I ran a test today to make sure that all of my servers could be run off of my truck’s electrical system without any downtime. I simply ran a long extension cord from an outlet in the truck to my server closet. I then unplugged the server closet UPS from the wall outlet and plugged it into the extension cord. The UPS in the closet beeped a few times, but kept on running. I then unplugged the shore power umbilical from the truck, the closet UPS beeped a few times, and then was running off of the truck’s UPS. Everything went off without a hitch. The trucks 6.6KWhr of usable battery life should give me about 16 hours of run-time, plus whatever the closet UPSs provide on their own. The closet draws around 415W of power. This includes all of my servers, switches, and routers, except for my surveillance system.
The only downside to this setup is that I have to manually unplug the closet UPS from the wall and then plug it into the truck. In order to get around this I may just run it from the truck system all the time (with the truck’s umbilical connected to shore power) and then switch the closet over to the local outlet whenever I drive the truck.
Computers, Deuce and a Half
Here are the two videos I made showing of my various computer systems. View them after the jump.
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Computers, Video
tour
It turns out that the power supply itself on the old server was not defective. The power cord was the cause of the problem. I plugged it into the wall with a different cable just to be absolutely sure… and it fired right up. I lost my “reliable” status, but I should have that back again within a few days. I’ve also upped my alocated bandwidth to a full 5 mb/s, so I’ll be helping out even more.
Computers
server, Tor
My Tor server just went offline(power supply failure). So much for the free Tor t-shirt 
I could probably repair the system, but it was made around 10 years ago. It’s served me well enough, but I’m not going to resuscitate it. On the downside, I now am basically required to build/purchase a new computer. I’m planning on using a Fit2 PC as the new Tor server, since it has more than enough CPU power for the job. All of my other spare systems are out of commission. Oh well.
Computers
Fail, server, Tor
I’ve set the LAN Party link at the top of the page to redirect to a subdomain I just setup: party.sudoseth.com From now on this is where I will update changes to the roster, what games we will play, when, and where. If I get bored I might even add some web forms so that people can RSVP via the site itself.
Computers, This Site
lan, Party, Warcraft
I stayed at Castle In the Sand. Their WiFi network is more through than it was last year, but there are still some gaps in coverage. By sheer conicedence I stumbled across Ekahau Heatmaper. It’s a low tech solution to mapping out how much wifi signal there is in a given area and then project how much signal should be available in other locations nearby.
Shown above is the map of the hotel’s main WiFi SSID for the guests.
Computers
Hotel, network, Travel, WiFi
I just got a new iTouch… and apple does not support Windows XP Pro 64 bit. Seriously?
I’ve found a site that tells you how to use MS Orca to run the Vista 64 bit installer in XP, but why should I have to do that. That is just stupid. This is the first time I’ve tried using an Apple product in four years, and so far I am not impressed at all. Four years ago I had an iMac that was about as useful as a boat anchor in my living room.
…Sigh. I’ll just use it on a different computer that still has XP 32 bit.
Computers
Apple
I travel to frequently and as such need to be able to keep an eye on my servers. I use SSH extensively for this purpose. I’ve been looking for some tools to keep track of bandwidth usage using the command line for a while and recently found some that do exactly what I want.
I found a list that introduced me to a bunch of different tools. Two of my favorites are bmon and bwm-ng. Both of these command line tools can be installed in Ubuntu by using apt-get. technical
Technical Notes
terminal, Tools, ubuntu
I’ve made a new page on my blog for listing information about upcoming LAN parties. If you’re a friend send me an email with details (or otherwise contact me) and I can add the get-together to the list.
Computers, This Site
I had some spare time today and decided to make use of my Cox internet connection while I still have it. Naturally the only thing to do with an unused connection was to put a Tor exit node on it 
The guide found at ubuntu-tutorials.com was very helpful. In short, simply use “apt-get install tor” to install the software and then edit /etc/tor/torc to change all the settings. It is required to give your endpoint a unique nickname. Read the config file and you’ll be fine. You can then use “sudo /etc/init.d/tor start” to start Tor and “tail -f /var/log/tor/log” to check the status.
If Apache is giving you trouble, or you should screw up the config files beyond recognition, it is possible to wipe Apache out completely and then re-install it. If you’re just playing around with the server this can save you a lot of time. The command to remove apache2 completely is “apt-get remove –purge apache2 apache2-common apache2-mpm-prefork apache2-utils ssl-cert” You can then reinstall apache using the default values with “apt-get install apache2″ It’s very simple once you know what some of the tricks are
Computers, How To
apache, Scripts, server, ubuntu