Monthly Archives: March 2013

How to Stop YouTube from Sucking (DD-WRT Version)

This awesome blog post at MitchRibar.com outlined a great way to improve YouTube’s sometimes crappy load times and performance.  It works very well and I’m glad somebody took the time to share this knowledge on the internet.

His method is a local client only option, so if you have alot of computers like I do it may be a pain to set this up on every computer, phone, etc that you have.  Instead, I decided to try and block it at my router which I happened to have flashed with DD-WRT.

Here’s how you do it!

  • Log into your router’s admin interface
  • Click on “Administration” and then select the “Commands” tab
  • Paste the following lines into the commands text area:
    iptables -I FORWARD -s 173.194.55.0/24 -j DROP
    iptables -I FORWARD -s 206.111.0.0/16 -j DROP
  • Now click “Save Firewall”
  • You should now notice a firewall section with these lines added, which looks like this:
    firewall_settings

Congratulations!  You’ve now improved YouTube’s performance on your entire network.  I did this on a DD-WRT enabled router; but this could be done on any device that runs iptables.  Open-WRT, Tomato, Linux boxes, etc.  If you have ipables, give it a try!

Creating an HP Integrity Virtual Machine on HP-UX 11.31

When I was trying to find a way to create an Integrity VM, I had to do alot of research. It was difficult to find updated information and correct syntax for later builds of HP-UX and later versions of the VM software.  Being the thoughtful and forward thinking internet citizen that I am, I figured I’d give back a little…

So, without further adieu, here is the steps necessary to create an HP-UX Integrity VM on HP-UX 11.31 using HPVM version 6.x

Create a virtual switch first

  • hpvmnet -c -S <vswitchname> -n <lanID>
    • The LanID references the numeric portion of the name. Run netstat -in to find yours
    • Example: hpvmnet -c -S vswitch1 -n 10
  • Boot up the switch by running:  hpvmnet -b -S <vswitchname>
  • Run hpvmnet to see a status

Now, create the virtual machine

  • hpvmcreate -P <servername> -l <label or description> -O HPUX -a network:avio_lan::vswitch:<vswitchname>
    • This creates the VM with a default network connection.
  • hpvmmodify -P <servername> -a dvd:avio_stor::file:/path/to/HPUX1131.iso
    • This will create a virtual DVD device connected to an iso for installation later. If you’re going to install from ignite or something else, dont worry about this part
  • hpvmmodify -P <servername> -a disk:avio_stor::lv:/dev/vgname/rdevice
    • This is adding storage for the VM to use. You could also add a disk image file instead of a real logical volume if you wanted
    • To create a disk image file, run something like hpvmdevmgmt -A -S 10G /path/to/vmdir/diskimage.fd
  • Your VM is now created!  You can run hpvmstart -P <vmname> to boot the VM up
  • If you need to install via an iso, just connect to the console by using hpvmconsole -P <vmname> and then selecting boot to file from the boot menu, and then selecting removable media.  Or, just wait and it should boot automatically if you added the DVD device.
  • hpvmstart, hpvmstatus, hpvmstop are useful commands to manage your VMs