Huge Wishbone Ash collection added to server

Well, a lot has happened since I fixed the ftp issue with the firewall script, but that’s a long story.  I ‘rolled it back’ to the state that it was in before I tried to get it working properly under systemctl, so I shall take another stab at it in the future, hopefully being a bit more cautious.

But, this update is not about the firewall, it’s about finally putting something back on the server that’s been missing since the huge crash back in 2007 or so.

Wishbone Ash!  Albums from 1970 up until 2015.  (I have some albums of Martin Turner’s Wishbone Ash, that I shall include later.)  Below is a list of the albums.  93 albums, 1800 songs.  Enjoy.

Wishbone Ash – 1970 – Wishbone Ash (1992 Germany)

Wishbone Ash – 1970 – Wishbone Ash (1994 UK)-Remastered

Wishbone Ash – 1970 – Wishbone Ash (2000 Russia)-Remastered

Wishbone Ash – 1970 – Wishbone Ash (Unknown)

Wishbone Ash – 1971 – Pilgrimmage (1991 Germany)

Wishbone Ash – 1972 – Argus (1991 USA)

Wishbone Ash – 1972 – Argus (2002 USA, Expanded Edition)-Remastered

Wishbone Ash – 1972 – Argus (2007 EU, Deluxe Edition, 2CD)-Remastered

Wishbone Ash – 1972 – Argus (2013 Japan)-Remastered

Wishbone Ash – 1973 – Live Dates (1995 UK)

Wishbone Ash – 1973 – Live Dates (2010 Japan Remastered, 2CD)

Wishbone Ash – 1973 – Live Dates (Unknown)

Wishbone Ash – 1973 – Wishbone Four (1994 UK)

Wishbone Ash – 1973 – Wishbone Four (2002 Japan)-Remastered

Wishbone Ash – 1974 – There’s The Rub (2002 Japan)

Wishbone Ash – 1976 – Locked In (1995 Austria)

Wishbone Ash – 1976 – Locked In (2013 Japan)-Remastered

Wishbone Ash – 1976 – New England (1992 Germany)

Wishbone Ash – 1977 – Front Page News (1997 Russia)

Wishbone Ash – 1977 – Front Page News (2001 Japan)-Remastered

Wishbone Ash – 1978 – No Smoke Whithout Fire (2001 Japan)

Wishbone Ash – 1978 – No Smoke Without Fire (1998 Japan)-Remastered

Wishbone Ash – 1980 – Just Testing (1998 Germany)-Remastered

Wishbone Ash – 1980 – Just Testing (2002 Japan)

Wishbone Ash – 1980 – Just Testing (2010 Japan)-Remastered

Wishbone Ash – 1980 – Live Dates Volume Two (2010 Japan Remastered, 2CD)

Wishbone Ash – 1980 – Live Dates Volume Two (2012 US Remastered)

Wishbone Ash – 1981 – Number The Brave (Unknown)

Wishbone Ash – 1982 – Twin Barrels Burning (1993 EU)

Wishbone Ash – 1985 – Raw To The Bone (Unknown)

Wishbone Ash – 1987 – Nouveau Calls (1988 Japan)

Wishbone Ash – 1987 – Nouveau Calls (Unknown)

Wishbone Ash – 1989 – Here To Hear

Wishbone Ash – 1989 – Here To Hear (2003 UK)-Remastered

Wishbone Ash – 1991 – Argus + Pilgrimage (2CD)

Wishbone Ash – 1991 – Strange Affair

Wishbone Ash – 1991 – Strange Affair (2003 UK)-Remastered

Wishbone Ash – 1992 – Living Proof – Live In Chicago

Wishbone Ash – 1993 – The King Will Come – Live

Wishbone Ash – 1993 – Time Was – The Wishbone Ash Collection (2CD)

Wishbone Ash – 1994 – Runaway

Wishbone Ash – 1995 – Live At Geneva – The Very Best Of Wishbone Ash

Wishbone Ash – 1996 – Illuminations

Wishbone Ash – 1997 – Distillation (4CD Box Set)

Wishbone Ash – 1997 – On Air (BBC Sessions 1971-77)

Wishbone Ash – 1997 – Trance Visionary

Wishbone Ash – 1998 – New England – Front Page News (2CD)

Wishbone Ash – 1998 – Psychic Terrorism (2CD)

Wishbone Ash – 1998 – Their Greatest Hits

Wishbone Ash – 1999 – Bare Bones

Wishbone Ash – 2001 – Live Dates 3 – 30th Anniversary Concert 2000 (DVD)

Wishbone Ash – 2002 – Bona Fide (2006 Limited Edition)

