I recently bought Fallout: New Vegas for PC and played as a female character, who, as it turned out, was quite adept at melee combat. I played for ~130 hours, exploring over 60% of “New” Vegas, and finished at the level cap of 30. I used a rusted version of the venerable Super Sledge called “Oh Baby!” for for much of the campaign and, with few exceptions, my traveling NPC companions included Boone (a sniper with a chip on his shoulder) and Ed-E (a flying robot with a keen appreciation for LASER technology). Here are my quick thoughts on the game overall.
Pros…
After the bombs – I’m a sucker for any game, movie, etc. that takes place in a post-apocalyptic dystopian world. While there is plenty to do and see and plenty of characters to interact with, Fallout: New Vegas retains that feeling of loneliness you’d expect in a world gone radioactive.
Don’t get lost – Wide expanses? Um… yeah. One of my favorite aspects of the game is just how open it is. This game, even more so than it’s predecessor Fallout 3, has so many places to visit. It absolutely demands you explore it – all of it.
Now where was I? – If you pursued only the main quest line this would be a ~30 hour game and you’d miss 75% of it. That’s a bit like going to Disney World and only riding the Monorail. Boring. One of the more satisfying aspects of the game is the sheer number of side quests this game offers. You can’t sling a dead mutant Gecko without running into some faction that has a problem only you can solve.
Cons…
Have I met you before? – If you do a lot of exploring in this game you’ll soon find that places start to look mighty familiar. I guess with a game this size it should be expected that Obsidian would reused game assets occasionally. But many were used a lot – caverns, caves and vaults come to mind. Also, some of the outdoor areas looked so much like Fallout 3 you’d swear that any moment you would crest a hill and gaze upon the Pentagon.
God mode – Bethesda took a quite a bit of heat when Oblivion players found that the creature levels scaled with their character’s level. Gone was that feeling that you were the biggest bad ass in the land when you got to higher levels. In Fallout: New Vegas however, that is not the case. In fact, the balance seems to have tilted decidedly the other way. At around level 17, for example, there wasn’t anything, save for the Deathclaws, that I couldn’t absolutely destroy. It became very unchallenging.
But wait, there’s (not) more – One of the things I enjoyed most about Oblivion, Bethesda’s other open world RPG franchise, was the ability to continue to play even after the main quest line was concluded. I probably spent another 75 hours in the game exploring all of the nooks and crannies I missed. Be forewarned that is not the case in Fallout: New Vegas. Once you settle the ending one way or the other, the credits will role and you are booted unceremoniously back to the launcher. Fortunately, the game does provide a warning… sort of… towards the latter stages of the game. Problem is, that warning is anything but intuitive – it’s deceptively subtle, nothing truly indicating that *this* is the point of no return.
Stop bugging me – Seeing NPCs walking like zombies through bar counters or creatures floating in air is nothing new to those of us that have played Oblivion, Fallout 3 or any other game that uses Bethesda’s infamous Gamebryo engine. However Fallout: New Vegas brings buggyness to a whole new level, plaguing an otherwise stellar game. PC gamers especially are used to dealing with a certain amount of “issues” – a price we play for a superior gaming experience. But Fallout: New Vegas seemed to excel at frequent stuttering, slow downs, and freezing, and those were the not-so-bad glitches. There were quests in this game that I absolutely could not complete because the game would crash to the desktop at the same point every time. Several times I actually wondered if I should give up on it entirely.
Tips…
Bug killer – I found the Fallout Wiki and the Segment Next site helpful in fixing bugs. Shutting off my PC’s antivirus program seemed to help too. Save often.
I love you man – If you’re going to play as a melee character, and let’s face it, who doesn’t enjoy swinging a big-ass maul made out of rebar and cement, or a sword made from a guard rail, then I strongly endorse Boone and Ed-E as your traveling companions. Boone’s awesome sniper abilities will compliment you well, and Ed-E will hover near you until blaring his battle anthem and blasting any enemies with his LASER.
Magellen – If you only pursue the main story line you’re really doing yourself a bad. As soon as you leave Doc Mitchell’s house, solve Goodsprings’ problems then hit the road.
