Computer Tips -Tech Info

Tag: ethernet

  • Making a 1000BT crossover cable

    I’ve been using 1000BT switches here for a year or more now, but just today have I run across the need to make a crossover cable. Many 1000BT (*gigabit ethernet) devices support “auto-mdix” which basically means a direct interconnect no longer needs a crossover cable. However, some devices don’t do this and it looks as though the crossover style is a bit different than that of the older 10/100 cables. (Since all 4 pairs are used, all four pairs have to be reversed…)

    Anyway, here is the page I used as a model.

    Essentially one end of the cable is white-orange/orange white-green/blue white-blue/green white-brown/brown and the other end is white-green/green white-orange/white-brown brown/orange blue/white-blue (I haven’t tested this yet – will update when that’s done.) Although – that seems to be backed up by this wikipedia page.

  • Firewire/USB card and ethernet incompatibilities on Ubuntu 6.06

    I’ve had a machine for quite a while that I’ve been working on as a “backup server”. My goal with it is to have a RAID1 setup with two 250GB drives and I also wanted USB2/firewire functionality so that I could even add a USB drive to the array for the purpose of having a hot-swapped spare drive that could be taken offsite. Well, the biggest frustration I’ve had has not been with software raid, or any of the rest of the software setup, but that something about the firewire/usb card didn’t like the built in ethernet. I FINALLY got things working… let me document what I went through.

    (more…)

  • Ubuntu-server 6.06 LTS plus vmware server and other vmware server notes

    What follows are some notes taken on vmware server. Most are related to an install on ubuntu-server (NO GUI INSTALLED)…. the main point of this is to have the host system take as FEW resources away from the guests as possible.

    This requires a few x libraries – but not full blown X gui.

    (more…)

  • Network Security – Arp spoofing series

    I think I’ve wrapped up the series on arp spoofing and it’s implications for network security. I know there’s nothing earth shattering here, most network security types are well aware of the problems (and perhaps aware of more sophisticated solutions?). For some though, this series is likely an eye opener as there are myths that switches cannot be sniffed, that ONLY wireless data packets can be sniffed, etc. etc.

    (more…)

  • NEW exploit for the WMF vulnerability

    Just when you thought we had a good understanding of the recent zero-day WMF (Windows metafile exploit) it’s worse. Sans is reporting on a new variation on the exploit released today. They have gone to yellow (again) to warn people. Here are some details. This exploit was “made by the folks at metasploit and xfocus, together with a anonymous source.”

    (more…)

  • Mythtv remote frontend

    So, when I did the laptop upgrade I formated the root partition which means that working mythtv frontend was erased and it had to be set up from scratch. I had been running version 0.16 of mythtv on all the systems, but finding rpms for that older version looked challenging, so…. I went ahead with the upgrade to 0.18.1 on the desktop first. All went fairly smoothly using Thac’s rpms of mythtv.

    (more…)

  • Small Ethernet Print Server

    The Hawking Technology Print Server (HPS1P) is a nice little parallel port to ethernet print server that can be configured to make a single printer available to multiple machines on a LAN (local area network). It supports a number of different protocols and can be configured through a web interface, or with a Windows based control application. There are disadvantages with hooking a printer up to a pc to share over a network. First, the pc that shares the printer has to be up and reliable. Second, that pc has to be in a convenient location to the printer.

    (more…)

  • Ultimate Christmas gift for the tech that has everything (else), a satellite?

    The story about the linux satellite that can be yours for a mere $10 million dollars caught my eye as I was skimming news this afternoon. Apparently a company called SpaceDev has launched the product called “SpaceDev Modular Microsat Busâ„¢”, which is a 220 pound satellite based on plug-n-play standard interfaces (ethernet, usb). It includes realtime linux as the OS, CORBA based object oriented control of subsystems and internet remote control.

    (more…)

  • Low power, small, wall mountable pc

    This is something neat I found at the sunbeltblog. Usually I see spyware/security related bits there, but this was different and worth a mention. It appears to be a wall mountable pc around 4-5″ square.

    (more…)

  • A tun of trouble….

    Sorry, VERY bad pun but I couldn’t resist. I mentioned that I was having tun difficulties that kept me from playing around with anything fancy networking-wise with qemu. For starters let me see if I can explain what tun is. Tun is a method of creating a point-to-point “imaginary” network connection between a program and an operating system. For instance, Qemu sets up a device called /dev/tun0 in the host operating system. This /dev/tun0 can communicate with the kernel and then the outside world. /dev/tun0 behaves just like any other network interface to the viewers on the outside (even getting it’s own ip address that is network reachable.)

    (more…)