Hardware
NFS + Openvpn
by Nick on Nov.03, 2009, under Hardware, Sofware
Hey, it works! I’m moving a file (on a GIG-E switch between VLANs) at around 3MBps.
Thanks to http://linux-bsd-sharing.blogspot.com/2008/09/howto-setup-nfs-server-on-freebsd.html
Don’t buy a Gateway Notebook!
by Nick on Jul.28, 2009, under Hardware
I bought a gaming laptop. I bought it thinking that I could do a lot with the nice, powerful chip that came with it. My first disappointment was the horribly outdated NVIDIA drivers that came with the laptop. I could not play WoW, at all. I found this odd for a gaming laptop. I could forgive them for giving me 4gigs of Ram, but a 32-bit operating system. My second is this, I cannot enable VT extensions on my CPU, even though it clearly supports it. I need to be able to run VMWare and/or VirtualPC for various work projects. This is highly disappointing. Ultimately, my prime gaming laptop may end up collecting dust in the closet, a constant reminder of why no one should buy Gateway.
VMWare
by Nick on Jun.12, 2009, under Hardware

One of Chronophage.net’s servers is virtualized inside of a Dell 1500. It runs like a champ. I think this is the future of hosting, especially with power and cooling costs going up. I should work on my VTSP now.
Ares.chronophage.net used to be my experimental FreeBSD box. It ran on a T2100 dual-core consumer system with 1.5 gigs of ram and an 80GB harddrive (a freebie that Dell sent to one of my company’s customers, ESATA) The system was slow, unreliable, and prone to crashing. With VMWare, things are scaling really well. The tools were in the ports tree, and it was painless to install. The system converter worked better than expected (since FreeBSD is not officially supported) All in all, this is a successful experiment.