People are pain.

Well.. its 12:08 at night.. and I am up.
Stupid you might say, considering I start work at 9:00 in the morn, but Its not entirley by choice.

Reason: I do tech support *waves tiny flag of stupidity*
Reason tonight?: Some german guy broke a network cable, so not only have to make sure he's actually using a network cable and not a phone cable (yes people are that daft) but then ring the administration of a small hotel (aka: the owners) who sounded just as happy as I felt being woken up 10 minutes before them :-P. Then I tell them to take him over a network cable.. ring back to tell him they are getting one (Probably while they curse the day they decided to go with our system) and wait.. because he is a business man.. and 'NEEDS' to get on. Now.

*Sighs* if I weren't getting $40 a night flat... I'd probably hang up laughing.

Why we use firefox

A friend sent me this link the other day. I had the strange urge go get firefox, then I realised I already use it. Har.

http://www.anzacclan.com/forums/index.php?showtopic=1005&hl=

On the same note, Im currently using an addon I found for firefox called Forecastfox -> http://forecastfox.mozdev.org/

Which suprisingly enough, actually covers Australia :-D and gives all the tweaks you could ever want.

One of the main features of it (in my opinion) is not just getting the weather, but being able to choose what you want to know. For example, my current rollover view is "[t], [tmp][nl]Wind [windt], [winds][nl][hmid] Humidity, [suns] Sunset"

Which gives me:
Partly Cloudy, 27 c
Wind ENE, 2 m/s
78% Humditiy, 17:41 Sunset

Neat eh? and you can set up more than one profile, and have it scroll through them at preset intervals..

BOFH and NewGirl are currently up in Bundaberg doing an install there; not a bad month, 2 new hotel installs and one marina.

Item of my week: I bought some shirts from Red vs Blue (Rooster Teeth Productions) www.redvsblue.com and they are awesome.

Finally somewhere that actually gives a medium medium size, rather than me buying a medium and looking like a lima bean in it.. arrr, it shivers me timbers.

The shirts, 'Chupathingy' and 'Bow Chicka wow wow' :-D

If you've never seen them before I recommend you stop reading right now and go there.. now.
Even if you have.. go.
Why are you still here???
*chuckles*

Cpanel - For Not Quite Dummies

Okay, here's that full cPanel tutorial I promised earlier.Just a warning note before you go ahead.. cpanel is made to intergrate fully with the operating system, you can not remove it in any standard way, which is why I installed on a test system with a fresh install.

For the test sytem I used FreeBSD 5.4 which you can download from http://www.freebsd.org/.The system was a 2.4ghz Intel Pentium with 512mb of ram and a 30gb hard drive (being a test system and all)

Starters.
Make sure the version of FreeBSD you are using is on the cpanel supported listing.
The install is relativly basic, requiring that you install at least the minimum set, the kernel source (src) and the included perl package (needed for the cpanel install). The only things we really changed were the default mounting, creating only a swap partion (2x the amount of ram) and creating the rest with mount point '/', This is a measure to make sure you will have enough room to complile your new kernel, but save that for a bit.

Once you have installed these, and gone through the base configurations (make sure to set up your network card for internet access) you are ready to add the special options needed for cpanel.

Note: Now would be a good time to update freeBSD before we do too much mucking about.

Ok.. kernel config time.If you did the install correctly, we now need to add this line# options QUOTAto enable quota support (a prerequisite for cpanel)and to do thatfirst change directory to where the kernel is located

# cd /usr/src/sys/i386/conf/

If you couldn't get to this directory, then you don't have the kernel installed.Do so by putting in your freeBSD cd and then# mount /cdrom# mkdir -p /usr/src/sys# ln -s /usr/src/sys /sys# cat /cdrom/src/ssys.[a-d]* tar -xzvf -

Then input the previous command -> cd /usr/src/sys/i836/confNow that you are in the right place we need to make a second copy of the kerneland open it to edit it. NEWKERNEL can be replaced with whatever name you want.

