back where i grew up it was all underground. 

I have been around the block a few times too and seen ( and have ) my share of 'oops'. But this one just 'feels' wrong, cant fully explain but it does not seem like a normal SNAFU/Oops moment.

The balloon appearing during the outage ( and us not being told about it at first.. ) only made my suspicions worse.

Sat Feb 24 2024 20:53:36 EST from IGnatius T Foobar

Anyone who works in technology knows that shit happens. As much fun as it is to immerse oneself in conspiracy theories -- indeed, I test them that way -- sometimes a network outage is just a network outage.

cool. nationwide cell outage. 

FBI is involved. 

is that a good idea? 

 I have seen in the past one slow drive on  your bus can drag down the others.   I suppose it depends on how they wire the bus on whatever board you get, but i have seen it.

Tue Feb 06 2024 13:13:31 EST from IGnatius T Foobar Subject: The new server, part 0

.  Into the drive slots will go a mix of SSD for my containers and virtual machines, and HDD for NAS and logs. 

Well, it's settled.  I saw something on eBay, made a lowball offer, and it was accepted:

I still need to wait some time before I can go buy all of the stuff to go in it.  I'll find a nice Mini-ITX motherboard with 32 or 64 GB of disk and an M.2 drive for booting the operating system.  Into the drive slots will go a mix of SSD for my containers and virtual machines, and HDD for NAS and logs.  Then a nice 12 volt battery backup and we're off to the races.

How does Citadel terminate TCP connections that timeout? Are you using the classical RST method?

My TCPing is rusty but TCP sockets have plenty options for dropping connections that have nothing interesting going on for them.

Citadel Server doesn't attempt to do anything like that.  When there is a session that has been idle for the configurable timeout period, it simply calls close() to close the socket.

If you know of a better way please suggest it -- that sounds useful!

That is my guess.  Both flooding with attempts and then attempts to crash things when that does not work, both for DoS and looking for bugs to exploit.. I have seen that here too. its one reason i took everything off line for a while. 

Script kiddies need to be up against the wall, but after the politicians. 

Mon Feb 05 2024 18:45:32 EST from IGnatius T Foobar

which would imply that they're messing with the TCP semantics somehow.  

These connections are staying open even if I tell the Citadel Server to terminate them.  That might mean they're still bound to a thread and in the middle of a transaction, which would imply that they're messing with the TCP semantics somehow.  I'm unable to reproduce this effect in the lab -- if I open a session and then either terminate it, it goes away; if I open a session and then let the timeout expire, it also goes away.

In other news, I found a bug in "ctdlload" that was only uncovered by trying to import an entire copy of the uncensored.citadel.org database.  The export on the production system took 18 minutes.  An import on that machine's twin had been running for 20 HOURS before it hit the bad record and crashed, and that's before it even got into the "big" table (message texts exceeding 1024 bytes).  After fixing the bug I'm trying it again on the NanoPi+M.2 rig.  It ran really fast and got well into the big messages before the OOM killer got it.  ☹️  So I added some swap and am trying again.

What it all boils down to however, is that my current server is absolute garbage when it comes to disk write performance, and I can build nearly anything at this point and it'll be a far better performer than what I currently have, as long as it's using some sort of SSD as its data drive.  

The "M350" Mini-ITX case looks pretty cool, is wall mountable, can be found for cheap on eBay (including existing systems that I could just up the RAM in) and with a PicoPSU can run from a 12 volt supply.  My current thinking is that one of these with an M.2 as the main system disk, a SATA SSD for virtual machine images, and a big spinning HDD for Home NAS use, could get the job done without breaking the bank.  As previously mentioned I could use my desktop as the hot standby machine.

An intentional DoS Tactic  

Sun Feb 04 2024 18:20:58 EST from darknetuser

2024-02-04 18:14 from Nurb432
Other than blocking their IP, ( like fail2ban does after x failed
attempts ) not sure you can.. 

I think the problem is more like the TCP connection is not getting closed when it should be naturally closed.

Other than blocking their IP, ( like fail2ban does after x failed attempts ) not sure you can.. 

Sun Feb 04 2024 17:54:47 EST from IGnatius T Foobar

I feel I have to address this.  The occasional "too many users are already online" issue happens when some douchebag from out of town decides to try to brute-force one of our services, like authenticated SMTP or POP or IMAP or whatever.  These people need to die slowly, slashed with razor blades all over and then submerged in acid.  Whenever it happens, I take a look at it and I see all of the idle connections.  I've checked a bunch of times and all the services have their idle timeouts configured and working, but for some reason these connections are held open somehow.  When I figure that out we'll be in good shape.  In the meantime I'd appreciate any help if anyone knows how to troubleshoot this sort of thing.

If you have a single ISP subscription, a single router and a single power source, the only thing a cluster is really protecting you from is having one of your computer nodes gest toast and take your services with it.

That's what you said last week, and the more I think about it the more it makes sense.

I'm in the data center business.  I do high uptime stuff, and we sell a lot of disaster recovery services, so it's the kind of thing that's in my head a lot.  My gaggle of virtual machines are all attached to a "router" VM that tethers the entire environment to a VPN service running at a place that actually hosts my IP addresses.  I pay for this service.  Not only does it conceal the actual location of the origin servers, but it actually makes the entire environment portable.  Anywhere there is a replica, the entire environment can be started up and attached to the Internet.  This is my current disaster recovery strategy: the virtual machines are all replicated nightly to my personal rig at home, so if the primary data center becomes unavailable for any reason -- from an actual facility outage, to the machine itself blowing up, to my hosting arrangements coming to an end -- I can simply start up the virtual machines (including the router) at home and away we go.

If I got a single machine instead of a cluster, I could afford to make it "better" -- more memory, more disk, etc. and then it could also double as a home NAS (something I do not have today).  My desktop machine would continue to be the local replica that I could turn on whenever I need to, and the old server would be relegated to an off site backup.

At this point my target date is late spring or summer of this year.  Because that's when my truck will be paid off and I'll have a little money to work with.  :)

We already have long downtimes due to connection saturation and the like at Uncensored. It is not like hardware redundancy is going to push availabilility from 99% into 99.9%

I feel I have to address this.  The occasional "too many users are already online" issue happens when some douchebag from out of town decides to try to brute-force one of our services, like authenticated SMTP or POP or IMAP or whatever.  These people need to die slowly, slashed with razor blades all over and then submerged in acid.  Whenever it happens, I take a look at it and I see all of the idle connections.  I've checked a bunch of times and all the services have their idle timeouts configured and working, but for some reason these connections are held open somehow.  When I figure that out we'll be in good shape.  In the meantime I'd appreciate any help if anyone knows how to troubleshoot this sort of thing.

If they were huge traditional servers, sure, i could see the power waste.

But, the stuff i use here at home, and with what i think IG has planned, it wont be that much of a concern really.   I mine max out at 50 watts if running full bore ( which they never do unless im experimenting )..  idle far far lower, around 15 or less..  

I also turn off my backup server ( same series of machine ) when not in use. Power it up remotely just before weekly backups.  Then it powers back down.

.....and having to rebuild the metal from scratch + restoring VMs from backups. For me its more about 'ease of recovery and general use' than 'maintaining up-time', tho from a hardware standpoint it helps that too.   It also makes it easier to shift loads around while i experiment with things, and upgrading storage or actual machines is also easier with a small cluster. Just shift VMs over to the 2nd node, upgrade the original node. then move some back. Again, no futzing with restoring backups.

But i do agree if its 'critical' then you have a backup line coming in. But i personally still see an advantage.

( and i have battery on mine. again not so much for 'up-time' but for a controlled shutdown option to avoid corruption and, once again, dealing with rebuilding metal and restoring VM backups )

Sun Feb 04 2024 07:38:24 EST from darknetuser

If you have a single ISP subscription, a single router and a single power source, the only thing a cluster is really protecting you from is having one of your computer nodes gest toast and take your services with it.

Personally, id run a tiny cluster, 2 real nodes, with a 3rd 'fake' on a tiny SBC to complete the quorum. Of course id use PVE and it really needs 3 nodes to work right ( even if one is 'fake' ), so YMMV on the needs of the cluster you are choosing ( I know its not PVE )

I do realize that its not 'life critical' stuff here and some downtime while you rebuild from the OS from scratch then restore backups isn't end of world, but its not that much more $, and makes things a lot easier to deal with, i feel.  If we were talking super critical stuff, then ya 5 node or something and a storage cluster separate. 

If i had not already invested in all these M93Ps, while they are slightly slower id be looking at a M700 since i can still swap the CPU out..  ( and 64g ram + installed m.2 SSD slot )

get a bunch of those boards, build a little rack for them.  Would be cool. 

https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:1936196

Oh and most have 2 Ethernet ports so you can separate out the storage traffic from web..  (  can anyone say ceph? :) )

The T6 is its big brother.  I have one of them of course, and i got the 16G version. I think 128g eMMC but like the others, its just to boot, then flip over to m.2 so its not really important how big it was.  its also a non-S chip, so more I/O ( actually the one you have i got while waiting for the T6 to be finished. After my disaster with the RockPi crap, i wanted something that actually worked and got tired of waiting so while it wasn't what i 'wanted' it was close enough ) 

Orange Pi, is my 2nd source that i trust.  The 5B plus is basically the same thing as the T6, also a non-s chip, but they offer a 32G option, which is nice. 

