Most of the phones available through Boost aren’t that great, but Boost is basically Nextel, and any Nextel phone can be used with Boost by only switching the SIM card.  So I got my hands on the Blackberry Curve 8350i.

Out of the box, you can make phone calls, but no data and no texting without a little work.  The iDEN network does not out of the box support texting, but Motorola has it’s own proprietary MMS protocol that works with their phones.  As far as data goes, Boost does not offer a Blackberry plan, so BIS and BES are out of the question; however, TCP works, so if you can get Opera mini installed and other apps that use a TCP connection and does not rely on BIS/BES than you’re fine.  But this means the Blackberry Browser does not work, and OTA downloads, even from Opera mini or the Bolt browser still need the Blackberry Browser to download and install.

The other feature that Blackberries are known for is their push email service.  Since BIS/BES don’t work, this also doesn’t work out of the box.

The answer to these problems is by using certain service books that have been hacked to allow the used of the Blackberry Browser either over Wifi or over the TCP network.  There’s also some service books available that fix the MMS problem.  Finally, ShangMail provides a free push email service that works with the Blackberry.

I’ve collected several service books that had all the hacks I needed to work and combined them into a single file located here.  In order to isntall it, download and unzip it first.  Then from your Blackberry go to Options->Advanced Options->Service Book.  Know hold down the Alt key and type S-B-E-B.  If you did this right you will get the message, “Legacy SB Restore Enabled.”  Now go the Blackberry Desktop Manager and go to Backup/Restore, then Advanced.  I would suggest doing a full backup before continuing.  I would also suggest you backup your service books seperately in case something goes wrong you can at least get back to where you were quickly.  Now open the file you extracted and install it to the Blackberry.  You may need to do a battery pull, but after that you should be able to use the Blackberry Browser and MMS should be working.  You may have to switch between the HotSpot Broswer and Browser inside the Browser settings as needed.

For Shangmail go to http://en.shangmail.com/ and sign up for a free account, then install their free software.  Now login to your new account and add up to 5 existing email accounts to have them pushed to your Boostberry.

That should be it.  Download whatever other apps you might want, either OTA or from your desktop.  I suggest the BOLT browser, WeatherEye, Google Maps, the MobiPocket E-Book Reader, and the Bible software from http://www.youversion.com.

Have fun!

]]> http://www.bamed.org/2009/08/01/my-boostberry-boost-mobile-on-a-blackberry-with-browser-and-mms-working/feed/ 12 http://www.bamed.org/2008/07/30/first-asterisk-problem-resolved/ http://www.bamed.org/2008/07/30/first-asterisk-problem-resolved/#comments Wed, 30 Jul 2008 15:27:51 +0000 admin http://www.bamed.org/2008/07/30/first-asterisk-problem-resolved/ Well I’ve already run into my first problem getting Asterisk working seemlessly with our old Samsung DCS, and I’ve managed to get the problem resolved as well. The problem was when making or receiving calls between the two phone systems if the caller on the Samsung side hungup first, Asterisk did not detect a disconnect signal and left that line off the hook. After playing with different configuration options in Asterisk, trying to get it to “hear” the disconnect signal I decided I’d do a bit of digging into the Samsung’s programming to see if that might be the problem. So I found a programming guide for the Samsung DCS and found my answer. Apparently the Samsung DCS doesn’t send a proper disconnect signal, unless that extension’s Ring-Type is set to DATA RING. So if anyone out there is going through a similar configuration problem, here’s a quick HOWTO. On your Samsung phone dial TRSF800, then your admin password, press the down arrow, then SPK. Dial 208, then dial the extension connected to Asterisk. Press the Up/Down arrows until the display says DATA RING. Press one of the buttons under the display, then go on to the next extension. When done press TRSF to exit programming mode. This will allow the Samsung DCS to send a proper disconnect signal that Asterisk can pick up on. Problem solved! Well, mostly solved anyway. For some reason, now the extension rings 20 seconds, then disconnects and starts ringing again. I’m sure it’s a timer somewhere, and when I find it I’ll let you know.