# cp GENERIC NEWKERNEL# edit NEWKERNEL

you will find a couple of entries here that need to be changedfirst, the most obvious, the name of the kernel change from GENERICand second you need to add this line at the end of the options section

options QUOTA # Adds Quota Support

then push esc, and savenow run config to generate the source code for you, and change into the right directory

# /usr/sbin/config NEWKERNEL# cd ./compile/NEWKERNEL

Then onto the build stage

# make depend && make && make install

This will take a while, so feel free to grab a some food.. you'll be able to get a drink later.Once the install is completed, give the computer a restart with

# reboot

Now onto the cPanel install, first we need to grab the latest installer and run it.

# cd /home# fetch http://layer1.cpanel.net/latest# sh latest

This is the time (as the installer states) to 'go get a coffee/jolt as this will take a while'When this is done (it will require an internet connection to grab the files needed) you need to make one final modification.

# edit /etc/fstab

and add onto the line similar to this(Original) /dev0s1b / /root rw 1 1 (or similar)you need to replace the section that says 'rw' with# rw,groupquota,userquota then esc and save. Now for your hopefully last reboot.

# reboot

and when the system is back up, connect to it for the first time. The url will be similiar tohttp://1.1.1.1:2086/ (replace 1.1.1.1 with your ip, and 2086 is the WHM port) this will begin the setup stage of the WHM config options.

Fill this out according to your local
network, dns settings etc. Now this is done, you should be able to poke around and get to know your main control panel.

When you have grasped the basics of this, create a user account (reseller or standard) and you

can then connect to this using the following format http://1.1.1.1:2082/ (2082 being the cPanel access port). Just as a matter of general interest, you can also connect to the default chat lobby on http://1.1.1.1:2084/

You can register a 15 day test licence for your server at the cPanel store.

http://cpanel.net/store/

This completes my very simple cPanel Installation tutorial for FreeBSDfeel free to email me at krusher00@gmail.com to tell me what you think, updates, corrections

additions etc. And feel free to post this around, just make sure to put my name with it ;-)

Have fun. - Omega00

References To Stuff

Just a note to anyone who happens to read this, I mostly only list software and hardware that I've tried and found effective for what I've stated. If I do mention some hardware or software that you have differing opinions on, please don't spam my comments with things like "THR SO LAMR" etc..

If I mention them In bad way, its probably due to the numerous installs and restarts I've had to do, along with plowing through mountains of incomprehesible manuals and whitepapers that should have been included in the first place.. and readable to anyone without a PhD. I do prefer to find my own way in things, mainly due to the fact I believe that programs should be about ease of use... you know something is crappy when you have 3 or more techs standing over you grunting at the screen. Haha.

News flash: Alienware is becoming part of Dell in a takeover.... hopefully this will mean cheaper computers, cos although they are a good system, they also take a good amount out of our pockets in the process.. you can normally build your own better (if you know what you are doing, want from the system, and have the time to do so.) I'll put some pictures of my new beauty up here soon... soon as its done that is.

>EOF<

Possibilities

I've been working some more on the Cpanel box, sorting out the whats what and whos who of the system. Takes a little while to get your way around the admin side, but I'll go into depth on that later.

The main thing that sparked my attention today was this headline "Gameserver addon for cpanel". Heck yeah. If I had a choice in the matter, this would be what the cpanel server was hosting, rather than some spiffy hotel websites that might only get 10 hits a day. Meh, might try for it anyway if we have any servers spare.... hmmmm. With the possibilites of hosting BF2, HL2, Quake, Doom, COD, COD2 and other such titles... and for money, why would you not want it. Then rehireing them out for money sounds even better :-)

I know what schemes I'll be dreaming up tonight. Admin of a game server sounds pretty darn good to me. Anyone know any good market research I could present to the CEO.... tip the monetary scales in my favour. I'd welcome any such avenues.

Thursday night is late night down at the plaza (big shopping place on sunshine coast) might head down and see what new computer stuff Electronic Boutique is peddling.

