Didnt really do much last week except for chill out at Frans and work. Have been playing around with my servers a lot recently, chopping and changing O/S’s on my security box etc, and i think im going to stick with PF Sense (now ive got it up and running), its pretty nice. Although ive found a guide to setting up VMWare Server on Ubuntu 7.10, so i might turn it into a VM Box! Not sure yet.

Didnt do much on the weekend – watched the rugby, got my hair cut and generally relaxed with Fran, as everyone was away doing stuff!

Well, Valentines day worked to plan eventually! Ended up going to Tesco with Jamal and Gibbons on the way home instead of co-op as Jamal was driving, only to find out that because i didnt have ID, they wouldnt sell any alcohol to the other 2? Shit rule. So Jamal ended up kicking off, and 30 minutes later he was getting chased around Tesco by a security guard lol.

Got home at 6.30pm and set up the house – got dinner cooking (Lasagne), got the wine in the freezer, candles, music, etc it was all very nice. I managed to convince Fran we were going out for dinner, so she was fairly surprised when she came round mine!

Went to Manchester on Friday on the train with Fran, and got into Warrington Bank Quay about 7pm where i met Ste and Shannon and went to the Hares. Didnt do much the rest of the night. On Saturday we got the train from Newton into Piccadilly and spent the day wandering round before going back to our hotel to check in etc. Went to The Printworks at 7pm for Dinner and ended up spending 2-3 hours in Lloyds before heading off to Tiger Tiger for the rest of the night which was fun. Got back to our hotel rather drunk at 1am, but it was a good night!

Spent Sunday doing pretty much the same as Saturday – i showed Fran around Albert Square, St Peters Square, Arndale area etc and it was pretty fun. Spent a few hours chilling out in the gardens near the Urbis as the weather was nice. Ended up eating in the Food Court as it was easier, and headed to Piccadilly gardens where we sat and chilled out till about 3.30pm. Went to Piccadilly where we got our trains home and ended up arriving in Swindon at 8ish. Spent the night chilling out at Frans as we were both knackered and went to sleep about 10pm. All in all a very good weekend!

My file server is now running RHEL 5! After a lot of tinkering and a complete RHEL re-install, i have finally have it working! After testing with multiple users etc, and confident i had done it properly – i migrated my Antec TruePower Trio 650watt PSU from my old File server into my new RHEL Box, followed by all my drives. I then tidied it up, and deployed it fully into my house! Woo. Now im left with my lightweight security box, which i need to pinch some blank CD’s off someone to install PF Sense/ Smoothwall security operating systems.

Well, im still plugging away with RHEL 5, a week down the line. This is good training for my RHCT! Samba is a very big pain in the ass to get working on this OS. Ive created the correct file structure, with permissions, owners (user AND group) etc defined. Ive then created the Samba shares, set the permissions, directories etc, and then enabled them, and still i cannot get online! It keeps prompting for a username and password all the time lol :S

I also had a play with getting NAT Masquerading to work using iptables – set it up as i always did except this time i didnt connect the outgoing interface to a switch just straight to the other computer, but it wouldnt work. Spent hours testing and configuring – ip’s are correct etc, and it has just dawned on me – i was using a straight-through Cat5 and not a crossover cable. Im an idiot sometimes. Hopefully when i go home and change the cable, it will all work hunky dorey – then i can sack off trying to get RHEL 5 to work as my new File Server and just use it as a security box instead – for now anyway!

Also, ive decided to seriously start studying for my CCNA; im designing a learning plan as we speak so i can start studying tomorrow – my aim is to have it passed by May/June.

Finally, valentines day is almost upon us – and i have a few tricks up my sleeve for Fran lol. We are going away for the weekend up to Manchester, which will be fun – plus im meeting up with Joe Joe and Con Cons for a few beers hopefully. Good times all round

Laters.

Havent been up to much at the weekend – went out on Saturday night to The Spot with everyone before me and Fran came back to mine about midnight. Didnt do much Sunday, watched MOTD, UFC and had Sunday dinner mainly.

Spent Monday after work installing RHEL 5 on my spare machine – very nice O/S, but confusing to get used to- especially SAMBA – my god is it confusing. Maybe a RHEL Engineer out there reading this could comment – but why, when i create my samba share, open the firewall ports, create username/groups, permissions, etc does it still come up as “192.168.1.6/guest” as username when i try and mount a share, and i cant edit the username field. This is irritating the crap out of me lol. Aside from that, its a very robust OS, and second to NONE when it comes to driver support – absolutely superb. 8/10 so far.