Sunday, July 27, 2008

Openfire notes

I've added notes for Openfire configuration to the wiki. Ben Perove has a 15-minute screencast on basick configuration. The one thing that he left out was that you have to enable management via /etc/asterisk/manager.conf.

I also learned (the hard way) that if you use the embedded database (vice an external one) for Openfire, you'll run into issues with configuring the Asterisk-IM plugin.

I'm having a bit of fun with Openfire (the server) and Spark (the IM client). The Asterisk-IM plugin announces inbound calls with pop-up windows using Spark. Openfire also has a gateway function for just about every IM available. This allows you to see when your friends are online (or chat with them), even in IRC, without having to start up a dedicated client for whatever individual service they might be using.

OpenMeetings update

Got the install-from-scratch version (vice the VM version) of OpenMeetings up and running. One tip for other people messing with it, running OpenMeetings on the same box as your web browser doesn't work well (if at all). Run the server on a different machine.

Thursday, July 24, 2008

WiFiDog status

I've got the auth server built with all of the modules/features enabled. The older ipkg installed nicely on my ancient WRT54G. The gateway works nicely (though I did lose some spouse points during the install) and seems to respect the pre-existing port-forwards. I don't see much of the previous notes changing all that much. I'll start tweaking them this weekend.

One side project though, the documention. The current stuff is a bit sparse.

Saturday, July 19, 2008

Ow! My eyes!

Dude! It's cool that you (you know who you are!) have a generally popular tech show on uStream. But don't forget to turn your rig off when you're done. We really don't wanna know that you wear too-small black speedo-like underwear and like to wander the house with a cereal bowl in the middle of the night!

Friday, July 18, 2008

Intrinsic.h errors

Note to self (and anyone else who's troubleshooting similar): The following error is caused by a lack of the XAW library.

    error: X11/Intrinsic.h: No such file or directory

The correction is to load the latest development version of libxaw.

Wednesday, July 16, 2008

WiFiDog update

I'll be updating the "setting up a captive portal" pages in the near future as a build another one from scratch (for the house). This weekend's project, from the looks of it, unless Sparks wants to mess with OpenVPN again. (Sparks?)

Saturday, July 12, 2008

OpenVPN

Sparks and I have started working on getting OpenVPN up and running. The example for the simple point to point configuration is quite easy. However, that's where most of the howto's end. We're trying to get a point-to-multipoint configuration up and running but it's a bit more complicated. We should have it up and running shortly.

Monday, July 7, 2008

Abandonment

In the effort to make my digital life just a bit simpler, I'm considering abandoning yet another tool. This time it's SageTV.

I've enjoyed using it for the last three years. It has quite a few features that the other DVR software packages don't. Plus an active support community. Plus being user-extensible.

The problem is that the version that I've purchased is starting to have some serious issues, mostly by not playing well with various upgrades to my system. Having to maintain two versions of Java (the older one for SageTV) and a number of legacy libraries was a serious P.I.T.A. On top of that, the online sources never really worked all that well (which can be blamed mostly on the serious shortage of documentation for the Linux version).

In any case, I'm considering moving away from SageTV. I really don't want to purchase the newest version. MythTV appears to have most of the features that I want and I'm willing to invest a few hours to get it up and running. I'll keep you posted.

Sunday, July 6, 2008

OpenMeetings Status

I've got OpenMeetings installed to the point where that it is able to provide a video feed, from an XP box, to anyone else that connects. I'm having issues with the webcam on the Linux box (its the same make/model as the one on the XP box) so I'm thinking that either the webcam shouldn't be run on the server or there's something hardcoded which requires that clients be Windows based.

I'm hoping that I find a howto or a troubleshooting page soon. That's the trouble with in-development code: documentation tends to be a bit sparse. Notes here.

Retreating

Amongst a certain crowd (*ahem*), it's a popular practice to go "on retreat" where the geek completely unplugs from all communications for the length of their vacation. This allows the geek to "retreat" from the stress of their connected work and social lives.

The problem is that stress conforms to many "laws" that physical objects do. In other words, the stress doesn't disappear just because you're not in it at the moment. Rather, the majority of it gets transferred to your coworkers and friends. In fact, it actually creates more stress from the inconvenience it creates on those friends and coworkers.

Translation: Sparks! Dammit! Answer your phone! You're not going to Denver on Monday!

Friday, July 4, 2008

OpenMeetings

For anyone with a subscription to the feeds from the wiki, please bear with me. The installation process for OpenMeetings is a bit intricate and recording the process adds a large amount of time to the process (i.e., you'll be seeing a lot of minor updates).

Feeds update

Hmm... down to 288 feeds, from 400+ earlier in the year. The hard part is saving the "to keep" stuff from the blogs that I no longer want to read (it is an election year after all...).

Thursday, July 3, 2008

SqueezeCenter

I'm not sure when it happened but Slimserver has become SqueezeCenter. More or less the same features, a new skin for the interface. I've added notes to the wiki on reconfiguring SqueezeCenter to use your MySQL service (vice the extra one that comes with SqueezeCenter).