A quick update to let you all know that I’ve added a servers tab at the top of the site that will bring you to some pages with real-time information about the Quake 3 and Quake 4 servers I operate. This is something I’ve been meaning to do for awhile and finally had some time around the holidays to hack together enough (really ugly) PHP code to make it happen. Stop by these servers anytime if you’d like to get your frag on!
Update: Due to some security concerns I am no longer making these servers available publicly. As a result, I have removed the tab from the site.
(20170504 — The steps in this post were amended to address changes in recent versions of software — iceflatline)
In a previous post, I described how to install and setup pfSense in a home network. In this post I will describe how to configure pfSense to act as an Network Time Protocol (“NTP”) server, as well as how to configure various hosts in your network to synchronize their local clock to this server.
pfSense is a customized version of FreeBSD tailored specifically for use as a perimeter firewall and router. It can be managed almost entirely from a web-based GUI. In addition to being a firewall and routing platform, pfSense includes a long list of other features, as well as a package system allowing its capabilities to be expanded even further. pfSense is free, open source software distributed under the BSD license.
Originally designed by David L. Mills of the University of Delaware circa 1985, NTP is a protocol for synchronizing the clocks of computer systems over packet-switched, variable-latency data networks, and one of the oldest Internet protocols still in use. NTP uses User Datagram Protocol (UDP) port number 123. pfSense uses OpenNTPD, a free, easy to use implementation of NTP.
The versions for the software used in this post were as follows:
FreeBSD 11.0-RELEASE
pfSense 2.3.3-RELEASE-p1
Ubuntu 16.04.2 LTS
Windows 7 Professional (x64)
Configure OpenNTPD in pfSense
Before configuring the OpenNTP server, it’s a good idea to ensure that pfSense itself is keeping accurate time. The best way to do that is to have it synchronize its clock with one or more remote NTP servers. First though, you should make sure that the clock in the machine hosting pfSense is set to something close to accurate – if the difference is too great, pfSense will not synchronize properly with the remote NTP server.
Login to the pfSense machine using its “webConfigurator” (webGUI) interface. Navigate to System->General Setup and select the timezone that matches the physical location of the pfSense machine from among the options under “Timezone.” Next, enter the host name or IP address for the remote NTP server under “Timeservers” (Remember to add at least one DNS server under “DNS Servers” if you decide to use a host name instead of an IP address). Most likely you’ll find this field is already populated with one or more default remote NTP server(s) such as 0.pfsense.pool.ntp.org, 1.pfsense.pool.ntp.org, etc. These servers will work just fine in most cases, however you may get more accurate results if you use one of the continental zone servers (e.g., europe., north-america., oceania., or asia.pool.ntp.org), and even more accurate time if you choose to use one of the country zone servers (e.g., us.pool.ntp.org in the United States). For all of these zones, you can use the 0, 1 or 2 prefix, like 0.us.pool.ntp.org, to distinguish between servers from a particular region or country. (See the NTP Pool Project web site for more information on how to use pool.ntp.org servers). Like 0.pfsense.pool.ntp.org, these server entries will pick random NTP servers from a pool of known good ones. Also, while one NTP server is sufficient, you can improve reliability by adding more. Just make sure their host names or IP addresses are separated by a space.
Now that the pfSense machine is on its way to keeping accurate time, let’s configure its OpenNTPD server. Navigate to Services->NTP and pick which interface OpenNTPD should listen on. This will typically be the “LAN” interface. When complete select “Save.” The OpenNTPD server will start immediately, however there may a delay of several minutes before it is ready to service NTP requests as it must first ensure that its own time is accurate. That’s all there is to it. You’ll find the OpenNTPD logs under by selecting the ‘NTP” tab under Status->System Logs->NTP.
Configure Hosts
Windows
After configuring the OpenNTPD server in pfSense, let’s configure a Windows host to synchronize its local clock to this server. Right-click on the time (usually located in the lower right corner of the desktop) and select “Adjust date/time.” Select the “Internet Time” tab, then select “Change settings.” Check the “Synchronize with an Internet time server” box, enter the host name or IP address of the pfSense machine, then select “Update now.” It’s not uncommon to get error message the first time you attempt to update. Wait a few seconds and try again; you should receive a “The clock was successfully synchronized…” message.
