Technology

Cisco/Linksys E4200 overclocked to 532 MHz — For the past few years, I’ve maintained an article on this blog offers my recommendation for the best DD-WRT build and settings to get max speed from a Linksys E4200 router. One of my recommendations in that article is to use the Administration: Commands tab in the DD-WRT GUI interface to […]

DD-WRT Speed Tweaks: Do they Really Work?

This entry was posted in Linux Technology and tagged DD-WRT Linksys router settings speed speed test tweaks on April 18, 2015 by Steve Jenkins (updated 3535 days ago)

My initial review of the KOHLER Touchless Toilet Flush Kit was positive… except for the part where the unit started to magically flush the toilet all by itself in the middle of the night. I called it the “phantom flush.” If you recall from my review, KOHLER promised to send me […]

Product Update: KOHLER Touchless Toilet Flush Kit Parts Upgrade

This entry was posted in DIY Home Theater & Automation Product Reviews Technology and tagged automatic flush Kohler phantom flush plumbing review toilet touchless toilet flush kit on March 29, 2015 by Steve Jenkins (updated 3555 days ago)

Linux Uptime — If you’re looking for the fastest and easiest way to get DMARC verification working on a RedHat (Fedora, RHEL or CentOS) mail server, I highly recommend OpenDMARC. I’m a bit biased, as I currently maintain the OpenDMARC package in the Fedora and EPEL repositories. This article will help you install the […]

Installing OpenDMARC RPM via Yum with Postfix or Sendmail (for ...

This entry was posted in Linux Reference Technology and tagged CentOS configure DKIM DMARC EPEL Fedora how to OpenDKIM OpenDMARC Redhat RHEL set up SPF on March 27, 2015 by Steve Jenkins (updated 3533 days ago)

For a few years now, I’ve been using a Linksys E4200 v1 router (running DD-WRT) as the main router at my house. However, because the WiFi signal from the router isn’t strong enough to reliably reach all the rooms in the house, I picked up a few inexpensive Belkin F7D3302 / F7D7302 […]

Adding Heat Sinks and Overclocking a Belkin F7D3302 / F7D7302 ...

This entry was posted in DIY Linux Technology and tagged Belkin cooling DD-WRT heat sink mod modding overclock router on March 24, 2015 by Steve Jenkins (updated 3559 days ago)

MeteoBridge Push Services tab with MySQL query included. — In my initial review of the MeteoBridge weather station interface device, I discussed its basic features, and briefly mentioned that it also included more advanced functionality, including the ability to store weather data from your weather station in a MySQL database (or a MySQL-compatible one, like MariaDB). But after searching online for an […]

Storing Weather Station Data in MySQL from MeteoBridge

This entry was posted in Linux Technology and tagged Davis MeteoBridge weather station on February 15, 2015 by Steve Jenkins (updated 3597 days ago)

standard MeteoBridge hardware configuration — I’ve been a weather geek (or as weather geeks would write it: “Wx geek”) since 2001, when I bought an Oregon Scientific WMR968 weather station. Within a couple of years, I’d connected my weather station’s console via a serial cable to a dedicated computer in my basement running Windows 95 and Ambient’s Virtual Weather Station (VWS) software, which […]

Product Review & How-To: Using MeteoBridge to Connect your Weather ...

This entry was posted in Home Theater & Automation Linux Product Reviews Technology and tagged Belfryboy data-logger Davis MeteoBridge MeteoBridge review product review review upload weather station Weather Underground on February 3, 2015 by Steve Jenkins (updated 3342 days ago)

My original ecobee3 review is now two months old, so I decided a “here’s how things are going two months later” post might be in order. Over the past two months, I’ve received numerous questions (both in my blog comments and over in the ecobee discussion forum at SmartHomeHub.net), and I’ve also […]

ecobee3 Review Followup: Two Month Update

This entry was posted in Home Theater & Automation Product Reviews Technology and tagged ecobee ecobee vs Nest ecobee3 Home IQ Nest review update on November 27, 2014 by Steve Jenkins (updated 3627 days ago)

Remember when you were a little kid, and your mother would take you to the supermarket, and as you approached the glass doors you’d wave your hand at them… causing them to open… with… The Force? It was almost like magic! Sure, deep down you probably knew there was some kind […]

Product Review: KOHLER Touchless Toilet Flush Kit

This entry was posted in DIY Home Theater & Automation Product Reviews Technology and tagged automatic flush Kohler plumbing review toilet touchless toilet flush kit on November 26, 2014 by Steve Jenkins (updated 3555 days ago)

