Old Authserver is going bye-bye's........

I am not paying for another month of hosting on the old Authserver(VPS setup). I would rather put the funds towards beefing up the Control server.

Some of you may have noticed some DNS related issues with some subdomains or my email. This should be all worked out by the end of the day after DNS propagates the Internet.

Once the server is down i will point ssl.publicip.net at the new control server so we have a good "trusted" cert and that warning will go away... I hate that friggin thing.

I plan to shutdown the old server October 1.

New Kernel in ZoneCD 0.5

Over the weekend i recompiled the kernel on the ZoneCD.... it's now a kernel with a purpose... It's got just about everything you can think of for network support. I am currently working on adding bandwidth throttling/shaping and other advanced networking "features". QOS, Hostap, and IPSEC(Frees/Wan) are now part of the ZoneCD. Hostap and VPN Passthru will need further developing over the next couple months. Shorewall will also be included on the .5 version.

I kinda have the throttling working a little. It's not working per Class yet... It's just 'on' or 'off'. The rules are there for the mark, but it's not working. I'm sure this is somehow related to the LiveCD environment. Once complete, bandwidth throttling will be configured for each user Class via Zone Control.

If you want to see the kernel config, you can check it out here.

New Morphix Base

I have been playing with the new .5-pre2 base from morphix. I can't say that i've been liking it either. After reading some problems that users are having with it, i am not sure i want to go there. The new base uses GRUB, not the floppy boot image currently used. Which i think is the root of all the problems. Seems like it won't boot on PC's that the older morphix base worked fine on.

We'll see what happens.... I am thinking i will just recompile the kernel for the current base....

The Control Server is done... for now....

Well, I am all done with the maintenance jobs. I also have added an "ftp user" job. I have a cron that runs every 6 hours to check for a file named member.csv in ftpusers' home directories. If found, the contents will be parsed and inserted into the user table (After it runs, it will mv the file to member.csv.bak so it doesn't keep doing the same thing over and over). If a user already exists, the record will be replaced with the new one.

If you're interested in using ftp to add users, shoot me an email.

What's next? I'm gonna hack away at the ZoneCD again. Give it the latest Morphix base and a new kernel with a bunch of goodies compiled into it.

Too tired to type more... brain hurt. Must sto

Control Server Maintenance Programs

Before i consider the initial release of the Control server complete, i need to finish a couple more programs that will scrub the db. The big one is for accounting. I will be moving data to a history table and only keeping data from "today" (relevant to a zone's tz) in the accounting table. Since limits are reset at midnight, this will not effect control, but it will keep the table lean for faster updates. Also, this means that reports will be pulled from the history table which will prevent control updates from being delayed because someone is running a report for "all time".

I will also be adding a "Denied Report" to Zone Control. This will list all the users that have been blocked and why. In order to do this i need to run a job to minimize the denied records. A deny is recorded whenever it occurs.... this means that if a user hits refresh a hundred times, a hundred denies are recorded. Not a very useful report. I will clean it up before you see it so you can use it to adjust a user's limitations or maybe set a persistent block.

Control Server - ZoneCD 0.4

So far, so good. Overall I am very happy with the performance of the new server. There were a number of bugs found, the biggest one was the IgnoreMac setting. Man-o-man was that a mistake. Granted some of you may need to use it, but it should only be used when all else fails. With IgnoreMac on, the ZoneCD doesn't send the client's mac to the server, you have very little -to- no control over your users without the mac. For the time being, the option was removed and i did a mass update in the db to fix all of you.

Aside from the logo thing i mentioned in my last post, there has been a couple small problems here and there. Nothing major, although they had the appearance of major problems. Please remember, it's just me over hear working on this stuff, the web ui, the zonecd, everything is me. There is no team of developers, or quality assurance. It's me and you. It's nearly impossible for me to catch everything myself. You guys help me by pointing out bugs and things that don't seem right. Thanks to all of you that help make this project work by providing the feedback i need to move it this quickly!!

Anyway, back to work.......

I F-up'ed the logo's

I made a boo-boo on the new server. When you upload your logo during the Master wizard it went to the same place as when you tweaked the logo in Zone Control. So Zone logo's were overwriting master logo's.... It was a mess. I fixed this today, so it shouldn't happen again.

IF YOU EVER SEE ANOTHER ZONE'S LOGO, PLEASE NOTIFY ME IMMEDIATELY. This is my nightmare.

The new PUBLICip is here!

The new website is live and ZoneCD 4-1 is released. This means the new Control server is in production. I will be waiting in "fire-fighter mode" for problems and questions.

Deleting All Control Server Accounts

First, thank you for testing the new system!!

I will be deleting all the accounts and all the data from the new system today(9/11). I want to do this to remove any bugs or mistakes I have made manually updating the db, or by you setting up your login while bugs existed.

All data will be wiped out of every table so we can start fresh. There were some bugs found during testing that caused problems with master/zone account setups. I don't want to deal with any "mysteries" or old setup problems once we are in production. This way I know we are all setup correctly (or at least the same ;-) and a problem for you means a problem for all... This will help me hang-on to what's left of my sanity and not waste too much time troubleshooting single setups.....

I am currently planning to do this tonight(9/11) after 8pm EDT.... Testing again Sunday... Then putting it into production on Monday. At least that's the plan.

Sorry if this is an inconvenience, but it's for your own good :-)

End-User Email Validation

End-User Email Validation is the last program(mini-system) i need to complete to put the new server in production. If you want to make sure users register a real email address, you can select to force new users to validate the email by clicking a link in an email sent to the registered email address.

Here's how i am handling this. When you select to validate the email, the user will be told after registration that they must check their email(using webmail) and click the link to activate their login... They have 24hrs to do this, after 24 hrs the login is considered a bad email address and deleted. Between the time the user registers and the 24hr limit, they will not be allowed to maintain a session for more that 10 minutes until they validate the email. Every 10 minutes they will be logged-out. When they login again, they will be told once again to validate their email address. That same page will also display your "support" email address to contact for assistance if the user doesn't get the email. The user can be manually "validated" from the User Management page in the new server.

Domain DNS Updated

I just updated publicip.net to use different nameservers. The new nameservers have been configured the same as the current DNS servers so nobody should notice any change... hopefully.

New website for www.publicip.net

While everyone else in the States was eating hamburgers and getting drunk during the Labor Day holiday weekend, i was redesigning the Public IP website. When i am ready to release the next ZoneCD and begin using the new Control Server, I will also be switching www.publicip.net to this new design. The new site is completed updated to reflect all of the changes to the ZoneCD and the server. I am hoping to make this live by the end of this week.

Let me know what you think.....

About the next ZoneCD

Here are some of the changes that will be in the next ZoneCD 0.4-1 release...

CHANGES:
New Control Server;
Fixed Eth0/Eth1 Bug (i mean it this time);
Fixed LogMailer rollover;
Fixed NoX Shell(no job control);
Added dansguardian.conf to floppy config;
Added filter on/off dialog for Open mode;
Installed iptraf;
Updated GUI Desktop Controls;
Modified nocat/bin/access.fw;
Modified nocat/bin/initialize.fw;
Modified nocat/lib/NoCat/Gateway/Captive.pm;
Modified /etc/hosts;
Removed Gimp and a few other "useless" programs;

NOTES:
The new server has many changes not shown here; NIC bug was caused by pump running in the background during network configuration. Some users that experienced problems with previous versions may need to switch cables for Eth0 and Eth1; The NoX fix was to not use NoX. The X server is started and runs a single instance of xterm. No windows manger; dansguardian.conf is copied to and from the floppy to allow some tweaking of filter rules;