Category: General

A customer expresses their take on my writings: “it usually sounds like gobbledy gook to me” … *sigh*

I have started calling myself “Computer Engineer” … I figured that best described what I do with these beasts … I can take a bunch of parts and assemble them to make a running PC … So, at the hardware level, I am capable of taking a bunch of separately purchased pieces and constructing a working machine. From this point, I then decide what Operating System is going to go on the machine, whether it be a workstation or a server, and whether or not it will be Windows, FreeBSD or some flavor of Linux (usually Mandrake or SuSE) … For the most part the machines have been FreeBSD lately, but I am approaching the rebuild of the Windows end of my network … I went Active Directory Native a while back as this seemed the thing to do at the time … Now, I’m not so happy with that decision being I am diversifying the responsibility delegation in my network. While some may seem to see me as some sort of Open Source Unix Evangelist, I’m not. I have simply decided to use the best tool for the job. You wouldn’t use a Phillips screwdriver on a flat-head screw. FreeBSD Servers are best suited for the Internet and serving its requirements. The benefit that everything is Open Source and FREE to the end user is an added benefit. Besides the fact that to replicate what I have running on FreeBSD Servers on Windows Servers it would hold a huge price tag in software, but the reliability wouldn’t be there. I have based my decision on #1.) Personal Experience; I have run these applications for years now and I have seen the results that they have provided. #2.) I have read, read and read all over the Internet via web pages and messaging about the results others have had in this area. I have read press releases describing the solutions of major corporations and their results … It just makes perfect sense that if you want to have reliability for the Internet, you don’t put it in Windows’ hands … This is not to say that I don’t think Windows has its place in this Internet network … I obviously have old web applications that I have running on the Windows servers as well as the new people who need the ASP.NET stuff … It’s a shame I really don’t understand that as well as I should, but from what I have heard described, it is much like the modular PHP. That’s about all I have been writing in lately due to the fact that I can write web applications as well as system applications using PHP …

So, we have the hardware, the Operating System and then we get down to the nitty gritty of making the machines do what I want them to do. What service they will provide. and how it will be provided … So, configuring the software applications that are running on those boxes is another part of the Computer Engineer’s job … This involves getting this new machine on the network and access to the Internet … We provide that by either using a pre-made cable or crimping up a new cable … Plugging that into a Cisco Switch that I have configured through HyperTerminal and the switch’s console cable … All the Switches go to the Cisco Router which I also configured … All network activity is monitored through use of MRTG and recently RRDtool have been making its appearance polling SNMP data from all the machines, switches and router. So that handles the internal network, but what about outside? Well, I have resources that I refer to when concerned about my connection status … My current provider is excellent in the way of connectivity where they have actually called me before I knew there was a connection problem … Fast.Net was horrendous and I always called them and brought it to their attention … At one point, their connection was so bad that I used all of the resources available to me to prove to them their network latency. I wrote custom scripts and did manual traceroutes via locations all around the world … Even one of their T3 customers showed latency … After they decided that they couldn’t fix it, I went to another provider, but I gave them over 8 months to fix it along with my diagnostic help … Shortly after leaving, Fast.Net went into Chapter 11 … Shortly after that, Asset Sale and now Fast.Net is run by another company. They lost all local support as well just like I told them they would … They had The Philadelphia Eagles web site. That showed the latency as well …

Anyway, so there are many hats worn providing these services, and I have had to dabble into them all … While at times it can be hectic, it can also be very rewarding when everything comes together and you see the results that you can provide. When things are configured correctly and with all issues covered, it is a beautiful thing … Regarding my Class C network? I’m not done yet … but when I am complete the tasks that I wish to complete, it will be awesome … Then all I need to do is grow … I don’t need it to be a rapid growth .. I am quite happy with the word of mouth growth that has been happening, and those that are educated or “in the know” enough to realize the idea of my goals, we are benefitting together … Sometimes the term “You get what you pay for” really does apply … I really should update my web page … It is so outdated considering the services now provided … Especially since per user SPAM learning is now working …

Bah, sometimes I vent here … I hope it makes sense … but then again, I am a struggling artist …

When you’re driving down the highway cruising at, oh, 70-75 … don’t friggin slow down when you see a state trooper that’s pulled someone over … He’s not going to stop giving that poor soul a ticket to jump in his cruiser and chase you! This way, I won’t have to hit my brakes when you’re sorry scared ass decides you should slow down to avoid a threat that isn’t even there … Thank you, and have a great day! Oh! If you do ever get a ticket, go to the hearing to fight it, and they will offer if you pay the fine that you won’t get any points, so don’t sweat the points, just the fine.

Playing around more with RRDtool and SNMP stuff I ran across Cacti as a front end for both. Tweaking, tweaking and more tweaking. I also have noticed a difference in the queries … Some report higher volumes than others, and I haven’t looked into the “meat” of this yet. Getting the graphs to work and accumulate data has been the main focus of direction thus far. I was able to make immediate modifications that were important to me. I will dive into the accuracy later. But, whether completely accurate or not, it does show a trend based on whatever data it is collecting. In the case of the routers and switches, I have MRTG graphs to compare it too. I am sure as I play more with these technologies, I will create custom graphs to show what I need. Only other thing I might mention is that Windows again is reluctant to play along in this endeavor. I had SNMP already installed and running on one of the oldest servers I brought up (imagine that), but on another I had to install it. After installing it (and it touching things I didn’t want it to), it surprisingly didn’t ask for a reboot, but I got an alert about it wanting to act as a server. So I said yes and immediately was graced with a BSOD. After a very long time of letting it dump, I gave up and banged the reset key. While it appears to be a functioning server at this point, SNMP data polled from this machine is incomplete. There is hardly any disk information at all, and that’s something I want to monitor. Oh well … The Windows portion of the network is going to be rebuilt at some point, so this is just another reason why.

I’m all about the bells and whistles, especially when it shows the traffic going through the network and the impact on the PCs that it has. I installed RRDtool on the “stats” machine for some game server graphing and while I was there I upgraded Perl. The installation and upgrading broke MRTG so I upgraded that to the latest and greatest as well. So, now I have all of the machines (IP addresses) monitored for bandwidth via MRTG and the Mail and Game servers are monitored with RRDtool …

I have been turned on to Firefox … a standards compliant browser created by the Mozilla people … Firefox runs on all platforms. So far I have only tried the Windows version, but I will be sure to get the OS X version soon … Using Firefox with a Web Developer plugin, I was able to verify that the WordPress bLog does in fact create valid XHTML and CSS from the PHP/MySQL application … I have also been farting around with Drupal here: http://drupal.davidpierron.com … The old MovableType install is still here: http://mt.davidpierron.com and I have the original bLog up at http://mt.davidpierron.com/blog … Neat!

Hmm .. I was just changing some of the categories on old posts (notably Health) and I noticed that the first MRI post I made wasn’t there … So I went back to the MovableType bLog and found that entry and cut and pasted it over here being able to put in the original post date and time … I wonder what other entries may be missing? Now I have to check this out … hassle …

I added other categories. Maybe this will help split these long posts I make into separate entries with a relevant category? Then I thought that maybe this would make it too easy for someone to pick my brain via simple links, so I decided against it. But then, I thought, it still would be neat. So, I guess since most of the information I get is from the web, and I like to be able to pin-point that information quickly, I would try to implement the categories. To choose which categories is tough though, and I don’t like thinking too much.