Nathan Butcher's Website of Technical Documentation
Hi everyone and welcome to the site. I'm a busy guy so forgive me if the website isn't pretty, when/if I get time I'll dress the place up a bit. Having said that, I'm using this site to host a pile of computer related documentation and projects I've done, mainly for my own reference... so it's a geeky site anyway. I'm coding most of it from text editor on a Zaurus PDA on my daily commute to work in a crowded Japanese train (close to the only spare time I get). I'm going to concentrate on substance over style - and hopefully I'll be able to make plenty of decent info available.
I'm currently working as a system/network engineer and administrator in a Japanese IT company for some important customers. I also do IT related translation work. While I have my CCNA and can configure switches, I mainly specialize in anything unixy, that is:- Solaris, Linux, and the BSDs. I'm very much a free and open source software advocate, but I grew up using the Commodore 64. I have a SL-C3000 Zaurus I picked up over here. I can't use a laptop on a packed train, but I can use a Zaurus! I use Debian on the desktop, although some Gentoo developer friends want me to switch.
The site is currently a work in progress and under contruction (and will continue to be) for quite a while. Some links just don't work, and I know about them. Most of my original documentation is in Japanese and I have to translate it all back into English! This will take some time.
Site Index
PROGRAMMING PROJECTS
Simple games in C - Here is what I got up to in a few spare hours of C coding.
Collection of UNIX scripts - Some administration scripts. I will be adding to this as I make them.
Exim Bounce/Tar listing - Perl modules which socket into Exim's acl system to catch spammers.
Nagios plugin for GEOM - A Nagios plugin to monitor FreeBSD GEOM volumes.
Nagios plugin for ZFS - A Nagios plugin to monitor ZFS zpools.
Nagios plugin for portaudit - A Nagios plugin to monitor the security and obsolescence of packages on a FreeBSD system
Nagios plugin for vinum - A Nagios plugin to monitor vinum volumes on legacy FreeBSD 4.x systems
Nagios plugin for sysctls - A Nagios plugin to monitor sysctl oids in FreeBSD system kernels
HOWTO DOCUMENTATION
FreeBSD installation - How to do a proper FreeBSD install.
FreeBSD CVS server - Installing CVSUP server to get FreeBSD source and ports.
FreeBSD upgrading - How to professionally upgrade a production FreeBSD server.
FreeBSD Japanese input - Getting Japanese input and functionality into FreeBSD in a few easy steps.
FreeBSD jail VPS server - How to run sandboxed instances of FreeBSD on the same server, and creating system images for that purpose.
FreeBSD GEOM mirroring - An overly simplistic howto on how to make RAID-1 in software on recent FreeBSD. Do you really need hardware RAID cards?
FreeBSD GEOM gate daemon - How to share a device node over the network to a waiting client
PureFTPd and user quotas - How to set up user quotas for PureFTPd users.
FreeBSD Loadbalancing and failover - How to save lots of money and never have to buy dedicated appliances for this job.
FreeBSD and joysticks - Are you game enough to use FreeBSD as a gaming platform?
FreeBSD and Nagios - A primer to configuring Nagios well enough to monitor your servers.
Linux LVS - A few notes for setting up loadbalanced and failover systems using Linux
ZAURUS PDA STUFF
VICE emulator for the Zaurus - I got the VICE emulator to run on the Zaurus..... slowly.
PRBOOM for the Zaurus - Doom on your Zaurus.
COMMODORE 64 PROJECTS - (Some really old stuff)
CMD HD Catalog system - This was I project I did ages ago to design a program cataloging system on this piece of Commdore 64 hardware.
T64 file extractor/creator - This was program I made because at the time, there was no T64 file extractor on the C64.
File splitter - When Commodore 64's finally learnt how to get onto the internet, we were able to download large text files, but weren't able to read them as they were too huge for GEOS. This program solved that issue.
Zip Drive on a C64 - Here's how to connect a SCSI Zip drive to a Commodore 64 and actually use it.
Hacking a keyboard to the SX64 - I managed to hack a keyboard from a broken C64 to an SX64.
EXTERNAL LINKS TO INTERESTING THINGS
GAMEBASE 64 - I helped out this project a little bit
The Treatise of Love - This document pretty much sums up human behaviour.
Dan Scorpio - Some incredibly advanced linguistics, and abuse of language structures.
Subliminal Harassment - Not sure how good this guy's research is, and I'm not sure if I agree with all of it either, but an interesting cynical perspective on bad workplaces.
And more to come.....