~UPDATE~
Nevermind about the timer problem. It had to do with some of the settings I was playing around with in Asterisk while trying to fix the first problem. I commented all those out and everything works fine.

First of all I brought another computer in from home.  I already had Ubuntu on it, so it’s all ready to be useful.  I did manage to get myself a decent 19″ LCD, and it has a DVI plus a VGA connector and I can select between the two using the front panel.  So I plugged my work-provided Windows desktop into the DVI port, and my Ubuntu machine into the VGA port.  So now I can use the same monitor for both machines by pressing a button on the front of the monitor.  Great!  Except I still need two keyboards and two mice. 

Synergy to the rescue.  Synergy is a neat little app that will let you share the same keyboard and mouse over multiple computers.  So all I need to do is drag my mouse over the the left side of the screen on my Windows machine, and the cursor shows up on the right side of the screen of the Ubuntu machine.  I went ahead and set it up so that if I drag the mouse the other way it shows up on my Eee.

So I don’t have a KVM, and I don’t have multiple monitors, but I do have three computers, my Windows desktop, my Ubuntu desktop and my Eee also running Ubuntu.  And now I only need one keyboard and one mouse to control all three just by dragging my mouse from one side of the screen to the other.  And I have one monitor for both desktops that I can switch between the two with a push of a button.

One last bit of the puzzle… I’m in IRC most of the time I’m at work, but if I’m switching between desktops I can’t always keep up on what’s going on unless I’m logged in at both desktops.  I could just login on the Eee, but I prefer a larger screen for this.  So I load up irssi in screen on the Ubuntu desktop, then ssh into it from the Windows desktop and then I can share it on both desktops.  (Thanks to Vollmond for this suggestion.)

So, nothing really novel about all this.  If we had the budget I’d definitely go about this VERY differently, but there you go, a poor man’s KVM.  Use this knowledge well.

For the long-term, it looks like we will be getting some kind of tape backup this fall to handle data archiving.  I’m still working on that plan.  The final plan will largely depend on what all gets approved in this coming fiscal year’s budget.  But I’m thinking I’ll continue to use something similar to what I’ve got here, but add the tape backup as well for archives.

backupservers > /var/log/backup.log 2>> /var/log/backup.log

This starts it up and sends all the output to /var/log/backup.log which gets emailed to me when it’s done. It’s not eloquent, but here’s the code:

#!/bin/bash

#let’s make some variables, kinda messy right now, need to clean up later
stateon=”getstate() = on”
stateoff=”getstate() = off”
statesusp=”getstate() = suspended”
vmdir=”/vm”
S1=”PDC”
S1dir=”/PDC/”
S1dev=”/dev/sdb1″
S2=”LAMP.vmx”
S2dir=”/LAMP/”
S2dev=”/dev/sdb2″
CMD=”/usr/bin/vmware-cmd”
backupdir=”/mnt/Backup”
rys=”/usr/bin/rsync –inplace -v”
log=”/var/log/backup.log”
EMAIL=”bmedlock@chcchurch.org”

#Send an email to let you know how it went
function email {
/bin/mail -s “$SUBJECT” “$EMAIL” < $log
}

#Exit if something goes wrong
function quit {
exit
}

/bin/date
for i in `seq 1 2`;
do
#Which Server to backup
if [ $i == 1 ]
then
dir=$vmdir$S1dir
server=$dir$S1
dev=$S1dev
else
dir=$vmdir$S2dir
server=$dir$S2
dev=$S2dev
fi
echo “Suspend the VM if it’s running\n”
#Now let’s check to see if the VM is running
state=`$CMD $server getstate`
echo -e “The current state of $server is $state\n”
if [ "$state" = "$stateon" ]
then
$CMD $server suspend
echo -e “$server is now suspended\n”
fi

