The Foscam control script for ZoneMinder which I found on the ZoneMinder wiki was a good starting point, but seemed to have left and right wired backwards, and didn’t support the presets. So I’ve updated it to fix those issues, the script is below.

To install: find where the control scripts are installed on your distro. In mine I found the files in:

/usr/lib/perl5/site_perl/5.8.8/ZoneMinder/Control/

If you’re not sure where to look, run the command:

locate PanasonicIP.pm

This will return the location of one of the existing control scripts.

Once you’ve found them, create a new file called FoscamFI8918W.pm and paste the code below into it. As with the original script this assumes there is an admin user with no password on your camera. This will have to do until I can work out how to pass through a proper username and password from the ZoneMinder frontend.Update 27/02/2011: the username and password are now passed via the Control Device field. See below.

You’ll need to add the control script to the ZoneMinder interface and attach it to your camera. First make sure that ZoneMinder is configured to support controllable cameras. Open Options from the main console and click OPT_CONTROL in the System tab.

Then open the source options for the camera you want to control. Select the Control tab, and click Edit next to Control Type. Click the Add New Control button, then enter the following settings (Update 27/02/2011, see bottom of post for updated settings for IR control and username/password.):

Now save and close that window, and refresh the one for your camera. You should now see the Foscam FI8918W script in the list. Select it, and enter the IP address of the camera in the Control Address box. Make sure Controllable is ticked, then click Save.

Now if you view the camera you’ll have a Control option near the top. Click it to reveal the Pan/Tilt controls, along with the presets:

That’s it. Enjoy your controllable cameras!Â

Download the FoscamFI8918W.pm script. Rename to .pm.

I’ll update this post when I work out the password passthrough and how to turn the IR LED on and off via ZoneMinder. Update 27/02/2011: the script now uses Sleep and Wake to turn the IR off and on and passes the username and password via the Control Device parameter. You’ll need to enable those options on the Main tab of the Control like so:

And put your username and password query string in the Control Device field:

# ==========================================================================
#
# ZoneMinder Foscam FI8918W IP Control Protocol Module, $Date: 2009-11-25 09:20:00 +0000 (Wed, 04 Nov 2009) $, $Revision: 0001 $
# Copyright (C) 2001-2008 Philip Coombes
# Modified for use with Foscam FI8918W IP Camera by Dave Harris
# Modified Feb 2011 by Howard Durdle (http://durdl.es/x) to:
#      fix horizontal panning, add presets and IR on/off
#      use Control Device field to pass username and password
#
# This program is free software; you can redistribute it and/or
# modify it under the terms of the GNU General Public License
# as published by the Free Software Foundation; either version 2
# of the License, or (at your option) any later version.
#
# This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful,
# but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of
# MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the
# GNU General Public License for more details.
#
# You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License
# along with this program; if not, write to the Free Software
# Foundation, Inc., 59 Temple Place - Suite 330, Boston, MA 02111-1307, USA.
#
# ==========================================================================
#
# This module contains the implementation of the Foscam FI8918W IP camera control
# protocol
#
package ZoneMinder::Control::FoscamFI8918W;
 
use 5.006;
use strict;
use warnings;
 
require ZoneMinder::Base;
require ZoneMinder::Control;
 
our @ISA = qw(ZoneMinder::Control);
 
our $VERSION = $ZoneMinder::Base::VERSION;
 
# ==========================================================================
#
# Foscam FI8918W IP Control Protocol
#
# ==========================================================================
 
use ZoneMinder::Debug qw(:all);
use ZoneMinder::Config qw(:all);
 
 use Time::HiRes qw( usleep );
 
sub new
{
	my $class = shift;
	my $id = shift;
	my $self = ZoneMinder::Control->new( $id );
	my $logindetails = "";
	bless( $self, $class );
	srand( time() );
	return $self;
}
 
our $AUTOLOAD;
 
sub AUTOLOAD
{
	my $self = shift;
	my $class = ref($self) || croak( "$self not object" );
	my $name = $AUTOLOAD;
	$name =~ s/.*://;
	if ( exists($self->{$name}) )
	{
		return( $self->{$name} );
	}
	Fatal( "Can't access $name member of object of class $class" );
}
our $stop_command;
 
sub open
{
	my $self = shift;
 
