Computer Skills

The DPOF ospreycam installation consists of two computers running the Linux operating system. The system is managed and maintained on a completely volunteer basis and utilizes the following skills:

• System Administration
  • Knowledge of the Red Hat Enterprise Linux and Scientific Linux flavors of the Linux operating system
  • The ability to patch the operating system using rpm
  • The ability to build kernel modules
  • The ability to administer and maintain a PostgreSQL database
  • The ability to administer and maintain an Apache 2 web server
  • The ability to program in the perl scripting language
• Hardware
  • The ability to work with computer hardware
  • Disk drive configuration and replacement
  • Knowledge of video capture technology and card configuration
  • Willingness to understand the home-made computer interface to the camera lens control
  • Knowledge of stereo audio hardware
  • Knowledge of CCTV hardware
  • Knowledge of UPS hardware
• Web Server
  • The ability to edit and maintain .html web pages
  • The ability to program in the PHP scripting language
  • The ability to interface to a PostgreSQL database
• Network
  • The ability to configure a multi-NIC computer
  • The ability to setup and manage multiple internal, non-routable networks
  • The ability to manage cascading routers

Troubleshooting

While there is a significant amount of work and time needed to setup and take down the computer system at the nest at the beginning and end of the season, there is also the ongoing potential for a failure at any time during the season. There are some failure modes that can be diagnosed over the network, but most of the problems have to be handled by physically going to the site of the hardware. It is therefore desirable to be within a reasonable distance from the nest site to be involved with working on the system.