Computing – Page 3 – Steve's Blog

Fail2ban tweaks

So I tweaked Fail2ban so it picked up failed SASL auth sesssion…

There are a LOT of compromised machines out there:

2014-10-21 15:57:08,236 fail2ban.actions: WARNING [postfix] Ban 222.247.167.96
2014-10-21 22:00:08,119 fail2ban.actions: WARNING [postfix] Ban 122.165.90.186
2014-10-21 22:00:09,089 fail2ban.actions: WARNING [postfix] Ban 77.42.202.232
2014-10-21 22:00:09,383 fail2ban.actions: WARNING [postfix] Ban 69.198.18.202
2014-10-21 22:00:09,828 fail2ban.actions: WARNING [postfix] Ban 167.135.119.251
2014-10-21 22:00:10,632 fail2ban.actions: WARNING [postfix] Ban 191.113.84.245
2014-10-21 22:00:11,741 fail2ban.actions: WARNING [postfix] Ban 184.71.165.174
2014-10-21 22:00:13,544 fail2ban.actions: WARNING [postfix] Ban 186.116.237.173
2014-10-21 22:00:14,812 fail2ban.actions: WARNING [postfix] Ban 12.25.8.201
2014-10-21 22:00:15,682 fail2ban.actions: WARNING [postfix] Ban 112.150.194.150
2014-10-21 22:00:16,488 fail2ban.actions: WARNING [postfix] Ban 68.118.118.10
2014-10-21 22:00:17,362 fail2ban.actions: WARNING [postfix] Ban 139.193.101.137
2014-10-21 22:00:19,292 fail2ban.actions: WARNING [postfix] Ban 192.30.241.146
2014-10-21 22:00:19,769 fail2ban.actions: WARNING [postfix] Ban 190.239.170.29
2014-10-21 22:00:20,741 fail2ban.actions: WARNING [postfix] Ban 178.120.155.241
2014-10-21 22:00:20,986 fail2ban.actions: WARNING [postfix] Ban 74.112.58.73
2014-10-21 22:00:30,266 fail2ban.actions: WARNING [postfix] Ban 212.215.218.191
2014-10-21 22:00:30,535 fail2ban.actions: WARNING [postfix] Ban 186.121.93.138
2014-10-21 22:00:31,159 fail2ban.actions: WARNING [postfix] Ban 190.51.59.93
2014-10-21 22:00:31,773 fail2ban.actions: WARNING [postfix] Ban 23.30.82.137
2014-10-21 22:00:32,636 fail2ban.actions: WARNING [postfix] Ban 41.228.195.145
2014-10-21 22:00:33,409 fail2ban.actions: WARNING [postfix] Ban 5.160.182.24
2014-10-21 22:00:33,704 fail2ban.actions: WARNING [postfix] Ban 105.186.70.162
2014-10-21 22:00:34,417 fail2ban.actions: WARNING [postfix] Ban 64.89.211.243
2014-10-21 22:00:34,988 fail2ban.actions: WARNING [postfix] Ban 111.91.86.86
2014-10-21 22:00:35,807 fail2ban.actions: WARNING [postfix] Ban 190.187.47.55
2014-10-21 22:00:36,768 fail2ban.actions: WARNING [postfix] Ban 14.192.128.34
2014-10-21 22:02:46,842 fail2ban.actions: WARNING [postfix] Ban 79.97.188.35
2014-10-21 22:03:10,199 fail2ban.actions: WARNING [postfix] Ban 49.249.55.38
2014-10-21 22:03:31,018 fail2ban.actions: WARNING [postfix] Ban 91.75.74.12
2014-10-21 22:03:49,365 fail2ban.actions: WARNING [postfix] Ban 190.176.210.91
2014-10-21 22:04:17,027 fail2ban.actions: WARNING [postfix] Ban 199.96.245.158
2014-10-21 22:12:58,539 fail2ban.actions: WARNING [postfix] Ban 123.176.22.30

Wordbooker and Canalplan

Well since I decided to abandon Wordbooker due to the major changes in the Facebook API and changes in the FB newsfeed algorithms which mean that Wordbooker posts actually got poor “reach” I’ve been working on the Canalplan AC Plugin for WordPress and also working on the Boat Index part of Canalplan.

