The Eden Project – Lost

I know, I know… I seem to be on an Eden kick. But like John 3:16, there’s a lot of power in Lost 3:16. 😉  Heh.  Yeah, skip to 3m16s and you’ll see what I mean. That bit keeps me coming back again and again. Then, at 3:46 I basically melt. I can’t stop looping this track. I have to admit, I’m digging The Eden Project big time.

Mako – Way Back Home (WE ARE FURY Remix)

One thing that always gets me is really. tight. harmonies. Mako had it on the original of Way Back Home, but I wanted something with a bit more intensity (it’s a pretty mellow track). Enter Trap Nation with the WE ARE FURY remix of Mako’s classic.

Take the intense harmonies of the original track, bring in a breakbeat, dubstep vocal chops, and an epic battle style for something I just can’t listen to without my phone warning me that “Listening at high volume for a long time may damage your hearing.”

That said, the original still gives me goosebumps.

Birdy – Skinny Love (Vanic Remix)

Time to turn up your speakers! This is a great remix. It’s a 5-minute crescendo that doesn’t stop oozing awesomesauce. Just when you think it’s starting to drip, Vanic turns back on the tap. Birdy has a great vocal, and the bassline build coupled with the unexpected (but oh, so welcome) dubstep breakdown makes it impossible for me to turn off the repeat feature.

For those interested in a little history lesson, here’s the original version of the song.

Why support may ask for your backup.nems file, and why you should never share it with others

During support sessions I often request either SSH access or a copy of the user’s backup.nems file. SSH access, it should be obvious, should not be shared with just anyone. Also, you should never, ever, ever, open SSH to the world on your NEMS server if you have not yet initialized it. This is because there are botnets that look for Raspberry Pi computers which use the default “raspberry” password, and then compromize them. Continue reading

Setting up NRPE on Windows for NEMS

Please Note: As of NEMS 1.2 NSClient++ is optional for monitoring of Windows computers (thanks to the addition of WMIC). If you’d like to use it, please follow the directions below.

  1. Grab the latest Windows client at https://www.nsclient.org/download/
  2. Install the client with the following settings:
    • Select to install the “Generic mode” NSClient++.
    • Choose “Complete installation” and if asked, choose to save config to ini file.
    • Under “Allowed Hosts” it should read 127.0.0.1,NEMSIP (where NEMSIP is the IP address of your NEMS server)
    • Clear the Password field for ease of deployment. NEMS sample scripts are setup to use NRPE without a password because I’m making the assumption that this is being deployed in a trusted LAN. If you do not blank the password here, you will have to edit all the scripts before NEMS will be able to communicate with this computer.
    • Enable all modules and change the NRPE mode to Legacy. NEMS uses Nagios 3.5.1 at present, and I suppose that’s technically “Legacy”. 🙂
    • Screen should look a little something like this:
      nsclient-setup
  3. Add your Windows host to NEMS. If you are using NEMS 1.1+ you can use the template “ourwinserver” in nconf. Just change the hostname and the IP address.

Please note: If you have a software firewall running on your Windows machine, setup an exception for your NEMS server IP to gain access through ports 5666 and 12489.