Category: Uncategorized

Posted on

Downloading Proxmox Container images

Before you can create a LXC container on a Proxmox virtualized environment, you need to download the template images first from an available list. You need to pre-download the images first befoe you can create new containers from them in the web ui.

From the docs here, there steps are (while ssh’d into your Proxmox server):

Update catalog of available templates:

pveam update

List the available templates:

root@pve:~# pveam available

system          alpine-3.3-default_20160427_amd64.tar.xz

system          alpine-3.4-default_20161206_amd64.tar.xz

system          alpine-3.5-default_20170504_amd64.tar.xz

system          archlinux-base_20170704-1_amd64.tar.gz

system          centos-6-default_20161207_amd64.tar.xz

system          centos-7-default_20170504_amd64.tar.xz

system          debian-6.0-standard_6.0-7_amd64.tar.gz

system          debian-7.0-standard_7.11-1_amd64.tar.gz

system          debian-8.0-standard_8.7-1_amd64.tar.gz

system          debian-9.0-standard_9.0-2_amd64.tar.gz

system          fedora-24-default_20161207_amd64.tar.xz

system          fedora-25-default_20170316_amd64.tar.xz

system          gentoo-current-default_20170503_amd64.tar.xz

system          opensuse-42.2-default_20170406_amd64.tar.xz

system          ubuntu-12.04-standard_12.04-1_amd64.tar.gz

system          ubuntu-14.04-standard_14.04-1_amd64.tar.gz

system          ubuntu-16.04-standard_16.04-1_amd64.tar.gz

system          ubuntu-16.10-standard_16.10-1_amd64.tar.gz

system          ubuntu-17.04-standard_17.04-1_amd64.tar.gz

For each of the templates you wish to use, download using for example for Ubuntu 14.04:

pveam download local ubuntu-14.04-standard_14.04-1_amd64.tar.gz

Now from the web ui, you should be able to click the ‘Create CT’ button and pick from your available templates:

 

Posted on

Amateur Radio CQ WW RTTY contest 9/22-9/23/17: 40m contacts using an end fed wire antenna at 5ft

I worked a few hours in the CQ WW RTTY contest today and logged 30 contacts so far, mostly on 20m, a few on 15m, and then this evening several on 40m.

For 20m and 15m I have homebrew wire dipoles in my attic at about 33ft above ground. They probably don’t work as well as they would at the same height outside in the clear, but I logged contacts (from Davis, CA – grid CM98dn) with Japan, Mexico, Chile, Uruguay, Hawaii, British Columbia, and across the US. I’ve worked my Worked All States (WAS) with these antennas, they’ve been working well for me so far.

I haven’t worked out a 40m dipole that will fit in my attic (without some serious bending back and forth), so for 40m and 80m I have a Maple Leaf 160-6m 60ft end fed, which runs along my backyard fence line. Now at about 5ft above ground a 40m antenna is far below it’s optimal height above ground (at least for a 40m dipole which should be 66ft above ground), and yet this antenna works. Does it work well? Probably not as well as an equivalent 40m dipole up at 66ft, but using this antenna this evening to work some RTTY contacts on 40m, I made 6 contacts all between 500 to 600 miles out to the East and South, and then one slightly further out, up to BC at about 700 miles.

I think at 5ft above ground this antenna probably qualifies as an NVIS antenna, but working contacts out to 700 miles is ok for what I’d consider a compromise antenna, or at least with a compromised installation. Or am I misunderstanding how these end feds work?

Posted on

River City ARCS weekly SSTV Net 8/30/17 9pm

This was my second time joining the weekly River City ARCS SSTV net and it had been a few weeks since the first time, so I had to go back and work out how I setup MMSSTV again. Since MMSSTV is a Windows app, on my Mac I booted WIndows 10 in Parallels and ran it from there. Unfortunately the combination of MMSSTV’s flaky soundcard settings and sharing a USB soundcard device with Windows in a Virtual Machine is probably not the best combination, but for future reference here’s the steps I used that finally worked:

  • Plug in the USB Rigblaster before starting Windows 10
  • From Mac System Preferences, Sound, set in and out to default mic and speakers, make sure Rigblaster not selected for either
  • Boot Windows 10 then from Parallels menu, Devices, Sound, select Rigblaster for both input and output
  • Start MMSSTV, go to Options, Setup MMSSTV, Misc tab, select Default for In and Out – this is shown in screenshot below:

The above steps seemed to work fine. Plugging in the Rigblaster after booting Windows 10 and then assigning it to the Windows 10 running VM when prompted by Parallels didn’t seem to work for me (although probably makes more sense), despite seeing the Rigblaster showup in the MMSSTV soundcard settings. No idea why this didn’t work.

Here’s a selection of the pictures received on the net this week:

Between each of these I was trying different settings and trying to get the Rigblaster selected in MMSSTV. By the time of the last couple of pictures sent on the net, I’d got the setting setup just right.

The River City Amateur Radio SSTV net is held weekly at 9pm, on the clubs 440Mhz repeater (which has coverage of Sacramento, CA and surrounding area). Details are on the club website here.

 

Posted on

BASIC 10liner 2017 contest entry – Boulder Jumper

I’ve seen posts about the BASIC 10Liner contest before, but this time I spotted posts for the 2017 contest with time to put an entry together. This weekend I spent a few hours putting together an entry using Sinclair BASIC on an emulated Spectrum, using Fuse for MacOS.

My entry is a take on the infinite runner style games, like Temple Run, but re-imagined in glorious 8 bit Sinclair BASIC style, I’ve called it ‘Boulder Jumper’.

If that’s not enough I went completely retro and implemented the graphics using only characters. This is my first entry to the BASIC 10Liner contest, and the first time I’ve written any Sinclair BASIC for maybe 33 or maybe more years.

My first thoughts were how can you possibly write a fully functioning game in 10 lines of code, but you can have multiple statements per line, and enter in either the 80 chars, 120, or 256 characters per line category. I think I’m just about squeezing into 120 per line.

Here’s a screenshot of the awesome gameplay:

Your character is a ‘b’ character, and rocks come from the right moving to the left, as ‘o’ characters. You press ‘m’ to jump and jump over the rocks or get squashed. You get points per rock you jump over, and have 3 lives.

Here’s the code in all it’s Sinclar BASIC glory:

And here’s the 10 lines in the Fuse emulator:

It’s not great and you could do a lot better (this is probably better suited to a ZX-81 than the ZX Spectrum), but it’s my first attempt for the 10Lines contest, and I had run writing and playing it!

Proudly powered by WordPress