Sat Jan 27 2024 16:59:15 EST from IGnatius T Foobar

Ooooh, that might be an option then :) Especially now that many of these boards come with 2.5Gbps Ethernet which is perfectly fine for cluster storage at this scale. And let's be honest: I am FAR more interesting and talented than Jeff Geerling.

The bigger brother to the one i sent you has 16G and Orange Pi now has a RK3588 option with 32G

Sat Jan 27 2024 12:42:16 EST from IGnatius T Foobar

Honestly, I'd host everything on ARM boards if I could get them with more than 8 GB of memory.

Well, it's official.  I ran the Citadel load test utility on my 11+ year old laptop.  It outperformed my production server by two orders of magnitude.

It looks like anything I get would be faster than what I have now.

ya the low ed stuff are all really celerons with fancy new names.

Bus bandwidth is always an issue with desktops tho.

I might be able to stick a N3350 + 6g RAM on my network. 

It was to replace my old print server. but its still sitting on a shelf. 

Wed Jan 24 2024 18:47:56 EST from IGnatius T Foobar

I wish I could take some of these new low-end CPU's for a test drive. I want to see how today's low end compares to a ten year old Xeon.

I would assume most would have that now anyway so each node wont be melting the lines, but ya, would not hurt to add an external one i guess.

Wed Jan 17 2024 04:09:07 EST from darknetuser

I'd place some overcurrent protection in the line if I was going to do that.

Hey, and if you run 12v you could use solar panels and an old car battery to easily keep it up after the apocalypse..   

well, other than the nuclear winter clouds.. 

As long as they run in parallel i dont see why not. 

Sat Jan 13 2024 20:19:00 EST from IGnatius T Foobar

Question for our resident EE: can boost converters be ganged? It could be interesting to install N+1 of them, for example two 30 amp converters instead of one 8 amp converter per node, and float the voltages on both sides.

Ya that will make zero budget hard

Sat Jan 13 2024 17:42:44 EST from IGnatius T Foobar

* Uninterrupted power. This is far easier at 12 volts than at any other level.
* No fewer than three nodes.
* No fewer than two disks per node.

 

+ 64G ram

adapters do exist. but like i was saying i dont know about bandwidth, if its worth the effort.  Been tempted to try one just to see, but i have a pile of SSD which do the job.. 

Thu Jan 11 2024 12:58:53 EST from IGnatius T Foobar

NVMe is obviously the fastest, but requires a machine with the M.2 slot.  Several of them, in fact, to do a reliable cluster.

 

I tried that once, but didnt provide enough power for my board. Went with something a bit bigger. Sort of the size of 2 M.2 cards back to back in length, like a long thin strip. 

Thu Jan 11 2024 12:58:53 EST from IGnatius T Foobar

 

As far as power, a little searching reveals that there is something called a "PicoPSU" that snaps right into an ATX motherboard.  It looks like this:

 

Mine does, but they charge you like 5 bucks a month extra.  I found out the hard way. Comcast didnt, and each IP was routable, tho it was DHCP so did change like once a year or so. I read the stuff on the fiber people, it was not mentioned.  Until it didnt work.. called up, "i cant, is it because" .. "oh, you have to order this extra feature..."  really? why didnt you tell this up front? Id still have switched but not been frustrated when things broke ... But its static at least. 

Ya a router that gets pissed off every so often, would suck. and suck bad.     Tried taking the case off and sticking a big ass fan on it?

Thu Jan 11 2024 12:17:57 EST from darknetuser

Dunno. An ISP that does give you a public routable IP and doesn't force a lame ONT+Router combo on you is better than a CGNated ISP subscription behind an ONT-Router combo that overheats and needs reboot every 12 hours, and can't be bypassed, even if the latter gives you x100 the bandwidth.

Supposedly I am the sort of nerd that would need a tough bandwidth subscription because everytime my backup scripts trigger a full level 0 dump, they upload 6 Tb to storage. And that is only the workstation. I'd love to be able to upload over the Internet but at things stand, I have to use local storage and then physically move the storage server fom a location to another, lol.


By the way, I think that, for games, latency is more important than bandwidth.

Agreed, if your machine supports it. 

Personally i have not tried any of those nvme to sata adapters. Might be faster than regular ssd, i donno if the bandwidth is there to see a difference.   But either way, ya, ssd is better than moving parts by a long shot..

Thu Jan 11 2024 12:01:06 EST from LadySerenaKitty

My laptop is solid state.  PCIe3 NVMe.  One time I took all 40GB of my IRIX files and put them into a tar file.  No compression, the operation was done in 20 seconds.  40GB read, 40GB written, 20 seconds.  Would have taken a lot longer with SATA SSD, and I hate to imagine how long it would have taken on spinning metal.  NVMe is the way to go.  It faster than a cat with the zoomies.

NVMe is obviously the fastest, but requires a machine with the M.2 slot.  Several of them, in fact, to do a reliable cluster.

As far as power, a little searching reveals that there is something called a "PicoPSU" that snaps right into an ATX motherboard.  It looks like this:

2099372936@UncensoredSame for your incoming network line.. ( bringing it back to the room >topic :)  ) if all you want to do is stream a couple cat videos at >the same time and read mail.. dont need much. But if you want to do >hard core multi player games, you need bandwidth.   Dunno. An ISP that does give you a public routable IP and doesn't force a lame ONT+Router combo on you is better than a CGNated ISP subscription behind an ONT-Router combo that overheats and needs reboot every 12 hours, and can't be bypassed, even if the latter gives you x100 the bandwidth. Supposedly I am the sort of nerd that would need a tough bandwidth subscription because everytime my backup scripts trigger a full level 0 dump, they upload 6 Tb to storage. And that is only the workstation. I'd love to be able to upload over the Internet but at things stand, I have to use local storage and then physically move the storage server fom a location to another, lol. By the way, I think that, for games, latency is more important than bandwidth. ]]>https://uncensored.citadel.org/readfwd?go=I%20Want%20Broadband%20Everything?start_reading_at=2099372935Thu, 11 Jan 2024 17:01:06 -00002099372935@Uncensored

My laptop is solid state.  PCIe3 NVMe.  One time I took all 40GB of my IRIX files and put them into a tar file.  No compression, the operation was done in 20 seconds.  40GB read, 40GB written, 20 seconds.  Would have taken a lot longer with SATA SSD, and I hate to imagine how long it would have taken on spinning metal.  NVMe is the way to go.  It faster than a cat with the zoomies.

Oh and didnt think of it before i posted, but Bmax has mall NUCs that run on 12v ( i went and checked )

Not high end stuff unless you pay what i feel is silly prices and better spent elsewhere, but they come with eMMC to boot and a M.2 slot so would be good for storage arrays at least.  I got one to upgrade my old print server since my printer is basically windows only without a lot of trouble..  its the only bit of windows i allow in the house other than my VM on my shops laptop.  I know i can get a new printer, but i print so rarely i cant justify it.

I think i paid 75 bucks for this one, its a celeron N100 or something. has 6gb ram. More than enough to print with, but not much else.

While im not fond of them as they are overpriced for what they are, there are are a few x86 ( both intel and amd ) SBCs out there. But dont expect them to be speed demons either.    And instead of getting cases, could build a small rack for them.

Thu Jan 11 2024 10:13:26 EST from IGnatius T Foobar

I really, really, really want to find hardware that can run on 12 volts.

I don't have a naming scheme, everything is named on the fly with whatever seems appropriate.

Depends on use case. If you are a hard core gamer, you want power. if you are an AI nut, you *need* it.. 

But if you just want to watch cat videos, read email and do a spreadsheet every so often.. ya it dont matter that much, once you reach a certain threshold. 

Same for your incoming network line.. ( bringing it back to the room topic :)  ) if all you want to do is stream a couple cat videos at the same time and read mail.. dont need much. But if you want to do hard core multi player games, you need bandwidth.  

Wed Jan 10 2024 19:56:10 EST from darknetuser

IMO for home systems it is more important to get hardware that has features than hardware that has raw horsepower.

My VMs are also by function.  Physical boxes that i actually use and not just testing or something ( other than the farm servers ) are things like Village ( ya, same as my now non existent bbs, comes from the 1960s TV show. one of my earliest memories... huge fan. ) wonderland, Moya..    all 'places' so its a 'theme'

At the office when i was still in charge of things, they were the serial numbers... Boring but useful.

Wed Jan 10 2024 20:00:28 EST from darknetuser

For home systems, I name them after the place they are located on, so I have machines called wardrobe, bedside... you get the idea.

For production I tend to call things by their function, so you get reverseproxy, mainmail, backupmail...

And a topic for another room, but its interesting how we all chose our machine names.. ( unless you are boring and use serial number or something )

Ouch.

