Myself, some guys from NCI and a gang from NUI Maynooth headed down to the IRISS Cyber Security Conference in the D4 Hotels, Dublin. Unfortunately we missed most of the talks, but we still got alot out of it:
Building your own computer, that’s relatively easy; building your own server is only a little harder; building your own 1u rack-mount server for colocation – that’s a whole new level.
42u Dell Data Cabinet
A few years back -maybe two, I got a real steal on ebay for a Data Cabinet. One of those badass cases that houses upto 42 servers in one glorious case. For around 500eur (560 if you include delivery) I bought a 42u Dell Data Center Cabinet, a UPS, a KVM, rackmount monitor/keyboard, two Switches and a bucket load of cat6 cables. It was only the beginning, ever since I’ve been eager to fill it to capacity with some serious hardware.
This summer I decided the time was right to thrust myself into a bit of debt and fill out the cabinet with some proper hardware, so I began selecting components for a server or three. For this post I’ll just focus on the 1u servers as they gave me the most trouble and perhaps something to be learned can be passed onto others from my experience:
Tyan s7002 Server Mainboard
The following components were selected:
* Norco RPC 150 1u Server Chassis w/ 4 hotswap SATA drive bays
* Intel XEON E5520 2.26GHz
* Dynatron 1u Heatsink
* Corsair XMS3 4GB DDR3 1333Mhz
* Tyan s7002 Server Mainboard
* x4 Hitachi Deskstar 500GB SATA Hard Disk Drives
As the proverb goes, “Failing to plan is planning to fail” and so it was with the components I had selected. I hadn’t sufficiently researched the Tyan mainboards in question, had I done so I would have known that they *require* two 8pin EPS12v connectors, so the power supplies I had ordered were never going to work out-of-the-box. To solve this, and to save any headache in returning the PSU’s I took a look at Maplin’s website.
4pin 12v Molex to 8pin 12v EPS adapter
I think we all have a bit of a love/hate thing going on with Maplins in Ireland, they have some really great stuff – all the electronics components and obscure cables you could ever need, its just a shame that they shaft us for it. They’re still working off what can be best described as a 5yr old exchange rate between UK and Ireland prices and have no intention of changing it so it seems. They’re prices are just silly sometimes, but I digress. I bought one of these, a 12v Molex to 12v 8pin EPS cable adapter (£2.99 UK, €4.99 Eire).
And it works marvelously! I would however advise anyone using one of these cables to absolutely make sure that no other devices use the same rail (ie: dont connect any other devices to any additional connectors on the same cable) as overloading it could be disastrous to your motherboard/cpu. I connected some fans to mine but the draw will be such that it should have little to no affect on it, and besides, I have only one CPU in this board at the moment so I’m not worried at all.
Another problem I found was that the motherboard faceplate just simply did not fit the chassis, and the set that came with the Norco RPC-150 didnt suite the Tyan s7002 board. So I didnt use one at all. Ultimately its just a fascia, it serves no real function so I’m happy to not have one.
I’ll end this now with a warning about 1u power supplies, they are incredibly hard to source. I now have a folder full of websites that have various degrees of 1u power supplies but the point I’m trying to drill into you here is that when your designing your 1u server, recognize that the more power it requires, the harder it will be to source a supply. Saying that however, Scan.co.uk and Insight were my top choices.
Things to take care of when building your own 1u server:
* Do your research, even when you get tired, don’t buy until your 100% sure everything will work. Unless you want to live dangerously… both are good choices.
* Most normal heat-sinks will not fit a 1u case, look for and purchase a heat-sink for your CPU that is specifically designed for a 1u chassis.
* Recognise that building a 1u server is not the ‘norm’, it can be frustrating, but take your time and you’ll get it right.
* 1u Power Supplies are the hardest component to source, find yours first and work from there.
Theres alot of discussion lately about Mozilla’s decision to annex self-signed certificates in Firefox 3.x; up until now Firefox would have grudgingly lived with self-signed certificates – when reaching a website that was self-signed all you had to do was click the ‘add exception’ link at the bottom of the warning message, but no more!
When you visit a website that secures itself with a self-signed SSL certificate your now more likely to recieve a much more ominous warning telling you that the certificate is invalid and no obvious way to allow you to proceed regardless.
Having recently setup a secure subversion repository I had this exact problem also. This morning I found a solution, its not ideal but it works perfectly. To make Firefox play nice you have to add your CA (certificate authority) certificate AND your server certificate to Firefox’s list of allowed authorities, then and only then do you get the option to add the server as an exception. Here’s how you do it:
You will need a local copy of the ca.crt and server.crt certificate files.
Open the certificates window
Firefox Preferences -> Advanced Tab -> Encryption -> View Certificates
Import your Certificate Authority file
Authorities Tab -> Click Import -> Browse to your ca.crt file
Import your Server Certificate file
Servers Tab -> Click Import -> Browse to your server.crt file
Thats it! Next time you visit your website (https://mywebsite.com/ for example) you should now be able to add an exception to allow the self-signed certificate.
Reaching the Firefox preferences window differs slightly from OS to OS. In Mac OS X its Firefox -> Preferences, in Linux its often Edit -> Preferences and in Windows its Tools -> Preferences. Its beyond me why Mozilla couldn’t keep it consistent, but there you go.
I hope this post helped you.
It was only a matter of time that someone would hack together a system to link up a Neural Impulse Actuator (NIA) by OCZ to make a pretty simulation of a mind controlling the input of a computer program.
This is a video of mind-control of the Besmoke fluid simulation project.
I am not mostly a geek. from eric gradman on Vimeo.
With a combination of software and hardware, the Wiremap project aims to create 3D wiremaps in real 3D space using materials and tools as simple as projectors and thread.
Read more about the [Wiremap project] via [HackNMod]
Mobius Circuit by EMS Labs
Evil Mad Scientist labs, one of the most awesomely named electronics outfits out there, has posted an article about the single sided circuit board they made.
For our circuit, we decided to make an LED chaser that would light up LEDs in sequence along the length of the Mobius strip. To do this we chose a smallish AVR microcontroller, the ATtiny2313, which is a 20-pin device with 17 available output pins. With each output we drive a single red LED, and the whole thing can be powered by a 3V type CR2032 lithium coin cell.
read more about it at [Evil Mad Scientist Labs]
The [GlobeAndMail] via [Engadget] report that a group of four college students from Toronto, Canada have accomplished a technological feat by constructing their very own astronaught-phone; with which, they managed to place a ten minute call to the International Space Station using a radio system they built themselves.
While school contacts with the space station are routinely made through the Amateur Radio on the International Space Station program, many of those contacts are made using a traditional ham radio.
“It’s an incredible feat of undertaking and technology, and I’d just like to say I’m really, really proud of this team,” said Humber instructor Mark Rector.
“They’re playing way, way above their league today.”
more at the [GlobeAndMail]
Kirton has posted a guide on how to make your own punchbag interface controller.
This is a very unique solution, and probably the only punchbag/beanbag type human interface device I’ve ever seen. Like most of these unique interfaces, its hard to find a practical application, however I think perhaps for certain children with learning or motor-skills difficulties, this would perhaps be a good introductory tool to get them engaged in the classroom.
make your own at [Instructables] via [HackADay]
