Category: Linux

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OpenDNS is adding a Singapore Datacenter

Good news for those of us in Asia using OpenDNS!

In their October 2010 newsletter, OpenDNS announced that later this year they will adding a new datacenter in Singapore to better serve OpenDNS customers in the Pacific Rim.

Since OpenDNS is anycasted, the new datacenter means faster DNS resolution and an overall faster Internet for OpenDNS users in Asia. If this is where you live, no changes on your end are needed to get the faster DNS resolution — your DNS requests will automatically begin routing through the new servers.

Existing and planned OpenDNS server locations are shown in the OpenDNS network map located here.

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Remove advertisments from Untangle Web Filter

If you are running Untangle’s free “Lite” package,  you may have noticed that advertisements are now shown in the bottom of block pages generated by the Web filter.

Untangle announced that they had put this in place in order to generate revenue to support development of the Untangle platform. Whilst I understand their need to support development, some of the ad’s that show up are of a questionable nature. If Untangle has to show advertisements within its block pages in order to support its back end infrastructure then I fear they may not be around much longer, as a company. I’d suggest Untangle look for sponsors to provide update and download hosting for the open source / Lite applications and only host their commercial applications themselves.

Solutions:

1. Purchase an application from Untangle, for example the Branding Manager which costs $108.00 per year. This will automatically remove ad’s in the Web Filter application and also lets you brand the interface with your own logo etc. This is my recommended method.

2. If your running a test UTM or a small installation at home, you can forcefully remove the advertisements as follows:

a. SSH into your Untangle box.
b. Make a backup copy of the blockpage:

$ cp /usr/share/untangle/web/blockpage/blockpage_template.jspx /usr/share/untangle/web/blockpage/blockpage_template.jspx~

c. Open the block page template: Continue reading “Remove advertisments from Untangle Web Filter”

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How to send an attachment from the Linux shell

Occasionally I have a ZIP file I need to transfer to myself from the shell (*nix) and SCP is not always available.

UUencode, part of the sharutils package, does the trick:

# uuencode /home/myname/file.zip file.zip | mail -s “Look at this file” [email protected].

If your system reports that UUencode is not available or not found, run:

# yum –y install sharutils

To install the package and necessary dependencies.

If UUENCODE isn’t available run: # yum –y install sharutils

That’s it!

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How to protect Horde Webmail (Plesk) against brute force attacks

This article outlines the process of configuring Fail2Ban to secure a Horde Webmail, running on a Plesk server, against brute force attacks.

Prerequisite: This article expects that you have already completed the installation of Fail2Ban as outlined here.

Once you have completed the installation of Fail2Ban –

1. Copy the Courier IMAP filter to a new filter for Horde:

# cp /etc/fail2ban/filter.d/courierlogin.conf /etc/fail2ban/filter.d/hordelogin.conf

2. Edit the contents of /etc/fail2ban/filter.d/hordelogin.conf

# nano -w /etc/fail2ban/filter.d/hordelogin.conf

The file should read:

[Definition]

failregex = FAILED LOGIN for *.* \[< HOST >\] .*$

ignoreregex =

3. Edit the Fail2Ban jail file:

# nano -w /etc/fail2ban/jail.conf

4. At the end of the file add: Continue reading “How to protect Horde Webmail (Plesk) against brute force attacks”