May 22, 2019
by dhoytt
Comments Off on Hump Day Evening Vibe
Throwing a Hump Day vibe to energize to complete while doing evening chores then to chill while enjoying the California unusual cloudy weather.
Already threw out some Mistah F.A.B, Ja Rule I still have artists like Lakeside, Halestorm, City Girls, Rappin’ 4 Tay, Tim Bowman, Prince and that a Marley and that covers the genres and flow.
May 4, 2019
by dhoytt
Comments Off on Site Network Rework
Moving site back to ASUS RT-N66U old router after going to the Linksys 3200ACM that failed on me each time I went out of town leaving my sites, smart devices, cameras and other items unreachable through that route. I worked with Linksys support up to 3rd level and the only solutions they had for any issues was to delete my config and start over which I couldn’t do remotely and of course is not a long term solution and they hadn’t updated or implemented fixes since January 2018 and yes I could go Ddwrt which was a plan but I decided not on this Belkin product which bought out the Linksys name in 2013 I found out. This was the second time the Linksys router failed on me as this current router is and RMA brand new product for the prior router with same model that failed totally losing it’s configuration before!
Luckily I did have some remote capabilities through other routers and I was able to hop on to my servers via that route and switched over my dhoytt.com site and music server and point my DNS to another static IP about a month ago.
I then to alter routes on my W2012 media streaming server, my Linux Centos 7 music IceCast music relay server that also monitors many of my systems to properly get my music streams out. I had to open up ports through another router via my LAN once in to the static ip address I pointed my music streams and websites to. I then added a static route on the Linksys that had stopped communicating over the WAN but still had LAN connectivity to go through my camera server as it was straddling all my networks and was able to communicate to most of my smart devices.
I did have to take down temporarily my hoytt.biz site. I walked a friend of mind through connecting a network cable to a third NIC I had on my Zoneminder physical server I had setup to my camera network.
Now I came back home due to a family issue and during this time I’m also correcting my router remote access issues. First I of course removed the Linksys 3200ACM and purchased a new ASUS AC86U which pretty much worked well except had interference issues with my other routers and routes in the ares over wireless so after almost a week I took it back and I’m back on my old but reliable ASUS RT-N66U.
I moved all my routing on my servers back to the original networks and pointed my DNS for dhoytt.com to my prior static ip.address and brought back up hoytt.biz. All of my music server streams are as they originally were and connecting my smart devices back where they belong. This is why I go for dependability and not flash look at all this work I had to do, and I truly understated the amount of effort it took to do this remotely from a slow internet connection I had that would stall where I was half a world away.
So if you noticed any minor glitches this morning that was me switching things over to the way its been for the most part for many years concept wise save my constant upgrading and changing the underlying technologies. I also updated several of my servers OS. As DNS propagates there may be some minor connectivity but if you use FQDN instead of actual hard coded ip.addesses you should reach my sites just fine. There may be a few things I have missed but not bad for an hour or so of actual work. I may also still get a new router so still holding out for that but I want the best ROI.
March 10, 2019
by dhoytt
Comments Off on Sunday Monotony Killer Music Mix
Doing some very monotonous tasks that need to be done but mind numbing and boring. This is all music from my den “Snakeice’s House of Beats”. That means all the infrastructure producing the musical stream and websites are on systems right in my personal computers on a on premises type cloud in my home that I have created from scratch on my personal property and I alone administer and support and customize the systems to my specifications network, hardware, software applications and storage is all my design and build specifications.
I do this for the experience of interacting with the various open source technologies that most people pay fees to have someone provide. Many people repackage and present this which is fine but I like providing the whole package otherwise its of no interest to me to have someone else host and do the work what am I learning and its not fun.
I like to reiterate this periodically as people ask questions. A select few understand (technology and why I do it) most don’t.
Anyhow this mix as most here even when I’m just relying on the scripts will be a special mix of various hand picked genres with a set of songs that at this point and time I want to hear and flow together. I can’t do just one genre I like several for my musical palate. They can be complex or simple but music I enjoy and hopefully you will as well.
