Folding@home

An important biological function that scientists still don’t have a firm understanding of is how proteins fold (assemble themselves). By studying the results of computer simulations, they hope to find cures to diseases resulting from proteins misfolding. These simulations are extremely complex, to the point that they require massive distributed computing. Nobody on their own has enough computing power to do the work alone. The Folding@home project needs the help of many computers from around the world. Further information can be found in their FAQ.

1. Check if you have a compatible router. If you do, follow the installation instructions carefully, realizing that you are modifying firmware at your own risk. Set your router as you like and then continue to step 2.
2. 

   Administration -> Scripts -> Init

   
   

   In your router’s config panel, go to Administration -> Scripts. Paste the following in the “Init” script, which will run when the router is booted. This will create an empty text file called adblock.conf

   sleep 3
   touch /etc/adblock.conf
   sleep 2
   logger adblock.conf created




3. 

   Administration -> Scripts -> WAN Up

   
   

   Once the router obtains an Internet/WAN connection, we want it to download the latest ad server list. Still under Administration -> Scripts, choose WAN Up and paste the following:

   logger WAN UP Script will execute after 30sec please wait.....
   sleep 30
   wget -O /etc/adblock.conf "http://pgl.yoyo.org/adservers/serverlist.php?hostformat=dnsmasq&showintro=0&mimetype=plaintext"
   service dnsmasq restart




4. 

   Advanced -> Scheduler

   
   

   Now we want to set the router to update its ad blocking rules on a regular basis. Go to Administration -> Scheduler.







5. Check the box labeled “Enabled” under Custom 1, 2, or 3.

6. For the time, choose a reasonable update interval that isn’t overly aggressive. I chose to update once a week (every 10080 minutes, Everyday).
7. Paste the following into the box labeled “Command.”

   wget -O /etc/adblock.conf "http://pgl.yoyo.org/adservers/serverlist.php?hostformat=dnsmasq&showintro=0&mimetype=plaintext" && service dnsmasq restart;

8. 

   Advanced -> DHCP / DNS

   
   

   Almost done! Go to Advanced -> DHCP / DNS, and make sure that “Use Internal Caching DNS Forwarder” is checked.







9. Paste the following into the box labeled “Dnsmasq custom configuration.”

   conf-file=/etc/adblock.conf

10. If you ever suspect that the adblocking is breaking a particular website (such as streaming video), you can temporarily disable it just by removing the text in step 9.

Twitter is a popular web service that lets its users post short status messages and is intended to be used for keeping friends up to date on whatever it is you may be doing at a given moment. However, these status messages are really just free form blobs of text (containing a maximum of 140 characters) with RSS feeds to monitor updates. There are many different ways to update a Twitter status, including from the command line. Actions that can be performed non-interactively in the command line can be scheduled to run automatically on a regular basis.

Putting the above pieces together, it is possible for you to set your server to periodically check for updates and then, if it finds any, update a Twitter status used for self notifications with a list of available updates. You can then subscribe to the Twitter feed in a feed reader, or better yet use a service such as Feedburner, Yahoo! Alerts, or RMail to receive email notification when the Twitter feed is updated. It turns out that this is not that hard to do.

1. With root privileges, use your favorite text editor to put the following shell script into a text file in /etc/cron.daily. I suggest naming it cron-apt-twitter

   #!/bin/bash
   #
   # Cron Script - run from /etc/crontab or /etc/cron.daily
   #
   # Check for updates and updates Twitter status with list
   # if any are found.
   
   if [[ `apt-get update 2>&1 | grep Get` ]]; then
     if [[ `apt-get --simulate dist-upgrade 2>&1 | grep Inst` ]]; then
       curl -s -o /dev/null --basic --user USERNAME:PASSWORD --data status="`apt-get -q --simulate dist-upgrade`" http://twitter.com/statuses/update.xml
     fi
   fi

2. Don’t forget to replace USERNAME and PASSWORD with the username and password for the Twitter account.
3. Make the shell script executable by running this command:

   sudo chmod +x /etc/cron.daily/cron-apt-twitter

4. Make a temporary post to Twitter so that you can get the link to the RSS feed.
5. Subscribe to the feed using a feed reader or get an email notification of feed updates via Feedburner, Yahoo! Alerts, or Rmail

This has been tested with Debian Etch 4.0, but should also work in Debian-based distributions such as Ubuntu. With a few modifications to the shell script, this should also be possible to do with other distributions’ such as Fedora.

Credits: The shell script is based on a combination of Mattias Wikistrom’s Apt Update Script and a Sakana article called “Scripting Twitter with cURL.”