Wed Jan 10 2024 18:26:21 EST from IGnatius T Foobar

OMFG.

oooo yes. if you still use spinny disks for anything other than off-line backup these days you will be taking a huge hit.  its amazing how much really. ( same for eMMC... its awful )

This summer i dug out a bunch of 10k 4tb disks out of my parts closet while looking for something else, "hey, i have 6 ports in my server and a huge PS now that is mostly idling..., and these are fast.. this would be cool"  scared up the cables and such put it all in.. and even not being boot drives the thing came to a crawl..

I may not be the best example but i'm happy with my E3-1275L's in those tinys. Seem to be the perfect compromise between speed/electric/size  Just wish i could toss more ram at them.

I also have 2 full size machines, with a E5 2620, inexpensive as they are bit older tech, they do fly, but again, full size monsters..  Last one i got has 3 m.2 slots along with 4 sata ports. One is wifi tho.. ( no on board video tho )

A thought. i could set one of the tinys up like we did that RK box if you want.. see if its worth pursuing or not. You wont see video performance  ( its not gamer stuff ) , but you dont care about that anyway.

I do the same actually, offline device at the office. Every 2 weeks when i go in, i bring the drive home. backup the stuff i care about, next day take it back  Its in a different county.. so pretty storm safe too. But since you are going to drop it at family and have full time network, id just just create a cluster, add it to the cluster. move the one node down the street....  instant replication/backup.... 

And if you use PVE using ceph is brain dead easy, tho it needs a 2nd drive on each machine.  Plus you have a extra CPU server if you needed to test something.. Just push the VM across 

Or use their backup solution and do daily or something on its own.  Make the remote site only a backup install..  I do like their backup solution, but for what little bit i do here, i stopped dedicating a machine for that.

Not pushing pve of course, just makes stuff like this pretty easy. ( but either way if both sides have bandwidth id consider a ceph cluster regardless of how its managed )

Wed Jan 10 2024 04:55:43 EST from darknetuser

I would backup my servers automatically to the local NAS and then swap both NASes once a month. It is far from perfect because you risk the offsite backup being too old if you have a local disaster that takes both the servers and the local NAS, but budget was kind of limited.

Mine are M93p.

The next model up with the 2nd M.2 socket installed and more ram option - M900. If i had known before i bought my M93's id have gone with them due to ram, if nothing else.

Most of these things came with i5's.  A few came with i3's and some came with i7s.  I get the bare bone i5's as they are common as dirt, and rip the CPU out and replace it with a Xeon E3-1275L V3, add ram and SSD. However the M900 is a different family so i dont know the part number without looking it up, but there are i7's and xeons available in that family too.  ( skylake? i dont remember.. ). BUT i have no first hand experience with the 900s, and only read that people have done it, so YMMV.. 

One thing to watch is if you care about WiFi, they are really picky on what they will accept. If you shove in a card it dont like, it wont even post bios..just bitch at you for 'illegal card installed'. Really annoying..

Tue Jan 09 2024 20:11:38 EST from IGnatius T Foobar

For this particular setup I might consider PVE. What model Lenovo is it?
All the ones I see on eBay have Celery processors in them.

Ran across a RK3588 ( :) )  SBC the other day out on Aliexpress that had emmc to boot and 4, yes, 4, m.2 sockets. 

Tue Jan 09 2024 18:24:37 EST from IGnatius T Foobar

Oh, and one other thing: offsite backups. When I ran the servers at home, I backed them up to the data center. When I ran them at the data center, I backed them up at home. With only one location I will need a B-site. I am thinking maybe a single board computer with a biggish disk and drop it on the VPN from a family member's home or something.

May not be for everyone, but if you dont mind the ram limitation, which does suck, those lenovo tinys i have, with a xeon swapped do pretty well. They are stupid cheap. Low power use.  And i know you are not into it, but they run PVE well. 

I hear the next model up can handle 64g ram. And do have the 2nd m.2 socket soldered in..   I have heard you can swap CPU there too, but i dont have one in possession to say that is legit or not. 

What early users of SpaceX’s Starlink satellite internet think about the service, speed and more:
https://www.cnbc.com/2021/04/15/spacexs-starlink-early-users-review-service-internet-speed-price.html

So, when I worked at MCI - we did the Department of Corrections, Security Information Systems telephones. Prisoner calls. 

DOCSIS. 

I've always hated that DOCSIS is used in relation to broadband. 

Thu Apr 08 2021 13:01:30 EDT from IGnatius T Foobar

Yup. Full-duplex was released as an enhancement to DOCSIS 3.1, and is a core component of DOCSIS 4.0. Supposedly it can go up to 10 Gbps downstream and 6 Gbps upstream.

The end state of all this will probably be to make the node coverage areas smaller and smaller with each generation, gradually transforming HFC from an FTTN solution to an FTTC solution. If they ever move the video service from QAM to IPTV, the network could be optimized by putting actual *routers* in the node cabinets instead of backhauling everything.

Saw a ticket last week ( i scan thru them every so often, making sure my system is working as it should ) about a laptop needing reloaded due to virus  ( not uncommon ) with a note:

"Computer is overseas, working on a way to retrieve it before reload"

WTH? Um, no, burn it. Burn it with fire.. I really hope our policy has not changed, just to save a few bucks.

They are also physically destroyed on re-entry. 

These folks are prime targets. Elected government officials mostly. ( Not all, but mostly )

Sat Jan 23 2021 12:53:51 EST from IGnatius T Foobar

We dont let people take their devices overseas.  We give them
burners with even more security than normal. 

Yeah. No connectivity except through VPN, all physical ports disabled, no physical storage. There are places where if you are anyone even remotely important you can expect to be spied on.

Yeah - as the owner of the company, which *was* a SMB - he kind of operated outside of my policies. 

He also used to bring in his family laptops, drop them down on my desk, and go, "Um, so this is my son's laptop. He says it isn't running quite as fast as it used to, seems sluggish and isn't as reliable. Have one of your guys look at it... can you have it ready by the end of the day?" 

I started threatening to bring my wife into the office, drop her down on his desk and go, "So um, listen - this doesn't feel like it used to. Things don't seem as... efficient. Have one of your guys take a look at it, see if they can tune it up. Can you have it ready by the end of the day?" around the office where I was sure people who would run back and tell him would overhear. 

As mentioned previously, he was a gynecologist, if that wasn't clear. 

Anyhow, family PCs stopped coming into the office. 

Sat Jan 23 2021 08:36:18 EST from Nurb432

We dont let people take their devices overseas.  We give them burners with even more security than normal. 

We dont let people take their devices overseas.  We give them burners with even more security than normal. 

At the place in Ohio, I made us implement pushed strict security for mobile devices. I hung out with all the executives from a sister company, and we would go out to clubs and bars, and everyone had their Motorola out on the bar, spinning it around, checking texts, drinking... every night, as they got completely blasted - all of them with no security on them. 

The physician who owned our company bitched righteously about how inconvenient it was and how necessary it was in his role as a physician (a gynecologist) to have quick access without needing to enter some complex secure passcode to his mobile device. 

"What are you doing down there, Doc? Taking notes about what you see on your blackberry?" 

Anyhow - he went on some exotic vacation to Africa - and his phone was stolen. He came back in a panic. Can you wipe it remotely? 


"Sure - we set that all up... and if it EVER becomes active on a domestic US carrier again, our wipe command will be queued and

Fri Jan 22 2021 10:43:51 EST from darknetuser

That is the problem with things like i2p. I understand that my

traffic is going out encrypted through a tunnel to decentralized peer

routers with i2p and why this buys me anonymity. But if I'm doing it

on my regular machine on my regular OS - there is a chance I'll make

a mistake, copy and paste things, enter something in the wrong

window. So the safest way is a boot CD or a USB drive that is either

non-writable or cleaned every boot - that is a hassle regular people

are never going to accept. 

Something I have learnt is that there is no fixing stupid when it comes to opsec.

My boss once made me encrypt his laptop because EVERYTHING IN IT MUST BE SUPERSECURE. Nowadays, I often find his laptop unlocked in some unatended table or counter.

The thing was programmed to lock itself if unattended for 5 minutes speficially to address this scenario, but boss disabled it because it was inconvenient.

I think like three weeks later, somebody accessed that computer and found out he is fucking some lady that is not his wife.

Bottom line is you can develop a secure protocol, and then people will missuse it and then blame you for making something that does not work. Akin to running Tor Browser, signing up with your real name on a forum, and then complaining because the SJWs found you.

Technically, it doesn't as it was never designed to. Other blockchain based currencies do however. 

Tue Jan 19 2021 21:52:57 EST from ParanoidDelusions

I mean, how does Bitcoin work to anonymize transactions? If it can be done there, there should certainly be a way to do it here. My understanding of bitcoin is that if you're not hacker-level careful, a transaction will expose your identity, anyhow. 

 

Agreed. I couldn't get my mind around how to word it, though. 

I mean, how does Bitcoin work to anonymize transactions? If it can be done there, there should certainly be a way to do it here. My understanding of bitcoin is that if you're not hacker-level careful, a transaction will expose your identity, anyhow. 

We need to make anonymous transactions bonehead safe. I know that is a tall order - but - your grandmother needs to be able to do it confident that she won't accidently reveal her identity if she doesn't maintain a clean system that boots from a USB image every time she logs in under the anonymous account. 

