Elder Scrolls Online
By · Commentshttp://www.elderscrollsonline.com/
So I hear they’re finally going to make Elder Scroll games into an MMORPG… About time.
I’m curious to how the PvP system will be among other things. I know having a game with wide open PvP such as Shadowbane is probably something beyond imagining nowadays with WoW kiddies running around but we can hope. Stay tuned for more feedback as more information comes out about this game.
Raspberypi has been released… Still waiting…
By · Commentshttp://www.raspberrypi.com/
I was pretty excited to hear about Raspberry Pi being released. My eventual plan is to replace consoles using them to hook up my media server to the TV. As soon as I finally get through the ordering queue I plan on giving a write up on the process to hook them up to the TV etc.
Turning a Dreamplug into your home media server.
By · CommentsDreamplugs are generally inexpensive small computers that use an ARM processor similar to your smart cell phone and about the same size as one too. They cost $159 + tax and shipping. What you spend buying the device will actually save you in the long run because it uses far less power than an old PC that you turned into a media server. You can purchase one at the following site:
Not only does it have a few options as far as the kind of hard drives you can attach ie USB hard drives but you also have an eSATA port as well. I prefer to use my Home Openfiler NAS box myself so I’m going to go through the process of setting up open-iscsi as well in this tutorial. A Dreamplug also has its own wireless network option as well so you can connect to that instead of hooking it up to your own wired/wireless network. Or you can hook it up and use it as a wireless AP for your network as well. I also recommend you getting a JTAG also found on the above site in-case you have to do any kind of trouble shooting.
The Dreamplug comes with a preloaded Debian Lenny Linux flavor. It uses a 4Gb mini-SDHC card embedded in the plug and whether or not you want to you can replace it with something bigger that’s up to you. You will void your warranty but since the warranty is only 90 days that’s pretty much up to you. It also has 512Mb RAM as well.
Anyways after you get the plug here’s what you do to be able to use open-iscsi. I had to put a new install of debian on the internal SD and its similar to what you will find in the downloads section from switching to ubuntu to debian on official website found here:
http://code.google.com/p/dreamplug/downloads/list
Download the rootfs files named: dreamplug_debian_v0.2.zip.001 and dreamplug_debian_v0.2.zip.002
Basically instead of using the uImage found there though you will want to download a couple files from the following site:
http://sheeva.with-linux.com/sheeva/2.6/2.6.39/2.6.39.4/
You want to download dream-2.6.39.4-uImage, sheeva-2.6.39.4-KernelHeaders.tar.gz, sheeva-2.6.39.4-Modules.tar.gz,
Now use the following document to put these files on the internal mini sd card:
http://code.google.com/p/dreamplug/downloads/detail?name=DreamPlug%20-%20Change%20OS%20from%20Ubuntu%20to%20Debian-20110617.pdf&can=2&q=
Make sure to put the headers and the modules from the sheeva-2.6.39.4-KernelHeaders.tar.gz and sheeva-2.6.39.4-Modules.tar.gz into the /lib/modules directory. and tar xf sheeva-2.6.39.4-KernelHeaders.tar.gz etc so they ended up in the correct directories. They should have been dumped into /lib/modules/2.6.39.4/ and /usr/ You need to check /lib/modules/2.6.39.4/kernel/drivers/scsi to make sure the following modules are in place : scsi_transport_iscsi.ko libiscsi_tcp.ko iscsi_tcp.ko are there.
