+1 Net-SNMP

I tried out Net-SNMP today. It’s a great set of command-line utilities for monitoring your SNMP devices.

In my case, I used it to monitor bandwidth usage on my Linksys AG241 broadband modem. If you like the command-line, as I do, then you’ll enjoy the no-nonsense, functional approach of Net-SNMP’s tools.

Plus there’s a handy wiki full of tutorials, how-tos and other information to get you up and running!

Start with snmpwalk, which lets you query a device for all the information it can give you. You can use that to find the names and numbers of network interfaces, for example.

Once you have the object identifiers (“OID” in SNMP-speak) for the data you want, use snmpget whenever you’d like to grab that info. Use snmpwalk and snmpget with grep, awk and perl to periodically poll the data you need, and:

• record it in a database,
• create a graph,
• alert you when bad things happen (e.g. too much downloading in one day), or
• anything else you could possibly want!

SNMP is great, and Net-SNMP is a great implementation.

FIXED: Thunderbird re-downloaded all my Yahoo mail!

Thunderbird connected to my Yahoo email account and, rather than just giving me the new messages, proceeded to download ALL 14591 OF THEM!

The problem is somewhere in Yahoo’s server. Again and again, I am faced with tens of thousands of “new” emails from 2002. It’s really irritating!

The solution, while really only a Band-aid, was to put all the old messages in a new “folder” on the Yahoo mail website. As a result, Yahoo won’t offer those messages for download through the POP3 facility. Yay!

Problem solved!

Installing Windows: love, hate and mashed potatoes

I bought new hard drives, and installed Windows XP again. Ugh. They make it hard! I spent hours playing with nLite, trying to “slipstream” the right drivers for my mirrored disks (i.e. add the necessary files to the Windows CD and burn a new copy). Created two nice coasters. Well, they were fully functional Windows XP CDs, and they actually have my serial number embedded in them, which is not ideal I suppose, but most disappointingly they don’t have the drivers I needed.

Eventually, it worked. Getting the rest of my system set up now.

Some software makes it easy!

Drag and drop to upload! Firefox add-on

Let me show you a Firefox extension to upload files, simply by dragging files from your computer and dropping them into a file upload form.

You love Quake 2? Quick, check this!

Quake Done Quick’s Q2DQ2 is essentially Quake 2 done quick. That is, the entire game in one 21 minute, 2 second run.

Check out the run on their web site, and you’ll be amazed. Having recently re-played the game myself over the course of a week and a half, I was flabbergasted. Seeing the QDQ team barge through an area in seven seconds, where us mortals take an hour, is a combination of shock, awe and inadequacy.

So if you want to see someone who really knows how to kick Strogg ass, check out the Quake 2 run, and the team’s Quake web site at http://speeddemosarchive.com/quake/qdq/!