Author: arved

Webserver moved

If you can read this, the move has been successfull.
I have decided to move to euserv.de. The new webserver has more RAM and a better CPU. Unfortunately Euserv.de charges 10EUR/month for 6 additional ip addresses. So i decided it is time for IPv6.
Although IPv6 has been around for quite some time, there are still some rough edges:
FreeBSD jails IPv6 support requires a patch from Björn Zeeb.
For access via legacy IPv4 i wanted to use lighttpd with mod_proxy, but mod_proxy does not support fetching IPv6-content yet, the following hack is required.
What i still have to think about is aggregated content, like the planet or the weather-plugin. There are way too many sites out there, that don’t support IPv6. (Hello twitter, last.fm, weather.noaa.gov). Possible solutions are NAT, a webproxy, or i have to put the aggregated content somewhere else.

Looking for a new hoster

My old hoster decided to move all his servers to XEN. Since FreeBSD XEN Support isn’t really there yet, this means i need to look for a new hoster.
So i am checking out the FreeBSD-rootserver offers in the 20 – 40EUR/month range. I am quite sure, i don’t want to play with depenguinator, so a real FreeBSD system is the preferred solution.
I currently know about euserv.de and mainlink.de. Anything else?
My current system runs 4 jails handling my email and a few lowtraffic sites. It currently has 256MB RAM which is a bit low, so preferably the new system should have 512MB.

My new mobile phone

I have my new mobile phone, a Samsung SGH-j700 now since about a month. Time to write something about it.
Case: looks like cheap plastic but survived a few crashes from the table to the floor. I like the tiny mirror next to the camera lens. Finally i can correct my makeup while travelling :-).
Software: Stable. I have not had a single crash until now. But the usability sucks a bit. One needs to click through a lot of menus to do simple things. The shortcuts aren’t as usable as on my old Motorola.
Syncing: Not supported by iSync, so no way to sync the Organizer and Contacts. File exchange possible via Bluetooth, or via the microSD card.
Headset: Has way too big earplugs. Unfortunately i have not found one with smaller earplugs.
But all in all i like like it.

New FreeBSD Desktop

After nearly 4 years i thought it was time to buy a new FreeBSD desktop.
Last week I bought a Shuttle XPC, with an Intel G31/ICH7 Chipset, a Core 2 Duo E8200, 2×2,66Ghz. It is faster than mchammer, my previous desktop and a lot quieter.
I named it dilek, a beautiful name which means something like desire.
Since last weekend was a party weekend it took me until this weekend to finally finish the installation.
Because it is not possible to disable the BIOS Boot sector protection, you may want to run boot0cfg -o noupdate
The ACPI implementation is buggy, so unless you like console message everyfew seconds, you have to run with debug.acpi.disabled="thermal"
The X installation was a bit problematic, as i had to add the device ids to the agp kernel driver and had to install the git version of the xorg intel driver. But now it is running smooth.
I am now installing KDE4 on it. With the new desktop i now have enough CPU power to help porting KDE4. Now i just need some more free time…

back online

Today the UPC technicians setup my internet connection. It requires two technicians to plug in the modem and make a phonecall to the UPC HQ. I wonder why there is no selfinstall option. At least this time they did not want to touch one of my PCs.
Afterwards i resetup a the soekris firewall. It was a bit tricky, because there was a display problem on the serial console, so it was a partial blind flight. And i forgot a couple of things, so it took longer than expected.
Things not to forget next time:

  • /boot/loader.conf: console=comconsole
  • /etc/ttys: enable ttyd0
  • /etc/rc.conf: Add network configuration for sis0 and enable ssh