Claire Nakakeeto – Research and Education Network for Uganda

Written by Claire Nakakeeto13Nov, 2023

Adding a LoRa IoT device in ChirpStack

The Internet of Things (IoT) has revolutionized the way we collect, transmit, and process data from a wide range of applications. LoRa (Long-Range) technology has emerged as a popular choice for building low-power, long-range wireless IoT networks.

ChirpStack is one of the powerful open-source LoRaWAN software that provides the infrastructure for managing, collecting LoRa IoT devices’ data from the gateway and sending it to any client’s desired visualization software.

RENU is currently one of the providers of this service in Uganda, with over 6 LoRAWAN gateways, and more than 12 sensors connected in different regions.

In this blog, we’ll explore the process of adding a LoRa IoT device to ChirpStack, step by step. Continue reading “Adding a LoRa IoT device in ChirpStack” →

Written by Claire Nakakeeto20Dec, 2022

Setting up zimbra redundancy – live sync

It is important to have a failover of every system as it improves the availability of the system and reduces data loss. In this articale, we describe how you can have near-live synchronization between two Zimbra servers so that one of them is live and the other is kept in a warm or very warm standby state. The sync can work in reverse when the mirror (redundant) server becomes the active server. This allows easy fall-back to the original server once the failover condition is resolved.

Zimbra employs several different databases to store messages, message indexes, meta-data, account information and configuration. Although it is possible to synchronise two Zimbra servers at the disk level using DRBD or VSphere, the amount of disk operations from all these databases that need to be replicated would probably take up a lot of bandwidth which may be debilitating and/or expensive to implement if the two servers are in remote locations. Continue reading “Setting up zimbra redundancy – live sync” →

Written by Claire Nakakeeto30Nov, 2021

Integrating BigBlueButton with Moodle

In order to improve online learning, educator and learners collaboration, moodle and BigBlueButtion were designed independently and these two can be integrated with ease.

About Moodle;

Moodle is an open source learning management system designed to create a learning environment for educators, learners and administrators. Moodle can be installed on a person’s web server, it is also proven and trusted worldwide.

It is completely free with no licensing fees, highly flexible and fully customizable.

About BigBlueButton;

BigBlueButton is an open source global web conferencing system intended for online learning. It includes features like; real time sharing of audio, screen and video, private/public chat, interactive whiteboard and upload of documents.

BligBlueButton is integrated in moodle as plugin and below are the step by step procedures on how this is done;

Sign into moodle as an administrator > Dashboard > site administration.

Continue reading “Integrating BigBlueButton with Moodle” →

Written by Claire Nakakeeto15Oct, 2021

Adding Logos in Zimbra

In Zimbra, there are two different images to re-brand: one is the image that appears in the Login window and the other is the image in the top-left corner when you are logged in. Each image has a different size, and the logos for the open source email platform (FOSS) should be set to the following max sizes:

Application Banner, 200px X 35px in Zimbra Collaboration 8.x;

Application Banner, 170px X 42px in Zimbra Collaboration 8.0.x;

Application Banner1

Continue reading “Adding Logos in Zimbra” →

Written by Claire Nakakeeto08Jul, 2020

Installing and configuring cacti on ubuntu to monitor the network

In a recent article, http://“https://blog.renu.ac.ug/index.php/2020/06/17/using-Cacti-to-monitor-your-bandwidth-consumption/”, we learnt how to monitor bandwidth consumption using Cacti and the assumption was that your service provider had given you access to their own Cacti tool which they use to monitor your consumption.

In this article, we shall learn how to install and configure Cacti on your own server either on premise or in the cloud.

Our installation focus is going to be on Ubuntu though it could also be installed on Windows which requires installation of a lot more software as compared to Linux. If you want to install on windows use the link below,

“http://“https://subscription.packtpub.com/book/networking_and_servers/97817 88299183/1/ch01lvl1sec11/installing-Cacti-on-a-windows-system”

With your own Cacti you will be able to monitor not only the bandwidth consumption but also the state (up or down) of your devices and how long they have been in that state.

Continue reading “Installing and configuring cacti on ubuntu to monitor the network” →

Written by Claire Nakakeeto17Jun, 2020

Using cacti to monitor bandwidth consumption

Cacti is a free network graphing tool that is used to visualize the time series data obtained by the Round-Robin database tool (RDD tool).

The tool polls network devices like switches and routers via SNMP and then graphs their data. Some of the data that are polled are CPU load, temperature, uptime and network bandwidth utilization.

Here we shall focus on how you can monitor your bandwidth from the cacti graphs.

Continue reading “Using cacti to monitor bandwidth consumption” →