Updated HomeIQ Activity and Temperature — Sir Francis Bacon is commonly credited for coining the phrase “scientia potentia est” — Latin for “knowledge is power.” Though one might argue that, instead, control is power, particularly in the world of smart home devices, such as WiFi thermostats. The new ecobee3 smart thermostat does indeed give you greater control over your home’s comfort, while […]

First Look: ecobee3 Web-based Home IQ Charts

This entry was posted in Home Theater & Automation Technology and tagged chart data ecobee ecobee3 Home IQ HomeIQ on November 26, 2014 by Steve Jenkins (updated 3454 days ago)

FreeDNS.Afraid.org A Record Setup — The Problem In the “early” days of the internet, you could find free Dynamic DNS (DDNS) accounts everywhere. The providers of those free services, such as DynDns, hoped that by giving you a freebie, you’d eventually become a paying customer for one of their pay services. Unsurprisingly, that’s not what happened. […]

Using FreeDNS.Afraid.org with DD-WRT when you lose your Free DynDns ...

This entry was posted in Linux Reference Technology and tagged Afraid.org DD-WRT DDNS DDNS service DynDNS Free DDNS FreeDNS.Afraid.org how to howto on November 1, 2014 by Steve Jenkins (updated 3343 days ago)

You probably haven’t stopped and really thought about exactly how many devices you have in your home that plug into a power outlet. So do it now. Go ahead. I’ll wait…. Now, think about how many of those devices have some sort of electronic or digital component. It’s probably way […]

What’s the “Best” Whole-House Surge Protection?

This entry was posted in DIY Home Theater & Automation Product Reviews Technology and tagged 51120-1 CHSPT2ULTRA compare comparison Cutler Hammer Eaton Leviton lightning product review review Schneider Electric SDSB1175C Square D surge suppressor SurgeBreaker Plus SYC-120/240-T2 Syscom whole-house surge protector on October 16, 2014 by Steve Jenkins (updated 3714 days ago)

I received an email today from a friend and fellow Linux sysadmin, Todd Lyons, informing me of a very sneaky way to exploit the Shellshock vulnerability under what he calls “just the wrong conditions.” Here’s how his email starts out: With your recent blog post, you might also want to […]

Shellshock Warning: Even after patching, your old vulnerable bash binary ...

This entry was posted in Linux Reference Technology and tagged shellshock shellshock bug vulnerable on September 30, 2014 by Steve Jenkins (updated 3735 days ago)

Setting up multiple WLANs in DD-WRT — Because I publish a lot of articles on DD-WRT router firmware, and I also recently published an article on patching the Shellshock bug on older Fedora-based Linux systems, I’ve been receiving a lot of emails asking if DD-WRT firmware is affected by the Shellshock Bash bug. The answer is… maybe. By default, the […]

Is DD-WRT Vulnerable to the Shellshock Bash Bug?

This entry was posted in Linux Reference Technology and tagged bash Bash on DD-WRT DD-WRT ddwrt exploit patch shellshock shellshock bug shellshock on DD-WRT vulnerable on September 29, 2014 by Steve Jenkins (updated 3736 days ago)

With the announcement of the Shellshock Bash Bug, Linux admins around the world have been scrambling to patch their Bash shells so that they’re no longer vulnerable to the exploit. If you have a Fedora, RHEL, or CentOS system that hasn’t reached End-Of-Life, then updating to a patched version of […]

How to Manually Update Bash to Patch Shellshock Bug on ...

This entry was posted in Linux Reference Technology and tagged bash bug Fedora 14 Fedora 15 Fedora 16 Fedora 17 Fedora 18 Fedora 19 GNU patch patch bash manually patch old Fedora shellshock shellshock bug on September 26, 2014 by Steve Jenkins (updated 3721 days ago)

Proper ecobee3 wiring for PEK users — So you got your hands on an ecobee3 smart thermostat, and instead of reading through the installation manual (which is actually pretty good), you came to the Internet to figure out how to install your ecobee3. OK, fine… I’ll help you. 🙂 This how-to guide for installing your ecobee3 covers a […]

How to Install an ecobee3 Smart Thermostat

This entry was posted in DIY Home Theater & Automation Technology and tagged ecobee ecobee 3 ecobee3 guide help how to how to install ecobee3 howto Install on September 24, 2014 by Steve Jenkins (updated 3679 days ago)

The new ecobee3 — In 2009, Toronto-based ecobee released the very first “smart” thermostat and called it, not surprisingly, the “ecobee Smart” (see my original review of the Smart from 2010). Since then, they’ve followed up with the ecobee Si (which I call the Smart’s “little brother”), along with a handful of firmware and mobile app updates for […]

ecobee 3 Review

This entry was posted in Home Theater & Automation Product Reviews Technology and tagged compare ecobee ecobee 3 ecobee 3 review ecobee3 Lyric Nest product review review vs on September 19, 2014 by Steve Jenkins (updated 3676 days ago)

