Category: Geekdom

I’m working on building a public hot spot for an area out here in Sunriver, and need some advice and see if anybody has recommendations. I need a good access point with the following:

• Functionality that will allow us to set a starter page a “Sponsored By” page that will say who’s providing the access and general rules and policies on it.
• I need to be able to limit bandwidth usage so that people aren’t able to saturate the providing pipe.
• If it can survive outdoors, that’d be ideal, but regardless, it needs to be able to have an external antenna hooked up to it as I can run the antenna outside.
• Ideally, I’d like to be able to have filtering that will filter folks based on time online, so they can’t be online for the entire day.
• 802.11b coverage is all I’m really concerned width — I don’t really want folks to have 802.11a/g.
• It needs to provide IP addresses and do DHCP, as I’m going to be hooking this thing directly into a pipe that’s not going to be doing any of that.
• Content filtering would be nice, but not required. Some sort of local cache would be nice (obviously we’re talking about hooking the thing up to a cache at this point, and that might be total overkill), but not required.

If anybody has input on parts they’ve used, that would be wonderful. Or if anybody knows of an alternative firmware for the Linksys WRT54G/L router that will do this, that will certainly save me some money.

Comment here or e-mail me if you have any ideas.

This is one of those things I just didn’t want to lose in case I need it again, but basically, if you have a cPanel server and you’re not using BoxTrapper (which you really shouldn’t, as it can cause your server to get blacklisted unnecessarily), follow these directions to get rid of it:

The first step is to modify /etc/exim.conf to remove the boxtrapper sections (there’s around 4 or 5 IIRC), and then run:

rm -rf /var/cpanel/version/boxtrapper

/scripts/eximup –force

/scripts/mailscannerupdate

rm -rfv /home/*/etc/.boxtrapp*

rm -rfv /home/*/etc/.boxtrapp*

rm -rfv /home/*/etc/*/.boxtrapp*

rm -rfv /home/*/etc/*/*/boxtrapp*

Also of note, I didn’t delete the boxtrapper sections out of exim.conf. Commenting them out seems to do the trick.

I was having trouble with some e-mail getting sent via my SMTP server, so I’m hoping that fixes the issue (it didn’t get bounced this time at least).

Why would I ask for such a thing? Because somebody got into my car last night. I honestly can’t remember if all my doors were locked (a couple of my doors are those kind where you have to hold the lever open while you shut it for it to stay locked — a stupid design in my opinion). But my car was certainly opened, and everything inside the main part of the car was moved around. Thankfully, nothing was taken. Other than my drumsticks and my music in there that belonged to COCC, there was nothing of significant value in the car. But whoever did this rummaged through my glove box, tore out the few things that were under my seat (mostly radiator fluid and a windshield screen), opened my drum stick bag (which I never leave in my car, but was just tired after band rehearsal last night), took my few cruddy CDs out of a little storage cubby, and even threw my ice scraper across the seat.

So basically from what I could tell, they were trying to find some quick cash or quick something they could pawn off for a few bucks (my stereo isn’t worth removing — it’s a piece of crap). They didn’t find anything, and they moved on (they popped my gas cap, for some reason).

What’s weirder is that they didn’t touch my wife’s car, which is a far nicer car — they decided to pick my crappy little car to rummage through.

But the reason this has me spooked is that back in 1999 when I was in college and living in Eugene, I made the mistake of leaving my laptop under my seat in my car (it was a long night of studying that I had gotten back home at 1:00am). My car was locked, but I woke up to a broken window, and my laptop, my bag, and my laptop was gone (you can read all about it in a ranting pissy online column I wrote which I’ve mirrored here as the original link isn’t rendering things properly).

I don’t want that to happen again where a momentary lapse in my judgement screws me over good or does something to me or my family. It’s one thing to screw me, but when there’s a chance that something might happen to my family, then I get a little angry.

So I’m looking to fight it and catch bastards like this in the act — I’m looking to setup a home-brew surveillance system. I know good little Web cams are getting fairly inexpensive now and I might have enough spare parts that I could build a computer to tether them to for archiving of images.

Has anybody done anything like this or have any suggestions? Linux-based systems are totally fine (and will probably be cheaper), and support for at least three cameras that I can access via the Web is a requirement (as I can route a URL to my house, if need be). Built-in motion sensing (it doesn’t need to record all the time) is basically a must. And if anybody has any spare parts that they’d like to contribute to the project, I’d be immensely grateful. I’m open to any thoughts and/or suggestions for anybody who has done this type of thing before.

Needless to say, I have filed a police report, and my cars are locked up.

I’ve been a loyal MovableType user for many years both on this site, and I use it at Cascade Winds as well. It’s a very nice, powerful system. But, just for kicks and giggles, I decided to try something else for a new site.

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