The Friday Picture will provide you with inspirational and (de)motiviational guidance to make the approaching weekend so much more appealing:
Monthly Archives: August 2008
NAS: Boot your NAS…
Posted by GNaschenweng on August 21, 2008 No comments
In a previous article I showed how to make the Synology reboot a router via a cronjob.
There are many more options – such as automatically rebooting your Synology NAS thereafter – you would just extend the script by another two lines:
# Wait until the router has restarted. This is a simple sleep, # but you could also check the NAS's interface or # ping the router. My Belkin takes 60 sec to restart sleep 60 # The following command initiates a restart of the NAS echo -n "CCCC" > /dev/ttyS1 NAS: Boot your router….
Posted by GNaschenweng on August 20, 2008 No comments
Having the Synology DiskStation hooked up to the UPS I have avoided any sudden problems when Eskom decides to load-shed again. Over the last few days I did notice (especially since now my iBurst modem and WLAN-access point is on 24×7) that leaving the iBurst modem on for too long seems to deteriorate throughput.
Neither the iBurst modem nor the Belkin access-point have remote management functions, and so I devised the following script to give my router the boot (resulting in the modem being disconnected and reconnected after the rooter boots).
How does it work: I wrote a small script which logs onto the routers management interface and then issues a restart command. This can be easily achieved with the post-method in wget. The script itself runs periodically on the NAS via a cronjob.
This mechanism will work for any router which has a browser-interface via HTTP. I created the script below after HTTP-sniffing the post-requests:
#!/bin/ash DT=`date +%b\ %d\ %T` echo $DT ROUTER: Restarting router >>/var/log/crond.log wget http://172.16.0.1/setup.cgi --post-data="pws=&itsbutton1=Submit&todo=login&this_file=login.html&next_file=ut_reset.html&language=en&message=&passwd=[BASE64-encoded-string]" wget http://172.16.0.1/setup.cgi --post-data="reboot=Restart Router&todo=reboot&this_file=ut_reset.html&next_file=reset_ok.html&message=" echo $DT ROUTER: Restarted >>/var/log/crond.log
In the above I use wget to submit the post request and have sniffed the http-login and reset request via HTTP Scoop – a sweet little HTTP protocol sniffer for Mac OSX.
Now you just need to automate this on your NAS via a cronjob:
MuffinStation> cat /etc/crontab
#minute hour mday month wday who command 0 2 1/5 * ? root sh /volume1/webapps/restartrouter.sh
The above will restart the router at 2am every five days starting with the 1st of the month (which is great, as by the first my cap is normally gone – smile).
The Friday Picture: Lost
Posted by GNaschenweng on August 15, 2008 No comments
PS3: Whoop Whoop – Home invite
Posted by GNaschenweng on August 15, 2008 1 comment
By the sounds of it I seem to be the first South African to have received an official Playstation Home invite:
PLAYSTATION Home (also marketed and referred to simply as Home) is a community-based service for the PlayStation Network which has been in development since early 2005. Home allows users to create an avatar for their PlayStation 3 console. This avatar will get their own virtual apartment space (think Second Life), which can then be adorned with items users can receive in several different ways.
How did I get chosen? Not sure – Sony has stated that users will be chosen based on their activity on the PlayStation Network and the PlayStation Store – and maybe it is just all my trophies I have been collecting – smile.
Update: The invite is not fake. Redemption of the PS3 promotional code worked and Home is downloading (about 88MB).
Update 2: Proof of invite and download below:
Update 3: Just to clarify – I am a South African resident, using my South African PSN-ID to be in Home.
NAS: Synology new beta available
Posted by GNaschenweng on August 14, 2008 No comments
Synology is really rocking and have just released the latest beta. I suggest that you sign-up before the beta closes – I did my upgrade last night and everything is working good. Amongst the enhancements (I was looking forward to the hibernation fix for my Western Digital Green-HD):
- RAID 6 Support: RAID 6 volume type cuts off the risk of volume failure and provides extra data protection.
- NFS Support: With built-in NFS option, admin can quickly enable NFS and set up privileges on the UI by a few checks only.
- Virtual Host: Hosting multiple websites on one single server for a more efficient and economical purpose; both IP-based and name-based virtual hosting are supported.
- Batch Users Creating: By importing the user list, admin can now efficiently create a number of user accounts on a batch basis.
- HDD S.M.A.R.T.: The S.M.A.R.T. information and S.M.A.R.T. test are available on the management UI for admin to monitor, detect, and report the hard disks status, in a way to alert possible HDD failures. (Not supported on DS-101j)
- Enhanced Local Backup: Enables multiple scheduled Local Backup tasks with the assistance of Local Backup wizard, the backup destination can be either the external HDD or the shared folders on the internal HDD. From now on, the external attached HDD (EXT3 or FAT format) can be used as storage and backup disk simultaneously.
- Enhanced FTP Server: The advanced privilege of “write-only” is supported. In addition, limiting the maximum connections from each individual IP provides better bandwidth management together with the bandwidth restriction option. UTF-8 filename support which better handles multilingual characters is also optional.
- New Download Station 2: Other than BitTorrent/FTP/HTTP download, new download channels eMule and NZB are now supported by the Download Station 2. In addition, partial files download from BitTorrent is also allowed. Download Station 2 is now separated from the management UI and stands on an individual webpage.
- Enhanced File Station: Admin can designate his/her own File Station with a different port as well as customize webpage banner, so that users will login the File Station independent from the NAS server management UI. The advanced privilege of “write-only” is also supported.
- Enhanced Audio Station: No USB speakers are required for playing music stored on the server anymore. The new streaming mode streams .mp3 audio files to the client PC(1) and delivers by built-in speakers. A built-in playlist “Random100″ will randomly choose and play 100 songs each time it is selected. (Not supported on DS-101j)
- Enhanced Photo Station 3: Admin can now customize Photo Station 3 background and theme in his/her own fashion, and sort photos and albums according to personal preference in the Settings area. Language setting is also modifiable based on his/her choice. The media RSS feed is now supported. Moreover, users can now enjoy the Photo Station 3 with PicLens dazzling full screen 3-dimensional photo slideshow(2).
- Enhanced Windows ADS Compatibility: Better handles the Windows domains especially for those with a large number of domain users. Windows Server 2008 is also supported now. (Not supported on DS107e, DS108j, DS-106e, DS-106j, and DS-101j)
- Enhanced Mac OS Usability: Synology NAS servers will be automatically found by Bonjour protocol, including Finder and Safari browser (Bookmarks > Bonjour).
- Enhanced iTunes Server: m4a and m4p file formats are correctly indexed on iTunes server with tags information.
- Enhanced Hibernation: Improved hibernation mechanism is introduced particularly to solve the problem of Western Digital Green Power series HDDs’ not sleeping while in hibernation.
- Enhanced Concurrent Connection Capability: The maximum concurrent connection number is now expanded to 256. (Available on DS508, RS408, and RS408-RP)
- Perl Support: Perl 5.8.6 is formally included in Synology Disk Station Manager 2.0. (Not supported on DS-101j)
Drake: Trophies
Posted by GNaschenweng on August 14, 2008 No comments
If you are chasing your PS3 trophies you will be delighted to know that if you play Drake on Hard you will be able to collect 3 trophies (for completing the game on Easy, Normal and Hard) at once.
Contrary to reports on the web, you are allowed to use the different Weapons via the “Rewards”-option. The 92FS-9mm is my favorite choice and I completed Hard just with this weapon. Now it’s on to Crushing mode to get the last Gold-trophy (and Platinum for unlocking all trophies within the game) – smile.