	$self->loadMonitor();
 
	use LWP::UserAgent;
	$self->{ua} = LWP::UserAgent->new;
	$self->{ua}->agent( "ZoneMinder Control Agent/".ZM_VERSION );
 
	$self->{state} = 'open';
}
 
sub close
{
	my $self = shift;
	$self->{state} = 'closed';
}
 
sub printMsg
{
	my $self = shift;
	my $msg = shift;
	my $msg_len = length($msg);
 
	Debug( $msg."[".$msg_len."]" );
}
 
sub sendCmd
{
	my $self = shift;
	my $cmd = shift;
	my $result = undef;
	printMsg( $cmd, "Tx" );
 
	my $req = HTTP::Request->new( GET=>"http://".$self->{Monitor}->{ControlAddress}."/$cmd".$self->{Monitor}->{ControlDevice} );
	my $res = $self->{ua}->request($req);
 
	if ( $res->is_success )
	{
		$result = !undef;
	}
	else
	{
		Error( "Error check failed:'".$res->status_line()."'" );
	}
 
	return( $result );
}
 
sub reset
{
	my $self = shift;
	Debug( "Camera Reset" );
	my $cmd = "reboot.cgi?";
	$self->sendCmd( $cmd );
}
 
#Up Arrow
sub moveConUp
{
	my $self = shift;
	$stop_command = "1";
	Debug( "Move Up" );
	my $cmd = "decoder_control.cgi?command=0&";
	$self->sendCmd( $cmd );
}
 
#Down Arrow
sub moveConDown
{
	my $self = shift;
	$stop_command = "1";
	Debug( "Move Down" );
	my $cmd = "decoder_control.cgi?command=2&";
	$self->sendCmd( $cmd );
}
 
#Left Arrow
sub moveConLeft
{
	my $self = shift;
	$stop_command = "1";
	Debug( "Move Left" );
	my $cmd = "decoder_control.cgi?command=6&";
	$self->sendCmd( $cmd );
}
 
#Right Arrow
sub moveConRight
{
	my $self = shift;
	$stop_command = "1";
	Debug( "Move Right" );
	my $cmd = "decoder_control.cgi?command=4&";
	$self->sendCmd( $cmd );
}
 
#Diagonally Up Right Arrow
sub moveConUpRight
{
	my $self = shift;
	$stop_command = "1";
	Debug( "Move Diagonally Up Right" );
	my $cmd = "decoder_control.cgi?command=90&";
	$self->sendCmd( $cmd );
}
 
#Diagonally Down Right Arrow
sub moveConDownRight
{
	my $self = shift;
	$stop_command = "1";
	Debug( "Move Diagonally Down Right" );
	my $cmd = "decoder_control.cgi?command=92&";
	$self->sendCmd( $cmd );
}
 
#Diagonally Up Left Arrow
sub moveConUpLeft
{
	my $self = shift;
	$stop_command = "1";
	Debug( "Move Diagonally Up Left" );
	my $cmd = "decoder_control.cgi?command=91&";
	$self->sendCmd( $cmd );
}
 
#Diagonally Down Left Arrow
sub moveConDownLeft
{
	my $self = shift;
	$stop_command = "1";
	Debug( "Move Diagonally Down Left" );
	my $cmd = "decoder_control.cgi?command=93&";
	$self->sendCmd( $cmd );
}
 
#Stop
sub moveStop
{
	my $self = shift;
	Debug( "Move Stop" );
	my $cmd = "decoder_control.cgi?command=1&";
	$self->sendCmd( $cmd );
}
 
#Move Camera to Home Position
sub presetHome
{
	my $self = shift;
	Debug( "Home Preset" );
	my $cmd = "decoder_control.cgi?command=25&";
	$self->sendCmd( $cmd );
}
 
