So I decided to look for a new theme for TOP as the current one isn’t responsive and an increasing number of people view the site on mobile devices. After goinf through many 100’s I decided on the Olsen Light theme. It fits in well with my minimalist look and will be making some tweaks to make it fit better.

Old theme

New theme

As you can probably see i’m not big on change and know what I like.

Over the years i’ve used various server monitors with varying degrees of success, the ones I did like are now paid for and over bloated with premium features I don’t need. So couple of weeks ago I thought about doing my own!.

Requirements
1, Simple clean interface
2, Ping only monitoring (for now)
3, Use remote nodes
4, All self written software

I began customizing an opensource firmware for a spare device I had and is still a work in progress as there is much to do. I have been writing scripts to interact between a single worker node and a master node. Currently I have the worker able to ping an ip address and report back to the master the return status i.e pass or fail at which point it then updates a simple webpage. To reduce the risk of false positives if the worker reports a fail the master will re check to verify it’s actually down.

Now my webdesign skills are limited to say the least (hell I use WP) i’ve had a ‘play’ around before so this was the first version I cam up with.

Yes its ok you can stop laughing now!

I decided to google bootstrap as previous sites built round this give the ‘clean’ look I want. This is v2, as you can see the entire row colour reflects the status i.e up or down.

Bit more googling and playing and I came up with v3. This differs from v2 in the fact that the status is only shown as a single button.

Currently i’m hard coding the test ips into a file, it would be nice to have the ability to add new monitors via the webpage but i need to figure out a) how to add working buttons b) how the master then updates the worker with the new ip’s. I sense much pain and coffee in my future….

16/07/17
This morning i’ve added buttons (don’t do anything yet) to my v3 layout. Personally I think v4 has too many colours so it would be hard to tell if a node was down with just a quick glance.

20/07/17
Done a bit more today. The worker/master interaction is going well. So far ive tested a list of 10 ips containing a mix of real and fake and they have all been reported to the master correctly and it telling the worker what it should be. If they dont agree the master has overall say. In the future it would be nice to have two workers so they can decided between them then tell the master who will do final verification. The trouble is going beyond 121 messaging things can get messey with messages lost/delayed/sent twice etc so is a fair amount more work. Ive decided im sticking with the v2 layout as its easy to tell the status and looks cleaner.

So had an issue on my windows 10 machine that every time I right clicked a folder explorer would crash. One of the reasons is the ‘quick access’ feature can become too full, this fix worked for me. Open File Explorer Right-click Quick Access Select “Options” Under Privacy click the Clear button After doing this right click began to work ok again, if your regularly coming across this issue then it may be better just to disable this function completely.

I ordered this from China based ebay seller for £13.29 on 09/03/16 it was posted on 12/03/16 and arrived 24/03/16 so thought id do a quick review.

So I recently switched to B.T due to the daylight robbers that are sky only offering me £3 per month discount off full price on renewal of my contract.

I’ve signed up for BT Infinity 1 unlimited their phone package and also their YouView TV package.

On my sky setup I used a BT OpenReach (BTO) modem along with an Asus RT-N66U Dark Knight router running Merlin firmware and it all worked very well and I had everything setup as I wanted so when it came to switch over I was loath to use the BT Home Hub, and this is how I did it….

NOTE: My router is running Merlin Firmware:378.56_2 make sure you backup your settings before carrying out the steps below. I suspect they will work on STOCK firmware but it’s UNCONFIRMED at this stage.

1, Login to router and go to the WAN –> Internet Connection page and change these settings

Connection type to PPPoE
PPP Username bthomehub@btbroadband.com
Password anythingyouwant (The password can be anything you want but it MUST have something entered as leaving it empty will stop it working)
Enable VPN + DHCP Connection No (On sky I had this previously enabled so if you did as well make sure you disable it.

Your page should now look like this

Click Apply

This will allow your router to login to the BT Infinity Servvice and use your broadband but if you try and go to an internet channel on your YouView box you’ll get Error Code IPC-6023 this is because further configuration is required to get IPTV to work, now go to step 2.

2, Next go to the LAN –> IPTV setting and use these settings

Select ISP Profile None
Choose IPTV STB Port None
Use DHCP routes RFC3442 & Microsoft
Enable multicast routing (IGMP Proxy) Enable
Enable efficient multicast forwarding (IGMP Snooping) Enable
UDP Proxy (Udpxy) 0

So you should end up with

Click apply

When I again went to the subscription channel I got error IPC-6023 again? rebooted the YouView box and again got the error, next I REBOOTED THE ROUTER and this time I got a picture but it was very pixelated.

After a lot more searching and trying of settings I used these.

3, Goto Network Map –> View List and find your BT youView box it will most likely be called HUMAX and make a note of it’s ip address (You can also rename it, I changed mine to YouView for easy finding)
Next go to LAN –> DHCP and scroll to the bottom where it says ‘Manually Assigned IP around the DHCP list (Max Limit : 128)’

In the MAC Address dropdown box find the ip address you noted earlier and it should have HUMAX (or whatever name you set next to it) click this so the box is populated.

Next we are going to assign assign it an ip address based on its MAC address. In the next box it will have already been populated with the IP you found earlier you can either leave it as this or set your own if you like your devices to be sequential etc. Next click the + sign you should then end up with something like this.

Click apply

4, Goto WAN –> Virtual Server / Port Forwarding

Service Name enter something relevant that you will remember, YouView, IPTV etc.
Port Range 1024
Local IP (The one you assigned to the YouView box in step 3)
Local Port 8081
Protocol TCP
Click the + sign and you should end up with this

Click apply then reboot your router wait for it to come back then reboot the YouView box goto an internet channel you’ve subscribed to and it should now display correctly.

While installing Debian 7 Wheezy on a Dell 1950 III I encounted the following error

Can’t load firmware file bnx2/bnx2-mips-06-06.2.1.fw

which is caused by the missing broadcom network driver. I fixed this by downloading http://www.theoutpost.org/downloads/firmware-bnx2_20160824-1_all.deb onto a linux machine and extracting the .deb file using

ar vx firmware-bnx2_20160824-1_all.deb

which created
x – debian-binary
x – control.tar.gz
x – data.tar.xz

then extract the data file

tar xf data.tar.xz

which created folders lib and usr.

cd /lib/firmware

Now copy the bnx2 directory into the root of a usb flash drive (it must contain the folder bnx2 folder itself and it’s contents) Now insert into the machine your installing on and hit enter when prompted.

The tftp recovery method is the same as the WDR3600 except the image needs to be named wr1043v3_tp_recovery.bin

http://www.theoutpost.org/6-techy/tp-link-wdr3600-recovery-without-serial/

Now I had a headache installing golang as using via apt-get in wheezy installed an old version which wasn’t compatible with the software I wanted to install. Luckily I manged to stumble upon a tool called Go Version Manager (gvm) installed under the root user so modify to meet your needs.

Manage Jenkins -> Nodes -> Select a node -> Script Console

in the box paste

println InetAddress.localHost.hostAddress

hit ‘run’ and after a short wait the ip will be returned.