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A couple weeks ago we had a reunion for those of us who had gone on a mission trip to Africa this summer. Father Anthony Messeh shared a word with us about Abraham and his two sons, Isaac and Ishmael. Father Anthony was comparing Isaac and Ishmael, contrasting what the Spirit accomplishes versus what the flesh accomplishes. This motivated me to pick Ishmael as the character for study last Monday. I wasn’t able to finish it in one day so I ended up completing it today.
Biographical Study Form from Rick Warren’s Bible Study Methods:

At our first tech night last week, Magued one of our uber volunteers who is responsible for maintaining our Cisco firewalls and switches, lobbied us to get a network management platform up and running. Magued had lobbied for quite some time that we must get some kind of monitoring system up so that we weren’t blind as to what was happening on the network.

We had toyed with OpenNMS a few times but never put the full effort into launching it, so on Wednesday we pulled out a box and set it up for production use. Here is an overview on the install:

• Hardware: Sony Vaio PCV-RS420 P4 2.8, 1 GB RAM, 2-120 GB Software RAID 1.
• Operating System: CentOS-4.3.
• Configure for the software mirror
• Choose server/minimal install.
• Assign static IP address.
• Disable the firewall and SELinux.
• Log in via SSH or the terminal and start yum update to get the latest operating system and package updates.
• Install Webmin. Use the System -> Software Packages module to install new RPM packages.
• Follow the OpenNMS Installation Guide with a few things to watch our for…
• In section 2.3, the prerequisite RPM packages for RRDtool.
• rrdtool-1.2.15-1.el4.rf.i386.rpm
• rrdtool-devel-1.2.15-1.el4.rf.i386.rpm
• tcl-rrdtool-1.2.15-1.el4.rf.i386.rpm
• In section 2.4.1 of the guide, note that the second part should read:
  Find the line in the file that contains max_connections. It needs to read:
  max_connections = 256
  The line that contains shared_buffers.
  It needs to read:shared_buffers = 1024
• In section 3.3 note where the following variables are pointing to.
• $OPENNMS_HOME = /opt/OpenNMS
• $CATALINA_HOME = /var/tomcat4
• Edit the /opt/OpenNMS/etc/discovery-configuration.xml file so that it reflects the right subnets. It takes about 8 seconds to scan an IP address, so expect it ti take a while to discover all your hosts if you have a large network.
• Edit /opt/OpenNMS/etc/javamail-configuration.properties file to reflect the correct system sender account for notification emails.
• Uncomment org.opennms.core.utils.fromAddress=root@[127.0.0.1] and change the email address.
• Start up and begin to configure OpenNMS.
• Hint: Don’t turn on your notification status until you have configured notifications or else be prepared for a flood of emails.

After a few hours of discovery, all of our firewalls, managed switches and servers started showing up. After tech nights last night Magued helped us configure SNMP on our backbone switch and our main active directory server. SNMP is pretty cool, once configured right, OpenNMS “discovers” all the services and interfaces a device is running.

We got a good start on the network management system by getting it up and running, but the key is going to be in the configuration. We still have to get SNMP configured for all our firewalls and the rest of our servers. Once all our devices are configured correctly, we have to setup and tweak notifications. An added bonus to OpenNMS is that it does basic Asset Management. We have been looking for an asset management solution for a while but nothing jumped out at us, so I think we will start with this one for now. The nice thing with the integrated asset management will be that when we have an outage we can see exactly where/what the equipment is.

We have had OpenNMS up, running and minimally configured for two days now, it already caught a minor outage when our senior priest’s Internet connection went down at home. When the outage happened we realized the need for a way to correlate events so that when a connection that has equipment running on it goes down, we only get notified that the connection is down and not all the additional notifications for the rest of the equipment. It look like this will be released in an upcoming version, according to the OpenNMS Road Map.

I will admit that I am always craving the latest gadget, looking for a legitimate way to justify getting it. Now I have an excuse to lobby the wife, it’s genetic…

Got to get that gadget? It may be your genes

We have had Vonage at home for about three and half years and have been reasonably happy with them. We mainly had two issues, one was that we would be out of phone service during extended power/internet outages and two was that international calls frequently did not go through (when they would connect fine with other providers). I figured we had been with them long enough and it was time for a change, I had been reading up on PhoneGnome lately and it seemed quite interesting.

PhoneGnome is a customized analog terminal adapter (the Sipura SPA-3000) that connects to the internet and an existing phone line. The existing phone line is used to receive calls, dial 911 calls and as a backup during power/internet outages. PhoneGnome can be configured to receive voicemails and send them to email as a .wav file and dial out using any SIP VoIP provider.