#Set preset
sub presetSet
{
    my $self = shift;
    my $params = shift;
    my $preset = $self->getParam( $params, 'preset' );
	my $presetCmd = 30 + ($preset*2);
    Debug( "Set Preset $preset with cmd $presetCmd" );
    my $cmd = "decoder_control.cgi?command=$presetCmd&";
    $self->sendCmd( $cmd );
}
 
#Goto preset
sub presetGoto
{
    my $self = shift;
    my $params = shift;
    $stop_command = "1";
    my $preset = $self->getParam( $params, 'preset' );
    my $presetCmd = 31 + ($preset*2);
    Debug( "Goto Preset $preset with cmd $presetCmd" );
    my $cmd = "decoder_control.cgi?command=$presetCmd&";
    $self->sendCmd( $cmd );
}
 
#Turn IR on
sub wake
{
	my $self = shift;
	Debug( "Wake - IR on" );
	my $cmd = "decoder_control.cgi?command=95&";
	$self->sendCmd( $cmd );
}
 
#Turn IR off
sub sleep
{
	my $self = shift;
	Debug( "Sleep - IR off" );
	my $cmd = "decoder_control.cgi?command=94&";
	$self->sendCmd( $cmd );
}
 
1;

NAT loopback you say? What’s that? Consider the following diagram showing a web server and work station both behind the same NAT router. The external interface of the router is configured to forward traffic to the web server to allow access from the Internet.

NAT loopback is functionality in the router that allows the internal work station to access the web server in the same way as external users. That is, via the external IP address. In order for this to work the router must allow the work station traffic to exit via the external IP address and “loop back” through the router into the web server. Not all NAT routers support this, and now unfortunately, not all firmware versions of the Draytek Vigor 2820 support it either.

My router had been running well on firmware version 3.3.3 for over a year, but the wireless is sometimes flakey, required a restart before devices can connect. The latest firmware introduces a number of fixes along with the ability for the router to reboot itself on a schedule. So I updated to the latest firmware available: 3.3.5.1. The upgrade went fine until I tried to access one of my internal web servers via its external address – this timed out. I confirmed that an external client could still see the server, so this was clearly a NAT loopback issue.

Next I downgraded the router to the next most recent firmware, version 3.3.4.1. This exhibits the same behaviour. Finally I downgraded all the way back to firmware 3.3.3. Thankfully I had a backup of the full router configuration so I didn’t have to reconfigure everything.

Oh, and NAT loopback is also important if you want multiple Xbox 360s to play well behind the router. Forza 3 in particular is very fussy about the network configuration if you want multiple devices on the same LAN in a game with external players – it’s the reason I bought the Draytek in the first place!

And finally, this is yet another example of the adage (which I would do well to try and remember this time) of if it is not broken do not “fix” it!

If you install Java 6 Update 13 and then try and log into Cisco SDM 2.5 it will fail. The SDM console will not load.

I found I had to go back to Java 6 Update 6 (available at the Java archive page, or direct download.).

With that the Cisco SDM started working again. I’ve not found anything about this on the Cisco site.

The image (click to embiggen) you see here is a screen capture of one of my virtual machines suffering some form of graphic corruption.  It should look like this.  This happens often enough now that it is seriously irritating.  I can make it go away by closing VMRC and reconnecting to the server, but I’d rather not have to do so several times a day (sometimes multiple times an hour).

I’m running Virtual Server 1.1.603.0 EE R2 SP1, and all my VMs have Virtual Addition version 13.813 installed.  The VMRC client which came with R2 SP1 is version 1.1.603.0.

The same corruption is visible from machines with ATI and NVidia graphics cards, running XP SP2, Vista or Server 2003.

So – why is this happening, and how can I stop it?

Anyone?

He used a custom compiled “rcon” binary to talk directly to the game server’s Remote Console port. This is the port that allows an administrator to configure the game, kick players, change maps and generally do all the useful stuff that a game admin needs to do. It’s the protocol used by the hlstats live stats page to determine what is happening right now on the game server. Unfortunately, as far as my Googling shows, such a binary doesn’t exist for win32. There is a perl module (kkrcon.pm) which does the work inside hlstats, but the command line wrapper for kkrcon.pm – kkrcon.pl – doesn’t seem to have been updated since 2001 and so doesn’t work for Source titles.