That is the problem with things like i2p. I understand that my traffic is going out encrypted through a tunnel to decentralized peer routers with i2p and why this buys me anonymity. But if I'm doing it on my regular machine on my regular OS - there is a chance I'll make a mistake, copy and paste things, enter something in the wrong window. So the safest way i

Tue Jan 19 2021 13:17:02 EST from IGnatius T Foobar

It sounds like the goal is simply decentralization, not anonymity.  That's a separate task and it doesn't have to be done as part of the same effort.

The big important existential goal right now is to remove the cartel's power.  Nothing else matters.

Cool ill add it to my list of 'things to consider when needed'  instead of cheap commodity routers.

You will have to give us a report after it cooks for a bit.

So it's been a little over a week now, and I am still delighted.  This little router is outstanding.

I see that the router software has their "CAPsMAN" software on board.  Does that mean I can buy a few of their wifi access points (some of which are also cheap-as-chips) and the router I already have will act as a controller for them?  I could use a system like that but I am really not interested in investing in Ubiquiti type stuff.  But for $20 per access point and a controller I already appear to own, it would be worth it.

I donno about that, i think both are important.  Staying anonymous will become more important as they start reaching out and slapping people down personally. Its already started. 

Not being known may keep you out of the FEMA camps. 

It sounds like the goal is simply decentralization, not anonymity.  That's a separate task and it doesn't have to be done as part of the same effort.

The big important existential goal right now is to remove the cartel's power.  Nothing else matters.

I dont see it changing anything.  You still hit the 'services' and login, buy stuff, etc. They need to gather information on you to be functional.   Unless you get every company to agree to purge data on logout, and they wont, its doing zero for you.

If you dont want to leave a 'useful' trail, you can do that today.

I did think this. It is a different time and he already let the Genie out of the bottle. I'm not sure if he can get lightning to strike twice. 

Fri Jan 15 2021 15:51:55 EST from zooer

I heard something about this last year, I am not sure anything will become of his efforts.  People don't care, people don't want to give up their facebook.

Elaborate. How does having your own wallet and deciding who to let plug into it, on a one time basis, erode your anonymity - as compared to now... where Facebook and Twitter and Google have it all stored on their servers and have cookies tracking you where ever you go? 

What are your privacy concerns about this idea? I haven't thought that deeply about it yet. Just a general, "sounds good... imma ask the guys who really care about this stuff what they think..." 

Fri Jan 15 2021 15:49:44 EST from nonservator

Solid looks to me like the end of anonymity for anyone engaging, and the ability of others to pull your plug at any time.

I heard something about this last year, I am not sure anything will become of his efforts.  People don't care, people don't want to give up their facebook.

Solid looks to me like the end of anonymity for anyone engaging, and the ability of others to pull your plug at any time.

Another source on it: 

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/01/10/technology/tim-berners-lee-privacy-internet.html

Fri Jan 15 2021 15:04:07 EST from ParanoidDelusions

 

https://www.indiatimes.com/technology/news/tim-berners-lee-wants-to-turn-the-internet-on-its-head-and-decentralize-it-once-more-353998.html?fbclid=IwAR02P6ewMZ7Cw8hUGf9fvPeS-NzTRk89TUesyj3r8g2FISf8Ye74xLgBQjo

Have you guys heard anything about this? 

Ill have to keep this in mind if i need another box. If i toast my current router, i'm still leaning towards a opnsence vm on a dedicated network card. But 60 bucks isn't bad to just toss it in the closet and not care anymore.  

Mon Jan 11 2021 23:38:52 EST from IGnatius T Foobar

Yeah, it's fine.  It's fantastic, actually.  I'm getting pretty damn close to wire speed on my "gigabit" (which is what Verizon calls 940/880) Internet connection.  Enterprise-grade software, nearly everything on a single SoC, 3 watts power consumption, what more could you want for $59 USD?  Nice small box, mounted neatly on my network wall, cable connections face down and the LEDs face forward into the room.  I love it.

Yeah, it's fine.  It's fantastic, actually.  I'm getting pretty damn close to wire speed on my "gigabit" (which is what Verizon calls 940/880) Internet connection.  Enterprise-grade software, nearly everything on a single SoC, 3 watts power consumption, what more could you want for $59 USD?  Nice small box, mounted neatly on my network wall, cable connections face down and the LEDs face forward into the room.  I love it.

Im sure there is some joke about not being able to read this, but i'm tired and tomorow is Monday :( 

You will have to give us a report after it cooks for a bit.

Sun Jan 10 2021 14:22:15 EST from IGnatius T Foobar

I did keep the OEM software. I've hear that OpenWRT can be installed on it, but I haven't been able to confirm that the OpenWRT build preserves this model's on-chip ethernet switching. Mikrotik's routerOS seems fine enough for my needs and it's already working.

Just a few minutes ago I took the old router out of the path. Everything seems fine so far. If you are reading this then it's probably working.

did you keep the oem software? 

Sat Jan 09 2021 11:45:37 EST from IGnatius T Foobar

I was actually thinking about that as I went through the first couple of rooms today. It's a very bad time to be a non-sheep but I hate that it's the only thing we're talking about everywhere.

So let's talk about my Mikrotik router some more!

It arrived yesterday, and I have put it in line with my old router, with the Mikrotik on the upstream side closest to the Internet and the old verizon router behind it. Later tonight I will gradually move all of my stuff out from behind the old router and directly onto the new one.

Even with both routers in line, I'm getting 871/863 Mbps on speedtest, and that's from the same machine running my servers, so I'm very happy so far.

Seconded that Mikrotik make some nice little boxes. I inherited this one from a friend who used it for years to his complete satisfaction:

https://mikrotik.com/product/RB750GL

though I'm sure it's long been superseded. This is a guy who hung on to his DSL connection for years after he got cable so he could run torrents on one without slowing down the other. He was pissed when they found an excuse to un-grandfather him.

Hey, i'm not bitter and disillusioned..  No, wait, ya, i am. 

:)

Sat Jan 09 2021 00:11:59 EST from ParanoidDelusions

I love how bitter and disillusioned your user base is, Ig. They're the most nihilistic community I've ever found in 35 years of telecommunications. It may be the first time I've ever felt truly at home. 

 

Getting new equipment is a mixed thing. You're excited and once you get it all up and running, it is always a great feeling if it delivers what you were hoping...


Doing the transition is always something that I dread, though - and if things go south, it can be a total nightmare.

Bitter and disillusioned, yes. Nihilistic, thankfully no - that's like suicide, it means your enemies win. And spite is as good a reason as any to keep living.

I love how bitter and disillusioned your user base is, Ig. They're the most nihilistic community I've ever found in 35 years of telecommunications. It may be the first time I've ever felt truly at home. 

Fri Jan 08 2021 06:41:13 EST from nonservator

The only wireless device I trust is an old school infrared remote. Everything else is a ridiculous inefficient joke.

So, I think a major difference is you guys are living on the East Coast - the homes out there are generally OLD, and they were built way different.

Sometimes.  My old house was built in the 1920s, with plaster and wire lath walls.  I got wifi coverage by putting the access point in the basement, so the signal could shoot through the wooden floors instead of the faraday cage created by the wire lath in the walls.  My current house was built in 1991, all modern construction with sheetrock on wood studs, 16 on center, etc. etc. etc.   It's far easier to work in.  But I also have a very shallow attic with trusses everywhere, that make the attic unusable for storage and really horrifying to run wiring in.

What bugs me is that in 1991 every house was being wired for cable television.  Mine wasn't.  I could have used those drops to pull Ethernet.  It took a few years to phase out all of the tacked-on phone and cable wiring and replace it with in-wall wiring and jacks.

Did I mention how fascinated I am with the MediaTek MT7621A chip?  That's what powers the Mikrotik arriving today, but when I learned how many different routers are powered by this chip, it kind of made me realize that there aren't actually a lot of different routers.  They're all made from hardware from just a few SoC vendors.  I should have known better, as this is already clear to us in the data center business, most vendors use the same merchant silicon.

4643945@Uncensored

The only wireless device I trust is an old school infrared remote. Everything else is a ridiculous inefficient joke.

So, I think a major difference is you guys are living on the East Coast - the homes out there are generally OLD, and they were built way different.

In Phoenix, probably 95% of the growth is after 1990.

We're almost entirely concrete slab foundation. Very few basements.

Our attics aren't really like your attics either.

The house in Ohio was fantastic. I could drop wires down the heat returns into the basement, run them along the rafters in the floor, take them up through another exchange to the attic, and then drop them back down into a 2nd floor room.

The house in Ohio was 6000 sq ft including the basement, though - the major problem was length of runs from the study, off to the far east side of the home, into the rest of the place where the living spaces were. There was also a formal living room and a full bar between the library and the living areas proper. My neighbors were all at least an acre away in every direction. When we moved in, my sis

Thu Jan 07 2021 18:41:18 EST from Nurb432

I think it all depends on the house and how its wired.