Linux
Many Linux distributions feature two utilities to help the local clock maintain its accuracy: ntpdate and/or ntpd (Note: Linux systems using systemd-timesyncd are discussed below). The ntpdate utility is typically included in Linux distributions as a default package, but if yours does not you can install it using your distribution’s package manager, for example:
1
sudo apt-get install ntpdate
ntpdate typically runs once at boot time and will synchronize the local clock with a default NTP server defined by the distribution. However what if this machine isn’t rebooted often, say in the case of a server for example? And what about using the OpenNTPD server in the pfSense machine? We can address both of those issues by occasionally running ntpdate using the following command. For this and subsequent examples we’ll assume the IP address assigned to the LAN interface in the pfSense machine is 192.168.1.1:
1
sudo ntpdate192.168.1.1
Perhaps a more effective approach though is to use cron, a utility that allows tasks to be automatically run in the background at regular intervals by the cron daemon. These tasks are typically referred to as “cron jobs.” A “crontab” is a file which contains one or more cron job entries to be run at specified times. You can create a new crontab (or edit an exiting one) using the command crontab -e under your user account. Because ntpdate needs to be run by the system’s root user we’ll create the crontab using the command sudo crontab -e. Here’s some example cron job entries using the ntpdate command. Note that cron will attempt to email to the user the output of the commands it runs. To silence this, you can redirect the command output to /dev/null:
While using ntpdate will certainly work well, the utility ntpd on the other hand is considerably more sophisticated. It continually runs, calculating the drift of the local clock and then adjusting its time on an ongoing basis by synchronizing with one or more NTP servers. By default ntpd acts as a NTP client, querying NTP servers to set the local clock, however it also can act as a NTP server, providing time service to other clients. Alas though, nothing is free, and using ntpd will result in yet one more system process that may not otherwise be running in your system, consuming both CPU and memory resources, albeit modestly.
Like ntpdate many Linux distributions include ntpd by default. If yours does not, you can install it using your distribution’s package manager, for example:
1
sudo apt-get install ntp
The installation process should add ntpd to the requisite run levels and start its daemon automatically. Now we need to configure it so that it acts as a NTP client only and not as a NTP server. After all, that’s what we’re going to use the pfSense machine for right?
ntpd is configured using the file /etc/ntp.conf. Open this file and comment out the existing ntp pool servers, then add the IP address assigned to the LAN interface on the pfSense machine. Again, we’ll assume this address is 192.168.1.1. Appending the “iburst” option to the address will provide for faster initial synchronisation. We’ll also want to comment out the NTP server-related options that allow the local machine to exchange time with other host devices on the network and interrogate the local NTP server. The remaining options can remain at their default settings:
