Category Archives: Networking

Adventures in Administration: USB Extension Cables over Cat5e Ethernet

While working as an admin you come across some unusual requests. We have a conference room at work where we’ve been requested to have a fixed-position USB webcam, but they want to locate the usb cable approx 25+ feet away. They’ve also requested not to have a lot of running cables in the room, so this means also hiding the cables away in the wall. This would also mean some kind of adapter/extension cable. Looking around online, you can buy USB extension cables (some powered), that run 50-ish feet, but they’re usually in the $40+ range. I’m cheap, so I wanted a viable alternative.

Read more »

Realtek RTL8191SEvA Wireless in Fedora

We’re rolling out a bunch of Fedora-based thinclient-like devices at work that contain a RTL8191SEvA chipset. Unfortunately, this isn’t built into the kernel as of 2.6.38.8-32.fc15 (I think there are licensing issues at play), so it has to be compiled and inserted by hand.

Read more »

The $1500 SAN: Part 1

Inspired by the folks over at Backblaze, who describe in this post how they build (pretty much from scratch, and with a breakdown of components and basic wiring diagram) their own Debian-based SAN devices to power their backup business, I’ve decided to try and build my own Linux-based iSCSI SAN device.

Read more »