The big changes to the Canalplan Plugin are to do with integrating Backitude. Backitude is an Android App that provides lightweight GPS functionality but what interested me is that it supports custom servers. So I sat down and coded up the stuff needed to get backitude to send its current location to the Canalplan AC plugin. The plugin uses that information to update the “Where am I” widget part of the plugin and it also passes that information through to Canalplan AC.

When we took on the Boat Index from Jim Shead we worked out we could do some clever integration into Canalplan.

So if you are logged in you can :

“like” a boat, actually you can like as many boats as you like
Edit Photos and “tag” them with any of the boats in your liked list
Nominate one of your “liked” boats to be “tracked” (Beta only at the moment)
Down load a backitude configuration to allow you to send track information to Canalplan (Beta only at the moment)

So Canalplan can now track a boat either directly with backitude or indirectly through the Canalplan AC blog plugin.

Boat tracks can be viewed by people and you can also see the current location of any boat which has enabled public tracking.

If you are logged in you can also:

Change the visibility of any tracked route you’ve created
Delete any tracked route you’ve created
Edit any tracked route to remove “rogue” tracking waypoints
Change if your tracked boat is public or not. If its private then none of its trips are available. This might change in future

These second set of features are only available in the Beta version at the moment.

“Ignore the Security Certificate Warning”

EE have invalid SSL certs on their website.

The OFFICIAL response is that you should IGNORE the warning:

Remember EE are not some fly-by-night operation. They are a huge communications company and their SSL certs have been broken for in excess of a week but they apparently cannot fix it.

Wonderful Suggestion from Facebook

Going to Suggest an Edit on Semalt’s Facebook page comes up with the following:

Diahreaa is a pretty fitting suggestion!

Moronic Comment spammers

What a stupid comment spam:

If you are going to post spam comments (which automatically get trapped by my spam filters) the least you could do is post stuff that is slightly amusing and makes sense rather than this complete bullshit The offending IP ( 84.232.199.214 ) is Canadian – which makes a change from the usual Chinese or Russian or Indian culprits.

Semalt – the SEO company who lie to you.

On January 24th Andrew Timchenko from Semalt sent me a Private message on Facebook:

Dear Stephen
From now on your websites:
tty.org.uk
Canalplan.org.UK
Canalplan.EU
Canalplan.co.UK
Pubnight.org.uk
won’t be visited by our robots.
I would like to bring apology on the behalf of our company if our service caused you some troubles.

I’d told him that I wanted all subdomains on those domains removing from their systems and I was stupid enough to believe him although for a while their annoying bots stopped visiting.

But they came back – not as stupidly fast as before but doing exactly the same call to the home page, over and over again.

So if you’ve had promises from Semalt to take your domains out of their system.. double check and make sure that you’ve got a rule in your .htaccess rule to ban them

Semalt really don’t get it

I posted on Semalt’s facebook and they deleted my posts. I made another post suggesting that deleting my posts simply confirmed that they were a rogue element.

Then they tried to friend me… I have a rule on Facebook : If I don’t know you and I’ve not met you or had a drink or three with you then don’t expect me to friend you.

So then they sent me a message:

I would like to bring apology on the behalf of our company if our service caused you some troubles.

Our bots have accidently visited your site, as well as the sites of other webmasters. These bots harvest statistics for our service and cause no harm. I don’t think this can be an issue, since nobody complains on bots that belong to Google, Bing and other search engines. There are so many services on the web that are believed to mess up the webmaster’s statistics.

This shows that they have no clue.

I have no problems with Google, Bing and other search engines running over my sites as they help bring traffic to me. Also they obey robots.txt and crawl at a sensible speed and don’t just sit there hammering the home page. Also they clearly identify themselves and come from recognised blocks of IP addresses.

Semalt do NONE of these – they use random IP addresses from all over the world, they don’t obey robots.txt. They don’t clearly idenfify that they are a bot. They don’t crawl my site and they don’t access it at a sensible request rate. On top of all of that they offer me NOTHING of any use – all they do is suck bandwith and give me nothing in return.