Wishbone Ash – 2002 – Live In Bristol

Wishbone Ash – 2002 – Tracks (2CD)

Wishbone Ash – 2003 – Live

Wishbone Ash – 2003 – The Collection

Wishbone Ash – 2003 – The Live Broadcasts (DVD)

Wishbone Ash – 2003 – Tracks 2 (2CD)

Wishbone Ash – 2003 – Warriors (2CD)

Wishbone Ash – 2004 – Almighty Blues – London And Beyond (CD+2DVD)

Wishbone Ash – 2004 – Lost Pearls

Wishbone Ash – 2004 – Phoenix Rising – Classic Ash Then & Now (DVD)

Wishbone Ash – 2005 – 25th Anniversary Of The Marquee 1983 (DVD)

Wishbone Ash – 2005 – Mystery Man (2CD)

Wishbone Ash – 2005 – The King Will Come (2CD)

Wishbone Ash – 2006 – Clan Destiny

Wishbone Ash – 2007 – First Light

Wishbone Ash – 2007 – Live – Timeline

Wishbone Ash – 2007 – The Power Of Eternity

Wishbone Ash – 2007 – Tracks 3 (3CD)

Wishbone Ash – 2007 – Wonderful Stash (3CD)

Wishbone Ash – 2008 – Argus Then Again Live

Wishbone Ash – 2008 – Now + Then (2DVD)

Wishbone Ash – 2008 – Tender

Wishbone Ash – 2008 – Tough

Wishbone Ash – 2009 – 40th Anniversary Concert – Live In London 2009 (DVD)

Wishbone Ash – 2009 – Melodic Sounds (4CD Box Set)

Wishbone Ash – 2010 – Club Visiounary

Wishbone Ash – 2010 – Roadworks Volume 1 – Live At The Grand

Wishbone Ash – 2010 – Sometime World – An MCA Travelogue (2CD)

Wishbone Ash – 2011 – Elegant Stealth

Wishbone Ash – 2011 – Keeper Of The Light

Wishbone Ash – 2011 – Live On Air

Wishbone Ash – 2011 – Performance

Wishbone Ash – 2011 – RoadWorks Volume 2 – Live In Hamburg

Wishbone Ash – 2011 – Wishbone Ash Live Part 2 – The Dave Cash Collection

Wishbone Ash – 2013 – RoadWorks Volume 3 – Live In Germany

Wishbone Ash – 2014 – Blue Horizon

Wishbone Ash – 2014 – RoadWorks Volume 4 – Live At Ashcon

Wishbone Ash – 2014 – Still On

Wishbone Ash – 2014 – The Living Proof

Wishbone Ash – 2014 – Trance Terrorism

Wishbone Ash – 2015 – The Album

 

CRAB server firewall.iptables now fixed, so it will restart without a reboot.

For those of you familiar with my Linux server, y’all know that I run many custom BASH, Perl, and Python scripts.  We are going to discuss today my iptables firewall script, or actually the fact that I took the time to repair it.   Since upgrading the server to Fedora 20 in September 2014, my firewall script would start fine, but would choke on restarting, reloading, or running it over itself.  The end result would be that the server would sever all ports with the outside, effectively taking it down, needing a reboot to get it back online.  This was a real PITA, since I couldn’t really make any changes to the firewall without reboot.  I thought it was an end result of the OS changing from SysV init scripts to a systemd system.  How wrong I was….  The cause was simply a typo that I made while adding a feature, and a ‘done’ without a ‘while’ and a ‘fi’ without an ‘if’ stopped the script from accepting the restart and reload argument.  Most of the iptables rulesets were created before this typo, so it gave the ‘appearance’ that it was working properly.  Debugging a script of this size is a fairly daunting task, as the main firewall script is a healthy 50 pages, and its configuration file (one of a half dozen helper files) is about 7 pages long.  Since I’ve had a few questions about this firewall, I’ll share it with everybody…..

Download links are only viewable to logged in users.  All the other helper files, as well as these are all available upon request.  If you are a logged in user, and downloading these files, remove the .txt extension from the config and main files….

This is the screen information if the VERBOSE variable is set to 1 (Select the pop-out gadget to see this properly formatted)

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This is the configuration file that allows for easy firewall config.     (Select the pop-out gadget to see this properly formatted)

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This is the MAIN iptables firewall script that should be run at start.  (Select the pop-out gadget to see this properly formatted)

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All in all, it was a fairly productive week off.  I have a few other minor syntax errors to chase down, but the firewall is operating within normal parameters…..