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25
26
27
28
29
30
31
32
33
34
35
36
37
38
39
40
41
42
43
44
45
46
47
48
49
50
51
52
53
54
55
56
# /etc/ntp.conf, configuration for ntpd; see ntp.conf(5) for help
driftfile/var/lib/ntp/ntp.drift
# Enable this if you want statistics to be logged.
#statsdir /var/log/ntpstats/
statistics loopstats peerstats clockstats
filegen loopstats file loopstats type day enable
filegen peerstats file peerstats type day enable
filegen clockstats file clockstats type day enable
# Specify one or more NTP servers.
# Use servers from the NTP Pool Project. Approved by Ubuntu Technical Board
# on 2011-02-08 (LP: #104525). See http://www.pool.ntp.org/join.html for
# more information.
#server 0.ubuntu.pool.ntp.org
#server 1.ubuntu.pool.ntp.org
#server 2.ubuntu.pool.ntp.org
#server 3.ubuntu.pool.ntp.org
server192.168.1.1iburst
# Use Ubuntu's ntp server as a fallback.
#server ntp.ubuntu.com
# Access control configuration; see /usr/share/doc/ntp-doc/html/accopt.html for
# details. The web page <http://support.ntp.org/bin/view/Support/AccessRestrictions>
# might also be helpful.
#
# Note that "restrict" applies to both servers and clients, so a configuration
# that might be intended to block requests from certain clients could also end
# up blocking replies from your own upstream servers.
# By default, exchange time with everybody, but don't allow configuration.
#restrict -4 default kod notrap nomodify nopeer noquery
#restrict -6 default kod notrap nomodify nopeer noquery
# Local users may interrogate the ntp server more closely.
#restrict 127.0.0.1
#restrict ::1
# Clients from this (example!) subnet have unlimited access, but only if
# If you want to provide time to your local subnet, change the next line.
# (Again, the address is an example only.)
#broadcast 192.168.123.255
# If you want to listen to time broadcasts on your local subnet, de-comment the
# next lines. Please do this only if you trust everybody on the network!
#disable auth
#broadcastclient
A comment about the driftfile option: this file is used to store the local clock’s frequency offset. ntpd uses this file to automatically compensate for the local clock’s natural time drift, allowing it to maintain reasonably accurate time even if it cannot communicate with the pfSense machine for some period of time.
While not required, you can run the ntpdate command one time to fully synchronize the local clock with the OpenNTPD server in pfSense, then restart ntpd.
1
2
3
sudo/etc/init.d/ntp stop
sudo ntpdate192.168.1.1
sudo/etc/init.d/ntp start
In recent Linux releases using systemd-timesyncd, timedatectl replaces ntpdate and timesyncd replaces the client portion of ntpd. By default timedatectl syncs the time by querying one or more NTP servers once on boot and later on uses socket activation to recheck once network connections become active. timesyncd on the other hand regularly queries the NTP server(s) to keep the time in sync. It also stores time updates locally, so that after reboots monotonically advances if applicable.
The NTP server(s) used to sync time for timedatectl and timesyncd from can be specified in /etc/systemd/timesyncd.conf. By default the system will rely upon the default NTP server(s) defined by the distribution and specified by FallbackNTP= in the “[Time]” section of the file. To use the OpenNTPD server in the pfSense machine, uncomment NTP= and append the IP address assigned to the LAN interface on the pfSense machine. Again, assuming this address is 192.168.1.1:
1
2
3
[Time]
NTP=192.168.1.1
#FallbackNTP=ntp.ubuntu.com
You can specify additional NTP servers by listing their host names or IP addresses separated by a space on these lines. Now run the following command:
1
timedatectl set-ntp yes
The current status of time and time configuration via timedatectl and timesyncd can be checked with the command timedatectl status:
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
$timedatectl status
Local time:Tue2017-04-2517:41:04EDT
Universal time:Tue2017-04-2521:41:04UTC
RTC time:Tue2017-04-2521:41:04
Time zone:America/New_York(EDT,-0400)
Network time on:yes
NTP synchronized:yes
RTC inlocal TZ:no
FreeBSD
ntpdate and ntpd are installed in FreeBSD by default, however ntpd is not configured to start at boot time.
Similar to Linux, we can run ntpdate manually as root to synchronize with the OpenNTP server running in the pfSense machine. Again, we’ll assume 192.168.1.1 is the IP address assigned to the LAN interface on the pfSense machine.
1
ntpdate192.168.1.1
ntpdate can also be made to run at boot time in FreeBSD by using the sysrc command to add the following lines to /etc/rc.conf:
1
2
sysrc ntpdate_enable=YES
sysrc ntpdate_hosts=192.168.1.1
We can also use cron under FreeBSD to run ntpdate. You can create a new crontab (or edit an exiting one) using the command crontab -e as root. The example cron job entries provided above under Linux will also work under FreeBSD.
To enable ntpd under FreeBSD, open /etc/ntp.conf and comment out the existing ntp pool servers and add the IP address assigned to the LAN interface on the pfSense machine. The remaining options can remain at their default settings:
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25
26
27
28
29
30
31
32
33
34
35
36
37
38
39
40
41
42
43
44
45
46
47
48
49
50
51
52
#
# The following three servers will give you a random set of three
# NTP servers geographically close to you.
# See http://www.pool.ntp.org/ for details. Note, the pool encourages
# users with a static IP and good upstream NTP servers to add a server
# to the pool. See http://www.pool.ntp.org/join.html if you are interested.
#
# The option `iburst' is used for faster initial synchronisation.
#
#server 0.freebsd.pool.ntp.org iburst
#server 1.freebsd.pool.ntp.org iburst
#server 2.freebsd.pool.ntp.org iburst
#server 3.freebsd.pool.ntp.org iburst
server192.168.1.1iburst
#
# If you want to pick yourself which country's public NTP server
# you want sync against, comment out the above servers, uncomment
# the next ones and replace CC with the country's abbreviation.
# Make sure that the hostnames resolve to a proper IP address!
#
# server 0.CC.pool.ntp.org iburst
# server 1.CC.pool.ntp.org iburst
# server 2.CC.pool.ntp.org iburst
#
# Security: Only accept NTP traffic from the following hosts.
# The following configuration example only accepts traffic from the
# above defined servers.
#
# Please note that this example doesn't work for the servers in
# the pool.ntp.org domain since they return multiple A records.
# (This is the reason that by default they are commented out)
Now use sysrc to add the following two lines to /etc/rc.conf. The first line enables ntpd. The second tells the system to perform a one time sync at boot time:
1
2
sysrc ntpd_enable=YES
sysrc ntpd_sync_on_start=YES
Run the ntpdate command one time to synchronize the local clock with the OpenNTPD server in pfSense, then start ntpd.
1
2
ntpdate192.168.1.1
service ntpd start
Conclusion
This concludes the post on how to how to configure your pfSense machine to also act as a NTP server. The OpenNTPD service in pfSense will listen for requests from FreeBSD, Linux and Windows hosts and allow them to synchronize their local clock with that of the OpenNTPD server in pfsense. Using pfSense as a NTP server in your network ensures that your hosts always have consistent accurate time and reduces the load on the Internet’s NTP servers. Configuring Windows hosts to utilize this server is straightforward, while configuration under FreeBSD and Linux requires a bit more work.
Any geek worth his or her cred knows about Folding@Home, the distributed computing project started by Stanford University to help understand protein folding, misfolding, and related diseases. When proteins do not fold correctly, there can be serious consequences, including diseases such as Alzheimer’s, ALS, Huntington’s, Parkinson’s, and many cancers and cancer-related syndromes. People from around the world download and run software to band together to make one of the largest supercomputers in the world. Every computer cycle takes the project closer to its goals: to understand protein folding, misfolding, and related diseases.
I think Folding@Home is a great cause and created a Folding@Home team to serve as basis for contributing some of my spare CPU cycles. How about you? If you have a few cycles to spare how about dedicating some to their efforts? I would also consider it an honor if would join my team. To join, simply enter the team number 78746 when you install and configure the client.
Recently I had the pleasure of building a Network Attached Storage (“NAS”) server based on FreeNAS. Since then, this device has more than fulfilled my initial requirements for reliable file storage and media server in my network. In a previous post, I described how I configured FreeNAS to store web files and serve as a document root for the Apache http server implemented in my Ubuntu server. Using a similar approach, this post will describe how I configured FreeNAS to host my Subversion (“svn”) repository.
Software versions used in this post were as follows:
FreeNAS v0.7.1 Shere (revision 5127)
Ubuntu Server v10.04 LTS (x64)
Subversion 1.6.6dfsg-2ubuntu1
nfs-common v1:1.2.0-4ubuntu4
portmap v6.0.0-1ubuntu2
Configuring the FreeNAS Server
I began by creating the directory svn on /mnt/files, an existing mount point on my FreeNAS server. This directory would serve as the location for my svn repository. Then I enabled the Network File System (“NFS”) service so that /mnt/files/svn could be accessed from the Ubuntu server. To do this, navigate to Services->NFS->Settings and make sure that the check box for enabling NFS is checked and specify the number of servers that will run (the default value of four should easily handle dozens of users). Now select “Save and Restart.” Next, navigate to Services->NFS->Shares and select the “+” icon, where you are presented with the configuration screen for creating a new NFS share. Enter the path to be shared; the network that is authorized to access this shared path; and, make sure that the “All dirs” checkbox selected. The remaining options can retain their defaults (See Figure 1). Now select “Add” then “Apply changes.”