I think it all depends on the house and how its wired.  I do have one room where it sux.  But in general it does ok for me. Saves me digging into the attic, which is a REAL nightmare in my house. No room to move around up there. Late 50's truss system. Dreadful construction.  When i move again going to build from scratch again and pre-wire before the walls go up, like i did a couple of my houses.

Friend of mine is now using these modules for his external garage/shop, as WiFi couldn't make it thru the walls, and he didnt want to dig a trench. ( concrete )

I've had mixed results, tending towards unsuitable. :)

Thu Jan 07 2021 18:30:28 EST from Nurb432

i have had decent luck with Ethernet-over-powerlines. 

For a house that is wired well, i have had decent luck with Ethernet-over-powerlines.  I use them in my garage to get network out to my miners.  ( free cooling in the winter )

The only device that I could have wired that I use wireless is my MBP and a couple of of other laptops that I mostly use as "auxiliary devices." I'm out of switch ports where it sits, and I've just been lazy. I should hook up another switch and just run some drops around for those machines. But yeah, if there is a wired connection, I prefer it to, outside of portable devices that I use primarily in a portable nature. I actually have USB Ethernet dongles and OTG adapters so I've had tablets and phones connected over ethernet, at times. 

Thu Jan 07 2021 16:17:28 EST from darknetuser

2021-01-07 13:03 from IGnatius T Foobar
I'm sure that was tongue-in-cheek, but I'm one of those nerds who only

uses wireless for portable devices. Anything that stays in one place,

gets wired.

We love you!

For the record, I am like that myself.

So, my house has an entry point off the garage where there is a "data box" - this is popular in the homes in Arizona that were built around 95-2001. Your whole house speaker system is there, and your cable drop terminates in there from the outside box, so your cablemodem, which is increasingly your router, go there too. 

Anyhow - there are drops into the two downstairs "bedrooms" and one is a kind of bonus room - designed to be a home office, really. Anyhow... so I have limited ethernet into a guest bedroom and my study, and from that drop I have switches galore - the majority of my machines are wired in there. 

But the rest of the family, all their iPads, iPhones, Macbooks, Surfaces - as well as mine, when I venture out of my cave - The TVs, stereo receivers, my wife's upstairs office, My daughter's desk in her room, the IoT devices, the doorbell, the fridge and dish washer, her Wii, then WiiU, then Switch... 

It is a 3000 sq ft split level with a big room dead center,

Wed Jan 06 2021 23:57:15 EST from IGnatius T Foobar

I suppose I haven't always "not had" a crimper. For the longest time I just borrowed one from work when I needed it, or just made the cable assemblies there. Since I've been working at home for the last four or five years that's not exactly convenient anymore. I've mostly gotten away with just terminating my cable runs on keystone jacks, and using pre-assembled patch cables since then. But now I want to do an even nicer installation with cut-to-length cables everywhere.

The Mikrotik I ordered is a very basic one, the hEX RB750Gr3. I don't need wifi since I have a dedicated access point in the middle of the house. Both the specs and the reviews say that this model does just fine maxing out a gigabit Internet connection, which is what I have. The more I read about Mikrotik the more it seems like they are everywhere and most people just don't know it. I'll bet their stuff is all over the place in hotels, cell towers, etc. In fact, I'm pretty sure I've seen a Mikrotik

Ironically, as the least "network-ey" guy here, I've had mine since 2001, but I think I couldn't find it when I remodeled my study. 

And I have a Google Mesh - because I was tired of messing around with the traditional way - and mesh just works so much better in a consumer application. 

Wed Jan 06 2021 17:39:12 EST from darknetuser

Oh, and now that I've been an IT professional for almost three
decades, I finally bought an RJ45 crimper :)

Thanks!

Wed Jan 06 2021 13:38:29 EST from IGnatius T Foobar

 And I like the fact that their monitoring software is called "The Dude".

Lol

Tue Jan 05 2021 17:02:01 EST from IGnatius T Foobar

Oh, and now that I've been an IT professional for almost three decades, I finally bought an RJ45 crimper :)

I wish you guys would put links to thinks you talk about for those of us who have no idea. I mean, I know there are these things called Search Engines.... but... 

Tue Jan 05 2021 17:02:01 EST from IGnatius T Foobar

Ok, I ordered a Mikrotik. 

I honesty dont remember the internal addresses. Once i realized it was a double NAT, i stopped caring and made the phone call.

If i remember fight the parent company of pfsense does sell some inexpensive ( and stupid expensive ) hardware too.    When it finally died i wimped out and just got a commodity netgear, and retired the old pc running pfsense. I had an older mini-dell with room for one network card, + its built in one. forget the model at this point.  If i *had* to do it again, most likely id just add another network card to the bigger PVE server ( others dont have room ) and run the router as a VM.  I know that is 'eggs in one basket', but its just my house. Being down a few hours while i scramble to put some hardware up isn't a huge deal.

We have metronet here. ( a mid-west thing i think ) and they have served us quite well.

Only gripe is they didnt tell you upfront that its a "neighborhood NAT" ( i forget the actual term ) and you had to pay extra for a static IP to get incoming.  Had to call to ask what the deal was, as it was nowhere on their pages as a service to buy or even an explanation of the default NAT. "Hi, it appears i'm on a NAT or something, can this be fixed? " "oh, everyone does this and you need to order... "  That's great.. just could have told me upfront and saved me some headaches and loss of incoming services for a week. ( and no, not everyone NATs entire neighborhoods together.. but whatever )

Thu Dec 24 2020 15:31:54 EST from IGnatius T Foobar

Hooray!

After a number of failed attempts, I FINALLY got Verizon to let me cancel my TV service and keep Internet.

Verizon FiOS is the single finest residential Internet service in the nation, hands down, no contest. As with many people, however, I just don't want the massive pipeline of raw sewage (cable television) pumping into my home. A year ago, I tried to change it up, and ended up with a lower bill, faster Internet, and keeping the TV service. A month ago, I tried again, and they scuttled the attempt but I was still able to return my set top box and cancel DVR service, which pocketed about $25/month.

Today ... while wrapping not-Christmas presents, I figured I'd put on my headset and wait on hold while trying again. And to my surprise, I got a service rep who only asked me once if I reeeeeeeally wanted to cancel TV, after which she gave me what I wanted. I still have the landline phone, which is weird, but getting rid of that would h

Thu Nov 19 2020 16:16:52 EST from IGnatius T Foobar @ Uncensored

Oh, it gets even better than that :)

The tunnel is capped at 5 Mbps, but my Internet service is 1 Gbps. So...

My nightly backup routine consists of:
1. Create a btrfs snapshot of /var/lib/libvirt/images
2. rsync the snapshot to an offsite host
(this uses the host's 1 Gbps Internet, not the guest's 5 Mbps Internet)
3. Delete the snapshot

On the offsite host, those backups are automatically snapshotted and rotated for a week, also using btrfs.

It's completely seamless, and my entire hosting environment can live wherever the tunnel terminates. If I can ever get the tunnel working in software, I could move the whole site back and forth between the two locations any time I want.

I design data center environments for a living :)

I figured you were in the industry. Elegant solution. I had an opportunity about 2011 to switch my focus to Linux - but then I got caught up in a difficult move, my kid working through Jr. High and High School, and my wive moving up to high level management in national companies. My professional focus got back-burnered - and at this point, a 50 year old white guy who hasn't been cutting edge for 10 years and wants a large salary in the IT field just doesn't seem worth fighting for. :) 

I just bought 5 32gb SD cards. My backup solution is going to be taking the SD out of the Pi, making an image of it, burning it to a new SD, putting the new SD back in the Pi, and putting the old one away in storage. I figure a rotation of 5 monthly images is enough for the mission critical purposes of a BBS that is getting maybe 3 to 5 callers a week. :) 

I hate backups. 

Tue Nov 17 2020 12:05:53 EST from IGnatius T Foobar @ Uncensored

It is the hops between my network to Ace, then back from Ace to my
public ID, that worry me. The folks between us. 

Right. And if you are concerned about the privacy of that part of the link, you should be looking at it, because they freely point out that the tunnel is *not* encrypted. Privacy/security is not the focus of this service.

However, if you set up the static route (72.0.224.96/29 via the IP address of the WAN side of your router), that traffic will *not* hairpin through the tunnel. It will simply be routed with normal forwarding.

Here's how you confirm it:
1. From your desktop, get a continuous ping going to one of your servers.
2. Add the static route.
3. Observe that when the static route is added, your ping time suddenly drops to <1ms

If you are not in New York City, the difference should be dramatic. Even where I am, in the northern suburbs, the difference is easily observable.

So... an interesting story about multihomed PCs. When Funlove or Klez32 came down - Intel had advanced warning, and we spent days preparing our externally faced systems in the DC to be ready. We went home that weekend, knowing it was going to hit, confident that we had shut every possible door in to our network, in particular, my group, which was a caged and locked DMZ inside the regular DC - felt very confident that our security was above standard P100 Intel security standards. 


That weekend, as soon as it started hitting, our monitoring alarms started paging out to us, and we all drove in, wondering WTF had happened. Once the worm hit, it hit EVERYWHERE. 


But when we got there, it was clear it wasn't inside our subnet on the DMZ from external sources, nor from any connections to the regular corporate network, which was ALSO getting hammered. 