I have a choice of Verizon or Cox for local analog phone service, I chose to go with Verizon because it gives me some redundancy (my internet is with Cox) and the wire is buried underground, Cox is strung up on poles and cuts through some trees to get to my house. Verizon has an economy messaging plan that gives you basic dial tone and free incoming calls for $5.50 a month and charges 9.6¢ per outbound call. Caller ID was an extra $7 a month and call waiting $4. I schedule my number to be ported from Verizon on Monday, July 10th.

I ordered PhoneGnome + SoftGnome package for $119.00. SoftGnome allow you to receive and place calls from soft client on your PC anywhere you have an internet connection.

Verizon came a day late on Monday, July 11th to install the phone line, but said there was a problem with the main cable on the street and they would come back another day. A few days later I found out that our number must have ported because we weren’t receiving calls on Vonage, Verizon didn’t leave any notice that they were done with the install (some things never change).

We had a visiting bishop in town so it was a few days before I could connect everything up and check what was going on. Our line with Verizon was active and I connected it to the PhoneGnome box. I connected the PhoneGnome box to our internal wiring.

I could receive calls now, but PhoneGnome would not complete its initial self-configuration process. I emailed their tech support and tried to call, but you cannot reach them directly, you have to leave a message (a little annoying). I got an email response half an hour later to submit a form online detailing the problem. I did so and got a response about an hour later saying that I need to enable stateful pinholes enabled on my Cisco Pix. I did a little research and found that all I had to do was add “fixup protocol sip 5060″ to the configuration. I checked the configuration and found that it was already there.

I decided to bypass the PIX and connnect PhoneGnome directly to my cable modem. I still couldn’t connect, so I emailed PhoneGnome tech support back. Tech support requested that I leave it connected directly to the cable modem and contact them. So this morning, I tried again and this time it worked. Once the initial self-configuration process completed, I put PhoneGnome back behind the PIX and it still worked.

I logged into PhoneGnome’s portal and enable basic voicemail to email and setup an outbound VoIP provider. I picked one of their existing options, VocalNet Gold Flate Rate Service, they are $14.99 for unlimited calling in the US and Canada. I may play with using SIPphone with their 1¢/min calling later on.

So far the combination is working great, Caller ID is passing correctly in both directions and call quality is good. This may be a good option for those who want to have the benefits of VoIP without losing the advantages of the PSTN. PhoneGnome also supports Iotum, a very slick call screening service.

Once I get my Verizon bill, I will do an exact price comparison with Vonage, including taxes and all. I will also post a follow up review once we have been using the service for a while.

I would like to welcome our senior priest at St. Mark’s, Fr. Bishoy Andrawes to the blogosphere!

www.frbishoy.com

Check out his blog and add him to your RSS reader.

Two of summer interns, Kyle and Travis, are wrapping up testing on their assigned projects. The first is an open source web content filter, we chose to use DansGuardian running on CentOS 4.3. The second is an open source spam/virus mail filter, we chose to use SpamAssassin and ClamAV, they found a pre-configured gateway called Piratefish which uses both and has good installation documentation.

They wrote up a rough draft on how they got DansGuardian up and running, I’ll post the final version shortly:

-Boot CentOS from disk 1
-choose skip
-choose next about 3 times,
-when it asks for installation type choose server
-automatically partition
-remove all partitions, yes you are sure
-next until firewall configuration, choose no firewall, and disable SELinux
-choose next, then click proceed when asks you to configure firewall
-make root password
-Package Group Selection
Editors
Development tools
-insert disks as needed
-log in as root
-type : ‘yum update’

-use WinSCP and place the webmin package in the root directory
-using putty type the commands:
‘rpm -U webmin-1.290-1.noarch.rpm’
to install webmin
-direct your browser to x.x.x.x:10000 (where x.x.x.x is the IP address of the box)
-click system, software packages, browse yum, type: squid, choose squid and click install
-using WinSCP copy and overwrite the squid config file to /root/etc/squid

-using WinSCP copy the dansguardian package to the root directory
-using WinSCP click networking, linux firewall, and setup a firewall using the defaults
-using putty type these commands:
tar –zxpf dansguardian-2.8.0.6.source.tar.gz
cd dansguardian-2.8.0.6
./configure
make
make install
make clean
cd
service squid start
service dansguardian start
service iptables stop
iptables -t nat -A PREROUTING -i eth0 -p tcp –dport 80 \
-j REDIRECT –to-port 8080
-using WinSCPcopy the html template file into the ‘/root/etc/dansguardian/languages/ukenglish/’ directory
-using putty type : ‘service dansguardian restart’
-using WinSCP copy the ‘dg-0.5.10-pr5.wbm’ file into the root directory
- using webmin, Click on webmin configuration, webmin modules
-install the file you just copied by selecting “from local file” and browsing for it by clicking the “…” button.
-using webmin, click servers, dansguardian, module config, and change the paths by deleting ‘/usr/local’ from any path that contains it.
-using WinSCP copy the ‘blacklists’ folder into ‘/etc/dansguardian/’
-using webmin, click system, scheduled cron jobs, create a new scheduled cron job
Execute as root
Copy the text from the ‘blacklistupdate’ text file into the “input to command” field:
type a command name and description
click the “simple schedule button” and choose “monthly (on the 1st)” from the dropdown menu
click save
-click the name of the cron you just made
-click run now
-edit ‘/etc/dansguardian/bannedsite’ list and remove the ‘#’’s to choose which blacklists you want to use, make sure the ‘#’ is removed before ‘*ip’ to enable IPs be blocked to protect against ‘ping’. Add any sites you wish to block in this file where it says to
-also edit ‘/etc/dansguardian/bannedurllist’ and perform the same basic actions.

