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Day: January 28, 2011

Goose Island Night Stalker

Earlier this week I picked up a bottle of Goose Island’s Night Stalker and tonight I’m drinking it. This 11.7% stout is a bit harsh when cold straight out of the fridge, but as it warms up it gets considerably smoother tasting. It’s just hoppy enough, but roasty and malty enough that it’s very clearly a stout. There’s just a bit of alcohol burn, but nothing unpleasant. Goose Island claims that this beer can be cellared for up to five years, and I can see this turning into something even nicer as it sits.

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CF Card Hole in Netgate alix2d13 Enclosure

This morning when a beta version of pfSense on my PC Engines alix2d13-based firewall crashed I decided to make it easier to swap the CompactFlash card from which the OS runs. While physical access to the card is not normally required to upgrade the OS, there have been a few cases recently where I had to remove the card and image it. After the third time of removing 12 fasteners just to remove the card I decided to follow pfSense developer Jim-P’s example cut a hole in my firewall’s enclosure.

After marking the CF card location in the case and stripping it, only three cuts with a small cut-off wheel were needed to make the long cuts, then the remaining bits of metal were easy to bend out of the way with a flat-blade screwdriver. A bit of quick smoothing and deburring work with small files resulted in a nice, smooth hole through which the CF card easily fits. While the card remains not hot swappable, it’ll be much easier to remove the card should I need to access the card from another machine. Since the card sits a bit inside the face of the enclosure I had to add a tape flag to make it easy to remove. Pushing it back in is a little awkward as well, but as this won’t be done much it shouldn’t be a problem.

Here’s a few photos taken tonight while cutting the hole in the case:

· After marking the enclosure was clamped to some very dense foam for cutting with a cutoff wheel.
· More cuts made with the cutoff wheel. After this point the metal was gently bent away and the hole was filed.
· Looking at the Netgate enclosure from inside showing the nice alignment with the CF card slot.
· Front view of the Netgate enclosure with a CF card hole cut in it.
· The CF card fits very nicely in the hole.
· View from inside showing how well the CF card fits.
· Because the CF card will not hang out of the slot tape was added to facilitate extraction.
· CF card placed in the alix2d13 board via the hole in the Netgate enclosure.

Now to wait for the next build to come out and reimage my CF card. This build should contain three ftp helper changes that should resolve the issue I had this morning. Hopefully a problem that I had with disappearing certificate authorities is also fixed.

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