Twitt-arrrr!
Repost of the instructions, since the previous thread disappeared.
Note: Twitt-arrrr is now offline so that it can be transported down to FLL via secret Monkey Zeppelin.
Instructions on using Twitt-arrrr
It is not necessary to create an account or sign in to view Twitt-arrrr posts, but it is to be able to post.
Pre-boarding:
If possible, you should create an account right now on the Twitt-arrrr microblogging service. To do so:
* Goto http://seamonkey.monster-island.org/statusnet
* In the upper right corner, click Login
* On the left hand side of the login page, click REGISTER
* Enter the nickname you wish to use as well as your password
IMPORTANT: For technical reasons this is not an encrypted site, so it is STRONGLY recommended that the password you enter here is one you currently do not use and that you will not use for any other website in the future. It should not be something personal or important. It should be something you wouldn't be afraid to tell a random stranger.
* All other information, such as email and real name are optional. Put in as much or as little as you like, but don't enter websites or URLs that requires the Internet. It might cause confusion.
* Make sure you accept the terms (last checkbox is ticked), and click the REGISTER button
* Feel free to explore and post messages
Post-boarding:
* Connect to the ship's WiFi network
* Note: you do NOT need to purchase Internet time to use the service. It is internal to the ship.
* In your web browser, go to http://10.154.66.16/statusnet
* If you have already registered pre-boarding, simply click Login at the top of the screen and enter your username and password
* If you have not yet registered, in the upper right corner, click Login
* On the left hand side of the login page, click REGISTER
* Enter the nickname you wish to use as well as your password
IMPORTANT: For technical reasons this is not an encrypted site, so it is STRONGLY recommended that the password you enter here is one you currently do not use and that you will not use for any other website in the future. It should not be something personal or important. It should be something you wouldn't be afraid to tell a random stranger.
* All other information, such as email and real name are optional. Put in as much or as little as you like, but don't enter websites or URLs that requires the Internet. It might cause confusion.
* Make sure you accept the terms (last checkbox is ticked), and click the REGISTER button
* Feel free to explore and post messages
Twitt-arrrr has support for file uploads as attachments to messages and custom avatars. Please limit your attachments to small to medium resolution images. Twitt-arrrr is running on a wee little laptop and we don't want to overwhelm it.
Known Issues:
* For mobile devices like smart phones and tablets (iPhone, Android, iPads, etc), not all features work correctly. The important stuff does, but things like uploading photos might not.
* There are a number of apps that claim to work with StatusNet (the thing Twitt-arrrr is made with). They don't work anymore; this includes the official StatusNet app. The website is the only way to use Twitt-arrrr, as far as we know.
Usage hints:
* There are a number of FAQs already written on Twitt-arrrr. On the right hand side is the TRENDING TOPICS, and the faq topic should be one of them. Click for a list of the FAQ answers.
* You do not need to follow someone to see their messages if you view the Public timeline. Following is only needed for the sending and receiving of private messages, and for including their messages in your own Home timeline.
* Groups are a good way to send messages to a smaller number of SeaMonkeys on a particular topic. If there is not a group already made for your topic, create one.
Note: Twitt-arrrr is now offline so that it can be transported down to FLL via secret Monkey Zeppelin.
Instructions on using Twitt-arrrr
It is not necessary to create an account or sign in to view Twitt-arrrr posts, but it is to be able to post.
Pre-boarding:
If possible, you should create an account right now on the Twitt-arrrr microblogging service. To do so:
* Goto http://seamonkey.monster-island.org/statusnet
* In the upper right corner, click Login
* On the left hand side of the login page, click REGISTER
* Enter the nickname you wish to use as well as your password
IMPORTANT: For technical reasons this is not an encrypted site, so it is STRONGLY recommended that the password you enter here is one you currently do not use and that you will not use for any other website in the future. It should not be something personal or important. It should be something you wouldn't be afraid to tell a random stranger.
* All other information, such as email and real name are optional. Put in as much or as little as you like, but don't enter websites or URLs that requires the Internet. It might cause confusion.
* Make sure you accept the terms (last checkbox is ticked), and click the REGISTER button
* Feel free to explore and post messages
Post-boarding:
* Connect to the ship's WiFi network
* Note: you do NOT need to purchase Internet time to use the service. It is internal to the ship.
* In your web browser, go to http://10.154.66.16/statusnet
* If you have already registered pre-boarding, simply click Login at the top of the screen and enter your username and password
* If you have not yet registered, in the upper right corner, click Login
* On the left hand side of the login page, click REGISTER
* Enter the nickname you wish to use as well as your password
IMPORTANT: For technical reasons this is not an encrypted site, so it is STRONGLY recommended that the password you enter here is one you currently do not use and that you will not use for any other website in the future. It should not be something personal or important. It should be something you wouldn't be afraid to tell a random stranger.
* All other information, such as email and real name are optional. Put in as much or as little as you like, but don't enter websites or URLs that requires the Internet. It might cause confusion.
* Make sure you accept the terms (last checkbox is ticked), and click the REGISTER button
* Feel free to explore and post messages
Twitt-arrrr has support for file uploads as attachments to messages and custom avatars. Please limit your attachments to small to medium resolution images. Twitt-arrrr is running on a wee little laptop and we don't want to overwhelm it.
