Send Yourself Emails Via a Script/Cron That Attaches a File – Linux
I’m using a nice little utility called mutt.
To get this guy installed and you are running CentOS, use:
1 | yum install mutt |
To send yourself an email with an attachement and no text:
1 | mutt -a /tmp/BackupFile.tar -s "Your backup" MyEmail@MyDomain.com < /dev/null |
To send the same file but with text try this:
1 | mutt -a /tmp/BackupFile.tar -s "Your backup" MyEmail@MyDomain.com < /tmp/TextForEmail.txt |
This site has some good info on mutt and the mail command.
Pop Quiz Friday – Redirect Users Web Traffic Going Out
This will be the maiden flight of my pop quiz series. I’m going to try and do them at least every other Friday, if not every Friday. I’ll give you until the following Thursday to put your answer in the comments section. Without further delay, here’s today’s quiz.
You have decided that you don’t want users going to GregSowell.com anymore…how unfortunate hehe. Instead of blocking GregSowell.com you want to redirect the users to an internal webserver at IP 192.168.2.2. The internal server will host a page that says something to the affect of “You are not allowed to view this page.” You are using public DNS, so no DNS query trickery
Also, no squid or other proxy services.
I can quickly think of a couple of ways to accomplish this:
One way takes only a single command, but is the most basic.
The second takes 3, but is a little more clever in design.
MUM Poland
I saw that the Poland MUM is like a month away. Any of you guys going?
Looks like they will have some security lectures that should be interesting.
10Gb Routing and NOT From One Of The Biggies
So I got yet another Vyatta email…they send out a lot of updates. This one was touting 10 gig capability in their 3500 series 2U appliance.

Reminds me of a Jack and Jills from the 70s...hehehe
For the uninitiated, Vyatta is a routing platform built off of open source packages…sounds familiar, eh…hehe. Vyatta configs in files and doesn’t have a GUI and such. They thought a lot of speed. Anyway, back to the point of the post.
They say that you can do 10gig…what would keep Mikrotik from doing 10gig? They would need a 10gig interface for one, right. In steps the Neterion x3110 PCI Express 10Gb NIC.

This guy looks like it MSRPs for around $1000, which isn’t thaaaaat bad. You could snag a motherboard like this that runs around $230. I’m thinking you could pull everything off for less than $3000. 10 gig routing/firewalling for less than $3K is pretty impressive. Of course, MTK would have to add the drivers into ROS, but I assume if you wanted to really do it, they may oblige you.
Juuuust me thinking.
My Pan-Tilt Mikrotik
Posted by Greg in Hardware, Mikrotik, Networking, Wireless on February 1st, 2010
I had the desire, not the need, to be able to pan/tilt my Mikrotik AP from inside my house. It is a huge pain to go outside, climb the ladder, sit on the roof with my laptop and tune my AP. Yes I occasionally have to tune my AP. So I came up with a simple and relatively inexpensive option…A Pan-Tilt mount for a surveillance camera.
I found this guy on ebay for $99 with $20 shipping. Here’s my install:
As you can tell, the PT unit is about the size of a milk jug, so it’s pretty big.
I used a tailor light hookup kit to connect my cat5 hookup wire to the PT unit.
My superfly custom brackets that I bent…I bent them on my BBQ pit ![]()
I attached a piece of PVC to the top of the unit to hold the rootenna to. I then spray painted it to look, in the words of Rob, less “redneck.”
A full 360 degree pan takes about 45 seconds.
I really only use pan, so I unhooked the tilt once I got it set.
1 Year of Blogging
I was looking back at my very first post and yes, it is as lame as your average first post. I say hello and that great things are to come…sound like the lie I used to swindle my wife…hehehehe. I think I’ve at least helped one person, which is what I set out to do…this year, I plan to help two and possibly 2.5 people. What’s happened in this year of blogging…noting really springs to mind, because it is melted at the moment. Perhaps I will update this post before it published, but I doubt it.
I did come back to this post to update…I’m full of surprises. I set out to make at least two posts a week, and I have. I publish an article Mondays and Wednesdays without fail…which is quite good for me.
What am I most proud of from this blog…I’m really glad of the friends I have made
I honestly made some REAL friends, which I didn’t expect. Thanks to Rob, Andrew, Ian, JJ, Stan, Jimmy, Yeager, Rick, Normis, Holden and the rest of my usual readers that my brain can’t think of this late at night…hehe.
My consulting has picked up, which I’m quite proud of. I get to educate, help others and I get paid…sounds like a dream job to me…hehe. Someone told me I’m building up the “Greg Sowell” brand. I told him I’m going to be releasing my new line of “Greg Sowell’s hemroid cream” soon…heh.
Thanks to my new sponsors BalticNetworks.com and CablesAndKits.com. I never imagined I would actually have sponsors, but there you go.
My site averages close to 500 visits during the week, which still astonishes me. I remember when I got excited the day I had 10 readers…hehehe. My Mikrotik videos are doing well. The intro to MTK video has over 800 downloads on the PDF! I NEVER imagined it would be that popular. Due the QoS I had to implement on the videos, I found that I have at least one person watching a video at just about any point during the day. I’m struggling to find time to finish the slides for my next video “Mikrotik Routing”. I’m covering static, RIP, OSPF and BGP. I’ve gotten about halfway through OSPF. I’m putting a lot of detail into the OSPF/BGP sections…I want people to fundamentally understand how the protocols function. I should have it done within the next month. Then who knows…perhaps I will torture myself by doing a QoS video…hehe. Now THAT would take forrrrreeeeeevvvvveeeeerrrrrrrr.
Honestly, when I started this thing, I had no idea what it would be or where I would go with it. It kind of reminds me how my cousin would draw when we were kids. She would closer her eyes and scribble with her pencil. She would then take a look at the scribblings and see what it resembled. She would then finish the drawing from there using the initial scribble as inspiration. I guess I kind of started scribbling and eventually settled on Mikrotik education…hehe. Thanks guys…see you next Monday and Wednesday.
Mikrotik R52Hn
Looks like MTK has put out a new high power version of their N card. See specs below. Looks like they will be retailing for around $50 over at Baltic.