I had added a rule to my .htaccess rule to ban them (and I’ve left it in there because I don’t trust them) – but they did accept a list of domains from me and have removed them from their rogue bot.

Semalt.com – Rogue element? Or just scum?

So Google is full of sites posting about the above company … they would seem to be trying to do some sort of SE ranking or are they just complete arses?

This is an example from one of my site logs … there is NO reason for this behaviour but their repeated use of IP addresses in various countries suggests that they’re either paying people to do this shit or they’ve paid for time on a bot-net.

Ask yourself…would you really trust a company who resort to these sort of tactics as a business model?

189.78.19.14 - - [16/Jan/2014:20:29:43 +0000] "GET / HTTP/1.1" 200 5720 "http://their url removed?u=http://my website here" "Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 6.1; WOW64; Trident/7.0; rv:11.0) like Gecko" my website here 189.78.19.14 - - [16/Jan/2014:20:29:43 +0000] "GET / HTTP/1.1" 200 5720 "http://their url removed?u=http://my website here" "Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 6.1; WOW64; Trident/7.0; rv:11.0) like Gecko" my website here 189.78.19.14 - - [16/Jan/2014:20:29:43 +0000] "GET / HTTP/1.1" 200 5720 "http://their url removed?u=http://my website here" "Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 6.1; WOW64; Trident/7.0; rv:11.0) like Gecko" my website here 189.78.19.14 - - [16/Jan/2014:20:29:43 +0000] "GET / HTTP/1.1" 200 5720 "http://their url removed?u=http://my website here" "Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 6.1; WOW64; Trident/7.0; rv:11.0) like Gecko" my website here 189.78.19.14 - - [16/Jan/2014:20:29:43 +0000] "GET / HTTP/1.1" 200 5720 "http://their url removed?u=http://my website here" "Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 6.1; WOW64; Trident/7.0; rv:11.0) like Gecko" my website here 189.78.19.14 - - [16/Jan/2014:20:29:43 +0000] "GET / HTTP/1.1" 200 5720 "http://their url removed?u=http://my website here" "Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 6.1; WOW64; Trident/7.0; rv:11.0) like Gecko" my website here 189.78.19.14 - - [16/Jan/2014:20:29:43 +0000] "GET / HTTP/1.1" 200 5720 "http://their url removed?u=http://my website here" "Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 6.1; WOW64; Trident/7.0; rv:11.0) like Gecko" my website here 189.78.19.14 - - [16/Jan/2014:20:29:43 +0000] "GET / HTTP/1.1" 200 5720 "http://their url removed?u=http://my website here" "Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 6.1; WOW64; Trident/7.0; rv:11.0) like Gecko" my website here 189.78.19.14 - - [16/Jan/2014:20:29:43 +0000] "GET / HTTP/1.1" 200 5720 "http://their url removed?u=http://my website here" "Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 6.1; WOW64; Trident/7.0; rv:11.0) like Gecko" my website here 189.78.19.14 - - [16/Jan/2014:20:29:43 +0000] "GET / HTTP/1.1" 200 5720 "http://their url removed?u=http://my website here" "Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 6.1; WOW64; Trident/7.0; rv:11.0) like Gecko" my website here 189.78.19.14 - - [16/Jan/2014:20:29:43 +0000] "GET / HTTP/1.1" 200 5720 "http://their url removed?u=http://my website here" "Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 6.1; WOW64; Trident/7.0; rv:11.0) like Gecko" my website here 189.78.19.14 - - [16/Jan/2014:20:29:43 +0000] "GET / HTTP/1.1" 200 5720 "http://their url removed?u=http://my website here" "Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 6.1; WOW64; Trident/7.0; rv:11.0) like Gecko" my website here 189.78.19.14 - - [16/Jan/2014:20:29:44 +0000] "GET / HTTP/1.1" 200 5720 "http://their url removed?u=http://my website here" "Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 6.1; WOW64; Trident/7.0; rv:11.0) like Gecko" my website here 189.78.19.14 - - [16/Jan/2014:20:29:44 +0000] "GET / HTTP/1.1" 200 5720 "http://their url removed?u=http://my website here" "Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 6.1; WOW64; Trident/7.0; rv:11.0) like Gecko" my website here 189.78.19.14 - - [16/Jan/2014:20:29:44 +0000] "GET / HTTP/1.1" 200 5720 "http://their url removed?u=http://my website here" "Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 6.1; WOW64; Trident/7.0; rv:11.0) like Gecko" my website here 189.78.19.14 - - [16/Jan/2014:20:29:44 +0000] "GET / HTTP/1.1" 200 5720 "http://their url removed?u=http://my website here" "Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 6.1; WOW64; Trident/7.0; rv:11.0) like Gecko" my website here 189.78.19.14 - - [16/Jan/2014:20:29:44 +0000] "GET / HTTP/1.1" 200 5720 "http://their url removed?u=http://my website here" "Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 6.1; WOW64; Trident/7.0; rv:11.0) like Gecko" my website here 189.78.19.14 - - [16/Jan/2014:20:29:44 +0000] "GET / HTTP/1.1" 200 5720 "http://their url removed?u=http://my website here" "Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 6.1; WOW64; Trident/7.0; rv:11.0) like Gecko" my website here 189.78.19.14 - - [16/Jan/2014:20:29:44 +0000] "GET / HTTP/1.1" 200 5720 "http://their url removed?u=http://my website here" "Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 6.1; WOW64; Trident/7.0; rv:11.0) like Gecko" my website here 189.78.19.14 - - [16/Jan/2014:20:29:44 +0000] "GET / HTTP/1.1" 200 5720 "http://their url removed?u=http://my website here" "Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 6.1; WOW64; Trident/7.0; rv:11.0) like Gecko" my website here 189.78.19.14 - - [16/Jan/2014:20:29:44 +0000] "GET / HTTP/1.1" 200 5720 "http://their url removed?u=http://my website here" "Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 6.1; WOW64; Trident/7.0; rv:11.0) like Gecko" my website here 189.78.19.14 - - [16/Jan/2014:20:29:44 +0000] "GET / HTTP/1.1" 200 5720 "http://their url removed?u=http://my website here" "Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 6.1; WOW64; Trident/7.0; rv:11.0) like Gecko" my website here 189.78.19.14 - - [16/Jan/2014:20:29:44 +0000] "GET / HTTP/1.1" 200 5720 "http://their url removed?u=http://my website here" "Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 6.1; WOW64; Trident/7.0; rv:11.0) like Gecko" my website here 189.78.19.14 - - [16/Jan/2014:20:29:45 +0000] "GET / HTTP/1.1" 200 5720 "http://their url removed?u=http://my website here" "Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 6.1; WOW64; Trident/7.0; rv:11.0) like Gecko" my website here 189.78.19.14 - - [16/Jan/2014:20:29:45 +0000] "GET / HTTP/1.1" 200 5720 "http://their url removed?u=http://my website here" "Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 6.1; WOW64; Trident/7.0; rv:11.0) like Gecko" my website here 189.78.19.14 - - [16/Jan/2014:20:29:45 +0000] "GET / HTTP/1.1" 200 5720 "http://their url removed?u=http://my website here" "Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 6.1; WOW64; Trident/7.0; rv:11.0) like Gecko" my website here 189.78.19.14 - - [16/Jan/2014:20:29:45 +0000] "GET / HTTP/1.1" 200 5720 "http://their url removed?u=http://my website here" "Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 6.1; WOW64; Trident/7.0; rv:11.0) like Gecko" my website here 189.78.19.14 - - [16/Jan/2014:20:29:45 +0000] "GET / HTTP/1.1" 200 5720 "http://their url removed?u=http://my website here" "Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 6.1; WOW64; Trident/7.0; rv:11.0) like Gecko" my website here 189.78.19.14 - - [16/Jan/2014:20:29:46 +0000] "GET / HTTP/1.1" 200 5720 "http://their url removed?u=http://my website here" "Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 6.1; WOW64; Trident/7.0; rv:11.0) like Gecko" my website here 189.78.19.14 - - [16/Jan/2014:20:29:46 +0000] "GET / HTTP/1.1" 200 5720 "http://their url removed?u=http://my