Cpanel = linux = better than microsoft anyday

I've begun to work on my choice of web control panels, namely Cpanel which I belive kicks wing (thats a good thing.. in my opinion).

Cpanel first glimses, rather than using 20 or so massive icons that fill up the whole screen and tell you jack all about purpose *cough*helm*cough* Cpanel gives you the full shabang right off the bat... just about any of the features can be reached in a short number of clicks, and this saves lots of time, not only for the admin.. but end users as well.

End user runabout:
The simple way to use it (as and end user) is if you recognise the control ...ftp, mail server, MySQL click on it, and be confronted by the standard set of controls. Other than this if a you don't know what something is, its quite safe to play around with it, as the admin panel lets you limit what any user can do. For example, before I had installed this version of Cpanel on our server, a friend gave me limited access to his, which I could quite easily create a some MySQL databases on using the included PHPMyAdmin web-interface. Along with this, setting up a simple ftp client, and uploading a website from frontpage was all a snap.

At the moment I'm still playing about with the admin features, so I will give a rundown of what I think of it tomorrow.

For anyone who wants to give it a try thou, I'll give you a couple of warnings, and a breif tut.
1) Cpanel is made for going onto a fresh server install, and cannot be removed easily.. (in other words you'll be there for a year if you try)
2) You'll need a constant connection to install Cpanel, as the installer downloads most of its content off the cpanel site.
3) For anyone who wants to try it, goto the Cpanel Store and you can get a 15 day trial for your server.
4) Unless you already have some sort of domain you can use this on, its a bit finiky and picky to get working on a local network. (That and the ip you specify for the key has to be external)

To install it from any version of linux (sorry to all those windows users.. toobad eh ;-)
goto the Downloads Section and find which one you want.
Copy the download link normally a .sea extension, then open up your terminal window.
use the command-> cd /home
then -> wget file_name_here

once this has downloaded run it with
-> sh file_name_here
and it will take between 10 - 70 minutes to install.
... as they say.. go grab a coffee/jolt/bawlz.. what ever fancies your tickle.

After this you need to register the key (if you haven't already grabbed it, then good on you.. you probably should have waited til you got this far anyway heh)
--- TO BE CONTINUED --- (Im off to uni *yawn*)

A new net for us all.

Hmm, girls confuse me.. always have.. and Im guessing unless I stupidly decide to fork out a ridiculous amount of money and become one; always will.

The 'new girl' at work.. who isn't really new because she's done some part time shabang with Aplus a while back, bemuses me. She was assigned the task of setting up a test webserver so we could fdisk the old one and start over.

Quote of the day: Me- so what type of control panel is it running at the moment? Ben- at the moment?? Its running the ben and don panel.

..so back to my thoughts, willow brought up the one she thought best (a windows solution hehe) mostly (well at least thats what her email said) because we could put the company logo in it, and it looked easy to use.

Mental note: big bright buttons and gaudy icons = very hard to understand

but to cut a long blog short, I ended up going over to give her a hand fixing up IIS.. the first time, and then with the next cpanel, and the next. Microsoft is an ass. Then yesterday, she basically sat watching while I installed 3 others, attempting to get server 2003 into gear. I don't mean to insult her or anything, but having 2 people working on 1 computer for a day is very inefficient.. I'd generally try to let her do a bunch when it was all installs and such, but you'd think she would do a little more 'work creation' like I do ... (General plan - emails on ros's comp, backups, portal backup, washing dishes, cleaning bins, cleaning up test desk in no particular order.)

I normally don't like to have to ask people what to do when I've run out, just because then they have to run around and find something, thereby disturbing thier own work.

.. I eventually found something to do, set up an apache server with MySQL, PHP, ActivePerl and PHP MyAdmin ... only to find out that WAMP does exactly the same thing.. in about 5 minutes. I highly recommend it. Even if it does make you feel like a bogan.

