Matthew’s Weblog

A truly illustrative but terrifying comic…

multiple numbers, no roaming… sounds like it just needs some growth, early adopters, and polish.  Slick idea.

Wow, I was putting together my MythTV machine and it was OK until I had to get my remote front-end working. Because of the WAF, I selected a small machine - the Hauppage MediaMVP. What I didn’t recognize was that the documentation for getting it running… umm… stinks. Or at least is severely misleading (http://www.mvpmc.org/ mvpmc-HOWTO-singlehtml.html, not linked so you don’t try and use it. I should have noticed when it used software 13 versions old.). Or is really hard to find. So here’s my trials and tribulations and fixes, for anyone who is doing it.

Add to Ubuntu (Feisty Fawn) to get the mvpmc code loaded:

apt-get install atftpd tftp
mkdir /tftpboot
chmod a+rwx /tftpboot
export TFTPBOOT=/tftpboot
cd /tftpboot/
wget http://downloads.sourceforge.net/mvpmc/dongle.bin.mvpmc-0.3.3?modtime=1169 586056&big_mirror=0
ln -s dongle.bin.mvpmc dongle.bin.mvpmc-0.3.3
ln -s dongle.bin.mvpmc-0.3.3 dongle.bin.mvpmc

but then I was shocked to find that while the config files for inetd were created, there was no inetd. So…

apt-get install xinetd tcpd
apt-get install nfs-common nfs-kernel-server
cd /etc
e exports
ls /media/hdb1/mythtv/recordings/
/etc/init.d/nfs-kernel-server start
/etc/init.d/nfs-common start
update-rc.d nfs-kernel-server defaults

and then it wouldn’t read the config file. Time to add the setting to have xinetd use inetd.conf…

e /etc/init.d/xinetd
add in flag: -inetd_compat

I learned that the instructions on mvpmc.org are pretty specific to the first generation of the machine, the H1. However, those aren’t made any more… and once I got into trouble, each piece turned out to be challenges with the version. I’ve got an H3. For that, you need a special service that whispers magic incantations into the ear of the MVP. It also needs a significantly different guide… and after searching and searching (has VLC notes for future) and searching (supersweet detail, enough to choke on and more, which also gave me the link to…) I finally stumbled across on http://mvpmc.wikispaces.com/ and started getting more progress on MythTV setup… well, almost…

e mvpboot.pl

and I then went spelunking into mvpboot.pl and mvprelay.c -

perl -MCPAN -e shell
install Net::Interface
apt-get install initrd-tools gcc
dd if=dongle.bin.mvpmc-0.3.3 of=dongle.bin.ver bs=1 count=40 skip=5

So once again I’m thrilled by Debian/Ubuntu and their dependencies… as well as the prompts (when you run a nonexistent program, Ubuntu now suggests packages to install that provide the command you’re trying to use… very cool). But I hate how I rely on them, because I thought once I actually installed GCC that it would work. I finally was googling and found I was still missing one big piece:

apt-get install build-essential

and now all the compilation stuff worked and Perl was happy. Argh!

I then started fighting my drive definitions… I had partitioned my three drives in a marvelous way, redundancy for the OS and big space for the media:

Mirrors on drive 1 and 2:

• 100mb - /boot
• 2gb - swap
• 28gb - /

One big XFS drive (3) for media:

• 400gb - /media

except it appears Ubuntu uses /media for its mount space, and somehow my brain didn’t register that. So when the folder was there, I thought it would have my big space… but no. Fought with fstab a while and eventually got it so the last drive moved to /mediafiles and all started working.

Now the shiny stuff. MVPMC can stream music from a central server, too…

apt-get install slimserver

and it didn’t work that well when I put it in. All I could get was a statement from Live365 that I wasn’t logged in. Shockingly, when I went to the SlimServer instructions and did some basic configuration it worked. Who’da thunk it?  I also had to chmod 777 to get it to read the media… I’ll clean that up later.

Other MythTV bits:

apt-get install mythweb mythmusic mythvideo mythplugins ogle mplayerapt-get install vlc videolan-doc

Followed the instructions on setting up vlc. It also said I needed mpslave to use aacPlus or Real Audio streams… right now I don’t need that bad enough to do the work. It’s not working yet, so I’ll have to poke it more later.