I still have yet to incorporate some more Indies artists music that people have sent me lately and I will get you in the mix soon! Until then enjoy.
A few artist coming up are some you have heard of and maybe some you haven’t are Icey Jaye, Popcaan, C-Bo, Will Smith, Doug E. Fresh, Meyer Rossabi, Leon Bridges, Ellie Goulding and so many more from all eras and many genres.
February 27, 2019
by dhoytt
Comments Off on Midweek Blowing Out the Cobwebs Music
Sometimes you just need to let it go and let it out just for the heck of it, don’t be ashamed its is what its is and that’s what this set of music represents for the next several hours.
The music as always with Snakeice’s House of Beats will sample from all eras and Genres thus the name “Snakeice’s House of Beats Gumbo mix of Music”
Sounds from people like the Eagles, George Clinton, Too Short, Sia, Egyptian Lover, Red Cafe and much more.
Let’s get wild!!
February 21, 2019
by dhoytt
Comments Off on Newly Built Systems Come Back Quickly After Power Outage
After a power outage just a few moments ago I think this is the fastest one of my virtual and NAS environments has ever recovered after booting up! No curruption to speak of and XCP-ng and FreeNAS recovered effortlessly!
Hopefully in the future my UPS can carry me a few moments more after I spread the loads out and continue to get get more efficient systems plus tune some systems for low power usage if possible. My Linux work station survives every power shutdown under 2 hours without powering off.
February 21, 2019
by dhoytt
Comments Off on Back Up After Regional Power Outage
Had a regional power outage but systems are back up and humming now that the power uyility has restore power to the area.
February 16, 2019
by dhoytt
Comments Off on Updated Memory on Streaming Server
I upped the RAM on my system that streams out the music as it had been topping out with my updated virus scanning software at 98%. I basically tripled the memory from 8gb RAM to 24gb RAM which also should do better handling more streams as well. I may increase more but we shall see. That was the only resource being consumed totally and not its at 11% usage where it was 89% and above before. CPU usage amd network resources are still strong it was only memory that was the issue.
The memory would have been very quick normally but my existing rails don’t quite fit my new servers I have gotten recently and I haven’t had time to do any custom adaptations and the systems were stacked on each other. My music streaming software that needed the memory was of course at the bottom of the stack so I ended up taking down my entire site so I wouldn’t cause data corruption or a huge outage I wouldn’t be able to take care of right easily.
Now memory update is done and more to come as I get mys environment updated some more!
February 16, 2019
by dhoytt
Comments Off on New Virtual Environment Almost Set
My new XCP-ng environment is just about completely set I just need one more 8tb SAS drive with the same geometry to put into one of the pools on my FreeNAS server. One of the prior 8tb drives was a Sun\Oracle branded and its LFF geometry was slightly off of the other 8tb same model Hitachi drives so I will move that 8tb SAS to a workstation and new one into the pool for VM’s.
I needed to make sure my new XCP-ng Hypervisors hardware was updated to the newest firmware levels after testing initial functionality with XCP-ng with the Dell r710’s I picked up for the Hypervisors. Initially trying to update the r710’s vie iDrac produced all types of failures even uploading the packages into iDrac. Then trying to update the r710’s via the cli of XCP-ng didn’t have all the libraries needed for the firmware scripts from Dell to work. I tried Openmanage as well.
Here’s a list of errors I received:
Well you get the picture so what I ultimately decided to do was take one of my spare hard drives I have put it inf a hot swap tray for the r710 migrate all of the VM’s to the other XCP-ng server,take out the boot drive and other drives in the r710 and install Centos 7 to the drive and then run the firmware update scripts from Dell from Centos 7. This worked very well without the errors except to install the needed libraries via yum.
I then just moved all of the VM’s to the other XCP-ng hypervisor and then updated the other r710 from a minimal Centos7 OS install as well.
