Cabledog.net

Ericsson Certified Technology- IP Essentials (ECT-IPE) Certification

Rick — Sun, 11 Dec 2011 19:09:17 +0000

Last week I passed the exam for Ericsson’s IP Essentials certification.

Even though this is the first of several IP related certifications, DO NOT LET THE NAME MISLEAD YOU! Being the initial certifications required on the IP path and the “essentials” in the name would lead one to believe that this is a basic level exam. It is not! It covers IP networking, routing protocols, QoS, and MPLS and is quite comprehensive. Detailed and thorough knowledge of all the topic areas are required in order to pass this exam.

This certification is for Ericsson employees only and is proctored by Prometric, or via remote with Ericsson proctor physically present.

The exam is difficult in that it will ensure that you know the technical details of each topic as well as understanding of how each works. Ericsson does have online courses and practice tests available. However, if you study up on Q0S, for example, and you do not know all details and understand how it works it would be best to study until you do by either redoing the online course or obtaining supplemental study material.

ALU NRS-I Certification

Rick — Sun, 11 Dec 2011 18:44:45 +0000

In July 2011 I passed the exam (4A0-100) for the Alcatel-Lucent NRS-I (Network Routing Specialist I) certification.

The exam requires fundamental knowledge of IP networking and routing protocols along with basic knowledge of their 7750 Service Router and is proctored by Prometric.

ALU provides training courses for all their certification exams, but I opted for the self study route and utilized the published study guide instead – Alcatel-Lucent Scalable IP Networks Self-Study Guide. This is the perfect study guide for this exam and I plan to keep it as I feel it is a great reference guide as well.

Automatic Deadbolt

Rick — Sat, 18 Jun 2011 18:53:20 +0000

My latest HA gadget arrived and I immediately discarded the installation manuals and dived in! I replaced the front door handleset and deadbolt with a new one made by Morning Industry, Inc. The new handleset is nifty in that one can not only lock and unlock the deadbolt the usual way – by key from the outside or knob from the inside, but also by a built in keypad and also wirelessly from included keyfob. The install was like any other handleset. Once installed, programming the codes for the keypad was easy. I also purchased an Insteon 2458A1 controller which allows wireless control of the lock via my home automation system. The handleset by itself works great and is “wife approved”, but the addition of the Insteon controller increases it’s awesomeness tenfold. I can now have the door automatically unlock in the event of fire, lock/unlock as the security system is armed or unarmed, etc. Since I can control and status my system from my iPhone I could even lock/unlock it remotely.

Inside View of new Handleset - Lower Right is Insteon Controller

Outside View

Cabling Project

Rick — Sat, 18 Jun 2011 18:14:45 +0000

I am finally done with re-wiring and tidying up all the wiring for my home automation system. Over many years as I expanded or added a new gadget to the system I would often run the cabling in some sort of expedient fashion which lead to quite a spaghetti mess of wires. So last weekend I yanked all the wires from my Elk M1 alarm/home control panel and re-wired everything the right way. Some cabling was thrown about the house and I had to remove it and and make a more permanent run – often through the attic. I moved the panel and installed a riser (schedule 40) from the panel that stubs into the attic to accommodate the wire runs. Not only is the attic warm this time of year, but I then had to figure the connections of each wire as they hooked into the panel and test everything to make sure it all worked.

Some photos after I was done. If you think there are a lot of wires showing now, you should have seen it before…

Elk M1 Panel

Garage Motion Detector and Strobe Light

Wireless Receiver

Neighborhood Homebrew Supply

Rick — Fri, 03 Jun 2011 04:37:40 +0000

I’ve been getting my beer and wine making supplies from an outfit here in Olathe called Homebrew Pro Shoppe.

