A while back I realized my current server monitoring scripts were not doing enough to alert me when something went wrong, so I modified the existing script I was using to do more for my situation. Yesterday I decided I liked it so much that I should share… So in case you are looking for something like this, read on to see if it will meet your needs and feel free to download it and use/modify it for your own server(s).

I was thinking about how non-productive this weekend has been… Not that this is a bad thing. I enjoyed relaxing, watching TiVo and browsing the internet for funny videos and wierd news stories. But the more I thought about it, the more I realized – it wasn’t completely non-productive. As long as I did at least SOMETHING that needed to be done, right?

Well, I did fix myself something to eat a few times… that was needed. Seriously, I did work on a few side-projects and got them out of the way making room for me to hopefully work on more pressing issues next weekend. (Such as cleaning a path to the front door so maybe I can go outside and take pictures and get some fresh air)

I finally got around to getting one of my old machines back up on the server rack, FreeBSD 5.5 installed, and configured it to run as a secondary DNS server again. I hope to be adding a 3rd and placing it at Rogers house one of these days. This is all to provide backup DNS and Mail relay (store and forward) for my hosting company, SSA Host as well as allowing me to have my own seperate DNS/Mailservers for side projects and experiments without using the resources of my companys servers.

I also got my monitors off of my desk, and mounted to the arms I bought for them ages ago. This gives me much more desk space, and more room to attract clutter. At least I can still see the screens when I have junk piled up on the desk. It’s also better for my back as I find that I’m actually sitting back in my chair now instead of leaning over to see the monitors.

And perhaps most importantly, I removed the sparkly red cell-skin I had on my phone, and replaced it with the patriotic flag print skin – just in time for July 4th! Click on the thumbnails below to see pictures of my now-spacious desk and stylish Moto Razr

Aside from these little projects, I also managed to finally get KristopherEJ.com redone and back online. I’ve also moved the photo gallery over to the new site as well. Now, to just get that path cleared to the front door so I can leave once in a while to take more pictures to put in the gallery!

I’ve had my Linksys wireless router for a while, and never really though much about security on it beyond a 128 bit WEP key, but while playing around in the setup screens, upgrading firmware, etc. I noticed now I have the option for WPA-Radius…

With my curiosity peaked, 2 FreeBSD boxes sitting around not doing much, and some free time I managed to get radiusd installed, configured it with a single client (my AP’s IP) and setup 2 users with the same login passwords Jamie and I use on our laptops. So regardless who is logged into which laptop, it will pass our login credentials via PEAP over an encrypted connection to request access from the AP.

After some mindless struggling I realized I needed to open the ports on the freebsd firewall for the access point’s IP to allow it to contact radiusd Otherwise, it was fairly easy to setup – and I feel better about my wireless security now than before. If nothing more than to have a log of any failed login attempts. Besides, with a little more firewall tweaking and routing via one of my static IP’s, I could configure my Mom’s AP in California to work the same way, authenticating over the internet to my radius server…. not that I’m going to do it, that would be overkill and annoying to her if she can’t get on the internet because my server is down. Still a cool idea tho’ ehehe.

Well, I finally got around to updating the theme on my blog… About time eh? As usual I had other work I needed to be doing, and this looked more entertaining So much for getting anything else done today, maybe tomorrow I can finish some of the other projects I’m working on!

SSA Host and SSA Phone are coming along nicely, making minor tweaks to the toll-free phone service, such as getting better recorded greetings to play on forwarded calls, instead of using text-to-speech which is hard to understand unless you’ve been listening to a lot of it and you can make out what it’s saying.

I plan to convert my router so I can use my IPCop server for something else, such as another backup DNS/Mailserver perhaps.

But for now, I’m going to bed…

-Kris

I finally added some more tee-shirts to Buffoon Tees. I had made a few more designs in my free time and not gotten around to uploading them yet.

So, go take a look at the new obnoxious designs

I especially like the Needs Head, and Eat Me (xican) designs.

Here are a few more: