S.M.A.R.T.
October 27th, 2012I guess S.M.A.R.T (“Self-Monitoring, Analysis and Reporting Technology“) as used in harddrives is already well-known, therefore just a short reminder about its usage with Linux.
Long-distance wireless networking
October 27th, 2012Together with some friends I’ve recently tested a temporary wireless network link between Graz and Leutschach, spanning a distance of over 57 kilometers. Using Ubiquiti 5GHz equipment we quickly achieved a stable link with a throughput of about 20 Mbit/s …
3TB harddrives and Linux
October 27th, 2012I recently bought two Seagate Barracuda 7200 3000GB (SATA 6Gb/s) drives to be used in a Linux software RAID. I knew I had to be careful because of the Advanced Format (AF) layout used by these new drives. Turns out that this wasn’t the only thing that one has to keep in mind when dealing with such drives – GPT BIOS boot partition, anyone?
IT Conferences Multimedia Archives
September 27th, 2009There are several rather interesting IT conferences every year with presentations to dozens of different topics. Some of these routinely make it into the news while others that are as newsworthy as others don’t make it there. Anyway; having a quick look at the presentation archives usually results in several “wow” style effects and helps to keep up-to-date on current developments in the IT scene.
Here I’d like to provide links to a few of these multimedia archives.
Cheap “open” WLAN router: D-Link DIR-300
January 6th, 2009It’s been a while since the last post here, but I just quickly want to mention the D-Link DIR-300. It’s currently the 2nd cheapest WLAN router at the Austrian price comparison site Geizhals – 24 EUR. Of course you can flash it and run alternative firmware such as OpenWRT or DD-WRT.
Just for kicks I got a hardly used one for 10 EUR at eBay. After checking out the D-Link firmware I quickly flashed DD-WRT v24-sp1 on the device. First I tried following the DD-WRT guide for the DIR-300, but it’s a bit misleading, as it tries to catch a sub-second boot prompt to send a break signal. Instead I used a method that’s way easier: Just keep the device’s RESET button pressed while powering it on. It will then halt at the boot prompt – now you can continue following the usual device-flashing guides.
The device seems to work fine, with signal strengths similar to those of my Asus WL500Gp (mind you, that was just a quick in-house distance measurement, not a scientific signal strength study).
Quite a nice device with a very attractive price tag.