Once that’s done make sure you do the following: depmod -a
Once its back up and running do the following:
Follow the following link to set connect and set up your Dreamplug:
http://www.spinifex.com.au/plugs/dplugintro.html#first
Ok now to get open-iscsi running:
Go to the following both work I found the first one easier to read but use apt-get portion for Debian. Don’t sudo as of yet because you don’t need to.
http://www.cyberciti.biz/tips/rhel-centos-fedora-linux-iscsi-howto.html
http://wiki.debian.org/SAN/iSCSI/open-iscsi
Now to get twonkymedia server up and running. You can find all the steps at the following link. It works great as I’ve already tested it of course! Most people hate buying software when there are free options that said Twonky is one of the most popular and the license only costs around $15 bucks. Plus you get an evaluation period to try it out.
http://www.twonkyforum.com/mediawiki/index.php?title=Sheevaplug/GuruPlug
I know this all sounds pretty overwhelming but actually its not all that hard once you actually do it.
Eventually I plan to make this process a little bit easier on people but I digress. The above is also a reason to get the JTAG in case you have to do some troubleshooting when networking is down. Another option is just open up the case and get the mini-SD card out and use the above on the actual card so you don’t have to get a JTAG or do the extra work but again it will void your warranty on the device.
I also want to give the people at http://www.newit.co.uk a shout out for the help they provided me as well.
Hope this is helpful please feel free to comment below with any questions.
Setting up a home server closet
By · CommentsRecently I’ve been working on a handful of at home projects and plan on doing a full write up on all of them but today I want to discuss my latest project I just completed. A home server closet! The following photos illustrate what I actually installed.
Basically with a $150 I bought a low power quiet bathroom exhaust fan, 25 ft of electrical cable, 3 electrical cabling boxes, 1 power outlet, 1 cable outlet, an attic fan thermostat so the fan only turns on when needed. After reading all the documentation I tripped the breaker and installed the various equipment cut the holes in the drywall etc. After about 4 hours everything was up and running like a charm. My loving spouse no longer hears the humming of fans from my equipment and I don’t have to worry about my equipment overheating. A couple quick notes make sure you vacuum up all the drywall dust and give it a day to settle before moving in your equipment. Drywall dust plays havoc on your system’s fans. Another thing when wiring your power make sure you are wiring it up to code.
This was a fun little project please feel free to shoot me any questions you my have.
Dreamplug
By · CommentsI got a Dreamplug in the mail yesterday! I have been doing some initial testing and will do a full write up later on.
Hello World!
By · CommentsSorry I’ve been unable to update the site lately. If anyone has any special projects for IT home use and have some questions I’ll post up some Q&A after I’ve done some testing on it. Lately I’ve been doing alot of VMware ESXi and VMware View at work and home and working on an article about it. Really the whole purpose of this site is to help people do home IT projects that are beneficial to there lives so if you have any ideas let me know!
Setting up your own Home Media Server on the Cheap!
By · CommentsI set up my own media server to stream movies around the house. That way I could watch a movie in my living room while my son could watch one of his movies in another room in the house. Currently I’ve been using XBOX 360′s to stream to but you can use other game consoles as well as other hardware on the market today instead of a gaming console along with every single one of your computers on the network. I like to do things on the cheap because I’m defiantely not made of money so keep that in mind.
There are costs to this set up which I will touch on all of them in this article, but it is cheaper than you probably think.
The following are things you will need to acquire to make this work:
- Old Desktop/Laptop computer.
- You don’t need some kind of huge media center specifically designed for sharing your music and movies throughout your household. Why because its expensive and you can basically get the same thing using old hardware. I took an 10 year old desktop and installed CENTOS on it.
- You can download CENTOS at: http://www.centos.org/
- Media Server Software.
- Twonky Server Costs $19.99. I know some of you only like free/open source software. Fact of the matter is I tried 2 other peices of software before Twonky Server and they just never matched up at their current stages to Twonky Server.
- You can find Twonky Server at: http://www.twonky.com/store/index.aspx
- Get the free trial first, lasts for 30 days that way you can test it out. Handles large amounts of movies without a problem.