It turned out to be developers who had brought in rogue hotspots and had left their PCs open. The PC got infe

Thu Nov 12 2020 10:34:01 EST from IGnatius T Foobar @ Uncensored

Monitoring is a separate problem to solve. If you want to monitor your servers, you could always install a monitoring app on your smartphone.


When I access a server on the 72.0.224.88 network, it is an ordinary routed IP path from my desktop to the router and then to the server. It does NOT hairpin through the Ace data center, it does NOT count towards the 5 Mbps bandwidth cap, and it does NOT leave the local network.

This is the important part, specifically, "does NOT leave the local network." 

It is the hops between my network to Ace, then back from Ace to my public ID, that worry me. The folks between us. 

As for monitoring - what I mean is that right now, I'll be hitting the BBS fine, from inside, and I won't realize it is no longer accessible from the outside due to a DHCP renewal. I know I could fix that by having something detect a DHCP renewal and updating my DDNS entry automatically - I've just never got around to it. 

Lazy network monitoring.. If I'm coming in from outside, and I can't get in, I know something is wrong. Right now, I hit an internal IP address, and just because I can get in, doesn't mean anyone else can. 


If there is a crash, Citadel notifies me about it the next time I log in. I've yet to have a hard crash that didn't recover automatically. 

*knocks on silicon* 

Wed Nov 11 2020 15:50:17 EST from IGnatius T Foobar @ Uncensored

The static route is probably the way to go in your case. No side effects. You just have to remember to set it up on any machine you want to use for that purpose.

I guess the only problem with this is that when I want to connect to the BBS, I'll be going all the way out and back in - I'm not even sure how to set a static route on an Amiga, which I'm tricking into thinking has a PPP connection when it is really an ethernet connection over a parallel port... 

But, it'll give me a better gauge of what my end users are experiencing. That has been the problem so far... I can't actually connect from inside to the OUTSIDE. I have to connect to the internal IP address of the machine. 

Thus I find myself thinking it is up, when it isn't reachable from outside. 

Wed Nov 11 2020 11:21:23 EST from IGnatius T Foobar @ Uncensored

The very first thing I did was a password recovery on the router so I could make changes to the configuration :) I saw where they did the IPv6 block and took care of it myself instead of asking for support to do it.

The service is designed to be simple for the customer, though... ...Just remember however, that when you connect to your own servers from your own network, it's going to hairpin that connection out to the Ace data center unless you've built some sort of short circuit into your local network.

For starters, I assigned a static IP address to the WAN port, and opened telnet access to it from my local network, so I can connect to it locally and do whatever else I want to. They actually configure a second tunnel just for managing the router, but I disabled that because I don't want anyone inside my network, even cool people like them.

Then I moved the tunneled network. Instead of appearing on Fa0 through Fa3 (the 4-port switch) it now

Yeah, you're a bit beyond my pay grade at networking. I'd multihome with a NIC on my internal network to achieve what you did - but, with the Pi, I suppose that would require a USB Ethernet or WiFi dongle installed and configured - and for all I know that would require a custom recompile on Raspbian in order to enable. I hadn't considered that maintenance via Telnet will be going out to Ace and then back in across the public network. That is less than ideal. I guess I could just Telnet through my VPN - but then my exit from my VPN service back to my server would still be cleartext over the public network, right? I guess the static route on my desktop is really the way to go. Thanks for that tip. 


I don't mind them being able to get into this network - it is just going to be the Citadel, anyhow - which is already a public faced server. I'm comfortable with pretty advanced networking concepts, but I'm not a networking pro by any stretch of the imagination - so it is probably best that I le

I just signed up. Currently my ISPs Router/Cable Modem has two broadcast SIDs, they go to my Citadel, to a Google Mesh, and to a traditional Netgear Router. 

What is one more router behind the main one and lots of differently poorly configured different Networks by a guy who is really more of a systems admin guy than a networking professional. If I were a Network Pro, work would probably be easier to find. I picked the wrong career path. 

Anyhow... We'll see if I can figure this out. Going to have to figure out who my Registrar is again. :) 

Mon Jun 24 2019 23:56:26 EDT from ax25 @ Uncensored

 Wat? https://i.imgur.com/IppKJ.jpg

Not so much that I've seen giant rubber ducks floating in the bay. But then again, I live in Phoenix - so they COULD be there. How would I know? 

Fri Jun 14 2019 12:26:07 AM EDT from ParanoidDelusions @ Uncensored

 

Sat Jun 08 2019 16:28:57 EDT from IGnatius T Foobar @ Uncensored

And ... one more public shaming for people who habitually quote an entire message instead of quoting just enough to establish some context.

I'm still getting the hang of this web editor. :D 

And I'd been drinking that night, I believe. It has been a crazy few weeks. 

 

Wat? https://i.imgur.com/IppKJ.jpg

Sat Jun 08 2019 16:28:57 EDT from IGnatius T Foobar @ Uncensored

And ... one more public shaming for people who habitually quote an entire message instead of quoting just enough to establish some context.

I'm still getting the hang of this web editor. :D 

And I'd been drinking that night, I believe. It has been a crazy few weeks. 

Right now, your mind is trying to justify how adding quotes was different than adding upvotes - and struggling... 

Because it isn't different. It is just a natural evolution... 

Thu Jun 06 2019 13:04:59 EDT from IGnatius T Foobar @ Uncensored

Citadel culture also had a no-quotes policy. I am personally responsible for ruining that, by implementing the Quote function when no one else ever had done so on a Citadel before.

There were a few cries of outrage, particularly from a fellow named Five Fresh Fish who found any amount of quoting intolerable. I attempted to counter by recommending that people keep quoted lines to an absolute minimum. That has repeatedly failed over the years. :(

I'm not a fan of quotes on Citadel - but you've asked for people to use it, so I do. I'm not a Luddite. Things move on and evolve. I use quotes everywhere else... in fact, I thought I'd use the Telnet client most for Citadel - but I find that the web client is more evolved. It isn't quite Citadel... it is an evolved version of it. So were Novu86 and Asgard86 compared to Citadel on Z80. 


Which is why I think we should be able to upvote. Quotes are something modern users want to have. Not me... but younger users. So are upvotes. 

I liked the use of the '^' to indicate which message you were responding to.  '^^^' meant three messages above.

Citadel86 had logoff messages that one local BBS used for quotes and random nonsense.  It isn't message quoting but I like the random crap, not unlike the MOTD program on Unix/Linux

Clymida]]32nd[[
Oh... wait... Quake III Clan name. 
Nevermind... 
1337 b3f0r3 iT wUz k001

+1

Wed May 22 2019 12:00:37 EDT from IGnatius T Foobar @ Uncensored

You can disable the prompts after each message, using <.E>nter <C>onfiguration.
Not-pausing after each message, combined with pausing at the end of each screen, is a particularly nice combination. Gone are the days when you could read text faster than the modem could push it, so you need it to stop *somewhere*.
Of course, I think that being able to reply to an individual message and then continue reading where you left off, is a useful feature.

It's always difficult to balance the needs of modern systems with the desire to keep Citadel traditions intact.

I agree completely. I'm torn on how I want to configure it and how I want to adjust it to cope for modern realities of my 175mb connection which is... I dunno, I'm bad at math... a lot faster than my 2400bps connection when I was 17. :) 

I was just thinking about how, as a Sysop, I miss being able to just WATCH the current caller entering a message... without them even knowing there was someone lurking and watching as they typed in each character - maybe backed out an entire line or paragraph, maybe abandoned an entire post that they thought only they knew about. The voyeur quality of being a sysop back then wasn't something you realized was a weird... not perk... but experience of being a sysop that a lot of people weren't really aware was even a thing... and of course, now that is gone - which is far more secure. 

It would be better to get social media and other forums to remove the up vote and like buttons, the world would be a better place.  Up vote if you agree.

Just because Facebook and Twitter have implemented it as a standard isn't the reason to reject it, though. 

Giving customers (callers) what they want to create a compelling alternative for people is why it should be implemented. 

I can see your concern - maybe. It could dilute the quality of the callers by encouraging the lowest common denominator of customer. Turn Citadel from Van Halen into Van Hagar, from Pre-Napster Metallica to post-Napster Metallica. 

So make it a switch that individual sysops can turn on or off at their whim. I mean, having a web interface at all dilutes the quality of the userbase by making Citadel more accessible. I had originally considered just implementing the text-client side - for just this reason. Then I realized - most of the people I know who know how to use the text-based version have long since burned out on Citadel - I need new, fresh users - and the problem with Citadel compared to traditional menu-driven BBS systems has always been

Sat May 18 2019 03:23:54 AM EDT from ParanoidDelusions @ Uncensored

in what Facebook and Twitter have established as a standard. 

That is exactly why it shouldn't be implemented.  

Ig.. your last post reminded me of something I'd like to see on Citadel. 

A way to LIKE or UPVOTE a message, even if I don't have anything to say to respond or add to the comment. Just a way to acknowledge, "I agree," in what Facebook and Twitter have established as a standard. 

