Aquarionics

Hate Technology

1. Thursday, 22:00: Accidentally buy an XBox 360
2. Decide it needs to talk to the network (before playing any games on it)
3. Current Network: Desktop (“Tsunami”) & 360 plugged into Belkin Wireless Router, laptop and Wii talk to it remotely. Cable modem is upstream on Router.
4. 360 cannot phone home due to closed ports.
5. Open ports
6. All ports not documented.
7. Fuckit(1): 360 in DMZ
8. 360 can talk to home for twenty minutes, then cannot anymore.
9. Reboot router
10. Reboot modem
11. Another 20 minutes
12. Fucket(2): Play GTA4 for a while, ignore the network. (Friday, 02:00)
13. Saturday, 06:00: Up early, decide to fix network.
14. Fiddle around with ports for a while, decide the route is at fault.
15. Attempt to reroute everything though just a hub.
16. Realise that takes away the single point of entry for the cable modem, which can therefore not connect.
17. Also: No DHCP server. Things complain at me.
18. Fortunatly, I have a spare firewall box (“Boilingpoint”) which still has IPCop on it from when it was my firewall in Bedford (and, before that, in Reading and Cambridge)
19. Boilingpoint has a network card and a PCI ADSL modem. On-board motherboard has no network. Turn out boxes of hardware looking for spare network card to use for upstream connection.
20. Fail. Find old desktop machine whose motherboard does have onboard networking, and cobble together bits of it and Boilingpoint until it works. (07:00)
21. (07:10) Machine stops booting (Fans spin, nothing happens), fiddle with connections and reseat ram to fix it.
22. (07:20) Machine stops turning on at all.
23. Transfer everything back to Boilingpoint, which at least boots, for fucks sake.
24. (07:45) Get tea, shower, email, clothes.
25. Find spare network card in sock drawer.
26. Install network card into IPCop
27. Attempt to reconfigure IPCop as GREEN/RED instead of GREEN/RED
28. Discover I can’t remember the root password for boilingpoint (Installed ~2003 and has Just Worked since then)
29. Decide to screw this for a game of sontarians, and install Smoothwall instead (IPCops website is down. Brand loyalty is strong within me. Plus, Neuro’s been recommending Smoothwall instead forever)
30. Realise I can’t install Smoothwall for the same reason I can’t bypass root on boilingpoint: because the reason it became a firewall box was that the PS/2 ports don’t work anymore, so cannot access it locally.
31. I don’t have a USB keyboard.
32. Plug the hard drive and network cards from Boilingpoint into Tsunami (Desktop) and install Smoothwall onto hard drive on that
33. Transfer everything back over.
34. This doesn’t work due to hard-drive naming.
35. Cannot SSH into new box because default smoothwall install doesn’t have SSH.
36. Cannot access web interface either. Don’t know why.
37. Resolve to borrow a USB keyboard from someone.
38. Now have to leave for Gamecamp London. Do so (10:00)
39. Gamecamp is awesome. I’ll write more about it soon.
40. After Gamecamp, go to party. After party, borrow USB keyboard from friend. Get home (02:00)
41. Discover that Boilingpoint predates having USB ports on the motherboard.
42. Search for PCI USB card we used to put a USB ADSL modem onto boilingpoint before we got the PCI modem.
43. Fail
44. Swear. Go to bed.
45. Have another thanksgiving dinner that couldn’t be beat, and didn’t get up until the following morning.
46. This morning: Decide to fix this once and for all.
47. Search for ages. Find USB card in box with university diploma in it, on top of a book case.
48. Repress momentary flash of optimism.
49. Install PCI card, configure Smoothwall
50. Access web interface.
51. Configure SSH!
52. Configure DHCP!
53. Connection to cable modem (RED) doesn’t work.
54. Swap network card roles a bit to see if it is a driver issue.
55. Isn’t.
56. More tea.
57. Remember that ex-NTL Virgin Media customers will still suffer from the fact that once Virgin have a MAC address for the connecting machine, they won’t accept a connection from anything else.
58. Put network back together. Access interwebs.
59. Discover that Smoothwall corp count MAC spoofing as a premium fucking feature, not to be fucking included with the free fucking distrifuckingbution.
60. Am a little put out by this.
61. Find out how Smoothwall works a bit, and hack the config file to run ifconfig eth0 hw ether 00:11:22:33:44:55 to set the mac address when the RC script sources the file.
62. There are more elegant solutions than this, including paying for the software.
63. Get a DHCP address!
64. Get a connection!
65. GET THE INTERWEBS!
66. Boot Xbox 360. Remember the Xbox 360? This is a song about Xboxes.
67. Cannot connect to XBox Live.
68. headdesk
69. headdesk
70. headdesk
71. Find a guide to opening up all the required ports to make an Xbox 360 work though Smoothwall
72. Assign the open ports to a static DHCP record
73. Xbox refuses to pick up the DHCP record.
74. Cut all electricity to the network, TV & surrounds and everything for a while.
75. Bring up everything in the right order.
76. Xbox still picks up a standard DHCP address. Same one, in fact.
77. Give in and move all the port forwarding to the address it wants anyway.
78. Connect to XBox Live.
79. Play GTA4.
80. Get stuck.
81. Write up all this.
82. Hate technology.