A little Perl hacking later and I’ve created a version of the kkrcon.pl wrapper that is capable of using the Source rcon protocol. You can download both the module and the wrapper here: source server rcon perl script. This was tested on Windows Server 2003 running ActiveState Perl.

With that done, we can use MRTG to run another Perl script which will run the new kkrcon.pl with the right parameters, request some data from the game server and then parse it into a format that MRTG can understand. The two scripts I used are much the same as I found on the Zokahn site, but tweaked to use my new kkrcon.pl instead of the binary and to pass the parameters in a slightly different way. You can grab the scripts here: MRTG Counter-Strike: Source perl data source scripts.

The last step is the MRTG config file itself, here’s what the CSS Users part of mine looks like:

Target[server.CS-Users]:`.\m_cs-s_users.pl <server_ip> <port> <rcon_password>`
Title[server.CS-Users]: Active Counter-Strike:Source users
PageTop[server.CS-Users]: <H1>Counter-Strike:Source Users</H1>
MaxBytes[server.CS-Users]: 16
ShortLegend[server.CS-Users]: #
YLegend[server.CS-Users]: Active Users
Legend1[server.CS-Users]: Current active CS:Source users
LegendI[server.CS-Users]: Users
LegendO[server.CS-Users]:
Options[server.CS-Users]: growright,nopercent,gauge,integer
Unscaled[server.CS-Users]: ymwd

It’s very important to note that those are back ticks (`) on the first line – NOT apostrophes (‘). This caught me out and stopped MRTG generating data until I’d fixed it.

You can see my graphs here, although there isn’t a lot of data yet – just waiting for the clan to wake up and start playing!

That particular graph shows the usage of my ADSL connection over time; green is downloaded data, while the blue line shows my uploads. It is generated by Tobi Oetiker’s outstanding MRTG – The Multi Router Traffic Grapher. MRTG is a free Perl script that connects to any device capable of talking SNMP and pulls interesting data from it.

I currently log DSL, Wireless and LAN use (Bytes per second), along with line noise and Noise Margin of the DSL connection. I could also log what the switch in my network is doing, and even what my various servers are up to. As you can see from the graphs you get a nice indication of traffic patterns over time – it’s very easy to spot peaks when BitTorrent kicks in and out, or when someone in a different time zone is playing on my Counter Strike server!

It gives me an “at a glance” overview of what most of my networked devices are doing – which was enough to make me notice the other day that despite having all my wireless devices switched off, something was still polling the Access Point. Turns out I’d left one of the laptops disassociated – but on – and it was sending a little chatter to the AP every few hours.

When you have a number of public IPs being translated through a router to an internal address space, a router’s dynamic translation can get full. I’ve got an 877W, and it seems that a combination of running BitTorrent and a CounterStrike: Source server can quickly cripple the router (even with a memory upgrade!). When it gets too full you end up getting timeouts on other connections, usually this is most obvious by my browser failing to return pages.

To clear the dynamic translation table before timeout occurs log in to the router via ssh (or telnet) and in enable mode, type:

clear ip nat translation *

That seems to do the trick on my network anyway.

I’ve sent a trouble ticket to support, but since they’re now owned by Netgear it’s anyone’s guess as to what’ll happen. Ideally I’ll get an empty chassis to put my (hopefully intact) drives in, and I can send my dead chassis back. Fingers crossed.

Update (6th July): I meant to blog this last week but: Kudos to Infrant/Netgear tech support.  I was contacted within a day by a tech support guy who took my diagnosis of dead PSU as correct and on receiving a PDF of my original invoice immediately authorised the shipment of a new PSU from the states.  This arrived a few days later.  Interestingly it’s a very different design to the original PSU, and includes a plastic riser to keep the cables out of the way of the air-flow.  It took a few minutes to install and my drives are all up and running again.   Great service!