website here" "Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 6.1; WOW64; Trident/7.0; rv:11.0) like Gecko" my website here 189.78.19.14 - - [16/Jan/2014:20:29:46 +0000] "GET / HTTP/1.1" 200 5720 "http://their url removed?u=http://my website here" "Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 6.1; WOW64; Trident/7.0; rv:11.0) like Gecko" my website here 189.78.19.14 - - [16/Jan/2014:20:29:46 +0000] "GET / HTTP/1.1" 200 5720 "http://their url removed?u=http://my website here" "Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 6.1; WOW64; Trident/7.0; rv:11.0) like Gecko" my website here 189.78.19.14 - - [16/Jan/2014:20:29:46 +0000] "GET / HTTP/1.1" 200 5720 "http://their url removed?u=http://my website here" "Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 6.1; WOW64; Trident/7.0; rv:11.0) like Gecko" my website here 189.78.19.14 - - [16/Jan/2014:20:29:46 +0000] "GET / HTTP/1.1" 200 5720 "http://their url removed?u=http://my website here" "Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 6.1; WOW64; Trident/7.0; rv:11.0) like Gecko" my website here 189.78.19.14 - - [16/Jan/2014:20:29:46 +0000] "GET / HTTP/1.1" 200 5720 "http://their url removed?u=http://my website here" "Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 6.1; WOW64; Trident/7.0; rv:11.0) like Gecko" my website here 189.78.19.14 - - [16/Jan/2014:20:29:46 +0000] "GET / HTTP/1.1" 200 5720 "http://their url removed?u=http://my website here" "Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 6.1; WOW64; Trident/7.0; rv:11.0) like Gecko" my website here 189.78.19.14 - - [16/Jan/2014:20:29:46 +0000] "GET / HTTP/1.1" 200 5720 "http://their url removed?u=http://my website here" "Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 6.1; WOW64; Trident/7.0; rv:11.0) like Gecko" my website here 189.78.19.14 - - [16/Jan/2014:20:29:46 +0000] "GET / HTTP/1.1" 200 5720 "http://their url removed?u=http://my website here" "Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 6.1; WOW64; Trident/7.0; rv:11.0) like Gecko" my website here 189.78.19.14 - - [16/Jan/2014:20:29:46 +0000] "GET / HTTP/1.1" 200 5720 "http://their url removed?u=http://my website here" "Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 6.1; WOW64; Trident/7.0; rv:11.0) like Gecko" my website here 189.78.19.14 - - [16/Jan/2014:20:29:46 +0000] "GET / HTTP/1.1" 200 5720 "http://their url removed?u=http://my website here" "Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 6.1; WOW64; Trident/7.0; rv:11.0) like Gecko" my website here 189.78.19.14 - - [16/Jan/2014:20:29:46 +0000] "GET / HTTP/1.1" 200 5720 "http://their url removed?u=http://my website here" "Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 6.1; WOW64; Trident/7.0; rv:11.0) like Gecko" my website here 189.78.19.14 - - [16/Jan/2014:20:29:46 +0000] "GET / HTTP/1.1" 200 5720 "http://their url removed?u=http://my website here" "Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 6.1; WOW64; Trident/7.0; rv:11.0) like Gecko" my website here 189.78.19.14 - - [16/Jan/2014:20:29:47 +0000] "GET / HTTP/1.1" 200 5720 "http://their url removed?u=http://my website here" "Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 6.1; WOW64; Trident/7.0; rv:11.0) like Gecko" my website here 189.78.19.14 - - [16/Jan/2014:20:29:47 +0000] "GET / HTTP/1.1" 200 5720 "http://their url removed?u=http://my website here" "Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 6.1; WOW64; Trident/7.0; rv:11.0) like Gecko" my website here 189.78.19.14 - - [16/Jan/2014:20:29:48 +0000] "GET / HTTP/1.1" 200 5720 "http://their url removed?u=http://my website here" "Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 6.1; WOW64; Trident/7.0; rv:11.0) like Gecko" my website here 189.78.19.14 - - [16/Jan/2014:20:29:48 +0000] "GET / HTTP/1.1" 200 5720 "http://their url removed?u=http://my website here" "Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 