I'd like users who have nothing to say to be able to contribute to a post by upvoting it. I know it is... silly, I guess... but it is something I think users respond to. 

+1 this post if you agree! 

Yup. That was the first wave of suits and bean-counters coming into technology with the idea that it is ALL widgets and that the methodology of moving widgets is universal. 
And technology hasn't been as exciting really, since. 

Wireless is cancer.

Just upgraded to 100Mbit and now I find out we supposedly have gigabit available. But I'd be willing to bet my geographical location is just far enough outside of their high speed zone.

Here in Uncensoredland, the legacy cable company (formerly Cablevision, now Altice) promised us in 2016 that they would start rolling out 10 Gbps fiber-to-the-premises for all subscribers in their service footprint, that the rollout would begin in 2017, and be completed within five years.

Well, here we are almost two years later, and there's no sign of fiber construction anywhere.  Certainly not here.

But they crammed the set top box, cable modem, and wifi/router into one box ... so that's just as good, right?  Who needs fiber to the premises when you've got everything locked into a single proprietary device?

When you want broadband, you get broadband.

http://www.cnn.com/2017/04/12/us/ohio-jail-computers-trnd/index.html

So, Metronet is working their way into my area...they've just had conduit (and maybe fibre) run into my neighborhood.

Has anyone had any experience with these guys, yet? 

AT&T purchased and then sold Comcast about 15 years ago.

hmm

[ https://www.dslreports.com/shownews/ATTs-Giving-Up-on-UVerse-Television-136300 ]

[ http://www.fiercetelecom.com/telecom/at-t-phasing-out-u-verse-video-broadband-brand ]

Although the U-Verse TV service is not being discontinued, they are rebranding U-Verse as "AT&T Internet" and "AT&T Phone" and steering new customers towards DirecTV.  There seems to be some indication that they want to eventually have a box at the subscriber prem that can combine the DSL and Satellite services, and then distribute the combined services through the subscriber's inside wiring.  As Professor Hinkle would say, "messy, messy, messy!"

As television networks begin to broadcast in 2160p (4K UHD) things are going to start getting difficult for any provider not deploying fiber all the way to the subscriber.  Even venerable old DOCSIS is going to be a squeeze, as each 6 MHz slot can carry one analog channel, about seven digital SD channels, two HD channels, about 38 Mbps of Internet, or ... half a UHD channel.  Of course, there are still a lot of networks that haven't even moved from 720p to 1080i yet, so that could be a while off yet.  But it's clear that bandwidth requirements are only going to keep going up, so the non-fiber technologies' days are numbered.  Verizon is of course sitting pretty, having completed its fiber rollout years ago and is now the fifth largest MSO in the United States.  Altice (who operate Optimum and Suddenlink) seem to see the writing on the wall and are reportedly getting ready to build a fiber network capable of delivering 10 Gbps to the subscriber.

(Disclaimer: I am fascinated by the technology and love keeping up with it ... but none of this matters to me because I've already got fiber to my home, plenty of bandwidth, and I despise commercial television.)

Thu Jan 12 2017 10:13:41 PM EST from wizard of aahz @ Uncensored

I hate Charter.. But I hated Frontier worse. Which was what I got when ATT UVerse gave the area to Frontier. It was horrible. Comcast Xfinity is the only other option up here. Verizon is NEVER running fiber to the boonies where I live.

Sadly, Verizon is selling a bunch of their territories to Frontier, as well.  Thankfully, not Boston yet!

What you need to do is work for Comcast.  Comcast gives their employees free cable TV, VOIP, and Internet service for free and/or greatly reduced rates.  After that the service is still horrible but you don't mind as much.

4145441@Uncensoredhttps://uncensored.citadel.org/readfwd?go=I%20Want%20Broadband%20Everything?start_reading_at=4137693Sat, 19 Nov 2016 12:05:39 -00004137693@Uncensoredhttps://uncensored.citadel.org/readfwd?go=I%20Want%20Broadband%20Everything?start_reading_at=4137558Fri, 18 Nov 2016 17:22:48 -00004137558@Uncensoredhttps://uncensored.citadel.org/readfwd?go=I%20Want%20Broadband%20Everything?start_reading_at=4137484Fri, 18 Nov 2016 10:22:27 -00004137484@Uncensored

OTOH, you didn't say which hair... a proper mankini zone trimming with a chainsaw is the thing I could imagine IG doing.

Nah, that is stupid, nobody gives himself a haircut while wearing a hat.

You covered the logo with duct tape, wrote "Trump" on it with a Sharpie®, and you do the yard work naked.

That and you were naked except for wearing a Trump hat, but that is how you usually do yard work.

Oof.  The pain of it all :-)

Just wrap your regular cat5 in tinfoil and ground at each end of the run.  It works just like tinfoil hats :-)

Mon Sep 08 2014 08:41:14 AM EDT from fleeb @ Uncensored

I haven't personally tested the throughput of a mutant bubble eyed turtle dove under laboratory conditions, but I suspect it could beat out a stationwagon full of tapes for bandwidth with just one bird as long as you don't throw stones at it.

Ok, so not tapes, but sd cards:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sneakernet

Thu Sep 04 2014 02:39:44 PM EDT from wizard of aahz @ Uncensored

FREE!! FREE AT LAST!


Got rid of Charter and went with ATT U-Verse

Best I could get here.. But 50 MB D/L speeds.. wheeee

and much faster ping times.

<Does Happy Dance>

and a DVR that doesn't suck!

Jeez, Aahz, where the hell did you move this time that the best you could get was *U-Verse*?  Or is this just another ploy to get work to move closer to you....

Bubble eyed turtle doves I would bet.  Damn recombinant DNA experiments gone wrong.  How many turtle doves does it take to surpass the station wagon full of tapes these days anyhow?  I know tape capacity has increased a bit, but not sure how much info you could shove in to a mutant turtle dove by comparison.

Must resist and implement DTN method to queue up data.

Some providers even force you to use their boxen, those bastards. They do not tell you the VOIP settings, which are hardwired to the box. Somehow they can autoconfigure those remotely, but you have to enter the dsl settings manually. Once a year, these boxes reset themselves, suddenly, without a reason.

Hmm, who will clean the kitchen if your new AP works better?

Anyway, MBP and wifes are a hazard to cheaper APs. We had a (cheap) Fritzbox here as plain AP for a while.* Apple laptops would make it throw fits. Half an hour of internet video safari on youtube and it would overheat and had to be restarted manually. The connected printer would not work either. I bought a used Airport AP, all is calm now and the printer has never lost a print job, nor had the AP to be restarted, no matter what load the thing gets.

*Fritzbox in the higher price segment are a real workhorses and they do not go down easily.

hm, over here the integratad NTBA died... funny effects...

Wed Jun 25 2014 04:54:15 PM EDT from roue @ Dog Pound BBS II

My network is [cable modem] <--> linux box router
The linux box router has three NICs. One for the cable modem, one for the internal LAN, and one for the wifi lan. The wifi lan is just a netgear wireless router. The wifi lan can only see the internet and the linux box router. Clients on the wifi lan can VPN to the linux box router and from there see the internal LAN, but that's it.

It's possible it's the netgear, but it seems client specific. As in, if my tablet starts failing I can pick up the chromebook and it's fine (or vice versa) but both of them exhibit weird drop off if I've been using them for a few hours (vs. my thinkpad, which I never see the issue with, or the usb wifi adapter attached to the raspberri pi, currently up for the 176 days now ... ).

Drop out or unplug sections to diagnose.  If you can unplug parts of the network to rule out devices, all the better.  If you can vie the traffic going out, it would make sence to view that, but if not, block as you can via limited segments and find what is eating all the bandwidth.

I have a situation where the WPA suddenly stops working and I have to shut down the wlan-devicedriver and re-enable it afterwards. its the same on several devices (however, not all of them...)

At work we had a switch dying - it would start sending garbage after several minutes...

And so with the sunshine and the great bursts of leaves growing on the trees, just as things grow in fast movies, I had that familiar conviction that life was beginning over again with the summer.

F. Scott Fitzgerald

Comforting, yet disquieting.  Lets set up a meet and greet sometime in the future to discuss plans for future plans.  We are old, but we are not dead (yet).

Mon Jun 02 2014 09:34:06 PM EDT from vince-q @ Cascade Lodge BBS

S&G

Agreed.  A ham shack should most properly be networked wireless.

Thu May 22 2014 12:54:34 EDT from IGnatius T Foobar @ Uncensored

Connect that to an aftermarket ethernet/WiFi router. I ***strongly***

recommend the cicso home office router. About a hundred bucks. Probably

Cisco's wifi products (real Cisco, not Linksys-co) tend to be really really good. Good range.

linksys is cisco no more - its belkin.

I have always hated the devices branded by the ISP. They had ridiculously little configuration options and performed like crap, often. In germany, the Fritz! Box is widely used, often unbranded. Had some security issues lately, but overall gives fine grained control and can be pimped with the freetz! software. Kind of a parasite mod, which lets you do even more basic linux stuff. Like running dropbear.