 

Security Camera BASH script to merge Zoneminder events into mp4 videos

The following script is a BASH (Bourne Again Shell) script that will take zoneminder camera events and merge them into mp4 videos that can easily be archived, or viewed.  The script will also ftp the resultant videos to a remote ftp server.

Zoneminder is a bit cumbersome to locate a particular event or time using the mysql events, or the ZM timeline, but this script streamlines that a bit, allowing you to use VLC or whatever and speed it up to ‘scan’ your day’s or week’s events…..

Very easy to configure as everything is set up using variables.  The script will create a directory name of the current date that it’s run under your home directory, or wherever you choose.

I have it set to run as a cron event daily, but you can set it to run weekly or how often you choose by changing the mtime value, and configuring the cron event to match.

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So as not to fill up the FTP server, I wrote a prune command that will delete those videos older than 60 days.  Also set to run as a cron event on the FTP server.  It will accept the following syntax:

/path.to.prune/prune </directory.path.containing.video.directories/

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Download

You will need to strip the .txt from both scripts and set them to chmod 700 and run them under the cron of the proper user.

Fender Bassman AB165 Mod – Switchable bass slope resistor part 1 – Remove death cap and bypass ground switch

This mod is the preface to putting in a switchable slope resistor for the bass channel.  First, unless you want to drill a hole to mount a switch, you may as well use the unneeded ‘ground switch’.  Also, if your amp still has the death cap, it will have to go, as well.  😉 You will need two 8 inch lengths of cloth covered stranded wire, if you wish to stay ‘period specific’.  Otherwise, you can use regular stranded wire, if that doesn’t concern you.  (I would keep the wire that you remove in case you wish to revert….) THIS LINK, Angela, has everything you might need, from cloth covered wire, to caps, or whatever.  So, besides the two 8 inch lengths of wire, you will need basic soldering skills.

And MAKE SURE that you discharge the caps, and verify it (like the video below) and UNPLUG the amp, since you will be working on the AC mains.

DO NOT MODIFY A RARE LEO FENDER AA864 CIRCUIT!!  ALSO, DO NOT ATTEMPT TO WORK ON THESE AMPS UNLESS YOU KNOW WHAT YOU ARE DOING, AS THEY CONTAIN VOLTAGES THAT ARE LETHAL AND WILL KILL YOU!!!

That being said, here’s a great video showing you how absolutely easy it is to discharge the filter caps in a tube amp.  This is how I’ve done it my whole life.  Remember, when in doubt, measure the B+ with a DMM!

In the picture at the right, you will notice the area that we will be concerned with, 20160909_104348_001and should be fairly common across the different Bassman circuits:  AA864, AA165, AB165….  You will notice on the right, that this amp has had the power cord replaced, and connected the hot and neutral wires to the two wire socket.  These wires are daisy chained across the ground switch before reaching the power switch and fuse holder.

20160909_105639-modFirst, we will remove the two small lengths of cloth covered wire connecting the black wire to the ground switch and the fuse holder.  As you can see in the picture to the left, I have removed those two wires from the terminals marked by the red arrows.

Next,we will remove the two small lengths of cloth covered wire connecting 20160909_111324_001-modthe white wire to the ground switch as well as the main power switch.  As you can see in the picture at the right, the points that I removed those wires from marked by red arrows.  You will also notice that the ‘death cap’ has been removed, as marked by the two green arrows.  (I actually just snipped off the lead going through the hole.)

20160909_112615Next, in preparation for actually wiring things back up, I removed the black and white power wires from the two wire socket.  I also cleaned out all the terminals of excess solder as you can see in the picture at the left.  I used a solder removal tool, but a cheap alternative is to use a round toothpick while heating up the terminal. 😉

Finally, we get to start wiring things back up!!  In the picture at the right,20160909_113804-mod you will notice that I slightly changed the orientation a little bit.  Now, the cloth covered wire is attached from the same direction as the white power cord.  (It’s far easier to get both wires through the terminal in the same direction.  I also marked the connection points with arrows.

Last connection!  20160909_120152-modIn the picture at the left, you can see that I connected the black wire to the fuse holder.  Now, we have the ground switch bypassed, and it can either be used, or replaced.   I will be installing a switchable bass slope resistor in the next installment.  I will remind you that solder ‘flows’ toward heat.  😉

Last check!  20160909_123918If you haven’t a lot of experience in doing things like this, I will suggest that you use a DMM to check continuity of all the changes that you have made.  Since I have 40 years experience, I simply plugged it in, and turned it on.  You will notice the maintenance stand that I built in an earlier post.  It makes it a lot easier to work on (and then test) your Bassman amp after you make changes.  I suggest that you make one.  Keep tuned for part 2.  😉

 

Tech, music, and general ramblings…..