PUBLICip DevlBlog

ZoneCD 2.0

wi-phi — Tue, 01 Apr 2008 12:03:00 +0000

ZoneCD 2.0 (beta) should be released in the next few weeks. Unless something goes horribly wrong it will be based on Gentoo.

The initial release will duplicate the current features of the Premium system. The features will be updated after the new kernel and software versions are found to be somewhat stable.

I will be attempting to integrate the Free system all into the ZoneCD and eliminate the need for the server side completely. Once i get started working on this, I may remember why it was so difficult the first time :)

BTW - there may also be a ZoneUSB version coming....

Bad Vista

wi-phi — Fri, 10 Aug 2007 13:59:00 +0000

Hi people! Still here and getting back on track for some new stuff...

But first, I came here to post a link to an important site. People need to be aware of exactly what Microsoft is doing with their Vista OS. Please take two minutes to visit Bad Vista and read what M$ is doing.... After reading what Bad Vista has to say, you may want to visit Ubuntu and Crossover Office.

Spread the word.

More to come on ZoneCD later......

Scott

On my way home....

wi-phi — Sat, 11 Mar 2006 01:12:00 +0000

Michigan was great to me. It's funny meeting people that you only know from the internet world, it's like meeting a friend for the first time.

Everything went great! There was two other vendors at the conference, and i am pretty sure we killed them :) At least half of the attendees really seemed interested in what Public IP has to offer, the other half i think were just there for the day-off ;)

Anyway - i'm tired, and once again posting something only because i needed to pay for Internet access from Detroit International. I'll post some more geeky stuff next week.

On my way to Flint Michigan

wi-phi — Thu, 09 Mar 2006 12:57:00 +0000

I am sitting at Philadelphia International waiting for my flight to Detroit. I had to pay Wayport $7.95 for 24 hours access so i figured I'll try to get my money's worth and post to the blog ;) You would think that paying for access would give you access to all or most ports.... not so with Wayport. But i use HotSpotVPN2 so all is well :)

I am headed to the WiFi thing for Libraries with a bag full of ZoneCDs. I thought for sure that 60 CD's in a box would have looked like a bomb, but i guess not. I was all ready to hit the floor, or get harassed by airport security. So far so good, other then paying for internet access

Authserver Code Release

wi-phi — Wed, 01 Mar 2006 14:58:00 +0000

I am preparing to release the source code used on the Premium authservers. I have a couple more changes to make in the code to fix a couple little bugs, and add a couple improvements. Once I complete this I will tar the source and install it on another server so I can get it ready for pre-release. There is one major problem. It has no Admin interface, only the captive portal. As I have always said, Zone Control will not be released, but the actual authentication code will be.

If anybody wants to manage the source code release please email me. I'll hand you the source code I have, and setup you to manage the publicip.org domain. Your responsibility would be to see that an Admin interface is developed, and also setting-up and maintaining the publicip.org domain. Of course, you will be working closely with me in the beginning, but after you're ready you'll be free to do as you wish.

You should be familiar with PHP5, MySQL, html form handling/UI design, and basic web design. Email scott at publicip dot net if you are interested in helping.

Premium Server Upgrades

wi-phi — Fri, 24 Feb 2006 14:33:00 +0000

This was supposed to all happen on this coming Sunday during off hours, but the boys at the NOC got their wires crossed. Yesterday between 4:00pm and 5:45pm New York time four of the Premium servers were migrated to beefed up servers (specs below). master.publicip.com, auth3.wificontrol.net, auth1.wificontrol.net, and ndb1.publicip.com were moved and all experienced downtime. Hotspots were not affected by this move because of the system architecture.

Server specs:

P4 3.2 Ghz with 800Mhz FSB, 1MB L2 cache
2 GB RAM
SATA drives in hardware RAID configuration
40 GB hard drive space

The migration will be completed next week when auth2.wificontrol.net, and ndb2.publicip.com are migrated. ndb3 and ndb4 will be taken offline by the end of next week. These two servers were added not for redundancy, but to carry the load. With the new servers they should not be needed and removing them should increase performance of the cluster.

I apologize for the downtime.... My stomach was in knots the entire time. But at least it was for a good reason.

TechEscape 4.0: No Strings Attached

wi-phi — Wed, 22 Feb 2006 15:37:00 +0000

Anybody that's a member of the MLA (Michigan Library Association), will get a chance to see me and Ronnie Morgan from the Genesee District Library give a live demo of the ZoneCD and Zone Control in Lansing Michigan on Friday, March 10 at a wireless workshop.

