Author: Curtis LaMasters

Categories
Windows XenServer

XenCenter Issue after upgrading to Windows 10

After upgrading to Windows 10 on my main work computer, I could no longer connect to 2 XenServer 6.2 hosts and found out that the error was “Could not create SSL/TLS Secure Channel”.  After a bit of lazy searching I found a forum post that fixed the problem.

Forum Post

The actual fix for this is as follows.

service xapissl stop
mv /etc/xensource/xapi-ssl.pem /etc/xensource/xapi-ssl.pem.bak
/opt/xensource/libexec/generate_ssl_cert "/etc/xensource/xapi-ssl.pem" '10.10.6.27'
service xapissl start
xe-toolstack-restart

Replace the 10.10.6.27 with the IP of the server host you are attempting to fix. This should resolve your ability to connect from XenCenter.

Categories
blog Linux Ubuntu

bitcoin CPU mining with Ubuntu 12.04

Please do not bother responding with how worthless this is.  This is purely academic.  A few of the guys at my office were curious and I was idle for a little while this weekend and got started with the basics of the basics in bitcon mining.

Prerequisites

Go setup yourself a bitcoin wallet here –> http://www.trybtc.com  There will be some tutorials, feel free to go through those.

You’ll end up here –> https://coinbase.com This is where you can keep track of your account.  First let’s pop in there and grab the bitcoin address that we will use in a bit.  You can find it under Account Settings –> Bitcoin Addresses.  This is how others can give you money.

Create an account here –> https://mining.bitcoin.cz/ This is the only way that CPU mining is even relevant….which it’s really not.  This is a pool of individuals that work on mining bitcoin blocks.

 

Ok, now that you have setup the accounts, here is the basic how-to for setting up CPUMINER on Ubuntu 12.04 Server.  I have this deployed on 16 VM’s running 1 processor and 512 Megs of RAM each for testing.

Install Ubuntu 12.04 Server and get root

wget https://s3.amazonaws.com/clamasters/linked/bcminingprep.sh
chmod o+x bcminingprep.sh

edit bcminingprep.sh for your worker user/pass found under “My Account” in the bitcoin.cz site.

./bcminingprep.sh
./mine.sh

Now you are mining.  Please feel free to comment how fast or slow your mining is going.  I have 16 VM’s on modern hardware under XenServer 6.2 running on AMD processors all getting 4.57 khash/s.  Please note…this is very slow and you will likely never make your money back once power is concerned.

If you want to learn more about bitcoin and bitcoin mining, here are 2 links that I found to be helpful.  http://www.reddit.com/r/bitcoin and http://www.bitcoinmining.com.

Categories
blog

Added some things…

Added Cycling to my “Projects” dropdown and Pins for Pinterest (they are actually my wifes but I like most of them). Stay tuned…

Categories
blog

Google Chrome Pilot Program

A few days ago I received a pretty new Google Chrome Notebook model CR-48.  I was, completely caught off guard by a very nicely packaged device sitting the table when I got home.  I still had no idea what I was because I forgot that I signed up for this program.  Ecstatic doesn’t quite cut how happy I was when I discovered what it was.  I was actually selected as a Google Chrome Notebook pilot user.  I doubt this is a rare thing, however I almost never get selected to test stuff that I think is cool.

So far the experience has been pretty good.  When I first booted the system, I had a bit of a hard time connecting to my wireless.  I have a WRT-160N running DD-WRT with WPA2 AES/TKIP enabled.  I reconfigured it to just TKIP and it seemed to work after that and then I was able to login and get the notebook updated.  Pretty neat that EVERYTHING is handled under Chrome.

My wife said it’s the perfect computer for her.  It’s small and light enough to take around the house and we pretty much use Google Docs exclusively for document creation and sharing. We both use Hulu for video’s, Picasa for photos and I use WordPress for blogging.  I have not found a telnet/ssh client for the browser yet so I may take a stab at creating one or finding someone who can.  Since I’m a network engineer, this is an essential function for me.  I’m happy to see the Cisco ASA Clientless SSL VPN now supports Chrome as a browser since that will be my primary view into my work network.

I’ll put up some more posts as time goes on about the use of the Google Chrome Notebook CR-48.

Categories
blog

New Chapter – all systems go.

Well, it has been over a year since I have last posted something worthwhile and I feel a little bad about that.  Even if nobody is reading this, I use it to help me remember things that I know I’ll need later.  So if I haven’t posted in a while then I’ll probably forget everything I’ve learned over the last year :).  Hopefully not.

OK, so a few new things have happened.   My daughter, Kacy was born 8/24/2009 and is now the fire in my life…literally she makes me burn inside with love, anger, cheer, fear, and laughs.  She’s pretty awesome.  My wife who stays at home with her has been very patient and we are now making good progress towards potty training.

I am now employed at KeyOn Communications, Inc as the Sr. Network Engineer.  I updated my about me section so you can check some details there, but in short, I’ll be posting some things up here about what I’m doing at work.  This change is bigger than it sounds.  I used to work in SMB/SME systems where I was the “go to” person for everything under the sun.  Servers, Exchange, Outlook, Quickbooks, etc…you name it, I had to support it.  Now, I get to focus on something and move away from the “Jack of All Trades, Master of None” mentality to finally becoming an expert on something…and I feel GREAT…  Working for a smaller ISP that is growing pretty rapidly, I think, is the perfect place for me.

I now have my CCNA.  This took me 6 years too long to get.  I should have taken it while I was in the Marine Corps but didn’t, then I feel into two jobs that didn’t care one way or another…therefor I took the path of least resistance…not anymore.  Now I am working towards my CCNP and then off to CCIP and CCIE in time.

</update> 🙂  Until next time…