Nice people.

http://www.brewcat.com/

AstLinux – Email Notification

Rick — Sun, 27 Mar 2011 17:06:03 +0000

Finally decided to use the email notification feature in AstLinux, but it wasn’t as easy to get it going as I thought. In theory one should just have to specify your email address for notifications in your voicemail.conf file like any other Asterisk setup and also configure your email server for whatever Linux distribution you’re using. For AstLinux the web GUI provides a convenient way to edit both your voicemail.conf to specify the email address for notifications of new voicemail to your voicemail box and also via the AstLinux Network tab the SMTP settings for the email host that’ll receive the email notifications and send them off to where they need to go. I planned to use my email account with AT&T as my SMTP host, but after configuring my email setup I found that when I made a test voicemail I was not receiving any email notifications. I looked into the log file and found indications of the trouble:

Mar 27 11:05:25 pbx mail.err msmtp: host=smtp.att.yahoo.com tls=on auth=on user=myemailaddr@att.net from=root@att.net recipients=mynotificationaddr@me.com smtpstatus=553 smtpmsg=’553 From address not verified – see http://help.yahoo.com/l/us/yahoo/mail/original/manage/send
Mar 27 11:05:25 pbx mail.info msmtpqueue: (65) msmtp: envelope from address root@att.net not accepted by the server msmtp: server message: 553 From address not verified – see http://help.yahoo.com/l/us/yahoo/mail/original/manage/sendfrom-07.html msmtp: could not se
Mar 27 11:05:25 pbx mail.info msmtpqueue: Failure: Keeping mail queue /var/spool/mail/2011-03-27-11.05.24-0 msmtp/mail pair.

From the log I see that AstLinux uses msmtp instead of sendmail for SMTP and that it’s sending emails to my AT&T account as root instead using my email address. I guess msmtp defaults to using root when sending email. Reading the msmtp docs I was able to determine that one can specify the from address msmtp uses by adding the SMTP_FROM statement to my startup files. I initially added it to the /mnt/kd/rc.conf.d/gui.network.conf file, but it did not stick. After adding it to the /mnt/kd/rc.conf.d/user.conf file and rebooting it seems to not only remain in the file, but actually being used in the configuration of msmtp.

Entry I added to my /mnt/kd/rc.conf.d/user.conf file:

SMTP_FROM=”myemailaddr@att.net”

Log entry of successful email notification:

Mar 27 11:34:40 pbx mail.info msmtp: host=smtp.att.yahoo.com tls=on auth=on user=myemailaddr@att.net from=myemailaddr@att.net recipients=mynotificationaddr@me.com mailsize=218 smtpstatus=250 smtpmsg=’250 OK , completed’ exitcode=EX_OK

I also wanted to send system messaging to my syslog server, but did not see anything in the AstLinux Network GUI tab for that so added the following to my /mnt/kd/rc.conf.d/gui.network.conf file:

### Syslog
SYSLOGHOST=”172.16.0.27″

After rebooting it appears that the AstLinux setup process left it in and and I’m now seeing log messages from my AstLinux PBX being logged on my syslog server.

AstLinux – Blacklist

Rick — Sat, 26 Mar 2011 21:58:31 +0000

I’ve tried to blacklist a few annoying numbers by adding them to the AstLinux blacklist, but it didn’t seem to work. It’s not that I’m anti-social, just seems like for some reason the wife holds me accountable for any telemarketer calls we get. Apparently the web GUI for Astlinux does have a tab to enter numbers into the Asterisk database, but you have to do some programming in your extentions.conf file in order for calls in the dialplan to be affected. I made the following changes to my dialplan and my test calls so far are going where they should. There is probably a more elegant ways of doing this, but I made a context for each blacklist scenario because the contexts for incoming calls are recorded in the CDR log and so when I review the CDR I can tell if incoming calls are handled normally or blacklisted.