#mount the backup directory
umount $backupdir
mount $dev $backupdir
status=$?
if [ $status != 0 ]
then
/root/iscsilogout
/root/iscsilogin
sleep 2
mount $dev $backupdir
status=$?
if [ $status != 0 ]
then
SUBJECT=”mount failed with status $status”
email
$CMD $server start
quit
fi
fi
#now let’s back it up
echo -e “Starting backup of $dir\n”
nice -n -15 $rys $dir* $backupdir
echo -e “The Server at $server is now backed up\n”

#let’s clean up
umount $backupdir
if [ "$state" = "$stateon" ]
then
$CMD $server start
echo -e “Server restarted\n”
else
echo -e “The server wasn’t on to begin with, so why start again?\n”
fi

done

/bin/date
echo -e “Backup Complete\n”
SUBJECT=”Backup Complete”
email

So there’s been some questions about how we do the GDOS, so I thought I’d share some ideas concerning how we’ve organized it.

First decide who your target will be. Sometimes we’ve made the GDOS specifically for our congregation, and other times we’ve made it more outreach focused. This effects how we publicize the event. Then I start recruiting volunteers. I’m not a great recruiter by any means, so i won’t go into that. I do try to confirm how many volunteers will be there ahead of time and plan accordingly. In an ideal situation, with a usable budget I try to provide for each volunteer, a battery powered screw-driver, a toolset of needed software, and a T-shirt. Of course those who have come before have most of these things. The night before the event I try to get everyone together and we setup the room we’re doing the event in. I like to have a table setup for each volunteer. I ask each volunteer to bring in a keyboard, monitor, mouse, CAT5, a power strip, and power cables. Of course most don’t so I provide as much as we need. For every volunteers workstation I want at least one keyboard, monitor and mouse, the necessary power cables and a connection to the network. I usually have a couple of analog phone lines nearby with VERY long cables in case anyone needs to troubleshoot a modem (we usually get a couple of those).

We use our Atrium for the GDOS, it’s a BIG room, basically it’s the foyer for our new worship center. It’s actually big enough we’ve been able to worship in it (just not everybody at once). In the middle of the Atrium, event spaced apart are four floor outlets complete with network connections. So we setup a circle of tables around each of these outlets. The placement of volunteers is very important. It is also important to know your volunteers well and their skill sets. We have some High School kids who are beginning to develop an interest in computers, and we have the IT Professionals who have been in this business longer than I’ve been alive and have already forgotten more about computers than I’ve ever known. Disperse the people who know what they’re doing evenly amongst the people who don’t, and sit the people with the least amount of skill next to those with the most. Besides the service and outreach aspect of the GDOS, the goal it most accomplishes is team building. I also make certain to take aside those uber-smart super geeks and tell them that I expect them to help out the people sitting around them.

When you first walk in the door there will be signs telling you where everything is, and there will be a table right inside the door with two volunteers sitting ready to check-in computers. Once the computers are checked-in, and EVERYTHING the user brings in is labelled the volunteers put the computers on a TO-DO table. When a computer is finishedOn one side of the room I setup a couple of laptops with burners hooked up to the Internet and a stack of CD’s between them. These are for download drivers or other utilities that may be needed.  When the computers are finished, there’s another DONE table where the volunteer puts the computers, then the volunteer calls the person, or finds them if they’re still hanging around to let them know the computer is finished.

As far as software I have prepared a CD with all the Win9X cabs, an XP Home CD, an XP Pro CD, some hardware diagnostic software (usually in a CD and a floppy), a Win9X boot floppy, recent versions of Ad-Aware, SpyBot and FreeAV, and a Bart’s PE CD with the previously mentioned malware removal tools with the most recent defs installed. I try to provide a few basic hardware components, optical drives, floppy drives, video cards, RAM, sound cards, NICs and whatever else I can come up with for testing purposes only. We do NOT provide hardware for anyone. If there is some bad hardware we tell the computer’s owner, and tell them where they can get replacement parts. If they get it and bring it to us we will install it.

