usefulthings.org.uk

I recently needed to bulk load some entries to the DynDNS custom DNS service, I ended up using wget and a couple of bash for loops. This was the crux of it:

To login:

wget --keep-session-cookies \
--save-cookies cookies.txt \
--post-data="__login=1&username=${USERNAME}&password=${PASSWORD}" \
https://www.dyndns.com/account/

To check you are logged in:

wget --keep-session-cookies \
--load-cookies cookies.txt \
https://www.dyndns.com/account/services/zones/dns/

grep the page for ‘Logged’ you should see it say something like ‘Logged in user: blah’.

Also look towards the bottom of the page for the ‘multiform’ hidden form element, you need the value which is a string, something like ‘jaoEEPpxzAhfadQZ/dpO/A341374′

To add an entry:

NAME=test
IP=1.2.3.4
MULTIFORM="jaoEEPpxzAhfadQZ/dpO/A341374"
wget --keep-session-cookies \
--load-cookies cookies.txt \
--post-data="name_new=${NAME}&ttl_new=600&type_new=A&data_new=${IP}&submit=submit&multiform=${MULTIFORM}" \
https://www.dyndns.com/account/services/zones/dns/

I never remember how to make Solaris ping show the time of each ping, like GNU Ping does, without any arguments the output is like:

% ping foo
foo is alive
%

If you want to see the time of each ping, use -s which makes it more like the GNU Ping you find on linux:

% ping -s foo
PING foo: 56 data bytes
64 bytes from foo.somedomain.com (10.44.101.16): icmp_seq=0. time=0. ms
64 bytes from foo.somedomain.com (10.44.101.16): icmp_seq=1. time=0. ms
^C
----foo PING Statistics----
2 packets transmitted, 2 packets received, 0% packet loss
round-trip (ms)  min/avg/max = 0/0/0
%

That is all.

Every so often I need a copy of one or all of these on a new machine. I tend to normally use RPM based distros and always have issues trying to find RPMS of these packages. As a result I’ve packaged them up and put them in my svn repo.

Feel free to checkout that directory, it includes a readme of how to build them for a system I’ve yet to need them on. replace the fc7 or el5 with something appropriate for your distribution.

Direct download links:

Redhat/Centos 5:

• daemontools version 0.76
• djbdns version 1.05
• ucspi-tcp version 0.88

Fedora 7:

• daemontools version 0.76
• djbdns version 1.05
• ucspi-tcp version 0.88

I’ve just had to struggle with the hex ip addresses which dnscache logs, after a bit of searching I found some nice notes about the log format here thanks to Rob Mayoff.

Finally I found this handy perl script.

Nice little reg hack to dsiable the Caps lock key in windows here.

Laptop for reference HP Compaq 6910p Notebook

Specs:

• 75Gb Disk
• 2.0 Ghz Core 2 Duo
• 1Gb Ram

I’ve just had to delete a bunch of messages from an Exim queue and I found this to be useful:

# exiqgrep -f billg@microsoft.com

Will print out details for any messages from that address.

To delete any messages from a person use the f as well as the i flags to print out just the message id, this can neatly be piped to xargs:

# exiqgrep -i billg@microsoft.com | xargs exim -Mrm

I can never remember the syntax to allow access to a directory from an IP or range of IP’s without a password but falling through to using a password from all other IP’s. The below works in a .htaccess file:

AuthName "some name"
AuthUserFile /some/htaccess.file
AuthType Basic
Order Allow,Deny
Require valid-user
Allow From 127.0.0.1
Satisfy Any

I’ve had troubles with vmware on redhat/fedora in the past. (See here or here) But I’ve now found a one stop solution to putting VMware on all things RedHat or Fedora. Follow the instructions in this VMware forum post. This has worked for me with VMware Server on Fedora 6 and 7 and also VMware Workstation 6 on Fedora 7. Thanks Petr!

To restart things run:

# svcadm restart ssh

To list the currently known svcs use:

# svcs

Sun have a nice guide here on their BigAdmin site.