<![CDATA[Tim Hastings - NonHostile (because there's no need)]]><![CDATA[Now Witness the Power of This Fully Armed and Operational Debian NSLU2]]> This post is trumpeting the successful installation of Debian onto a Linksys NSLU2 Network Storage Link.

The unit is a Network Attached Storage (NAS) server which allows upto two USB hard drive or flash drive to be network accessible from anywhere. There are lots of different firmware replacements available developed by the open source community and these allow you to use the NSLU2 as a dedicated Linux box.

The NSLU2's specs are:
  • 266Mhz ARM Intel XScale CPU
  • 32MB SDRAM
  • 8MB Flash
  • 10/100 RJ-45 Ethernet port
  • 2 USB 2.0 ports
  • 5V DC power consumption (solar power?)
I used a 4GB USB flash drive as the boot disk which I needed to manually partition as the instructions say you need at least 256MB for swap partition, but the Guided Partitioning process made approximately 93MB for swap. Below is a record of my settings:

My partitions were configured as:
3.7GB – Primary partition, used for ext3, bootable, mounted as /
380MB – Logical partition, used for swap (lots more than the recommended 256MB)

Changing the hostname from the serial number:
    echo slug > /etc/hostname
Modifying /etc/network/interfaces to include 
    # The primary network interface
    allow-hotplug eth0
    iface eth0 inet dhcp
        hostname slug
Links
That’s no moon, it’s a server!

]]><![CDATA[Ryan is 1 - Happy Birthday Son!]]> In the past few weeks, Ryan's crawling and walking has come along lots. He's now able to find his way into different rooms and we have to keep an eye on him. It's nice because he can please himself a little bit more and he gets frustrated a less.


Ryan's birthday party was relocated from our house to St. John's at the last minute on account of the heavy summer rain. The venue was brilliant. Unfortunately, we had to cancel the bouncy castle, and we got lots of kiddie toys to play with instead. Fortunately there was lots of room to run around which is all that really matters.




Abigail and Ryan have their breakfast, lunch and dinner at the dinner table which looks into the back garden where Leo the Rabbit runs around.
Each meal is usually an eventful combination of ambitious mouthfuls, mini-floods, chatting, cool tricks and Abigail's tactical diversions.
I can't imaging the number of meals we've clocked up at this table already.



As you can clearly see in this video, Ryan's walking is very good and he's able to occupy himself in our cupboards for ages.



Also, here's Abigail's 1st Birthday

]]><![CDATA[MonoAmi: Hosting ASP.Net, C# and VB.Net with Mono on Linux in The Amazon EC2 Cloud]]>
Mono AMI for Amazon EC2

For anyone interested in experimenting with Mono on Amazon EC2 I have created a publicly available image which you can instantiate and play with. It can be used for both ASP.Net applications and console applications. The image does not have a GUI so this is not an appropriate platform to test applications with a GUI.


The EC2 AMI is:

    ami-0abe5a63: nonhostile-mono-i386/image.manifest.xml
Getting Started
It is beyond the scope of this post to cover the basics of using Amazon EC2, there are already great tutorials on how to do this. Once your instance is up and running, you can take your browser to the public DNS name to play with the ASP.Net XSP sample pages. Most of the samples are implemented in C#. There is some chatter in the forums saying that some of the ASP.Net samples are a bit broken, most work, please feel free to fix any bugs and contribute back :-)

If you want to host you own web pages, you will need to modify the Apache config file and either modify the served directory (at the bottom of /etc/httpd/conf/httpd.conf) or alternatively, add new virtual directories or virtual hosts as explained in mod_mono's documentation

I would also strongly advise any .Net developers interested in Linux to knock up a quick "Hello World" console application in Visual Studio and the copy it across to Mono. You do not have to recompile for Mono, it just works™, the Mono boffins have created a binary compatible version of the CLR and you app doesn't know the different (unless it starts to get get nosey). The only difference is that .Net executables have to be launched with the Mono command line tool, like this: 
    mono hello-world.exe
Ingredients
This instance was made from:
  • Amazon’s Fedora 8 image (ami-f51aff9c v1.06)
  • Apache 2.2.6 installed via yum
  • Mono 1.9.1 binary installation
  • mod_mono 1.9 compiled and installed from source
  • Apache and mod_mono are configured to serve the XSP 'test' files from the web site's root in /etc/httpd/conf/httpd.conf (at the bottom)
History
As part of my What’s on my iPod? Facebook application I have been using Amazon EC2 to host the PHP front-end application and Mono to run the backend data processor which is a console application implemented in VB.Net (written in Visual Studio 2005).

On occasion, I have tried to get ASP.Net working, but never quite got it right, and never really had to. But, this evening I have had a break-through, so I thought I would share my progress with anyone interested.

Color Blue is not a valid color (I disagree)
I had made many failed attempts to get ASP.Net working on Apache with mod_mono and mod-mono-server but usually came unstuck with obscure errors when executing some pages. Depending on the test page, it would report: "Color Green is not a valid color" or "Input string was not in the correct format" errors thrown from System.Drawing.WebColorConverter

After much searching and experimenting, the problem was pinpointed to System.Drawing's dependency on libgdiplus.so, when this library is installed (via yum) it would install the library as "libgdiplus.so.0.0.0", and a symbolic link to it called "libgdiplus.so.0", but not create the "libgdiplus.so" symbolic link required by System.Drawing - which causes this fault. If you are experiencing this problem, make sure that libgdiplus.so exists in /usr/lib, if it does not, you can create a symbolic link to it with: 
    ln -s /usr/lib/libgdiplus.so.0 /usr/lib/libgdiplus.so
Extra credits go to wangli, Sebastien Pouliot-2, Max Karavaev and Abe Gillespie for figuring this out

Links
  • Mono: The Mono homestead
  • mod_mono: Documentation on configuring mod_mono
  • Amazon EC2: The mother ship
  • Elasticfox: a Firefox Extension for Amazon EC2
  • WinSCP and PuTTY: The essential SSH tools for Windows
  • Twitter: My twitter link if you want to keep in touch

bookmark this on del.icio.us

© 2008 Copyright Tim Hastings
p.s. please do not draw attention to the irony that this blog is implemented in Classic ASP – move along, there’s nothing to see here.