Details available here:
http://www.cmpl.org/mla/ltd/Events/2006techescape/index.htm

Opinions are like assholes

wi-phi — Tue, 21 Feb 2006 14:07:00 +0000

Every project has one. Public IP's showed it's face yesterday in the forum. I have no problem if you don't agree with my vision, just don't try to slam me in my own forum and not expect me to come out swinging. Go do it in your own forum where others like yourself can bash me to pieces and have a good ol' time.

People come to Public IP trying to make it what they need. I am always willing, and even eager to help, but there are times when I can't. The Install version is one of these things.... The ZoneCD install version is not as simple as releasing a distro that will install to a disk. It needs to stay updated. Nobody wants to install a new OS every few months... or possibly weeks(especially in the early releases). I need to put an apt repository online to download updates, and maybe even use CVS too. Also support demands will increase probably by 5x to 10x because people will be hosing their system. It happens....

An Install version may be what you need, but it may be exactly what causes the demise of Public IP - If it's not done correctly.

Connecting the ZoneCD directly to the Internet

wi-phi — Thu, 16 Feb 2006 14:49:00 +0000

Don't do it! I am receiving more and more complaints and FYI's that spammers are utilizing Squid, or DG to relay spam. This usually results in your ISP shutting you down, or blocking ports. If you have read the setup instructions http://www.publicip.net/devl/setup.php you will notice that i do not recomend connecting the ZoneCD directly to the Internet. Please DO NOT connect the zonecd pc directly to the internet!! The eth0 side of the box should be connected to a LAN, or stick a router out on the Internet then connect the zonecd box to the router. Eth0 has not been hardened to withstand the abuse coming from the Internet.

What's NOT been happening..

wi-phi — Wed, 15 Feb 2006 18:48:00 +0000

New development. I've been in seclusion for a few months. At least that's probably how it appears to most of you. I've been working behind the scenes on support issues, and some minor bug fixes, as well as a few enhancements to Premium service. I have still been very busy.

I've spent alot of my time over the last couple of years working on public ip. I owed some make-up time to my family... BUT, I think I am just about paid-up now (or maybe I'm just fed-up :) . It's hard to break out of the casual lifestyle of a normal father/husband back into the madness of livecd development. But I feel the urge coming back.

Public IP Services is on the verge of becoming something very big... I think that's what is causing me to step out of the spotlight and do more behind the scenes work. I think I liked posting in the blog more when nobody was reading it. Weird right? It's taking me time to adjust to everything happening around me.

Sooo... No worries, I am not terminally ill or giving up. I am just adjusting and observing to everything around me. Sometimes you need to stop building, so you can see how far you have gone, and what still needs to be finished.

Testing 1-2-3

wi-phi — Mon, 06 Feb 2006 18:54:00 +0000

This thing still working ?

Unionfs - Stack 'em up!

wi-phi — Thu, 20 Oct 2005 17:29:00 +0000

Unionfs is awesome. Unionfs will be used in the next zonecd (1.3) to make the filesystem a lot more friendly. No more seeing doubles. No more read-only errors. It will also be possible to have any changes automatically saved and restored!! You can read more on their site about the benefits. http://www.unionfs.org/

Being able to stack filesystems has also made development easier. Speaking of devl, the next release will be a big change in the evolution of the zonecd, not only because of unionfs, but I am also switching to 2.6 kernel, and adding the madwifi drivers. AND the zonecd will have an install option! No separate distro. It will be made to work on embedded systems as well as PC's.

Developmental Retardation

wi-phi — Fri, 30 Sep 2005 15:58:00 +0000

Development is currently at a snail's pace compared to my normal rate. It's been a week full of reconfigurations of all types. Servers, services, job positions, and family have all had their fair share of changes this week. Seems like I just have to sit back for a few minutes and wait... something is bound to go wrong, or need immediate attention. I don't know how else to say it, it's been a shit week, maybe two.

Development of the new install distro is still my top priority. When I am not running around putting out fires, that's what I am working on. I am also constantly making minor adjustments to [premium] zone control. That seems to fit nicely in the small divots of time I have to focus before something pulls me away.

I believe I have things in order for a much more productive week next week. The only thing that will remain is my added responsibilities at my day job. We had a couple guys quit, and I got stuck with some of the chores. It's kinda funny really... I am now the web specialist and firewall/content filter administrator for a 1500 employee corporation. At least for another week or two. AFAIK, there is only one other place that job combination exists...

Remote Authentication

wi-phi — Tue, 13 Sep 2005 14:18:00 +0000

I've been slacking a little for the last week or so... been on vacation from my day job so I decided to let the brain rest for a couple days.

Services are running fairly smooth. There was a problem a few days ago with a network database. I ended up putting a new server online and letting the problem server stay offline. It will probably stay that way until I put a fourth server online. Other than the rogue ndb node, things have been going well with the new Premium services.