Figure 1
Configuring the Ubuntu Server
In order to mount the NFS shared path without error, I needed to add a couple of packages. The nfs-common package is needed when a host acts as an NFS client, and includes a number of processes that ensure a particular NFS connection is allowed and may proceed. Also, because NFS relies upon remote procedure calls to function, the package portmap is needed in order to map RPC requests to the NFS service:
1
sudo apt-get install nfs-common portmap
After these requisite packages were added, I created a directory to mount the NFS shared path. In this command, you must include the IP address of the FreeNAS server as well as the path to the directory created on it previously:
1
2
sudo mkdir/media/svn
sudo mount192.168.10.5:/mnt/files/svn/media/svn
Then I made sure the permissions for this directory were set correctly:
1
sudo chmod755/media/svn
Next, I added the following lines to /etc/fstab in order for the shared path to mount automatically at boot time:
1
2
3
4
5
6
###Start iceflatline
#Mount the FreeNAS directory /mnt/files/svn for use as a Subversion repository
Then I installed Subversion. The Subversion package for Ubuntu includes the Subversion client, tools to create a Subversion repository (svnadmin), and a custom protocol to make the repository I create on FreeNAS available over my network (svnserve):
1
sudo apt-get install subversion
And created an svn repository at the root of the shared path:
1
svnadmin create/media/svn
Next, I removed anonymous access to the repository and established write privileges for authenticated users. To do this, open /media/svn/conf/svnserve.conf and uncomment the following lines (Note: The svnserve.conf file is sensitive to white spaces, so make sure to not leave a space preceding the line when removing the hash (#) symbol):
1
2
3
anon-access=none
auth-access=write
password-db=passwd
Then I added myself as an authenticated user to the /media/svn/conf/passwd file:
1
2
3
# harry = harryssecret
# sally = sallyssecret
iceflatline=<my password>
I plan to use svn’s custom protocol for access to the repository so I need to start the svn server. One way to start it is to use the svnserve command:
1
svnserve-d-r/media/svn
However, I wanted the svn server to start up at boot time, as well as have stop and restart capabilities while it was running, so I created the following simple init script:
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25
26
27
28
29
30
31
32
33
34
35
36
37
38
39
40
41
42
43
44
45
46
47
48
49
50
51
52
53
54
55
56
57
58
59
60
61
62
63
64
65
66
67
68
69
70
71
72
73
74
75
76
77
78
79
80
81
82
83
84
85
86
#! /bin/sh
### BEGIN INIT INFO
# Provides: svnserve
# Required-Start:
# Required-Stop:
# Default-Start: 2 3 4 5
# Default-Stop: 0 1 6
# Short-Description: svnserve init script
# Description: This file is used to start, stop, restart,
# and determine status of the svn server daemon.
# Author: iceflatline <iceflatline@gmail.com>
### END INIT INFO
### START OF SCRIPT
set-e
# PATH should only include /usr/* if it runs after the mountnfs.sh script
PATH=/sbin:/usr/sbin:/bin:/usr/bin
DESC="svnserve"
NAME=svnserve
DAEMON=/usr/bin/$NAME
# Make sure the path in DAEMON_ARGS
# reflects the location of the svn repository
DAEMON_ARGS="-d -r /media/svn"
SCRIPTNAME=/etc/init.d/$NAME
# Exit if the subversion package is not installed
[-x"$DAEMON"]||exit0
# Load the VERBOSE setting and other rcS variables
./lib/init/vars.sh
# Define LSB log_* functions.
# Depend on lsb-base (>= 3.0-6) to ensure that this file is present.
Now, if for some reason the Ubuntu server is rebooted, the svn server will fire up automatically.
With the svn server now running, I created a root-level directory in subversion for a project called “code”:
1
svn mkdir svn://192.168.10.5/code
After creating the project in subversion I can now use the standard svn commands or applications such Tortoise, RapidSVN and others to checkout the project or otherwise interact with the repository.
Conclusion
This concludes the post on how to configure a FreeNAS server for use as an svn repository. Sure, I could have installed the subversion package directly on FreeBSD, the underlying operating system for FreeNAS, but that approach adds processes that are not native to the FreeNAS implementation. By using the approach outlined in this post, I was able to place the repository on a solid, reliable and centralized storage system, and provide good logical and physical separation between the svn repository and the svn server functionality.