]]>monoec2amazonawscloud<![CDATA[Project "Weblog Backlog"]]> Dear weblog,

Sorry for neglecting you.
Prepare to be lavished with attention!

I normally don't do self-incrimination, however, according to the home page of The Maison De Stuff it has been 97 days since I last posted. That's not very good. Especially as I really value it – I am sad to see it stale.

There have been some very significant events take place in this time, the saddest of which is the passing away of my Granny who is already sorely missed. So here's my plan. I'm going to initiate a project. “Project Weblog Backlog.” My intention is to spend a week 'back filling' my blog with posts for these events and includes links to them below – I will also tweak the dates of the posts to magically cover up this void in the continuum – that's cheating I know ;-)
Once my personal backlog is sorted, I have a geeky backlog that I need to splurge onto the blog too. This has made me realise that my weblog has a split personality. There's all my personal and family posts, as well as my technical posts. One the one hand, part of me thinks I should create a separate blog for all the geeky stuff; but on the other side, if you know me, you know I'm a big geek, so this mixed content is a true reflection of me!

]]><![CDATA[My Unfortunate Nose Accident]]>Ryan's Christening, I took the little fellow for some fresh air in his pram.
Whilst walking the pram around the car park in the rain, I was saying goodbye to Phil and Sam.
As I was soaking I gestured to Phil to give him a hug, he ran away and I gave chase.
Due to wet tarmac and silly posh shoes, my feet did a Scooby Doo run on the spot and my face hit the deck.
I just remember hearing Sam saying "he fallen" and I remember thinking "I'm on my nose".
I stood up and went to touch my nose, there was a lot of blood already.
Fortunately, it was just a cuts and bruises, and somehow I didn't hurt my teeth - I must have a big nose.
I think that the worst thing about the whole accident was Abigail reaction, she was clearly upset, and didn't want to touch my nose or hug me in case her "nose went red."

Anyway, as you can see from the photos, David and Lorraine did a great job patching me up.
Thanks guys :-)


My nose is very useful to me for holding my glasses onto my face, but my injury impeded its function, luckily I am the resourceful type.


]]><![CDATA[Ryan's Christening]]> We had a top day with the service at St. John's followed by a do at the Blackpool and Fleetwood Yacht Club.
Big sister Abigail was Christened at the same church three earlier.


The God Squad
Please meet the cast of holy people. Introducing, Father Muir, and the full compliment of God Parents: Lisa and Sarah, Phil and Sam, and Dave and Michelle. Ryan's a lucky boy to have such great role models.


Thank You’s
Big thanks go to Alex and Eugene who did all the food for the party. Mum and Terry for making Ryan's Christening cake. Amy (pictured with Ryan behind the bar) and Terry (and everyone else) from the Blackpool and Fleetwood Yacht Club for being super friendly and being a great venue. And also a very big thank you to David and Lorraine for fixing my nose, but that's another post.



]]>baptismchristening<![CDATA[March Pictures]]>





]]><![CDATA[Spring 2008 - Ryan is 7 Months Old]]> Ryan is now 7 months old, with two bottom teeth, and Abigail is 2¾.
Unfortunately, this February will go down on record as a bad month for coughs.





]]><![CDATA[The Riverdance]]> A ferry called the Riverdance got into trouble in the recent storms and ran aground on Blackpool's beach near Cleveleys.
The Riverdance has had its cargo and fuel removed and is in the process of being refloated.
You can see the scale of the ship against the houses in the first picture, it is huge, and you can see it from all the beaches.



A big thank you to Clare, Abigail and Ryan for my go in a helicopter!
For more pictures with a boaty theme, check out these holiday photos.

]]>riverdanceboats<![CDATA[Brockhole Visitors Centre]]>
:-)



]]><![CDATA[A Long Weekend in the Lakes]]> We stayed at The Burnside in Bowness and spent an easy time playing around the hotel and nipping out all under the guise of Christmas shopping - of which we did nil.

Ryan was 5 months old and it was our first experience with all four of us sharing a room. The first night Ryan didn't settle, the second night it was Abigail's turn, but the third night was perfect - well, alright at least. Abigail was six months old when she went on her first Christmas Shopping Weekend.

The Burnside has a swimming pool (with dolphins and kites on the bottom) which was great for Abigail and Ryan. The weekend started out with bad weather, but as you can see, turned glorious. The outdoors pictures were taken at the playground and grounds of The Brockhole Visitors Centre which we had all to ourselves.


]]><![CDATA[Autumn 2007]]> The photos were taken in Autumn just on the cusp of Winter at home, Stanley Park and in the Lakes.
At this time of year, the Lakes is absolutely perfect, we couldn't have wished for a nicer crisper autumn day.


]]><![CDATA[Space Commander Ryan]]>

]]><![CDATA[Photos from September]]> The little man is an absolute star, no trouble!




]]><![CDATA[Ryan and Abigal Photos]]> Ryan is 9 weeks old, Abigail is 2 year and four months old.



Intense Concentration
I think Ryan is a grand master in the making, check out the concentration he's giving the console.


]]>