Category: computers

Greylisting

February 28, 2008

My received spam counts have been exploding lately, so I’ve enabled greylisting on nuxx.net via postgrey. It’s too early to tell, but looking at mailgraph shows that delivered message counts are WAY down, spam detections have almost gone away, and rejection counts are way up.

The way this works is by telling mail coming from unknown places to go away and try again later. Most spamming software doesn’t bother trying again later, but proper mail servers do. After the proper mail servers try again the mail is delivered, and that server is noted as being safe. So, because of this, mail coming to those I host from new destinations may be delayed for 5-15 minutes, but it’ll eventually get through.

If I host you and you are suddenly not getting mail which you expect to get, let me know and I’ll sort it out. It should work fine, though, just be patient. I’ll post more in a day or so once I know for sure how much counts are down.

For reference, I personally have been receiving 300-500 pieces of spam (with most of it flagged by SpamAssassin) per day, and it was just getting to be a bit much.

Presenting: Trashwall

February 25, 2008

Presenting: the Trashwall, a repurposed Power Mac G4 AGP. It has been taken from an old, failing machine and turned into a powerful firewall which boots from flash, contains an 8-port managed switch, offers free public wireless via a segmented, built-in access point, and handles NAT, DNS, DHCP, NTP, and whatever else I might want it to do.

It’s also got a shiny serial console for setup / management and Open Firmware. It’s basically a real PowerPC UNIX box now.

The article is complete, I’m just waiting for a small antenna adapter cable to arrive so I can hook up the better 802.11b antenna. After that I’ll post one more photo to the article, but otherwise it’s complete.

So, if you’re wanting to stick together an OpenBSD-based do-everything firewall, you could do far worse than to check out the Trashwall.

computers making things moved from livejournal

OpenBSD Problem Fixing!

February 24, 2008

Back on the 13^th I posted about a quirk in OpenBSD/macppc 4.2 which kept the serial console from working after first boot. This was submitted as PR 5732 and I listed a workaround here in the Trashwall article.

Late last night after going to bed I included on a message from Theo de Raadt asking for confirmation from another developer that it is fixed in -current. Poking around cvsweb brought me to this change to /src/distrib/miniroot/install.sub which appears to sort it out.

I’m very happy about this, and I’ll have to be sure to buy the 4.3 CD release when it becomes available.

computers moved from livejournal

nuxx.net Back Up

February 23, 2008

Well, even though rowla.nuxx.net made it to an uptime of 500 days back on the 11th, that didn’t last. Today Waveform unexpectedly moved my box to their new data center, causing a bit of an unexpected outage. As you can see in the bandwidthd graph above there was a period of time during which the server was unreachable.

I was ssh’d in at the time talking to people on #llamasoft when things just up and went away. It seems that Waveform simply pulled the plug on the boxes and moved them. Thankfully mine came back up safely.

computers moved from livejournal nuxx.net

nuxx.net Is Down

February 23, 2008

Hey everyone… My server at http://nuxx.net is down, and no, I don’t know why. I think Waveform is moving locations, but they didn’t notify me, so I’m just not sure what’s up. I have a support ticket open about it, but they haven’t replied yet. So, we’ll see… I hope I don’t have to move providers.

computers moved from livejournal nuxx.net

Reverse DNS

February 22, 2008

Having stuff like this working is fun:

trashwall# arp -a
c-69-244-128-1.hsd1.mi.comcast.net (69.244.128.1) at 00:01:5c:22:71:82 on gem0
core-ap.home.nuxx.net (192.168.0.2) at 00:16:cb:c5:16:2f on fxp0
basement-ax.home.nuxx.net (192.168.0.3) at 00:11:24:05:7d:53 on fxp0
livingroom-ax.home.nuxx.net (192.168.0.4) at 00:11:24:0a:91:6d on fxp0
tivo.home.nuxx.net (192.168.0.6) at 00:11:d9:16:54:43 on fxp0
dhcp21.home.nuxx.net (192.168.0.21) at 00:1c:b3:b5:1b:77 on fxp0
trashwall#

The Trashwall and its associated article are nearly done. :D

computers moved from livejournal

Fucking Comcast

February 21, 2008

Arraugh. So, I have Comcast service for internet access, but not television service. I have a TV, but I only use it for pre-recorded stuff / video games / etc. However, when I got home today I had a note hanging next to my garage which reads:

While performing work in your neighborhood, it was determined that the cable TV line and/or equipment inside your home does not meet technical specifications established by the Federal Communications Commission (FCC).

The problem appears to be a leak of the cable TV signal. Signal leakage has the potential to cause interference with with aeronautical, police, and other communications. Comcast is required by the FCC to record and promptly repair signal leaks.

Please call Comcast at 1-800-865-9787 to schedule an appointment for one of our technicians to repair the signal leak.

If you are unable to contact Comcast within three (3) business days, we will be required to interrupt your service until the necessary repairs can be made.

So, I called and told the operator that I only have internet service and then asked what should be done about the note. The operator then first told me that I should just ignore the note, since I don’t have TV service. When I reminded her that I have internet service and that the note says the service will be terminated if I don’t call, she put me on hold to talk to a supervisor.

After she returned to the line we began to set up an appointment, but there were only 9am – 12pm or 12pm – 3pm windows open for technicians to visit, all the way through the end of March. Even better, the end of March is the furthest out she is able to schedule visits.

Great, eh?

So, she logged that I called and suggested that I just call back tomorrow and see if another slot is open.

I’m not sure what to do now. Maybe wait and see if my service actually gets switched off? <sigh>

UPDATE: I rejiggered the wiring just inside the house so that there are no unterminated connections. Hopefully that will sort it out. The root issue may very well be my fault, but I’d hope that Comcast would have some more reasonable appointments available. Hopefully my service won’t be interrupted now that things should be sorted out.

around the house computers moved from livejournal

OpenBSD Bug Report

February 13, 2008

Yay, the bug report I submitted, #5372, for an issue I experienced during a headless install of OpenBSD/macppc has been posted. My workaround is here in the Trashwall article.

(In short, everything for a headless / via serial console install works automatically except setting up /etc/ttys so that the console goes to the serial port.)

computers moved from livejournal

Merging .reg Files

February 13, 2008

Do any of you have a good way to merge .REG files together?

I’ve got four files and I want them to all become one. Key values don’t need to be merged, the lines can simply be duplicated if they are different. I just need to slam four files together and get rid of the duplicate lines.

computers moved from livejournal

Trashwall Failure

February 12, 2008

Hrm, the Trashwall failed sometime during the night.

I think it may have bad RAM… I’ll have to hang a serial console off of it so I can actually watch it go down.

<sigh>

This stuff is never as straightforward as it should be.

computers moved from livejournal