-edit the file ‘/etc/rc.d/rc.local’ and add all the text from the ‘squidstartup’ text file.

-take the ‘phraselistsmay31’ file and extract it twice in the ‘/etc/dansguardian’ file

-Go to ‘network connections’ on the workstation you wish to have the internet filtered on, right click ‘local area connection’, click ‘properties’, click ‘Internet Protocol (TCP/IP), click ‘properties’, click ‘advanced’, click add, and add the IP address of the box that filters.

I got to spend a wonderful time today studying St. Andrew the Apostle, I am glad that God encouraged me to start spending more time studying His word. I look forward to doing this on a weekly basis.

Biographical Study Form from Rick Warren’s Bible Study Methods:

God has definitely been trying to drive home a point with me these past couple weeks. He is telling me that I need to give significantly more time to the study of His word. Yes, maybe I spend half an hour to an hour a day in quiet time, praying, reading, and meditating, but it isn’t enough. I need to set aside larger chunks of time once or twice a week to study the Bible in depth. Here are some snippets of what He has been revealing to me:

If I want to hear His voice, open the door and dine with Him. I am sure that there are many different ways we can hear His voice, but I know that the Bible is definitely one of them. Do I listen intently?

God is willing to teach us, are we willing to learn? He gave us the ultimate textbook, do I spend time skimming parts or open it up for serious study?

How can I “test the spirits”? Christ when He was tempted by the devil (Matthew 4) answered with scripture, but the devil also tried to use scripture. If I don’t spend time to really understand the scripture, with the guidance of the Holy Spirit, how can I test spirits and resist temptation?

By now, I am convinced that I need to set aside time for in depth study of the Bible, but then I begin to stress about how busy I am and all the work that needs to get done. This verse was comforting, if we are doing His will, He will provide. Now I am more comfortable with giving up significant chunks of time. I also began to realize that it was my pride and lack of faith that was telling me that I have to be the one to get the work done and that if I didn’t do it wasn’t going to get done.

We get to know God thorough His word. If I can’t spend a few hours a week studying the Bible, how can I spend eternity with Him?

I began to pray about how God wants me to delve into His word, I know there are many different methods of doing so. When I read this, I began to think, how can I imitate someone I don’t know. I decided that I would begin with doing biographical studies of characters in the Bible to see examples of how they imitated Christ.

Yesterday, we got to spend some time with Bishop Paul, our Bishop of Mission, He was sharing with us about what makes a great disciple of the Lord. He began with a verse from the gospel of John:

He was asking why don’t we do greater works than Christ? It is because we aren’t filled and led by the Holy Spirit. He use the example of Saint Paul, who was smart and intellectual, yet this is not what led to his fruits, it was sensitivity to the Holy Spirit. The only way to produce the great work is spending time getting filled and being obedient to His leading..

Now for action on my part. I had started using Rick Warren’s Bible Study Methods as a guide to studying the Bible before, but only made it through the first method, “The Devotional Method of Bible Study,” so I picked it back up today and read through the fifth method, “The Biographical Method of Bible Study.” He recommends several different characters to study if you are just beginning. I think I will begin with my namesake, Andrew. I have scheduled in several hours on Monday to take the plunge. I’ll post an outline when I’m done.

The big announcement I posted about earlier is the release of OrthodoxSermons.org, where our entire collection of sermons is available for FREE. The site contatins the largest collection of Orthodox sermons in English on the web and we still have many more to add.

The challenge now is to keep up with bandwidth demands, we will keep the site running at church until we get to 75% or so of what we can handle then move the server to a colocation at a data center.

Also, we are working on setting up podcast feeds for Light and Life, Wednesday Bible Study and the Sunday Sermon.

Found this on Digg, IBM engineers take a look at open source content management systems and decide to go with Drupal.

Using open source software to design, develop, and deploy a collaborative Web site, Part 1: Introduction and overview

We are currently testing out Drupal as a potential replacement for Joomla!, our current content management system for all our sites.