Month: February 2006

Bad Day, No Really …

Split PantsAs if my day had not seemed like it was both long and bad enough, when I left work I felt a draft on my backside. I thought that my shirt might have come untucked and I was just getting a breeze. That would have been much too nice, instead I found that I had split my pants at some time during the day. I would have liked to know that it had happen, so I could have changed. Even worst was the fact that I had four stops to make on the way home.

Oh well, guess that’s life …

Open Source Project

I have been looking into what is involved in starting an Open Source Project. I have some ideas for a project that I would like to start and thought it would be fun to start a project and see if there would be any community support for it. I switched to Linux about two years ago, and still have not found a good replacement for iTunes. I can live without the music store part, but I really like to way it works for pod caching and updating the iPod. I know there are several projects out there that can be used together to accomplish what I want, but I want it all in one application. I have also been looking for a project to do in Java, and thought this would be the time to put it all together. After finishing my research into what I need to get the project started, I’ll post the steps and kick this off.

Does anyone know of a good spell checker for WordPress?

Blizzard

Well the big blizzard that has been hitting the Northeast was not too bad, as least for us. We got about 10 inches of snow with drifts of about two feet. I had fun with the snow blower, which I was starting to think was not going to get used again this winter. I think it had only been used once since my wife bought it for me. The kids had fun playing in the snow and making snow angles.

Lea’s Surgery

Well, the little woman had surgery yesterday. Everything went good and she should be home in a couple of days. The kids are looking forward to her getting home. I have some pictures that I will try and get posted in the next few days. The pictures are classic Lea, laying in bed watching a movie on my notebook.

Lea at Hospital

Updated 5th February 2006
Well everyone is home and doing good. Lea has a follow-up apointment later this week to make sure everything is still going good.

Installing Vonage behind a Firewall

This is a quick discription of the steps that I had to go through to get my VoIP router working from behind my firewall. The Vonage router does include a firewall, however it was not as tuneable as the firewall that I already had install.

Lets start with my current hardware configuration:

  • NetGear FVS318 ProSafe VPN Firewall – 10.0.0.1

  • File Server – 10.0.0.25

  • Print Server – 10.0.0.26

  • Computers – 10.0.0.50 – 10.0.0.75

  • Linksys – RT31P2 VoIP router from Vonage

I do connect to the VPN from remote locations, so that had to be the first thing after the cable modem. So here are the steps to get this working, hopefully.

  1. Disconnect the RT31P2 from your modem.

  2. Connect to your FVS318.

  3. Access the FVS318 and get the DNS server setting from the status page.

  4. Now we need to allow some ports through the firewall. Create the following rules:

    1. Forward UDP 5060..5061 to 10.0.0.250

    2. Forward UDP 123 to 10.0.0.250

    3. Forward UDP 69 to 10.0.0.250

    4. Forward UDP 10000 .. 20000 to 10.0.0.250

  5. Disconnect from the FVS318.

  6. Connect one of the three network ports on the RT31P2.

  7. Open a browser and login to the RT31P2. The address at this point should be 192.168.15.1.

  8. On the setup tab, change the connection type to STATIC IP.

  9. Enter the following information for the static ip address:

    1. IP Address: 10.0.0.250

    2. Subnet Mask: 255.255.255.0

    3. Default Gateway: 10.0.0.1

    4. DNS 1: from FVS318

    5. DNS 2: from FVS318

    6. DNS 3: 10.0.0.1

  10. Click save and close your browser.

  11. Disconnect from the RT31P2

  12. Connect to the FVS318

  13. Connect the cable that came with the RT31P2 from the FVS318 to the Internet port on the RT31P2.

You should be able to make calls at this point. If not you may have to shut down the modem, FVS318 and RT31P2. When you start them back up, bring up the modem, then the FVS318 and then the RT31P2. After doing this you will not be able to login to the RT31P2 without connecting your computer to the RT31P2, but once it is up and working there is no real need.

Good Luck …

ECLUG Meeting for tonight.

We had our monthly LUG meeting tonight. The meeting had a different flow tonight, as most of the officers were out. It was an open floor for discussing different topics that members wanted information on. Based on tonight’s meeting we are going to move forward on setting up the server for use at the meeting for demo’s and testing new distros and packages. That should be fun. Well this is not much of a post, but I need to be up early in the morning.

For anyone interested the ECLUG, Eastern Connecticut Linux User Group, meets the first Wednesday of each month in New London CT.