nick's site

lim Nick = shirt+tie+slacks
clothes->suit

centos 5’s implementation (probably many OSs too) of xinetd puts a connection limit per source IP, by default.  this causes the service to become unresponsive when there are dozens of queries a second.  in my situation, it caused nagios’s NRPE agent to become unresponsive.  not being able to monitor hosts causes alerts.  alerts cause me angry.  from syslog/messages:

Jun 27 22:13:28 nms1 xinetd[2592]: FAIL: nrpe per_source_limit from=123.456.798.123
Jun 27 22:13:28 nms1 xinetd[2592]: FAIL: nrpe per_source_limit from=123.456.798.123
Jun 27 22:18:28 nms1 xinetd[2592]: FAIL: nrpe per_source_limit from=123.456.798.123
Jun 28 01:38:56 nms1 xinetd[2592]: FAIL: nrpe per_source_limit from=123.456.798.123
Jun 28 01:38:56 nms1 xinetd[2592]: FAIL: nrpe per_source_limit from=123.456.798.123
Jun 28 16:50:00 nms1 xinetd[2592]: FAIL: nrpe per_source_limit from=123.456.798.123

we didn’t encounter this until we hit like, 100 checks every three minutes.

to fix this, update the service’s xinetd config. in my case, /etc/xinetd.d/nrpe


service nrpe
{
option=var
per_source = UNLIMITED
instances = UNLIMITED
moreoption=bla
}

restart xinetd.

the linksys wga54g does not support multiple devices.  you cannot expect to hook up a switch to it, along with multiple devices.  (your xbox, mythbox, network-enabled waffle iron, etc) regardless of cloning mode.

..well, you can, but only one device can be active at any time, and you have to power-cycle the wga54g as you switch devices.

fyi. 😡

i love xbmc, i can tolerate the xbox fan noise and the loud hard drive i put in it.  however, it’s too slow for any high-res content or any content encoded with newer cpu-hungry codecs like h264.

i poked around and found the pocorn hour.  runs a little sigma chip which can decode h264, various other codecs, output 1080p, smb/nfs client/server, hdmi, component, spdif, svideo, composite, ata100 jack, 2 usb ports, remote control, runs embedded linux.  etc.   you can read more about it on their site.

i read some reviews, compatability with some televisions is a bit odd, but so is anything.  interface isn’t nearly as mature as xbmc.  samba server/client can be a bit odd.  it plays just about anything.  some scene-released content isn’t compatible.  doesn’t downsample/handle DTS, just passes it on through to the tv/receiver (licensing issue.)

i pre-ordered an a-100. it arrived about three weeks later, i hooked it up, set a static address, downloaded new updates through its interface, and pushed some stuff to the 40gb hdd i put in it.  802.11g w/ 30% signal strenth through linksys jobbies isn’t fast enough to watch any 720p content.  it does work.  first h264 720p movie i watched had DTS audio.  my receiver doesn’t have anything more than analog inputs, so i had no sound..  the popcorn hour community wrote an app which converts the DTS audio to AC3 and adds the AC3 channel to the original file.  All automatic-like.  nice.  while that encoded, i watched some ‘planet earth’ stuff i had laying around.  besides some UI issues, some .mkv files won’t let you seek.  i don’t claim to know the circumstances, that’s what the forums are for.

with an older 7200rpm hdd in it, it’s kinda vibratey.  i put some clear rubber protective pads on the hdd mount, in the corners of the lid, and the corners of the base.  this helped considerably.  i also had some 1/4″ rubber grommits laying around, i put them under the corners to isolate it from the table..  this helped some more.  i suppose a 2.5″ 5400rpm drive would be better.

so far, it’s nice.  it’s locked up a few times but they release updates regularly.  if i don’t like it, i can unload it on ebay for more than i paid for it. 🙂

another mpcon is coming up, end of july.  you should go. 😀

my role as staff has grown over the last few events. i don’t play games much anymore, but it’s nice to help pull something like this off.  based on power, cooling, network, and internet requirements, this has been likened to setting up an adhoc datacenter for three days.

there’s a strong chance of penguicon staffers running some board/card/tabletop games, bringing additional variety to the event.