Net Fest Blog
2008-10-13
This entry is about 4 months late...
We test FreeNAS and OpenFiler.
FreeNAS went off without a hitch, but when we started messing around with iSCSI on OpenFiler we ran into a snag. To get iSCSI working on OpeFiler we had to:
Edit /boot/grub/grub.conf, took the only entry and copied it over.
Then we looked in /boot for the other kernel (already existing).
We changed our title, kernel, and initrd to match the other kernel, then defaulted to 1 instead of 0 at the top and rebooted.
The problem was that the newest kernel was missing a module(s).
2008-10-13
TRex is back!!! The original Net Fest crew is back together again. Not only that, but we have been getting a lot of new members.
As far as presentations, Dave give a nice intro to Subversion and John got Ubuntu rocking on his Acer Netbook.
There was lots of beer and it was great to see everyone.
2008-01-21
This was the first Net Fest of the new year and it was good to see the crew back together after a few months of inactivity. We spent the night load testing FreeBSD 6.2 against Solaris 10 and the results were very surprising. The goal was to test Apache/PHP performance between both OS's under moderate to heavy loads. The system used were identical Sun Netra T1's and the tool used to perform the load testing was http_load. Lio coded a bunch of PHP scripts that ran through the Fibonacci sequence at various level and then we reproduced thousands of them on both systems. We generated our list of files to test and started off with a light and basic load test. What we saw was under normal conditions and average load the FreeBSD system was the clear winner. But then it got really interesting when we started to pound the web servers really hard. The Solaris system seemed to deal with heavy loads much better. The Solaris system was roughly twice as fast as the FreeBSD system under heavy loads. The surface level conclusion was if you run a small site and see average loads, use FreeBSD for speed. If you run a site that gets hit hard and you want an OS that can maintain its composure under heavy loads use Solaris.
2007-10-15
This month we hung out at Panera and talked about encryption and messed around with Truecrypt hidden volumes.
2007-06-25
Even though only a few people came out for the June fest, everyone seemed happy to get together. CrazyGreek gave a nice VMWare presentation and PhuSioN a really quick intro to programmable microcontrollers. After dinner everyone setup PGP and exchanged public keys.
2007-04-15
We just kicked it at Lio's pad this month.
2007-03-14
With help from MasterP, the crew explored the benefits of using relational persistence for Java using Hibernate and Lyz talked about the basic concepts and administration of SE Linux.
2007-01-15
The crew just kicked it and talked about Vertias Storage Foundation Basic, OpenNMS and watched Jet Li's movie Fearless.
2006-12-17
The fest lasted until the wee hours of the night as the crew built a MySQL in-memory distributed database cluster using VM's.
2006-11-16
The November turn out was high and there was plenty to talk about. After a quick meet and greet, Lyz kicked off the first presentation with and intro to LDAP and the Fedora Directory Server. The next presentation was on Sun's new file system, ZFS, by PhuSioN. After that the crew kicked back and talked about what we could do with the demo router from Link Gear. We tossed around some ideas, like running LVS on it and essentially making it a low cost load-balancing solution, but by this time it was getting late. We finished up by taking about the agenda for the next fest and our hopes of building a Red Hat cluster using GFS and iSCSI.
2006-10-22
We kicked off the October fest without an agenda, but it didn't take long for the crew to find something to do. In a few short hours we setup a SAN using iSCSI and standard network hardware. We used Linux for the target and Windows and Solaris for the intiators. At the end of the fest iSCSI proved to be a low-cost SAN solution.
2006-09-07
Weekend work and busy personal schedules have consumed the weekends of many of the members, so it looks like we are going to skip the September fest.
2006-08-18
It has been a few months since we all got together, so this months fest was more of reunion. We were kicking back drinking some brew's when someone asked if we wanted to go to Fry's. I didn't take much to convince the crew, so we all piled into the car and headed to Fry's. CrazyGreek picked up a WRT54GL Linksys router and PhuSioN snagged a 7200rpm notebook drive. Once we got back CrazyGreek's first priority was to download and install OpenWRT on his new router while PhuSioN started swapping drive's and preparing to do a disk to disk image. After installing and scanning all the new features of the OpenWRT firmware, CrazyGreek and PhuSioN decided to install net-snmp on the router and configure a few MRTG monitors to watch the traffic on the router. In just a short time and the combined effort of the OpenWRT firmware/project, we turned a $60 router into a $600 router.
2006-06-15
This month's Net Fest was hosted by a newcomer, Eric Z. Eric's design skills were put to use as he recorded a couple of spoofs on the "I'm a Mac commercials" in his basement studio. They will be posed when they are done being edited. Hopefully we can use them as propaganda to attract new people to the fest. Tom gave a presentation on his new dumpster computer that is now a diskless IPCop firewall. The system ran entirely off of flash memory. Tom proved that it's incredibly cool to have a DMZ in your house. Angelo finished up the night by showing off some RAD C# skills. He combined a MSSQL database with a crystal reports pie chart in just a few lines of code.
