[Nottingham] LAN Party, Install-fest, Linux fun: Sun 12/11/06

[Michael Erskine]

On Monday 13 November 2006 12:15, Martin wrote:
> Certainly, a good fun day was had. More troubleshooting and hacking than
> demos but there were a few games sessions (on the one Windows box).
> All started at about high noon and I had no idea that Beeston was
> paralysed at that time by a procession. So, I was there in the
> procession of cars for a while...

That was the Remembrance Day parade!

> Meanwhile, Michael had already got various bits set up and was waiting
> for the internet connection and server/firewall. First was to add a
> second ethernet card to my backup server, rejig the networking settings,
> reset the D-Link WiFi box and connect to ineedbroadband and whoosh...

Jim was there already with an absolute TON of kit all carried by bicycle - 
well done fella!

> And... the whoosh was more like a Keyston Cops sliding around and
> falling down episode (as in Charlie Chaplin for the youngsters). The
> D-Link box suffers very random operation for the "factory defaults"
> reset switch and my very old scavenged ethernet card added to the server
> gave dubious results. A second Belkin WiFi firewall/router box didn't
> support acting as a client. Swapping in a more recent ethernet card
> helped to then find the D-Link box problem. Martin G came to the rescue
> with a USB WiFi dongle with aerial that just simply worked.

Sounds like a useful piece of kit. What is it marting?

> Next was to share the connection with the internal LAN and... OK, so the
> Mandriva point 'n' click GUI setup knows nothing of connecting to the
> internet via WiFi! Also, I'd not installed any software for dhcpd or
> firewalling/masquerading and Mandriva didn't know to use the WiFi
> internet link and the install disk was somewhere...
>
> Mandriva did the automagic with the USB detection and setup.
>
> Martin G then came to the rescue with a deft:
>
> ifconfig wlan0 up ineedbroadband

There's dozens of half-arsed networking GUI front ends that all just call 
ifconfig(8), iwconfig(8), and/or ip(8) under the hood and thus far most of 
them can only handle the simplest of cases.

> An iptables and route quickly set up the connection sharing and all were
> surfing the web! I then loaded up shorewall which then worked just as
> well as the Martin G iptables hack. :-)
> Meanwhile, James and Michael were making an impressive mess of machines
> and cables and ethernet switch in the middle of the room.

We worked out a good cabling strategy that best suited our health and safety 
needs. I love ad-hoc machine rooms!

Anyhow, we had a nice time - the kids enjoyed playing on the park outside and 
on the LUG members inside, some of whom seemed to became climbing frames. 

I was able to help another Ubuntu user to get restrictive formats working with 
the help of EasyUbuntu (hope that all went well guys) and I spent some time 
trying to get the kxmame front end to MAME to recognise my Playstation2 
joypads (unsuccessful :( ). 

We left at about 6pm and managed to recover most of our kit before leaving 
(any leftovers can be kept by the finder!) 

Looking forward to another LAN party/fix-it night. Perhaps next time I'll 
bring the MAME cabinet if the venue suits.

Regards,
Michael Erskine.

-- 
No snowflake in an avalanche ever feels responsible.

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