In the News: I have completed the programming that allows Premium subscribers to use remote authentication via http. Zone Control can be configured to parse an ACL, or any remote webpage to authenticate a login from your hotspot. You can even parse for a specific string/date/number and display a custom message depending on the value. For example, a library is authenticating a barcode on the user's library card and parsing an ACL for "money owed" (and a few other things too). If the amount owed is greater than $4.99, then the user is blocked and a message is displayed to see a librarian for assistance. So far I've got four library branches and a university using remote http authentication.

What's coming: I'll be working on a new "Install" distro over the next week or so. This will allow you to install the gateway file system used for the premium system to a hard drive instead of using the ZoneCD. Sometime after that, I'll work on the WRT release.

New Additions

wi-phi — Fri, 26 Aug 2005 13:49:00 +0000

I've been slacking a little in keeping to all up to date on recent additions to the premium service. But I've got a little time today so here's a quick run down of a few new additions to PUBLIC IP Premium.

IPP2P: User requested. The zoneCD can block file sharing protocols per class. IPP2P will block Internet access for eDonkey, eMule, Kademlia, KaZaA, FastTrack, Gnutella, Direct Connect, BitTorrent, AppleJuice, WinMX, SoulSeek, Ares, and AresLite. See http://www.ipp2p.org/

One Time Reg: User requested. You can [try to] restrict users to registering only one username. This is done by using the MAC address of the user's wireless client to confirm that he/she has not already registered. If you require validation and the user fails to validate his account he WILL be given a second chance to register with a good email account.

Registration Filters: User Requested. A registration filter is a regular expression that will be applied to a username upon successful self registration. It is recommended to only use this feature when you require a validated email address for a username. "Pending" accounts are in a special class or validation period until approved or validated. In other words, a user classified as Trusted by a filter rule will not be in the Trusted class until validated.

If the expression is a match, then the user will be classified as defined by the filter rule. If the username does not match any regular expression then that user will be put in your default class. For example, maybe you setup a school and your default class is Protected, but you want to allow the students to have Liberated access. You could add ^.*@school\.com$ to the Liberated Filter and students will be classified as Liberated users. Or maybe you don't trust free email users... You could have your default class set to Liberated, but ^.*@(hotmailmsngmailyahoododgeit)/.com$ (this piece of shit blog keeps stripping my pipes out from between email domains) get thrown in the Protected class.

DHCPd Configuration: I have finally added the ability to configure dhcpd yourself. If you don't know already Eth1's IP and subnet mask can also be re-defined in Zone Control. In my personal setup I am using 10.10.1.1 as the gateway IP, 255.255.252.0 as the subnet mask. DHCPd is configured to use subnet 10.10.0.0, Start IP of 10.10.1.10, and a stop IP of 10.10.3.250. This gives me about 750 IP addresses for clients.

Import users: Three options are available to import users into the system. 1.) Import from the free system. 2.) Upload a CSV file. 3.) SMTP (email attachment) To setup an email address for imports, you need to supply a valid email address with a choice of subject for the email. This combination will act as a kind of username and password. Aside from only accepting emails into the system from this address, the import program will send the results of your import to this email address. As added (needed) security, you will also be required to import a GnuPG public key for your email address.

SpotCheck: Spot check has been around. For those that don't know, Spotcheck has an RSS feed and a flash object in zone control that provides gateway statistics such as active sessions, registered users, uptime, load, etc.. Spotcheck also emails you upon system failure and recovery. Well now you can email Spotcheck. You can send an email to spotcheck@publicip.com with you zone's username as the subject and get an auto-response with your zone stats.

I think that's it. If I think of something else I'll post it.

PUBLIC IP Support Techs Wanted

wi-phi — Fri, 26 Aug 2005 13:44:00 +0000

I think I might be done. Kinda scary saying it out loud, but I'm feeling it. The only thing left is the support system, which I am setting up this weekend. Any of you helpful types that are active in the forum should contact me if you would like to help support Premium users. In return you will get free premium service. In the future who knows where this will lead... maybe to a little cash payout as well. We'll need to work out details on exactly what is expected of you, and what is expected from me.

Shoot an email to me for more info on become a Public IP Support Tech.

OpenSSL 0.9.8 Ruined My Day

wi-phi — Tue, 16 Aug 2005 16:15:00 +0000

Everything seemed to go pretty smooth last night....

I had to re-compile apache 1.3.33 last night. I figured i would upgrade to the latest and greatest OpenSSL while i was in the compiling mood. Baaaadddd idea. I am not sure why but 0.9.8 hosed mod_ssl. It kinda worked.... It worked almost perfect for firefox, but IE always came up with broken images, or the stylesheet missing when using https.

Anyway went to 0.9.7g, re-re-compiled apache, and mod_ssl and it seemed to clear things up. Now maybe i can get something done... and you can too.

