Posts Tagged ‘linux’

Goodbye Alphastation

Friday, June 22nd, 2012

My second cool legacy UNIX workstation which got me started on FreeBSD & OpenBSD, I obtained this workstation back in the summer of 2002, I first tried Redhat Linux 7.2 which was available as a free download as a promotion to demonstrate the optimisation ability of the Compaq compiler suite for the Alpha. It was a terrible experience consistent with my previous attempts at running Linux up to that point ( I’d started off on Slackware in 96, moved onto Redhat 5.2 followed by Suse 6.2 ), I soon dropped it & moved onto Debian 3.0 (Woody) which was ok but the 7 cd set was a bit too much hassle for doing package installs, the performance wasn’t much better with the compared to the “optimised” Redhat so I moved onto NT 4.0 workstation & FX32! & ran that for a bit before getting bored. In the new year FreeBSD 5.0 release was announced & Alpha was a supported platform so I gave it try on this machine, armed with a copy of the handbook & the help of IRC I made a lot of progress, first by dropping 5.0 & going back to version 4.7 after being told either x was broken in 5 or y was a bug in 5 too many times. I was blown away by how much faster it was compared to the so-called “optimised” edition of Redhat.
Towards the end of 2003 I started thinking about trying OpenBSD as a firewall after hearing about PF & deployed it when 3.4 was released, the Alphastation served as my gateway connected to a 512k/128k cable modem connection but ended up dropping it & moving to i386 when 3.5 was released because php mysql extension was broken on alpha & I wanted to launch this blog.
After that the Alphastation was used less & less over the years so I passed it onto a fellow techie who would appreciate it.

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iPodLinux on iPod Classic

Wednesday, June 20th, 2012

I’ve kept an eye on the iPodLinux project since I got my 120GB iPod Classic back in 2007, I was never able to try out the fruits of the project as the last supported model was the one prior to the Classic & from the description of the site, the reason was the Classic & newer models used an encrypted firmware.
I was bored tonight & decided to revisit the project to see if any progress had been made & found the site no longer loaded, reading up on the wikipedia page revealed freemyipod which lists the device as supported, so I gave it a go.

Why would you want to do this?

  • Support for file formats not offered by Apple e.g FLAC & OGG
  • Not being tied to an instance of iTunes on a specific computer

    • Installation is only supported via Linux or Windows & is fairly straightforward, I went with the “no iTunes installed” path on Windows and was done in a few minutes. Only sightly annoying thing is that the device needs to be formatted as part of the install process.

    Flashing iPod Classic

    Why would you not want to do this?

  • Rockbox interface is clunkier than the Apple one
  • Losing the ability to use iTunes to sync music (device presents itself as just another drive to computer, you need to manage getting the music on the device yourself)

    I think It was worth the effort to have gained some flexibility & if the interface is really an issue, it is an open source project, so just roll up the sleeves and get involved!

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    My 1st Patch!

    Monday, November 22nd, 2004

    Woohoo!
    I’ve just created my 1st patch, to add support for Slackware to the iSCSI Enterprise Target software

    Read this guide if youre interested in rolling out your patches

    --- Makefile.orig 2004-11-22 10:30:57.000000000 +0000
    +++ Makefile 2004-11-22 10:35:16.000000000 +0000
    @@ -28,6 +28,8 @@
    install -v -m 755 scripts/initd.debian /etc/init.d/iscsi-target;
    elif [ -f /etc/redhat-release ]; then
    install -v -m 755 scripts/initd.redhat /etc/init.d/iscsi-target;
    + elif [ -f /etc/slackware-version ]; then
    + install -v -m 755 scripts/initd /etc/rc.d/iscsi-target;
    else
    install -v -m 755 scripts/initd /etc/init.d/iscsi-target;

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    iSCSI On a budget!

    Monday, November 22nd, 2004

    Following the Quick Guide to iSCSI on Linux I managed to setup a iSCSI Target host on Slackware 10 running on a virtual machine on VMware then connected to it from the Windows 2000 box which was the VMware host! :)

    I used the iSCSI Enterprise Target rather then the Ardis Target which the guide covers but as the Enterprise Target is a fork of the Ardis Target there is no variation in steps carried out.

    The Windows Initiator can be dowloaded from here

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