When the day comes we show up early for some last minute setup, have some coffee and donuts and give some last minute instructions. Here’s a sample of the last minute instructions I give:

General Policies and Procedures for the Geek Day of Service!

SMILE!!! BE FRIENDLY!! Offer to carry stuff in and out for people. Please remember that the purpose of the Geek Day of Service is to show the love of Christ in a practical way! So be Jesus to these people!

DO NOT reload an operating system unless the user brings their own disks and product key!!! NO EXCEPTIONS!!!!!

Make certain EVERYTHING is labeled!

NO food in the Atrium. Drinks are OK, but please keep them away from the equipment. Lunch will be available in room A102 starting around 11:00AM. Please take some time to get something to eat.

Put your name and DETAILED notes on the paperwork before finishing. Many people will call me after the GDOS with questions, and these papers are all I have to go off for most of them.

Remember we are working on quality, not quantity. We will turn people away when I feel like we have enough to do. Once that call has been made there will be NO exceptions.

You may offer to do extra work for people outside of the GDOS, but please do not bring anything home with you from the GDOS. Make plans to meet at a later date and in a different place and make certain the user knows it is not a G4J sponsored task you are doing, but something you do of your own accord.

If you need to call a user, I have a cell phone and will gladly lend it to you for this purpose. If you have your own cell phone you are welcome to use it as well.

There are two phone lines available for testing modems. It is necessary to dial ‘9′ to get an outside line.

Be careful what you say. If you are a novice in computer repair, please do not make comments about not knowing what you’re doing in front of the person whose computer you are working on.

We will tear down at 2:00PM. Please find a stopping point on whatever you are working on by this time so we can clean up in a timely fashion, and give the users time to pick up their systems before we leave.

If anyone asks, the next GDOS is April 29!

Then we pray and open the doors.

As a person walks in they should be greeted, by a non-Geek if we can get someone, who takes their info.  This person has been trained on how to ask intelligent questions to get useful info from the user instead of, “It crashed!”  It is explained to them that this is a volunteer-only event with participants of various skill-levels and as such we make no guarantees that we can fix anything, and we make no guarantees that all their data will be preserved, only that we will do our best.  We have some chairs setup on one side of the room and give the option to sit around, though it may take several hours to finish, or go home and come back at a pre-determined time.  All the gathered information is taped to the computer, and everything the user brings in is labeled with their name.  Then the computer is placed on the TODO table, and a volunteer comes up and gets it and brings it back to their workstation and starts working.  When finished, the volunteer notes on the paperwork what was done to fix the problem, they place the computer on the DONE table and contact the user to let them know it is finished and what was done to it.

On the paperwork that is filled out there is also a Liability Release Form that must be signed and dated.  It reads as follows:

 

Geeks-4-Jesus

The Geek Day of Service

Release of Liability

This release of liability is being executed in connection with the Geeks-4-Jesus’s (“G4J”) sponsorship of a computer diagnostic clinic at our College Heights Christian Church known as The Geek Day of Service at which members of G4J have volunteered (the “Volunteer”) their services to provide general computer repair, maintenance, upgrade and other computer related services to the general public without charge as a community service.

I understand that G4J has not made any independent investigation or inquiry as to the skills, training, experience, abilities or qualifications of any of the Volunteers who have offered to provide these services and, consequently, I understand that G4J does not make any representation or warranty that any Volunteer has the requisite skills, training, experience, abilities or qualifications to work on my computer or to perform any computer related service or other task for me.

I hereby release and discharge G4J from all civil and other liability for any act or omission on the part of any Volunteer, including, without limitation, any loss, injury, or damage resulting to my computer hardware or software or other equipment or loss of data due to the negligence, malfeasance, or misfeasance of any Volunteer. Without limiting the generality of the foregoing, in no event shall G4J be liable for any direct, indirect, punitive, incidental, special, or consequential damages arising out of or in any way connected with any loss, injury, or damage resulting from any negligence, malfeasance, or misfeasance of any Volunteer in providing any service, whether based on contract, tort, strict liability, or otherwise, even if G4J has been advised of the possibility of such damages.