The big deal about updating my firmware was to make sure that whatever IPMI platform (iDrac from DEll, ILO from HP or IPMI Supermicro) I used was fully updated and useful for when I’m out of town. I chose Dell servers with iDrac because that’s what has the best price point at this time in the surplus market. For some reason there are very little HP servers though I prefer their ILO over Dell’s iDrac.
Now that firmware and bios updates of the hardware are handled onward to make further improvements and other projects!
February 16, 2019
by dhoytt
Comments Off on New Virtual Environment Almost Set
My new XCP-ng environment is just about completely set I just need one more 8tb SAS drive with the same geometry to put into one of the pools on my FreeNAS server. One of the prior 8tb drives was a Sun\Oracle branded and its LFF geometry was slightly off of the other 8tb same model Hitachi drives so I will move that 8tb SAS to a workstation and new one into the pool for VM’s.
I needed to make sure my new XCP-ng Hypervisors hardware was updated to the newest firmware levels after testing initial functionality with XCP-ng with the Dell r710’s I picked up for the Hypervisors. Initially trying to update the r710’s vie iDrac produced all types of failures even uploading the packages into iDrac. Then trying to update the r710’s via the cli of XCP-ng didn’t have all the libraries needed for the firmware scripts from Dell to work. I tried Openmanage as well.
Here’s a list of errors I received:
Well you get the picture so what I ultimately decided to do was take one of my spare hard drives I have put it inf a hot swap tray for the r710 migrate all of the VM’s to the other XCP-ng server,take out the boot drive and other drives in the r710 and install Centos 7 to the drive and then run the firmware update scripts from Dell from Centos 7. This worked very well without the errors except to install the needed libraries via yum.
I then just moved all of the VM’s to the other XCP-ng hypervisor and then updated the other r710 from a minimal Centos7 OS install as well.
The big deal about updating my firmware was to make sure that whatever IPMI platform (iDrac from DEll, ILO from HP or IPMI Supermicro) I used was fully updated and useful for when I’m out of town. I chose Dell servers with iDrac because that’s what has the best price point at this time in the surplus market. For some reason there are very little HP servers though I prefer their ILO over Dell’s iDrac.
Now that firmware and bios updates of the hardware are handled onward to make further improvements and other projects!
February 3, 2019
by dhoytt
Comments Off on Taught a Valuable Lesson Super Bowl Day
With my Rams, a team I have followed since I was in elementary school in the Super Bowl I was debating going to my normal Super Bowl party. I then decide I’m going and will take some pulled pork and maybe some prime rib made all the rubs and sauces, cleaned my Traeger then brine and injected the pork butt and got ready to throw the meat on the grill in the early morning then go back to bed. Well my Trager controller didn’t power up at all and the I had to start the troubleshooting @ 3:30 AM.
I grabbed my lantern and hand held spot light I use for fishing. The GFI wasn’t popped, electric outlet was powering other devices I plugged in, took the controller loose fuse wasn’t blown and everything was connected.
Called Traeger support a few hours later and they went over my troubleshooting steps and mentioned something I thought I checked but hadn’t fully checked which was to make sure that my pellets I had left in weren’t wet. I had dug my hand in and all pellets were dry to feel and didn’t feel wet.
I went to Emigh Ace hardware and picked up a controller a place I normally get my pellets. I had been there yesterday and talked to them about upgrading my controller to one with wireless but my model I couldn’t updated to wireless. I didn’t know yesterday my controller was out when I was there.
So this morning replaced my controller which didn’t take long but kept my pellets in that seemed dry but the controller kept stopping and giving errors. So I scooped up all my pellets and there was very minimal wet dust on the auger bit deep down that takes the pellets into the place the pellets burn that was a bit hardened. I got my Wet Vac and vacuumed that out put back in a few pellets and everything started working correctly!
The lesson learned is empty your Traeger pellets when its wet outside even without a direct hit from rain as the dust will absorb the moisture in the air and cause your Traeger issues. I was unable to attend my Super Bowl party because I wanted to be awake to watch my favorite team in the Super Bowl and cook my prepped meat, plus had to but a new controlled because I didn’t take my pellets out of the Traeger in between my grill usages.
WEll GO RAMS!!