As noted in my previous post, I’ve been working on a small script to make the conversion of dotted decimal IP addresses into their hexadecimal values much simpler and automated. Below is the result of that work and the companion lookup table file that makes this conversion work. The script is written to request and to output information for use with Mikrotik’s RouterOS DHCP Server. When invoked, the script confirms that the lookup table is in the correct location; proceeding if found and exiting with directions if the lookup file is not found.

Recently, I needed to push a static route out to all DHCP clients on a network. With my memory full of Cisco ios commands, I figured this would be a piece of cake to implement before going on about my day. Well, come to find, things aren’t as straight forward on a Mikrotik Hex router (which I shouldn’t say was a huge surprise). Options like this are set using the hexadecimal values rather than the dot-decimal octets you’re likely familiar with.

While making a few changes to my lab network, I revised one of my IPMI user passwords and inadvertently locked myself out of that account. While the management interface was happy to accept the new password without error, it was beyond the 19 character limit and all attempts to login with the new, correct password were denied. To solve this issue, I turned to a utility from Supermicro called IPMICFG which is available from the Supermicro ftp site and supports BMCs which support the IPMI v2.

Local sync solution for small scale use Back in January 2019 I was on the hunt for a program that would let me keep a small shared folder in sync across all my local machines, that I could host myself, and that would not need to reach out to the internet to operate. That search led me to Syncthing and it is everything I needed and more. Thank you Jakob Borg (@calmh), Audrius Butkevicius (@AudriusButkevicius), Simon Frei (@imsodin), Tomas Cerveny (@kozec), and all other contributors to this project.

My backup strategy has varied through the years but has always incorporated duplication, at least of my critical data. On top of my current local backup drives, I’ve finally been able to setup a remote machine for offsite backups. I use a Raspberry Pi and a LUKS encrypted drive connected to my network over a VPN. Rsync is used as needed to run backup jobs to the remote site. For the time being, I want manual control over the process and have not automated the backup process.