Further, I hereby release and discharge each Volunteer from any civil or other liability for any loss or damage to my computer hardware or software or other equipment or loss of data, provided the injury or damage was not caused by any wanton or willful misconduct on the part of the Volunteer in performing such services.

Dated: August 12, 2006  ____________________________________

Signature

____________________________________

Typed or Printed Name

I think that sums up most of the day.  I usually try to find someone to provide lunch for the volunteers, and there’s a lot of cleanup when it’s all done.  We normally open the doors at 8AM and stop taking in new computers by noon, or by the time we’ve received 3 computers per volunteer.  The goal is to have all the computers out by 2PM, and everything put away and cleaned up by 5PM.  Our biggest GDOS was after putting an ad in the paper for two weekends prior to the event, and we ended up with about 25 volunteers, and nearly 75 computers we worked on.

I know Jim Walton from ChurchTechMatters.com does something similar at his church, and others have too.  If you’re interested in doing something like this at your church and need any help/advice I’d love to help.  I’d also like to hear about any events you’re doing.

I’m starting with a basic Ubuntu Server 7.04 Feisty Faun configured as a LAMP server. It’s a standard VM I carry around on my laptop. Before I can compile Samba, I need to download and install some dependencies:

# sudo apt-get install autoconf make gcc gettext libreadline5-dev libgnutls-dev libacl1-dev attr

Now download the source from Samba and untar it:

# wget http://us1.samba.org/samba/ftp/samba4/samba-4.0.0tp5.tar.gz
# tar xvzpf samba-4.0.0tp5.tar.gz

Be sure to read the README and the howto.txt which most of what follows is based on. For tp5 you will need to generate the configure script. So do the following:

# cd samba4/source
# ./autogen.sh

Now we have a configure script, so run it:

# ./configure

And then we make stuff. (Note: adding proto to ‘make all’ will make samba4 compile about 5x faster if you have a recent version of gcc, 3.4 or higher, which you should have if you’re following this tutorial)

# make proto all

Now make sure you’re root and:

# make install

If you’ve EVER compiled anything in *nix this should all be familiar. If you’ve never compiled anything before, and perhaps don’t even know what compile means, then why are you trying to install a technical preview of ANYTHING? Let’s continue…

Now we must use the ‘provision’ command to set up a basic user database. I’m assuming you’re following along and still in the samba4/source directory. You will need to make sure ’smbscript’ is in your path. I did this by:

# PATH=$PATH:/usr/local/samba/bin

You should also add the above to your .profile so it stays in your PATH. Before you’re finished you’ll need /usr/local/samba/sbin in your PATH as well.

Now you can:

# ./setup/provision –realm-YOUR.REALM –domain=YOURDOM ==adminpass=SOMEPASSWORD

Now you’re about ready to go, but we need to setup a share in /usr/local/samba/etc/smb.conf. Edit smb.conf and add something like:

[test]
path = /data/test
read only = no

Now that we’re all setup all you need to do is start samba:

# smbd

There you go. It’s up and running. You can share files and there should be some AD functionality. I was able to access the ‘Test’ share we setup earlier. I was also able to access SWAT by browsing to http://localhost:901. From SWAT I can currently add new users, provision the database, and import users from Samba3 or Windows. There’s also a link to run some ESP tests and a link to preview the NEW SWAT, but neither one of these work after following the above steps.

One last thing you’ll want to do that’s in the howto.txt document. You’ll want to make certain the partition hosting your shares is mounted with the user_xattr option by editing your /etc/fstab file. I changed the appropriate line in mine like so:

# /dev/sda1 / ext3 user_xattr

Then reboot:

# mount -o remount

[thanks to Matt for pointing out the original error here, you don't have to reboot]

You’ll need to do this to be certain you can support the new features of Samba4. There are some other things listed you might want to do in the howto.txt document, but the above seemed to be enough to pass all the tests listed.