It’s obvious why (after a little thinking!) the MSDE denies remote access by default! To change that behaviour, run the “SQL Server Network Utility” (SVRNETCN.EXE) and add TCP/IP to the enabled list. Sorted.

You will need:

• A copy of Microsoft Virtual Server 2005 R2
• cdrom-1.21.iso from the m0n0wall site
• a blank virtual floppy image (you can create this inside MSVS)
• a real or virtual machine from which you will access your “router”

Create a Virtual Machine

Using the Virtual Server interface, create a virtual machine called “router” (or some other meaningfull name).  It only needs about 64Mb of memory, and it doesn’t need a hard disk.  (Click “Attach a virtual hard disk later”).  Attach the first virtual network adapter to the Internal Network for now.  We’ll add more NICs and change the network configuration later.

Once the VM is created, you’ll have a “router” folder under your Virtual Server default path.  Copy the cdrom.iso you downloaded earlier to this directory.

In the Virtual Disks menu click Create->Virtual Floppy Disk.  Select the location of your router folder in the drop down, and give it a sensible name.  RouterFloppy.vfd would be fine.

You’ve now got all the files you need created:

Now go into the config for your router’s VM.  Virtual Machines->Configure->Router.

Select the CD/DVD drive.  Hit the known image files drop down and select the cdrom.iso you downloaded and copied across.  Click OK.

Now select the Floppy drive. Again, hit the known floppy disks drop down and select the floppy you created earlier.  Click OK.

Now add two more NICs.  I add two because m0n0wall always expects the second NIC to be used for sharing a WAN connection (broadband internet) and it’s easier to ignore this interface and route between the LAN and OPT interfaces.  (This will make sense once you see the web interface.)

You should now have a 64Mb virtual machine with three NICs, a CDROM attached to the ISO and a floppy attached to our routerfloppy.

Starting the Router

Starting the router for the first time is a bit fiddly as the VM will attempt to boot off a non-existent hard disk – failing to use the CDROM.  When this happens you’ll see:

To get round this you’ll need to turn off the virtual machine and then as soon as you’ve turned it on, hit DEL to get into the BIOS:

Once in the BIOS, select the Boot menu, and then Boot Device Priority.  Change the 1st Boot Device to CDROM, then hit F10 to Save and Exit.

The Virtual Machine will restart, and start loading m0n0wall from the CDROM.  The floppy is there to save our router configuration.

After a bit of virtual thrashing about, the router will present it’s default startup screen:

(The “microuptime went backwards” seems to be an artifact of running in the virtual environment.  It doesn’t affect the running of the router.)

You’ll need to configure which router interfaces are connected to which physical (or in our case, virtual) NICs.  Hit 1, and follow the instructions – I usually say “no” to VLANs, and then assign de0 to LAN, de1 to WAN and de2 to OPT.  Allow the router to reboot once configured.

Now set the IP and subnet of the LAN interface – this will be your management IP.  Press 2.

In this example we’ll set it to 192.168.0.2 in a /24 with no DHCP:

That microuptime() thing gets really annoying.  Thankfull that’s the last time we’ll need to look at the console for a while.

The Web Interface

Remember that when we created it we put the router’s NICs on Virtual Server’s “Internal Network”.  If you have a virtual OS (Windows, Linux, whatever) running on your Internal Network you can connect to the router from that.  If not, you’ll need to move at least the LAN IP onto another network.

For our purposes I’m connecting it to my external network card – this way my real machine will be able to access the virtual router’s management interface.  Go into the configuration for the virtual machine, then select the Network Adapters link:

Once that’s done, you’ll be able to connect to http://192.168.0.2/ from your real machine.  Try it.  Your username is “admin” and the password is “mono”.

We used m0n0wall to route between three different sites using its traffic shaping features to simulate lossy and high latency links.  I may go into the details of how to set that up, although the manuals on their site are pretty clear.

m0n0wall combined with Virtual Server mean you can do some pretty smart infrastructure simulation.  I’ve successfully routed between virtual machines across multiple host machines and real machines on the same networks.  Neat.