- The following are other Media Server Software I tried to get running. For a linux novice your best bet would be to just try out, at least for the 30 day trial period, Twonky Server because it was far easier to set up and implement and make your own judgement call. I also tried out the following first:
- You can find an entire list here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_UPnP_AV_media_servers_and_clients
- I tried the following because they were free before finally using Twonky Server:
- uShare – Spent a week trying to get it to work. Worked fine until you had a lot of movies stored on your media server then kept freezing while streaming movies to my Xbox 360 console.
- MediaTomb – Never got it to be fully functional before I decided to try Twonky Server.
- Hard drive space.
- Be it external hard drives or an internal hard drives you have to have somewhere to store your plethora of movies that you rip into MP4 formate.
- DVDFab or Handbrake (software you’ll install on your main computer not on the server you are currently building.
- Handbrake is Opensource free software for ripping movies from DvD to MP4 format.
- http://handbrake.fr/
- DVDFab is a pay to use software. I found it worked better than Handbrake but you only get a trial period before you have to pay.
- http://www.dvdfab.com/dvd-ripper.htm
- There’s plenty of other software packages that do the same thing you’ll just have to make your own judgement on what type of software you want to use. Just do a google search for DvD ripping software. (Disclamer) Remember you should only be doing this with your own movies you have purchased, otherwise you will run into software piracy issues.
Basic Install Notes:
- Install Hard Drive Space onto your old system. IE. plug in your External Hard Drive via USB or install your internal hard drives
- Install the Linux OS (CentOS) ISO on your old platform.
- Make sure you install SAMBA (SMB) during installation. You will want to create a SAMBA share so you can move MP4s from where you ripped them (IE your main computer) to your media server.
- Make sure you dont install the OS on your External Hard Drive either if using one.
- Setup SAMBA How to guide can be found here all depends on your Linux OS so make sure to google your type of Linux OS type when trying to figure out how to set up SAMBA. http://www.samba.org/samba/docs/man/Samba-HOWTO-Collection/install.html
- Make sure your external hard drive is found. (If you are using one that is.)
- Use the following commands:
- fdisk -l
- as a root user on the computer, it should show something like /dev/sda
- NOTE: the “a” maybe another letter, and this will be the device, it will then list the partitions underneath it as a regular hard disk ie /dev/sda1 etc.
- Make sure you vi /etc/fstab next so it auto-mounts this hard drive on start up (powering on your machine)
- Tutorial Found here: http://www.tuxfiles.org/linuxhelp/fstab.html
- Install Twonky Server (Or your chosen Media Server Software.)
- Twonky Server Installation Guide: http://twonky.com/upfiles/TwonkyServerInstallationGuide-v6-EN.pdf
Once this is all set up you should be able to browse your media via your brand new media server! If you have any questions or I need to explain something in a little more detail let me know.
Setting up WordPress Permalink error 404.
By · CommentsWordPress is a great tool for building up-to-date websites. While the installation is mostly painless there is an issue that I have found after installation when setting up your website… The Dreaded 404 “page can not be displayed”, when Custom Permalinks is enabled.
There can be a couple causes. If the .htaccess file in your server’s web directory isn’t getting updated when enabling Permalinks then its a file permissions/ownership issue.
The other issue is a bit more complex. From all the google searches I have done for the past several days researching I have found only 1 website on page 10 of the google searches that actually help rectify this other issue.
Basically if you host your own sites on a linux server and are using apache then you have to make sure a couple options are corrected. By default, WordPress uses URL with question mark and its post ID. After enabling Permalinks in Settings, all the posts give is an 404 error page cannot be displayed. At first, I thought it’s .htaccess problem, however this file was updated automatically after I applied the changes. After searching Wordpress documents, I found that it also requires FollowSymLinks option along with AllowOverride FileInfo directives in the Apache configuration file. I never knew this since shared hosting servers generally have those options enabled by default. On a Linux server, you will have to configure this file yourself.
vi /etc/httpd/conf/httpd.conf (Redhat, Fedora, CENTOS)
Change the exiting file from whatever it has for OptionsFollowSymLinks to the following.