I’m afraid that’s as far as I go tonight. Over the next couple weeks, when I have time, I’ll try to test out some of the functionality and I’ll get back to you. According to all the documentation I’ve read the features that work are stable, but it’s still just a technical preview, so there’s several features that simply haven’t been coded yet. I’ll see what kind of tests I can come up with, and I’ll get back to you.

Anyway, the point is I need to do it all over and do it right this time. So I’ve been planning, and testing and this is what I got.

First of all, there are some great examples for setting up Samba at samba’s own website. Just go to http://us1.samba.org/samba/docs/man/Samba-Guide/. You can go there and learn all you need. Go through the examples and get your Samba/LDAP PDC all setup. Or you can cheat, like I did, with smbldap-installer. I thought I’d write an extensive HOWTO, but the truth is everything you need is at http://www.vcsvikings.org/docuwiki/cgi-bin/moin.cgi/FrontPage. You can get the files you need there, then follow the instructions in the wiki. In Ubuntu, all I had to do was download the script, untar it, then run it. It automagically downloaded all the files and dependencies I needed, asked me a few questions, and before I knew it I had a Samba/LDAP PDC installed and working. The same script is also used to configure a Samba/LDAP BDC. Could it be any easier?

Now I just need to setup all my users and we’re good to go.

I put together a system with an AMD Athlon64 X2 AM2 3800+ with 2GB DDR2 800 RAM, a 20GB IDE HDD for the OS and 4 250GB HDD I had lying around. Three of the 250GB HDD’s are IDE and the fourth is SATA. When my budget allows I intent to replace the IDE’s for SATA’s. I installed Ubuntu Server 7.04 on the 20GB HDD. Then installed iscsi-target, configured my LUN’s and all was done. For the moment I’m just using one of the 250GB HDD’s as a backup for our server, but now that I know how easy it was to setup, I’m going to think of some more creative ways to use my homemade SAN.

For those of you interested, here’s how I setup the software.

First download and install Ubuntu. It was pretty straightforward so I won’t get into that part of it. Once Ubuntu is installed get all the updates, including any kernel updates:

# sudo apt-get update
# sudo apt-get dist-upgrade
# sudo apt-get upgrade
Once all the updates are installed reboot. Now you need to install a few more packages:

# sudo apt-get install make
# sudo apt-get install libssl-dev
# sudo apt-get install linux-headers-`uname -r`
# sudo apt-get install gcc
Now make a symlink to your kernel source:

# sudo ln -s /usr/src/linux-headers-`uname -r` /usr/src/linux

This way make can find your kernel source files when you compile scsi-target without any other configuration from you.

Now download iscsi-target from http://sourceforge.net/project/showfiles.php?group_id=108475. Unzip and untar the file, the cd into the directory you extracted it to. Now:

# make
# sudo make install

If you don’t get any errors iscsi-target is installed. I did find one compatibility problem with the startup script with Ubuntu. To fix it edit /etc/init.d/iscsi-target by changing the first line from

#!/bin/sh

to

#!/bin/bash

No copy the ietd.conf file from the etc/ directory under the directory where you compiled iscsi-target to the systems /etc directory. You should read the man files and all associated documentation, but the only things you need to worry about to get up and running are the ‘Target’, ‘Lun 0 Path=’, and ‘Alias’ options. Configure these according to your system, then start up iscsi-target:

# sudo /etc/init.d/iscsi-target start

Now you just need to configure your iscsi initiators on whatever your want to use the iscsi drives on. I tested it in Windows and in Linux and it works beautifully. So far I’ve only tested it by making one HDD = one LUN, but it should be able to support different types of configurations such as RAID or file LUN’s, and there’s failover support as well. I’ll look into these some more and get the details back to you.

I’m just excited to have a 1TB homemade SAN to play with now.