6.1; WOW64; Trident/7.0; rv:11.0) like Gecko" my website here 189.78.19.14 - - [16/Jan/2014:20:29:48 +0000] "GET / HTTP/1.1" 200 5720 "http://their url removed?u=http://my website here" "Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 6.1; WOW64; Trident/7.0; rv:11.0) like Gecko" my website here 189.78.19.14 - - [16/Jan/2014:20:29:48 +0000] "GET / HTTP/1.1" 200 5720 "http://their url removed?u=http://my website here" "Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 6.1; WOW64; Trident/7.0; rv:11.0) like Gecko" my website here 189.78.19.14 - - [16/Jan/2014:20:29:48 +0000] "GET / HTTP/1.1" 200 5720 "http://their url removed?u=http://my website here" "Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 6.1; WOW64; Trident/7.0; rv:11.0) like Gecko" my website here 189.78.19.14 - - [16/Jan/2014:20:29:48 +0000] "GET / HTTP/1.1" 200 5720 "http://their url removed?u=http://my website here" "Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 6.1; WOW64; Trident/7.0; rv:11.0) like Gecko" my website here 189.78.19.14 - - [16/Jan/2014:20:29:58 +0000] "GET / HTTP/1.1" 200 5720 "http://their url removed?u=http://my website here" "Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 6.1; WOW64; Trident/7.0; rv:11.0) like Gecko" my website here 189.78.19.14 - - [16/Jan/2014:20:29:58 +0000] "GET / HTTP/1.1" 200 5720 "http://their url removed?u=http://my website here" "Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 6.1; WOW64; Trident/7.0; rv:11.0) like Gecko" my website here 189.78.19.14 - - [16/Jan/2014:20:29:58 +0000] "GET / HTTP/1.1" 200 5720 "http://their url removed?u=http://my website here" "Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 6.1; WOW64; Trident/7.0; rv:11.0) like Gecko" my website here 189.78.19.14 - - [16/Jan/2014:20:29:58 +0000] "GET / HTTP/1.1" 200 5720 "http://their url removed?u=http://my website here" "Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 6.1; WOW64; Trident/7.0; rv:11.0) like Gecko" my website here 189.78.19.14 - - [16/Jan/2014:20:29:58 +0000] "GET / HTTP/1.1" 200 5720 "http://their url removed?u=http://my website here" "Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 6.1; WOW64; Trident/7.0; rv:11.0) like Gecko" my website here 189.78.19.14 - - [16/Jan/2014:20:29:58 +0000] "GET / HTTP/1.1" 200 5720 "http://their url removed?u=http://my website here" "Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 6.1; WOW64; Trident/7.0; rv:11.0) like Gecko" my website here 189.78.19.14 - - [16/Jan/2014:20:29:59 +0000] "GET / HTTP/1.1" 200 5720 "http://their url removed?u=http://my website here" "Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 6.1; WOW64; Trident/7.0; rv:11.0) like Gecko" my website here 189.78.19.14 - - [16/Jan/2014:20:29:59 +0000] "GET / HTTP/1.1" 200 5720 "http://their url removed?u=http://my website here" "Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 6.1; WOW64; Trident/7.0; rv:11.0) like Gecko" my website here 189.78.19.14 - - [16/Jan/2014:20:29:59 +0000] "GET / HTTP/1.1" 200 5720 "http://their url removed?u=http://my website here" "Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 6.1; WOW64; Trident/7.0; rv:11.0) like Gecko" my website here 189.78.19.14 - - [16/Jan/2014:20:30:00 +0000] "GET / HTTP/1.1" 200 5720 "http://their url removed?u=http://my website here" "Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 6.1; WOW64; Trident/7.0; rv:11.0) like Gecko" my website here 189.78.19.14 - - [16/Jan/2014:20:30:00 +0000] "GET / HTTP/1.1" 200 5720 "http://their url removed?u=http://my website here" "Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 6.1; WOW64; Trident/7.0; rv:11.0) like Gecko" my website here 189.78.19.14 - - [16/Jan/2014:20:30:00 +0000] "GET / HTTP/1.1" 200 5720 "http://their url removed?u=http://my website here" "Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 6.1; WOW64; Trident/7.0; rv:11.0) like Gecko" my website here