AllowOverride None
Change this line to:
AllowOverride All
# Each directory to which Apache has access can be configured with respect
# to which services and features are allowed and/or disabled in that
# directory (and its subdirectories).
Update on Openfiler NAS box.
By · CommentsApparently a guy named Derek figured out that if you manually set up the 4k sector drives using fdisk you can align the drives properly to use the new hard drives available on the market today. There is one catch. The OS hard drive install still wants to run on the old style kind of drives. So What was done was to use an older hard drive for the OS alone and the storage drives were the newer hard drives.
Here are the steps that they used to align their drives using fdisk:
- # fdisk -u /dev/sdc
- type ‘p’ to print the partition table(confirm it’s the drive you expect)
- type ‘o’ to clear the partition table
- type ‘n’ to create a new partition, ’p’ for primary, ’1′ for the first, ’64′ for alignment(default is 63, which is non-aligned), and default end block
- type ‘t’ to change the partition type if configuring as raid, and type ‘fd’ for linux raid(skip this step if you’re not using the partition in raid)
- type ‘w’ to save your changes and exit fdisk
Thanks Derek for your hard work in figuring this issue out. To bad the creators of Openfiler couldn’t just update the OS….
MMORPG Idea. Game name Archon?
By · CommentsBasic premise:
Basically I want to use a Righteous Honor System. It works like this. 3 NPC safeholds on each side 3 for Good aligned characters and 3 Evil for evil aligned characters. People of Good can go to those safeholds and be free from attack by the NPC guards while Evil will not and vis versa. Neutral players can interact in all NPC cities. Each race will start out as Neutral in the honor system and they can travel to safeholds for each side. Evil or Good. Based on the actions of the player they will either go from neutral to good or neutral to evil but the pendulum is ever swinging and based on actions in game and certain time restraints players adhere to in game will result in how that players character is perceived.
That said the player progression system is as thus. The core PvP skills needed for survival is based on a level system ie 1 through 60 based on their stated class at startup. There are additional skills a character can also acquire as well ie mining, blacksmithing, tailoring. alchemy, etc. that a player will have to learn over time using those skills and the components that those skills need in order to be used these skill levels will be based on 1 to 100 100 be grandmaster of this trade skill .
PvP Combat and NPC safeholds:
Players can errect guildhalls to create guilds and can also wage war against other guilds through out the realm to include safeholds. Players will be flagged as such and normal players outside of those guilds will not be allowed to heal people within other guilds or attack those said guilds within the safeholds.
Outside of safehold city limits it is a free for all except if you are below the level of 20 in designated areas of the map unless those users go into a higher level zone ie the mainland. Thusly advanced players can’t grief newer players until they reach a point where they can actually defend themselves unless they enter higher level areas of their own volition. IE newb island.
Player Run Cities/ Property:
I’m still up in the are on exactly whether or not to use the Player run city system or have the House/Guild Hall system where People can place a guildhall/House for their personal use or if they own a said house in a suitable flat area where a house/guildhall can be built. Either way if a guild takes over a region of the map those houses/Guildhalls can and will be taxed at a low fee to stay in the region or be disolved. I want a way where individuals can maintain houses thus becoming vassels of the guild that controls those regions but also not make it so static that conflicts dont arise over who controls regions because this is a PvP game at heart but also with other stuff for the casual player to become involved in.
Quests:
Quests will be included in this game for the strict purpose of taking a region of the map and also influence the Righteous Honor pendulum a character may want to change. Depending on how Good or Evil a person’s character has become will also depend on the hard it will be to sway said pendulum back to the other side.
Game master quests will also be available in game periodically.
Races:
- Elves
- Aracoix (Horusarians)
- Dwarves
- Centaur
- Human
- Minotaur
- Ogre
- Goblin
Beastery Mounts:
- Griffons
- Pegasi
- Horse
- Unicorn
these may change over time…
More as I think it up…..