[vitel-inbound]
exten => 9135550000,1,GotoIf($[${DB_EXISTS(blacklist/${CALLERID(num)})} = 0]?200) ; blacklist test
exten => 9135550000,n,GotoIf($["${DB_RESULT}" = "0"]?110)
exten => 9135550000,n,GotoIf($["${DB_RESULT}" = "2"]?120)
exten => 9135550000,n,Goto(Blacklist-Zap,s,1) ; “1″ TN in blacklist database, answer and Zapateller
exten => 9135550000,110,Goto(Blacklist-Hangup,s,1) ; “0″ TN in blacklist, Hangup
exten => 9135550000,120,Goto(Blacklist-VM,s,1) ; “2″ TN in blacklist, direct to voicemail
exten => 9135550000,200,Macro(stdexten,702,SIP/702)
exten => 9135550000,201,Goto(s,end)

[Blacklist-Zap]
exten => s,1,Answer
exten => s,2,Wait(1)
exten => s,3,Zapateller
exten => s,4,Zapateller
exten => s,5,Playback(ss-noservice)
exten => s,6,Hangup

[Blacklist-Hangup]
exten => s,1,Answer
exten => s,2,Wait(1)
exten => s,3,Hangup

[Blacklist-VM]
exten => s,1,Answer
exten => s,2,Wait(1)
exten => s,3,Voicemail(702,u)
exten => s,4,Hangup

AstLinux

Rick — Sat, 26 Mar 2011 21:42:58 +0000

I’ve been using Asterisk, the IP PBX software, since shortly after it came out, but for the last few years have been using AstLinux. I like AstLinux because it’s able to run on the WRAP or Seokris hardware platforms which have no moving parts and use very little power. These little embedded IP PBXs are great VOIP solutions for simple home use. Because AstLinux is a slimmed down version of Asterisk it means that usually only has a basic feature set available. However, it does have a web GUI for system and Asterisk configuration which is great for quick status and small changes, but I find myself using ssh to login and make changes via UNIX shell most of the time.

Weather Station

Rick — Mon, 29 Mar 2010 00:01:15 +0000

I added some new 1-Wire sensors to my weather station this weekend – a barometer and a humidity/temperature sensors from HobbyBoards. The white square box in the photo is the barometer. Because it requires more power than is provided on the 1-Wire bus a power injector (unit to the right w/ the red lights) is needed. The power for the power injector comes from the battery bank which is charged by two solor panels (15 watts each) on the garage roof. Since a few of these devices use 12 volts DC I plan to calculate the power requirements and see how many I can run off solar power.

Also in the picture is the 1-Wire hub (HA7Net) to the right and to the left is the lightning detector (seen with the 9 volt batter dangling from it) The coax cable goes outside to the lightning detector antenna which is about 20′ up the pole.

The humidity/temperature sensor was installed in the radiation shield and mounted on the corner of the shed. I know, this is not a most scientific placement, but I do not have any other place to put it where it has access to wiring. In this case, I scammed a few cable pairs from the sprinkler control cabling that runs behind the shed.

I edited the /etc/thermd.conf file to include both these sensors and they are now showing up on the thermd graphs as well as being sent to Wunderground.com.

Vinotheque Merlot Secondary Rack

Rick — Sun, 28 Mar 2010 23:29:42 +0000

Did the final rack of the batch of Vinotheque Merlot today. SG = .994 I racked it from the usual 6 gallon carboy I’ve been using for years to a new 6 gallon carboy I just got this week and for some reason came up about a liter short from topping it off. This was after I racked it, added 1/4 cup of water with the potassium Metabisulphite and another 1/4 cup of water with potassium sorbate. Previously when I’ve come up a bit short I’ve just added a cup or two of water to get it to within 2 inches of the bung, but in this case I could see I would be more than a few cups short. I’ve read that one should not added water during the wine making process as it will throw your SG off. Since I didn’t have any Merlot from a previous batch left I ended up pouring in a bottle of Barolo that I bottled last year. I figure that the added body from the Barolo will help the Merlot out and bring it more to our taste in the end. When the batch is done I’ll have to measure some water into each of the 6 gallon carboys to see which is on the mark and which is off.