What remains? Glad you asked…

• For some reason the network connection is running at 10mb Half Duplex. Since it happens with other computers on that drop I think it’s a switch or wire problem.
• mplayer on my mvpmc only shows streaming radio successfully from live365 and the other XML is having parsing errors.
• slimserver is cataloguing AAC files from iTunes but not playing them, even the unencrypted ones
• I have to set up playlists and my local radio stations as m3u links so we can use them also… should be easy, just has to be done…
• I want to get the ReplayTV and Filesystems menu items to not display, which should be doable according to the commandline argument writeup but it somehow isn’t.
• Live TV isn’t running yet (but we almost never watch live TV so I don’t care much)
• Get VLC working
• Clean up the /mediafiles/music chmod 777 hack
• Oh yeah, and getting it working with remote systems so I can drive the other two TVs. I’m going to see if I can get my hands on an AppleTV to get a richer interface for the Myth frontend and still have iTunes playback work for the stereo… that might be better for music playing. Not to mention then it will have HDMI or composite video which would be very good if we upgrade our TVs anytime in our life… sigh.

so I tried putting together a media server earlier in the year (late last year?) and never quite got it going.  Now, it’s up and running.  I fragged the previous build and installed Ubuntu Feisty Fawn (7.04) and all the issues I had previously run into pretty much were just handled naturally.  I had only one problem when I followed the community setup guide and that was that somehow I missed the significance of the Channel Frequency table selection… so when I started recording things, all I got was static and the server only recognized the VHF channels (2-13).  Thankfully, I wasn’t the first to have an issue like this so I googled and found a discussion on what to do when you only see local channels.  ‘us-cable’ is your friend!

Now, we’re recording.  Next, remote playback on a small, wife-acceptable device.

A friend of mine, Bill, found out that his password had been mailed to him in plaintext from his ’shiny, new 401k’ and he wrote about the disconcerting experience of a financial services company being careless with security. Having worked in a financial services company, I can only say that the troubles he encountered are not that bad… you should have seen some of the sausage in the factory I worked in.

That said, Bill violated a crucial rule of security and he needs to learn it as much as the Schwab folks need to learn their own lessons:

Never, never, never depend on someone else to provide your security.

Bill “used one of his common passwords”… and you shouldn’t have any of those. A common password is a common vulnerability, especially because you can’t know how companies will protect your passwords or your data — as he unfortunately learned. To avoid this, you can use a desktop application (such as the free Password Safe, originating from Bruce Schneier’s Counterpane Labs) or a browser plug-in (such as Password Hasher or Secure Login or any of the other 48 listed on the addons site) or the Mac’s built-in Keychain app so you can generate random passwords and never, never reuse them. Personally, I’ve been using Password Safe for years.

He also offers great tips for websites to make their applications more secure, like not asking for really constant, common, data like mother’s maiden name. The other option is to not answer with an expected response. Mother’s maiden name? Istanbul. Honeymoon location? Jones. And so on…

Never trust someone else’s security.

Technorati Tags: security, password, firefox

More quick reference links to apache goodness: mod-rewrite and virtual hosts overview. Next step, hooking up the rewrite so my old-format links with multiple blogs point to the new-format post URLs. sigh.

Wordpress is simple, but it still isn’t psychic.

And I also found that Redhat has a nice overview of named for those of us still learning BIND.

from a tech reference article…

• once connected open the file:

• /var/ipcop/ovpn/server.conf

Add a line for each XXX subnet you want:

• push “route 192.168.XXX.0 255.255.255.0?

So an interesting contrast in articles yesterday… one column on how Windows Is Free, due to the widespread sharing and ineffectiveness of the registration process, and another column on Software Copyright and Role Models - the impact of software sharing on ethics, morals, and society. The intertwining thread is the Law of Unintended Consequences, where people’s actions have far wider ripples than they anticipate. It really stopped me in my tracks.

I have, in the past, observed unlicensed software being installed. Sometimes, because my own hands were acting on the copied CD. I’ve found it much easier to be in compliance recently because of MSDN access, but now I have kids. I want them to have a computer to use and to play on, and many of their games are Windows-only. Now I have to consider how to move forward.

I’ve purchased computers in the past with Windows installed on them, then blitzed it in order to install Linux. Now I feel like I should have a floating license for that Windows OS, but is that actually fair? I know it’s not legal according to the contracts, but what is really fair? And what do I do to show the kids that I really believe in doing what is right? I work in software development, for goodness sake… you’d think I wouldn’t be conflicted at all.

But all I have are questions right now… no answers.

(At least my Macs are legal, with no questionmarks!

Technorati Tags: Windows, Mac, Linux, ethics

Comprehensive Wordpress Plugin Database with Plugins Tracker

AskApache htaccess password builder

and then some tips on WP security:
drop version string
block viewing of plugins/themes folders
and htaccess (see link above)

whoops, almost forgot Lorelle’s mention of a theme security scanner… which is this security scanner here.

Technorati Tags: wordpress, security

Here’s a great writeup on some of the enterprise management options for Mac environments… if you thought only Windows could be centrally coordinated, this is a very interesting insight into the tools available.

Technorati Tags: mac, enterprise, configuration