OpenWRT, RAID Crashes, and a Truck

Sil Greene — Tue, 10 Jul 2007 16:03:53 +0000

My first day at my host org, I arrived minutes before the moving truck. My organization got new digs and I was just in time to help set up. On Weds of that week, we had the annual staff retreat out on Watauga Lake, and I got a good introduction to all the staff and various projects going on here. As an environmental nonprofit, much of our work is the type of advocacy campaign that VISTA wants me to step carefully around. My project is more of an education program -- teaching landowners about sustainable forestry techniques -- so that's my main focus.

Early in my second week, I sat down with several folks in the organization to get an in-depth feel for the sustainable forestry project and it's future. We're planning a forum for landowners and forestry professionals, as both an online community and an information resource. Much of the initial planning is done, but I get to carry the ball into the endzone. This means working with the project partners, finding and arranging hosting, working with a professional web design company, developing initial content, and recruiting others to continue the content ....seems like most other aspects of the project (hopefully, with the exception of fundraising!). Our in-house meeting went well and I'm arranging a conference call to introduce myself to our project partners.

I'm also working on maintaining and extending their technical capacity, by assessing their needs and expanding their current capabilities. I've already extended their LAN and WirelessLAN capabilities with an older Linksys WiFi router (I *heart* OpenWRT!). The WiFi router provided by our DSL supplier, it turns out, doesn't play nicely with newer MacBooks.

I'm working through an issue with their fileserver (minor things, ya know, like replacing a drive in the main RAID set that decided that Friday afternoon was the perfect time to die). One drive dropped out of the RAID mirror, and I got the local volunteer who built the server to stop by and help me kick off a rebuild. Most of the time this works fine and things are back to normal (the rebuild takes forever, but you can still access the existing drive). Unfortunately, around 3pm last Friday I realized the network drive wasn't accessible, and sure enough the rebuild had encountered a serious problem with the offline drive (think "click of death"). I consulted our volunteer, rebooted the server, and waited until everyone was done for the day before trying the rebuild again. Sure enough, the problem drive started making its click of death again, and the server locked up. Now we're up and running, but without a mirror, and waiting for a replacement drive to come in.

I'm also rolling out an intranet webserver so I can evaluate and demo the CMS systems we're considering for my project. The hard part in all of this is making it sustainable: documenting the setups and configurations that make all of this work, so that other techies can understand, duplicate, and extend the work I've done while I'm here. Fighting tech fires is fun and all, but I won't be here forever, and those tech fires always flare up no matter how robustly the system is designed. I'm thinking an intranet CMS could play that role here.

Can anyone tell me if WDS is really helpful? I'm debating the right way to make sure our facility is adequately covered by WiFi, and right now I've got two AP's that don't really cooperate. (Well, only one answers DHCP, so it's cooperation, but our laptop users still see two different networks.) I don't think I can get our DSL router to do much in the way of WDS, but I can probably get someone to donate another Linksys, then setup WDS between the two, one at the front of the facility and one in back, and just turn off the DSL router's WiFi altogether. Any tips?

First Day at PSO

Marilyn Taylor — Wed, 20 Jun 2007 20:28:11 +0000

Today was the 1st day of PSO. Mostly, we had meetings and filled out paperwork. It was nice to discover that not everyone was right out of college. A few of us had several years of work under our belts. Even my roommate had years of experience in teaching and photojournalism.

Digressing a bit, it certainly is warm and humid. It made for a sleepless night last night since there was no air conditioning. It gets warm in eastern Washington state, but the humidity there is in the teens rather than the eighties. I also have air conditioning at home.

First Few Days at the Egleston Sq. CyberY

Leena Silverman — Tue, 23 Jan 2007 23:45:34 +0000

Yesterday and today have been my first few days at the Egleston Sq. YMCA coordinating the CyberY computer labs. My full title is CyberY Youth and Teen Media Developer, sounds so official. Well, I have just been getting a feelof howtheyrun things at this YMCA and the computer lab. Irealize that I have a lot of work a head of me and mad volunteers to recruite! Otherwise, everything is pretty cool. My apartment is in walking distance, I have free laundry, and a pretty purple room that I painted all by my self! that's enough more serious stuff next time, when something is actually happening.

1st Day

Derek Maxwell — Mon, 22 Jan 2007 19:46:15 +0000

So I have started my first day at Phillips Community Television (PCTV) here is a link to their website
phillipscommunitytv.org
I have got my desk and phone, so I think at least I will be comfortable at work.
In addition to serving PCTV with my skills in Graphic Design I will be working with the Twin Cities Youth Media Network (TCYMN). This is a coalition of local youth media initiatives. Below is a link to a list of those sites.
TCYMN
Thats all for now. Good luck to everyone on day 1.

Digital Arts Service Corps - first day

OpenWRT, RAID Crashes, and a Truck

First Day at PSO

First Few Days at the Egleston Sq. CyberY

1st Day