So much for Mobile broadband

In which Steve mutters about the O2 broadband dongle and its broken DNS handling.

Was trying to check a problem with Canalplan AC today and as its sitting on the server in the living room I thought I should try it “remotely” rather than access off the local network.

So I got the O2 broadband dongle and powered it up and connected, and couldn’t reproduce the error… Oh well, thats how things go, especially when you are talking about IE8.

So whilst I was connected I thought I’d just hop onto this blog site and check a couple of things.

Sorry – No Can Do! Not Possible. Kept telling me the site was not available.

But it sits on the same server as Canalplan AC. It sits on blogs.canalplan.org.uk when Canalplan is on www.canalplan.org.uk.

So if one responds, then the other other should. Right?

Well you are wrong:

Here is the output of a ping command:

Microsoft Windows [Version 6.0.6002]
Copyright (c) 2006 Microsoft Corporation.  All rights reserved.

C:Userssteve>ping www.canalplan.org.uk

Pinging www.canalplan.org.uk [212.159.61.36] with 32 bytes of data:

So that’s good – its getting the IP address. It wont ever respond to pings because the router dumps them.

So lets try for the blogs:

Microsoft Windows [Version 6.0.6002]
Copyright (c) 2006 Microsoft Corporation.  All rights reserved.

C:Userssteve>ping blogs.canalplan.org.uk
Ping request could not find host blogs.canalplan.org.uk. Please check the name and try again.

Nope – its not there.

The DNS servers for O2 don’t recognise it as a valid host name.

Tosspots.

OR rather its their Windows software that is screwy. If I power up under Linux then it works fine!

Posting to WordPress MU by Email Part 2

THIS POST IS OBSOLETE

Warning: This post contains material of a technical nature, if you start reading and feel dizzy or nauseous then stop reading immediately and go and lie down.

This is a follow up to my previous post where I outlined a prototype of an extension for WPMU which allowed posting to multiple blogs from one centralised POP3 account which collected all posts from all users of all blogs. This is very different from the usual way of doing it where you either go out to get the emails from external email addresses or you have multiple local accounts.

Well the prototype has, like Frankenstein’s Monster, come alive and it’s now got configuration screens and lots of rich techy goodness to it.

I’m not going to go over the instructions on how to configure the MTA again, those are documented on my last post, and in the notes in the downloadable archive :

Post by Email-v1.zip – file removed

The Archive also contains instructions on where the TWO files need to be placed for the system to work.

What I’m going to cover here is the new features that I’ve added since the last post. Yes I have way too much time on my hands, but this is keeping my brain sharp so its all good at the end of the day.

These can be broken down into to distinct groups which are reflected in the two new options that will appear on the Settings menu:

Blog Level Options

These are options which are set by the blog administrator or blog owner:

Default Category for posts : This is a drop down of all categories and you select one to be the default category for posts without a category override

Optional Categories: This is a tick box list of all other categories in your blog, Toggle the ones you want users to be able to use in their category override.

Allow Posting By: This is a tick box list of all the user who are members of your blog. Toggle the ones you want to be able to use the post by email. This will include YOUR address and by default no-one of them are checked (which basically deactivates the system for your specific blog).

User Level Options

These are options which are set on a user by user basis.

Personal Identifier : This is a optional text string which allows users to “secure” their posts. If this has been set then posts from them will be rejected outright. So set this to something good but memorable as you’ll have to provide it for each post.

Alternative Email: This allows you to nominate a secondary email address which the system will accept emails from. If you do not set this then posts will only be accepted from the email address registered to your account.

Additional Posting options

To support the “new” features there are now some additional posting options which you set at the top of your email.

wppbm-categories: A comma separated list of category names for this post. NOTE: This is names not numbers which makes it easier to remember (or are you so sad that you know the underlying IDs of your categories). You’ll find a list of the available categories on your user settings page. So assuming that the Administrator has enabled them you could do something like: wppbm-categories : computing,witterings which would post your post with those categories. If you do not specify this line then the default category set by the Administrator will be applied.

wppbm-pid: Your PID. If you’ve set your PID then you have to provide it here. If you’ve set it and don’t include it (or get it wrong) then your post is toast!