The new ecobee3 — I’m still tinkering with the new ecobee3 smart thermostat, and will have a full review posted soon. In the meantime, you can check out my initial reaction in this unboxing video (in TWO parts): Part 1: Part 2: Stay tuned for the full review soon!

ecobee3 First Look and Unboxing Video

This entry was posted in DIY Home Theater & Automation Technology Videos and tagged ecobee ecobee 3 ecobee3 unboxing video on September 17, 2014 by Steve Jenkins (updated 3748 days ago)

The new ecobee3 — While the Nest smart thermostat has fans of Apple-inspired designs swooning, it wasn’t the first smart thermostat. Toronto-based ecobee is actually the pioneer in this industry, and had two iterations of smart thermostats (the original “Smart” and the “Si”) on the market well before Nest (and now Honeywell) jumped into […]

New ecobee3 thinks it’s time to leave the Nest

This entry was posted in DIY Home Theater & Automation Product Reviews Technology and tagged ecobee ecobee3 Nest on September 16, 2014 by Steve Jenkins (updated 3749 days ago)

There is no such thing as privacy — Another day, another story about nude photos of celebrities being hacked and posted online. I won’t mention the names of the celebrities in this most recent round, because it really doesn’t matter… and I really don’t want to accidentally show up in web searches of people looking for the photos. […]

What Hacked Nude Celebrity Photos Can Teach Us About Privacy ...

This entry was posted in Personal Rants and Raves Technology and tagged celebrity nudes Hack hackers iCloud nude photos photo privacy video on September 2, 2014 by Steve Jenkins (updated 3763 days ago)

Why doesn't it look different? — Here’s the scenario: you’ve set up Dynamically Allocated Storage for the hard drive on your Guest VM in VirtualBox and you’ve run out of space — even though your Actual Size is smaller than the Virtual Size (this happened to me recently when my Virtual Size was 10 GB, and […]

Resize a Fedora, CentOS, or Windows Dynamic Guest Virtual Disk ...

This entry was posted in Linux Reference Technology Windows and tagged CentOS dynamically allocated Fedora LVM partition resize resize VDI VDI virtual disk VirtualBox Windows on July 23, 2014 by Steve Jenkins (updated 2849 days ago)

Linux Uptime — CentOS 7 was released recently, and so I fired up my build VM so I could attempt to build the OpenDKIM package for submission to EPEL. But the compile barfs on strlcat/strlcopy, because RHEL/CentOS doesn’t have libbsd available (yet?). The libbsd package was a requirement for the package to work […]

Rant: Why is there no libbsd for CentOS 7?

This entry was posted in Linux Rants and Raves Technology and tagged CentOS CentOS 7 compile libbsd OpenDKIM package yum on July 18, 2014 by Steve Jenkins (updated 3808 days ago)

Rasmus Lerdorf's opcache-status script — When I upgraded to PHP 5.5, I also said goodbye to my beloved APC cache (which never let me down) in favor of Zend OPcache, because it’s already part of the PHP package. Back when I used APC, one of my favorite tools was the apc.php script that showed cache status and allowed me […]

My Favorite Zend OPcache Status Scripts

This entry was posted in Linux Reference Technology and tagged APC apc.php cache memcache memcached OPcache opcode cache php cache script user data cache Zend on July 3, 2014 by Steve Jenkins (updated 3709 days ago)

Honeywell EconoSWITCH Review — When my primary residence was built in 1998, the builder installed a Lutron HomeWorks whole-house lighting system. Basically, it’s a set of three panels (one on each floor) that can control all the lighting loads in the house. It also allows any keypad in the house to control any light […]

Adding Astronomical Clock Functionality to an Original Lutron HomeWorks System

This entry was posted in DIY Home Theater & Automation Technology and tagged astronomical clock HomeWorks HWV-IP5 Lutron on June 25, 2014 by Steve Jenkins

If you’re trying to set up an Apache web server on CentOS as your origin server for Google PageSpeed service, you need to take certain steps to make sure that Apache can see (and also log) the IP address of the visiting host. Otherwise, all you’ll see in your Apache log files […]

Configuring Apache on CentOS 6 for Google PageSpeed Service

This entry was posted in Linux Reference Technology and tagged Apache CentOS configure Google mod_remoteip PageSpeed PageSpeed Service PSS wrong IP on June 24, 2014 by Steve Jenkins (updated 3833 days ago)