zeroxcool.net – Harm van Tilborg

Well, after a long time some updates. The DigiMatrix project can start, I have received all the materials, looking for the Celeron FSB400 CPU was the hardest part. It was set EOL (End Of Life) in December 2004 so almost no (web)shop had it available. However Alternate did. As said, I ordered the memory, harddisk and CPU at Cool Prices, but the CPU delivered with this package was a FSB500 (Prescott-core) processor, which can not be ran on the motherboard. So I had to look for another. Besides the not very good experiences with the delivery they were kind enough to take back the CPU (slightly used of course and with some cool pasta on it). Good job Cool Prices!

The Linux part with the DigiMatrix has to wait. As stated on my ASUS DigiMatrix page I had also found Media Portal, which runs under Windows (blame me :)) and .Net (blame me even more ;)), so I’m going to try that first.

Also some news from work. Our first mail server is heavily overloaded, load doesn’t get below 4 and that’s on a single CPU box. So, it was time to either upgrade the machine to a dual CPU box and faster I/O or to split accounts to a new server. We made the last choice. So, now a way to avoid e-mailing those 4000 clients who are going to be transferred to the new box. A colleague of me came up with Perdition (no, not from the movie). Perdition is a POP proxy, it is able to reroute a POP-request to the right server. So if a user connects to let’s say pop.example.com (192.168.0.1) Perdition checks its own database (ODBC, MySQL, PostgreSQL, LDAP, BDB, GDBM) to determine where the request has to be forwarded to. Mail for example.net is handled by pop01.example.com (192.168.0.5) and mail for example.org is handled by pop10.example.com (192.168.0.10). So, all the traffic will be transferred through Perdition. Now the user doesn’t have to know on whether POP server it is, we (well, Perdition) decide for them. We use the GDBM database, because it’s familiar with the data format used on qmail’s smtproutes. The only (big) thing left is to split the accounts to the new server and put the real mail box on another IP. This will be done on a Saturday night (less traffic and we have whole Sunday left to ‘repair’ things if necessary), we have to determine what date exactly because we’re still waiting for the new mailserver. I just finished configuring the new Perdition proxy server, so that part is finished. Next time hopefully more about this :)!

Another cool fact, tomorrow trainings of my footbal team starts. I have already tried to build up my condition by doing some running. Let’s see if that was enough to run the warming-up without gasping ;).

I’m thinking of buying I have bought an ASUS DigiMatrix ‘Home Theater PC’ (HTPC), to put Linux on it.I’ve won the box on eBay and have received it a few days ago. Today (16-7) I have received the processor (Intel Celeron D 2,4GHz), memory (Kingston 512MB DDR PC2700) and harddisk (Western Digital 200GB PATA 7200RPM). But there’s a big problem. The mainboard isn’t able to run with a Precott-core based CPU, like the one I’ve ordered. So, I’m waiting for the webshop if they can trade this one with a Northwood-based core. Nevertheless, I have done some research and there are quite some interesting projects running:

• Linux on ASUS DigiMatrix
• AsusHomeTheater forum (‘part of’ site above)
• Review on X-bit labs
• Review on Digit-Life
• Media Portal – A free (open-source) MCE like framework
• Media Portal – A FreeVO like (free) Windows ‘framework’

On this page I would like to share my experience of setting up Debian GNU/Linux on that box. It will look a lot like the Linux on ASUS DigiMatrix page, from the list above.

So, hopefully soon some more info about this really great product!