Johann's Research

I'm not sure if my stuff is really research, but this is some of the stuff that I'm busy with:

Installing cacti on FreeBSD

Recipe to install FreeBSD, add ports mysql, php5 and cacti: http://wirelessafrica.meraka.org.za/wiki/index.php/Image:Installing_Cacti_on_FreeBSD.zip

If you intall it for the first time, you may have to follow this steps to make it work correctly:

1. Create the MySQL database:
# mysqladmin --user=root create cacti
2. Create a mysql user/password for cacti:
   (change user and/or password if requered)
# echo "GRANT ALL ON cacti.* TO cactiuser@localhost IDENTIFIED BY 'cactiuser'; F           LUSH PRIVILEGES;" | mysql
3. Import the default cacti database:
# mysql cacti < /usr/local/share/cacti/cacti.sql
4. Edit /usr/local/share/cacti/include/config.php.
5. Add a line to your /etc/crontab file similar to:
*/5 * * * * cacti /usr/local/bin/php /usr/local/share/cacti/poller.php > /dev/nu           ll 2>&1
6. Add alias in apache config for the cacti dir:
Alias /cacti "/usr/local/share/cacti/"
7. Be sure apache gives an access to the directory ('Allow from' keywords).
8. Open a cacti login page in your web browser and login with admin/admin.

Add the following line in the end of httpd.conf
vi /usr/local/etc/apache22/httpd.conf
Include etc/apache/Includes/*.conf 

vi /usr/local/etc/cacti.conf
Alias /cacti/ "/usr/local/share/cacti/"
<Location /cacti>
AddHandler php-script php
DirectoryIndex index.php
AllowOverride None
Order allow,deny
Allow from all
</Location>

Meraka wireless Network

We are making use of Linksys WRT54 wifi routers, re-flashed with dd-wrt software. We've also enabled WPA corporate mode, using a Radius server that verify users against the CSIR LDAP server.

Upgrading the dd-wrt firmware on a linksys.

Firmware upgrades are usually done via the WEB gui. Here is the instructions to do it on the command line. It's important to know how to do it, so that we can script it in future. Fist enable ssh via the WEB gui. You can find it under Administrator -> Services -> Secure Shell. Select SSHd en then add your ssh public key under the Authorized Keys section. Save settings. Now you can login without a password as well run remotes commands via ssh.

scp ftp/linksys/dd-wrt/dd-wrt.v24_std_generic.bin root@192.168.1.1:/tmp
ssh root@192.168.1.1 "write /tmp/dd-wrt.v24_std_generic.bin linux"
ssh root@192.168.1.1 reboot

Load WEB gui and verify if upgrade worked. Yes - all new.