TechieM2net Blog

So it's a new year, and I have some l33t new gear!

I have made a new version of the nukedisk utility.
It is available here (nukedisk.pl.txt).
You'll need to rename the file to nukedisk or nukedisk.pl and make it executable.
Before it will work you'll need to edit the script and remove the # from before the 2 system() lines.

Usage:
nukedisk.pl (with no options)
OR
nukedisk.pl
y or n is whether or not to test the disk after wiping.
i.e.
nukedisk.pl /dev/sdb y


If you don't specify the parameters it will ask you for the device and whether to test or not.

Update: If you downloaded it soon after I posted, I found a glitch that broke it from working when called with the parameters.
To fix it change "my ($disk, $test) = @ARGV;" to "our ($disk, $test) = @ARGV;"

The other day I finally fixed the configuration on my core switch so I can manage it from anywhere on the LAN.
After that I sat down and recorded the VLAN configurations of the switches and mapped out what is hooked up to where on the LAN.
Later I made up a new diagram showing the LAN setup and the entertainment system setup.
Continue below for the diagram and some details on how it is configured.

I have recently updated and refined my personal voice communications system, which now allows me to be contacted pretty much anywhere I have cell or internet service.
I am using a variety of products and services to achieve this.
Read on for an overview of how I have everything setup now.

Friday morning I was woken up by Dad to tell me the school network was down and that nobody could connect to the internet.
I got up and connected into the school router/vm server and started looking around.
Nothing looked overly unusual to me, so I told him to reset the switches and see if that worked.
Then I went back to bed for the day (I worked Friday night).
When Dad got home he told me that everything was still down.

Anyone who does much work with client computers knows (or should know) that people often have sensitive data on their machines.
This is especially true for business machines, or machines in industries such as health care (where my primary job is).
These machines may contain sensitive client information, financial information, patient health information, etc.
What many people do not seem to think about is what happens when they no longer need a machine.

I was working on a machine the other day that had Norton 360 Backup (all appropriate copyright/trademarks/etc. apply) and noticed that I couldn't actually find the restore option in the main program interface (I assume it has it's own utility in the start menu, but didn't look).
Later I was bored so I started examining the backup structure and realized that it was quite simple, so I wrote a script to recover the files (you never know when you will need to recover something for someone, and if their install is hosed...you may not have access to Norton itself to restore with).

Needless to say the script is designed to run in Linux, and has only been tested there.
Thanks to all the peeps that helped me figure out the perlness to get this working.

You can get the script (gzipped) here: n360rec.pl

Read on for more details about the inner workings.

Soon after switching from standard web hosting to a full blown Linode VPS, I fell in love with subdomains and Apache vhosts.

Once you learn to configure things properly, vhosts make setting up new webapps or services much simpler and safer than using a single web root for everything, where you run the risk of breaking everything when you try to setup or update a new webapp (especially if you need to change apache options to make it work right).

Here is a little tour of how I have things configured on my VPS.

Note: I'm using Apache 2 on Gentoo for my setup, if you are copying this you may have to adjust things appropriately for your environment.

I have update Picsort.pl to version 2.0.
Changes:
It now handles the full tree properly (it was skipping some directories).
It should now handle files/directories with $ in the name properly instead of just skipping them.
It now checks the file extension and will only process files with .jpg or .jpeg extensions.

picsort.pl.gz

There is now a Wiki page up for it at picsort.pl.

I finally finished putting together the audio system I've been wanting in my room for quite a while to handle my unusual requirements.
I'll try to explain the basic setup of the system in this article.

I sometimes have the need/desire to sort a collection of images.
Such collections are usually a jumbled mess and in no logical order whatsoever.
So tonight I wrote a script to sort things out.

I uploaded a new picture set of my room last night, so I'll give you a little tour.

Welcome to the new home of techiem2.net and techiem2.info!

I am migrating everything to a shiny new Linode VPS account.

Right now things are pretty basic, but will get more interesting as I have time to set stuff up.