Can't wait til neil and ros get back from thier holiday... Im supposed to be getting my broadband upgraded from crappy 256k. Laugh while you can.

>EOF<

Bloggers Start your engines.

Haha, turns out I am a PFY after all... I stumbled across bens blog.. on this site Lol.. being a good PFY (can you call one of us that??) Im not going to use anything against him.. yet. Lol, I'll just post some incriminating stuff in mine so Im not tempted..

I was innocently searching for his website to have a gander (the name being conveniantly labeled on the front of one of the servers, and I found it.. his blog.. and another site paying homage.. in some language other than english.. I had a look, and it looks like they might just be translating it all into dutch or something.. gota find out what location is.. (Virtualroute is a good program peeps.)

Thats me for today, I finally decided to act on my blog, and put it here.. if he thinks its good enought, then I reckon he's probably right.. bloody good guy in my opinion

>EOF<

The crew.. cabin boy reporting.

Still searching for a site to put these all on, a completly respectable blog community, well I never!! Haha. I'll introduce the gang from work, they all seem pretty neat, and the techs are pretty social too. (Hard to believe we still have some almost bofh types around after all the sterotypical crap that gets fed to us in school) I think im going to enjoy working here.
So heres the roundup (in order of appearance)

Ros thompson:First meeting, a nervous PFY waiting for an interview... a general receptionist, accountant, and rather shrewd buisness women (Part owner of the whole shebang). Married to

Neil thompson: First meeting, a profusely sweating PFY trying to read his interviewees and give them something to hire me for... apart from good looks and charm of courser....another of the the owners, who by some strange fate, seems to be the semi- CEO of the whole shebang... guess that means he probably doesn't know that much about computers (Edit: Yup, you can always tell)

Don Muir: First Meeting, same as neil, only Don asked the hard questions... eg "What program do you use for telnetting"... *andrew thinks:wtf?* ... "telnet generally, I haven't done much that required anything special"....A real techie, reminds me more of an engineery type.. doesn't really like new tech and software that much.. but he has to be pretty smart, he doesn't like playing with MS. Hehe. Apparently he used to work designing networks for one of the telcos, then left to start this place with neil, them knowing each other for years and all.

Ben Johns: Probably the quietest out of the bunch, but seems like a pretty cool character.. he's a gamer, the way he uses the keyboard is a good indication to start.. that and the fact I noticed him looking at 'Concerned' the HL2 comic... gota have played it to understand it :-) Could be a new source of some nice warez.. that and I could do with a good mentor. He's hell good at what he does, that much is obvious.

Chris Jouris (Edit: Kris Jooris): He's a foreigner, Im guessing germany, brussels, belgium (Edit: Belgium) one of those anywho.. originally had a company called 'Accession' or 'Accession Wireless' that joined in with neil don and ros. Seems like an okay guy.. has kids, and smokes.. seems like a stupid idea to me.. but, as long as he doesn't kill my lungs, it's his choice.

>EOF<

Work work... zug zug

Shiiiet dude, work can get hell busy. I've been pretty busy at home too, planing out some of the networking stuff I wanna do when mum and dad get to and renovate. Ben had a week off.. lucky bugger. Though I managed to wrangle a week off to go down and see Elise, depending on how well she is. (Thats not until april though grrr.)
Note to self: Next time a uni student complains about connection speed.. go down and remove network card.. put an adaptor on thier com port, and let them figure the bloody rest out. Specially trevor... *sighs*
>EOF<

Hey, a week into my job and I've decided I might just go ahead with this blog deal, not just getting a load of my chest like most of the garbage blogs around.. I've seen quite a few interesting ones, raising my liking level to about a 4/10... good enough to give it a try at least.

>EOF<

New beginings.. sounds like work to me

Well, I don't really know why.. or how.. or why. But, I've decided to start a blog.. lets see how long this lasts. I spose I could relate it to starting an awesome job.. even though im pretty much just a gopher/rookie, my handler (haha, I assume he might have been assigned that job) seems pretty cool.
>EOF<