The el cheapo ISPs here wont give you support if you do not use their crap box, some even do not give you the login credentials. And I doubt that my mom could exchange an ISP box with a free one. She would refuse to do so, I guess. It is also one of the most common tasks I do for my clients, only very few of them dare to do it themselves.

way back in the days when wifi routers were pricy, there was a company called 'la fonera' around here.

they would give you an accesspoint for free. it would have a second antenna, for the public hotspot.

since theres QOS and bandwith shaping in the linux kernel which works pretty well nowadays (which you will find in most routers) I don't see the point in not doing it?

What IG said.  From a provisioning standpoint, when I have a client that insists on FiOS, it's actually considered a Broadband equivalent, on the order of Cable or DSL - definitely not T1.  Believe it or not, we can even get an SLA for it - it's just not worth much once the calcs are done.  T1 and MPLS are still the way to go if you need decent quality of speed and dependability....if you can afford the cost, that is; the jump is huge.

Goodbye Internet.  Hello Hinternet:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-speed_multimedia_radio

Not that it would get much data across quickly, but low data requirements would find a way.

Not pipe per say, but rather a series of tubes.

Sat Feb 15 2014 10:45:11 PM EST from zooer @ Uncensored

This is what happens when you donate to the Obama campaign. You can buy NBC and make a mega-merger.


Disclaimer: I worked for Comcast.

Just relax the rules on amateur radio and watch what happens.  Innovation up the wazoo and the commercial market will have to try to keep up.  The FCC has a giant stick up its but, but likes it that way.  They keep the rules based at or about the level of understanding of what we knew back about the late 70's for emissions types.

arrrrrrrgh.

Wed Oct 30 2013 10:46:33 AM EDT from Freakdog @ Dog Pound BBS II

 

Tue Oct 29 2013 06:19:24 PM EDT from Ladyhawke @ Uncensored

 

Tue Oct 29 2013 11:24:38 AM EDT from IGnatius T Foobar @ Uncensored

Sorry, we can only network the wireless room wirelessly.

Bah.  Green eggs would work just fine.

Just leave out the ham.

Hey man, I manage disaster shelters for the Red Cross.  If there's one thing you learn running shelters, it's NEVER to leave out the hams!

Tue Oct 29 2013 06:19:24 PM EDT from Ladyhawke @ Uncensored

 

Tue Oct 29 2013 11:24:38 AM EDT from IGnatius T Foobar @ Uncensored

Sorry, we can only network the wireless room wirelessly.

Bah.  Green eggs would work just fine.

Just leave out the ham.

Tue Oct 29 2013 11:24:38 AM EDT from IGnatius T Foobar @ Uncensored

Sorry, we can only network the wireless room wirelessly.

Bah.  Green eggs would work just fine.

Tue Oct 29 2013 11:24:38 AM EDT from IGnatius T Foobar @ Uncensored

Sorry, we can only network the wireless room wirelessly.

Bravo!!!

Not to spoil the fun, but Sig has opened the QSO room for this type of fun.  I will be continuing my ham related conversations over there.

I agree vince-q.  When we speak of WAN, we really mean it :-)  It is fun to see how much can be done with so little bandwidth.  It is not always fast, but I know of node sites that are going on almost 12 years of uptime (and counting) here in Minnesota.  That has to count for some 9's :-)  Fun to see what traffic will pass when you get creative some times.

Mon Sep 30 2013 07:47:56 AM EDT from IGnatius T Foobar @ Uncensored

I have absolutely no idea. It's not an issue with me. If I end up
doing this and the only user is 'me' I'll still be happy. It in the
doing after all.

I am having some trouble envisioning how one would enjoy building a radio system with no one out there to communicate with. I either need new hobbies or a less codependent personality, or maybe both...

I have been known to wire up the pom (phase of the moon) program to my packet setup just for fun.  It can be fun to experiment with things like that (even if they don't amount to being useful for everyone).  To have a service available and or prove you can make it work is sometimes the point for later projects and or endeavors.  I don't think the fitsat-1 (satelite that blinks morse code using led's was practical either, but probably fun):

http://spacewatchtower.blogspot.com/2012/07/japan-satellite-leds-to-twinkle-as.html

Thu Sep 26 2013 01:01:43 AM EDT from Sig @ Uncensored

Perhaps we need a radio room. =)

My understanding of the intent behind the no-crypto rules is that anyone listening SHOULD be able to know what you're saying. Protecting authentication seems to me to be reasonable, but I don't know what the learned people think about it.

I definitely wanted to play with citadel over HF (and/or VHF); it was part of what got me looking at radio in the first place. The group in Minnesota that were doing major marathon support had it set up somehow to support their internal comms, but I don't know any details. I really missed an opportunity to ask, since one of the gentlemen presenting on Friday at DCC was describing the whole project. I don't know to what extent Citadel was used, but it still merited a mention on the slide.

I second that (radio / ham room).  My last room creation was kind of a failure :-)

I can tell you how Citadel works in that set-up.  As it currently stands, not much.  The Citadel installs would only be used as a back-up communication method.  The CItadel setups are more or less configured (and able to be re-configured) for some Emcomm (emergency communications) groups by copying in standby databases and re-starting.

The race uses a different program (web based) for the data entry (re-written version of Trivnet-DB).  The nice thing about Citadel is that you can get a copy set up and running in a pinch and just connect it to the network if you need the services it provides (which are many).

Ax25

P.S. The text mode client (with some hacks) performs well over 1200 baud packet radio.

Wed Sep 25 2013 05:09:15 AM EDT from dothebart @ Uncensored

Ah, so you don't expose port 504 to the peer then and the citadel client runs on the server..

As mentioned above speed may increase for the user if you do that since i.e. the local echo is a real local echo.

However, you need to find a way howto open / route a tcp port or a unix domain socket through that.

Oh, it is tcp...

btw, the citadel client can run tls.

I don't run port 504 on packet, but I probably should.  It sounds like a good idea (assuming the client can do some sort of compression).  I have not check the code out to that level.  The reason we don't do tls is that there are some interpretations of monitoring of the ham radio bands in the US that say you must not encrypt anything but the login, and others that say you can encrypt as long as the encryption key is "published" and the encryption method is well known.

I fall back on the first bit (just encrypt the login) and let the rest of the conversation run in the clear with my hacked sshd, but I am probably still wrong.

Is anybody else doing something different with the cit client and port 504 over a slow link that can share experiences?  I am all ears (even though this is the broadband room).  If it gets too far off topic it can probably be moved to save the text client room.

Wed Sep 25 2013 05:06:51 EDT from dothebart @ Uncensored

Wed Sep 25 2013 00:57:27 EDT from ax25 @ Uncensored

http://www.tldp.org/HOWTO/AX25-HOWTO/x1688.html

.ax25

Ah, so you don't expose port 504 to the peer then and the citadel client runs on the server..

As mentioned above speed may increase for the user if you do that since i.e. the local echo is a real local echo.

However, you need to find a way howto open / route a tcp port or a unix domain socket through that.

Oh, it is tcp...

btw, the citadel client can run tls.

Wed Sep 25 2013 00:57:27 EDT from ax25 @ Uncensored

 

Tue Sep 24 2013 08:14:48 AM EDT from dothebart @ Uncensored

Hows that Ham stuff working?

Do you have only one line at once like if you had just one dialin connection?

Or do you primarily do inter-node point to point networking between the hosts?

It works fine for me (packet radio based).  I use some software that works with my modem (in a mode that allows multiple connections) called node:

http://www.tldp.org/HOWTO/AX25-HOWTO/x1688.html

I can let authenticated users connect (unfortunately, in the clear as I have not yet wired up my sshd that only encrypts the login bits yet).

It is multi user (you can even chat or post to a room at the same time, but you will be limited by the bandwidth of a 1200 baud connection).  I have not done andy networking between nodes, but that sounds like fun.

I have run an xterm and xclock from a friends computer over x forwarding via a 9600 baud connection on packet radio, and while I can say it was "fun", it was not really useful.

.ax25

Ah, so you don't expose port 504 to the peer then and the citadel client runs on the server..

As mentioned above speed may increase for the user if you do that since i.e. the local echo is a real local echo.

However, you need to find a way howto open / route a tcp port or a unix domain socket through that.

Tue Sep 24 2013 08:14:48 AM EDT from dothebart @ Uncensored

Hows that Ham stuff working?

Do you have only one line at once like if you had just one dialin connection?

Or do you primarily do inter-node point to point networking between the hosts?

 

It works fine for me (packet radio based).  I use some software that works with my modem (in a mode that allows multiple connections) called node:

http://www.tldp.org/HOWTO/AX25-HOWTO/x1688.html

I can let authenticated users connect (unfortunately, in the clear as I have not yet wired up my sshd that only encrypts the login bits yet).

It is multi user (you can even chat or post to a room at the same time, but you will be limited by the bandwidth of a 1200 baud connection).  I have not done andy networking between nodes, but that sounds like fun.

I have run an xterm and xclock from a friends computer over x forwarding via a 9600 baud connection on packet radio, and while I can say it was "fun", it was not really useful.

.ax25 

Hows that Ham stuff working?

Do you have only one line at once like if you had just one dialin connection?

Or do you primarily do inter-node point to point networking between the hosts?