HA Tested and working !

wi-phi — Mon, 15 Aug 2005 18:52:00 +0000

Sometimes bad news can be good news too... The premium system took a hit about a half an hour ago and i lost the master server and one of the auth servers to unknown causes (still looking at the problem). But even a half an hour after these two servers are down i still see 17 gateways online and 8 users :) So it might suck that www.publicip.com is down, but atleast the servers and DBs that support the end-users are still chugging away... Nice to know that the high availability is working as expected.

OK, the servers are back up :)

Premium Service Language Translations

wi-phi — Tue, 09 Aug 2005 17:00:00 +0000

http://www.publicip.com/lang/

I included directions in the index.
I'll give $10 account credit for each full translation.

Language Translations

wi-phi — Mon, 08 Aug 2005 14:18:00 +0000

I am working on getting the translation file together for the new system... I should have it done today. I'll just post a link to the file with instructions when it's ready.

Premium Services Are Live!

wi-phi — Mon, 08 Aug 2005 13:10:00 +0000

Still beta, but the new system will be administered and updated as if it was in full production mode... no "willy-nilly" updates, or unannounced downtime. Changes will go through Quality Assurance (QA) before being pushed to the authservers. BTW- Anybody can QA. From your Zone's homepage in the "Common Links" menu, click "Restart or Reboot..." and select QA from the WiFiDog droplist. This will restart WiFiDog with it pointing at the Master server. This is only recommended when working with me on a bug or feature request! QA can be up and down.

The new system should be very stable.

I removed the htaccess from document root on www.publicip.com.

You can still use the BETA99 coupon until September 1.

I have uploaded a new iso to sourceforge with a bugfix or two.... zoneCD_1.1-4 You can also grab it here http://www.publicip.org/mirror/dists/beta/

Keep the feedback coming, and be sure to let me know if something doesn't work the way you think it should.

Looking towards production....

wi-phi — Fri, 29 Jul 2005 13:19:00 +0000

It got a little crazy for a day or two, but the new system is starting to stabilize. It will probably take a month or two to work out all the bugs with all of the options that are available. There are still some bugs in the server push for "On The `Spot" support, but that will take a little time to work out because testing is slow.

This weekend i will be cleaning up publicip.com with some of the changes to copy on the site that have been discussed in mailing list and in blog comments. Hopefully by early next week i will be removing the htaccess from document root and be in a "beta production mode". Meaning that there will be a few bugs, but the system is stable enough to support users.

The BETA99 code will be valid until September 1. After that it's full price.

Release the hounds!

wi-phi — Thu, 21 Jul 2005 15:41:00 +0000

I actually have "butterflies in my stomach" as i type this... It's ready! Ready enough anyway... I know we will be finding a lot more things to fix but it's time for you guys to start helping ;-)

http://www.publicip.com/

The document root is "protected" with htaccess. I dropped an htaccess in document root to protect anybody from stumbling onto the site and making a purchase before the system is ready for actual production use.

User: beta
Pass: beta

Use coupon code BETA99 when you select a service. This will give you a %99.9 percent discount. Service will cost you a penny or two.

Thanks to everybody for the support over the last 6 months. This has been a long road, but i am afraid the journey has just begun... when your ready check it out and let me know what you think! (remember to use the mailing list for questions during beta)

Sorry, almost forgot (ok, not almost i did).
heres the iso: http://www.publicip.org/mirror/dists/beta/

ZoneCD_1.0-0.iso (skipped to version 1.0)

No Go

wi-phi — Wed, 20 Jul 2005 12:32:00 +0000

I had to call it quits at 2:00 am. I ran into a bug last night with the queue system. I had to move the data to a ndb table and change a few programs. Then i had some problems with foreign keys on the slaves. Then decryption stopped working for the downloaded files on the zoneCD.

I am pretty bummed-out. I really thought i would be posting info for access to the new site for beta testing. I guess, check back tommorrow.... There is no "sign-up" for beta testers. I will post details when the time is right.

On your mark, get set....

wi-phi — Tue, 19 Jul 2005 15:46:00 +0000

All that remains is writing a few cron jobs and a final round of testing and it's a "go". I just need to make it from new account setup -> order -> master config -> zone setup -> zonecd boot -> wireless login without an error interrupting me.

After beta testing is complete i will be setting up a ticket system for support. But while we are in beta, lets use the old mailing list for QA:
http://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/publicip-testers

Please submit bugs here:
http://sourceforge.net/tracker/?func=add&group_id=98792&atid=637601

These links are also available in zone control.

All beta testers will get a major discount. You will get a %99.9 percent discount on the first month subscription... why not free? I hate saying it, but I need to test billing too.

I will post the coupon code for the discount along with the url to the new public ip, and the url to the new zonecd tomorrow.