Known Issues:
* For mobile devices like smart phones and tablets (iPhone, Android, iPads, etc), not all features work correctly. The important stuff does, but things like uploading photos might not.
* There are a number of apps that claim to work with StatusNet (the thing Twitt-arrrr is made with). They don't work anymore; this includes the official StatusNet app. The website is the only way to use Twitt-arrrr, as far as we know.
Usage hints:
* There are a number of FAQs already written on Twitt-arrrr. On the right hand side is the TRENDING TOPICS, and the faq topic should be one of them. Click for a list of the FAQ answers.
* You do not need to follow someone to see their messages if you view the Public timeline. Following is only needed for the sending and receiving of private messages, and for including their messages in your own Home timeline.
* Groups are a good way to send messages to a smaller number of SeaMonkeys on a particular topic. If there is not a group already made for your topic, create one.
Comments
Just curious (and no biggie if not)-is it going to be up before it gets on the boat, or not until it's installed on the boat? And I assume the public DNS name won't resolve to the internal IP since I doubt they're going to NAT it for us right?
Unless we set up an internal DNS server...hmm doubt we're going that far eh? :P
If everything goes as expected, the IP on the boat will be 10.154.66.16
The boat and its Wi-Fi operator are still obviously used to serving only technology-challenged snorks.
If there's ever a land-based JoCoCon or w00tstock Festival, I will volunteer to do the Wi-Fi and make SURE it is top quality and reasonably priced. But I can't do much on the boat except put up with their flaky, spotty service. I'm writing this at a cybercafe on Aruba which is much more reasonably priced AND much faster.
Also, is it being put back online so we have the archive?
To the rest - I think we have 12 months to give a small amount of grief to the iOS developers responsible for the StatusNet app. Tell them to bring it current, and we pay them. Very simple arrangement.
Maybe. The web interface was *okay*, but obviously iOS users could not post pictures. The result - not many pictures got posted. Not a knock against Android, but I saw a fair number of iPads, and personally my wife and I were carrying 4S'. The DHCP problem was big, enough that I started suggesting we simply operate out of 169.254/16, but if our "Top Men" aforementioned are working out the kinks, they've earned my trust. Superb job, everyone.
Meanwhile, I'm making a note here to see if there's anything I can do to help beef up the hardware for next year. I have a suspicion we're going to have a few more users next year. This year was artificially limited to 200 concurrent.
So that means ifconfig eth0 (or 1, depending0 should have had 10.x.x.x assigned to it, with a netmask 255.255.255.0, with matching netmask and gateway. The other devices on board were in that same netmask. If you're getting DHCP assigned addresses, and you fail to get a lease, you'll get 169.254.x.x with a netmask of 255.255.0.0 and no gateway.
So I say you add a virtual interface to the box, call it eth0:0, and assign it whatever 169.254.x.x address contents you, with netmask 255.255.0.0. Go ahead and leave eth0 as it was.
What then happens is you configure statusnet to answer on any available IP, be it localhost, 10.x or 169.254.x. It was probably that way by default.
The end result is that we have 2 available Twitt-arr addresses. If you got a lease, it's 10.x. If not, 169.254.x.x.
Could we advertise using Bonjour? Absolutely. Say we assign the box the name twitt-arrr.local. We set up Avahi to advertise the correct IP on each separate interface. That way no one has to remember what address to use: twitt-arrr.local will always answer.
Of course, we'd want to test that in advance...
In addition to the Bonjour name service, it would probably be a good idea to run a NetBIOS Name Service via Samba.
I wouldn't mind reading the RFC that discusses the 169.254 address allocation. I'd be interested in reading up on how it should work if you happen to know the RFC number. If not, I can probably google it.
ETA: RFC-3927
One thing I noticed that might be a problem was that when my iOS devices did not get an IP address via DHCP, they would disconnect from the wireless network. I don't know if this was a server or client side disconnect, or if it is configurable.
In hindsight, I really wish I had run a packet capture of the failed connection attempts.
In the DHCP RFC, I didn't see what the server should do in case of complete IP exhaustion. If the DHCP server stops responding to DHCPDISCOVER requests, the device might stay connected to the network and then auto-assign an IP address in the 169.254/16 range. I don't if that is compliant behaviour, nor if MTN would be able to reconfigure/recode their servers to act accordingly.
The best way to get around the limitations without causing MTN or HAL any grief or expense would involve setting up some of our own wireless routers in key parts of the ship, such as the function spaces, Lido Deck, and poop deck. They'd be bridged to one another through the ship's network but wouldn't take up any IP addresses in the ship's subnet at all, so limits on the ship's DHCP server wouldn't be an issue. (In fact, we'd unload the ship's hotspot by removing Sea Monkeys' devices from the competition for addresses.) Giving the routers a common WPA2 password (which we would announce and post in the game room) would keep snorks from connecting to them by mistake. The result would be a Twitt-arrrchitecture that was completely independent of the ship's hotspot server and used only a little of their Wi-Fi capacity.
As for setting up a "shadow network:" that's really what we did this time. We'd just be making ours more separate and cause it to use fewer of their resources -- two things I cannot imagine they wouldn't approve. And if we used 1 watt access points, the signals would reach to a lot of the cabins.
The HAL IT officer did mentioned that they were doubling their IP range, and that many other ships were doing the same. That, combined with improved WiFi etiquette (disabling WiFi when not in use) would greatly improve the situation to acceptable levels.