2006-05-03
The April Net Fest was a riot! Rex and PhuSioN pulled off the best Net Fest April fools joke. Here is how it played out... Rex planned a trip to the States for early April and asked PhuSioN if he could move the Net Fest up one week. Rex wanted to buy a new laptop and was hoping to have it ready for the next Net Fest. After months of shopping online he found one he liked and had it shipped to PhuSioN's place so he wouldn’t get hit with all the import fees. When the laptop arrived at PhuSioN’s he took pictures of it, emailed them to the crew and told everyone he scored a deal with a major laptop manufacture and would be raffling off the laptop at the next Net Fest. Weeks went buy and everyone was so excited about the laptop raffle. On the day of the Net Fest Rex hid in PhuSioN’s second bedroom while the crew eagerly waited for the raffle to kick off. PhuSioN rigged the raffle so Rex would win and laughed inside as he pulled Rex's name. While all this was going on, Rex was on a conference call via Skype from the second bedroom as if he was still in Germany. When PhuSioN announced Rex had won the laptop the crew chatted briefly about all the extra expenses Rex would have to pay to have the laptop shipped overseas. At that point Rex said he would catch the next flight to the US instead of paying the fees. A minute later Rex walked down the stairs and the crew went nuts!! We didn’t accomplish much that night except drink beer and party at Exit. It was good to have the old crew back together.
2006-03-16
We had to skip the February fest, but the March fest is going to be crazy! It's the one fest you don't want to miss.
2006-02-28
The fest continues to grow and this time around there were three new faces. After the
initial meet and greet, CrazyGreek walked the crew through a very detailed, structured,
and well prepared
Windows Server Update Services (WSUS) deployment in an large network with multiple
remote offices. After that the crew ordered some pizza, talked about different tools to
administer multiple systems, and helped Lio peak into the performace of his MythTV PVR.
2006-01-15
Some of the guys were running late, so to pass the time we started installing
Check Point NGX Secure Platform
on a spare system. Buy the time we got it up and running
the rest of the crew finally showed up. After everyone got settled in, Joe gave an excellent presentation on
installing and configuring NGX.
After a quick break for some grub, Lio introduced the crew to AJAX with a cool chat program.
When Lio finished up it was close to midnight and the fest decided to move the party to a little industrial club
called Exit.
2005-12-12
It has been months since we had the fest, but it was worth the wait. Once we got our feed to Germany working, PhuSioN kicked off the fest with a quick presentation on how to setup a chroot jail. Next up was Taz with a well prepared presentation on setting up an HA MySQL database. After that the crew kicked back and drank some brews.
Both presentations were recorded and will be available on-line soon.
2005-10-19
Since we skipped the October fest the next fest will be one week early. There's a lot to catch up on, so make sure you are on time.
2005-10-09
The October net fest has been cancelled. Details on the next net fest will be posted shortly.
2005-09-10
The fest got off to a late start, but we were in for a real treat when CrazyGreek showed up with 6 PC's to demo a real High-Availability (HA) Linux Virtual Server (LVS) setup. After walking the crew through the LVS details on how it works, we started to test different failure scenarios. LVS proved to be an affordable, highly configurable, and comprehensive open-source HA load-balancing solution. Next RowdyR broke down the basics of Linux From Scratch (LFS) and was able to put the finishing touches on his custom CD-ROM based bootable distro. Everyone learned some really neat tips and tricks that RowdyR used to build, test, and troubleshoot the CD based distro. You will have to come to the next Net Fest if you want to know what we have planned for the bootable distro in the future.
2005-08-18
RowdyR kicked off the fest with a solid BSD intro and installation. The crew talked about old-school UNIX and the differences between BSD and System V. Next up was CrazyGreek with a well prepared Power Point presentation on LVS. PhuSioN followed up with a simple LVS load-balancing configuration and demo.
2005-07-11
While we all chowed on some grub, Lio was busy installing Fedora Core 3 on his XBox. Since that was going to take awhile, PhuSioN gave a quick demo on a new
feature of Solaris 10 - zones. Once that was out of the way, PhuSioN showed the crew how to retrieve
passwords from the Nortel Contivity client by dumping the related process idcontents out of memory using PMDump. By this time the fest was in full swing, so CrazyGreek and I began working on this awesome Alpha box he aquired a while back. It took us all
night, but we managed to get Debian stable running on it.
2005-02-19
The crew went strong until 4:00AM! Lio helped everyone with their MythTV
boxes while roadrunner and PhuSioN setup a VPN between their NetGear routers.
Later in the evening PhuSioN gave a quick Solaris Volume Management class on how
to mirror disks.
2004-11-13
First thing we did was get an audio and video feed to Rex out in Germany.
Lio arrived not long after and showed us how to build a MythTV box from
scratch.
2004-09-11
The site has been down for a while during PhuSioN's recent move to a more spacious abode. Now we wont
be so cramped for space when we throw down at the fest! Improvements to the site are coming soon.
Rex moved to Germany and we hope to start a European extension of netfest.
Send him an email if you are near Frankfurt and want to joi
n the fest.
The last fest was at my new place and CrazyGeek took center stage. We broke out the Catalyst 5000
and got down to business. CrazyGreek setup a SPAN session to direct all netfest traffic on a
VLAN to a single port. Then he walked the crew through a Snort Linux installation and
configuration. In no time we were watching Snort monitor suspicious traffic on the network.
2004-06-12
Everyone has been working hard lately and we decided to just chill out in Rex's gazebo all night.
2004-01-10
The new year started off great. PhuSioN's intro to SPARC hardware presentation went
well and the kernel recompile class was a complete success.
2003-10-16
With the Matrix Revolutions only weeks away, we decided to see it as a group and then have the net fest.