Mugshot in FreeBSD

Well, I’ve just finished porting Mugshot to FreeBSD. If you’re interested in trying out, you can download the shar of this port’s tree (md5sum: 7c2f123ca4fce0b7689454b496605081) or refer to the FreeBSD PR ports/107174.

Merry Christmas :)

UPDATE: shar available at ports/107174 is not the latest shar.

UPDATE: Mugshot has been committed and available at net/mugshot in FreeBSD ports tree. To install do: cd /usr/ports/net/mugshot/ && make install clean

Google patented their search UI

Google Inc. has now patented their search UI.

Airtel Broadband dropping all outgoing packets to SMTP port

Well, this I just experienced a few minutes ago, and I think I should blog it. After queuing a mail on 127.0.0.1 smtp server in evening, I found that it was still not delivered. On tailing /var/log/maillog I found that smtp port of smtp.gmail.com is unreachable. I tried to telnet smtp.gmail.com on smtps port, there I got connected. So, I thought Gmail might have dropped support for relaying mails via smtp port, only smtps port. So then I asked one of my friend Edwin, who is fortunately online from non-Indian (or to be more precise, non-Airtel) network, to connect to smtp port of smtp.gmail.com. He told me that he is able to connect. Now, the next thought that came in my mind, Gmail has blocked smtp port of a specific box (though chances of that is very low, as these companies are running cluster of servers for load balancing, and anyways I never worked on clustered network :( ). So I tried another IPv4 address of smtp.gmail.com, still same problem. Then I thought to try connecting to another SMTP server’s smtp, so this time I tried MX of microsoft.com, still same problem, so then I checked my box’s and my ADSL modem’s iptables, but no such rule found. So then I called Gautam to know if he is already experiencing this problem. So he also confirmed me the same. Then Edwin suggested me that I should try tcptraceroute to see where packets were being dropped. Following is the stuff which I did:

[wahjava@chatteau ~]$ sudo tcptraceroute smtp.gmail.com -p 25
Password:
traceroute to smtp.gmail.com (72.14.215.109), 30 hops max, 40 byte packets
 1  172.16.0.1 (172.16.0.1)  1.503 ms  2.419 ms  3.376 ms
 2  rasBTNLDel-static-135.215.56.202.mantraonline.com (202.56.215.135)  366.339 ms  367.289 ms  368.254 ms
 3  rasBTNLDel-static-230.215.56.202.mantraonline.com (202.56.215.230)  378.217 ms  380.183 ms  384.148 ms
 4  * * *
 5  * * *
 6  * * *
 7  * * *
 8  rasBTNLDel-static-162.215.56.202.mantraonline.com (202.56.215.162)  3340.447 ms !X * *
[wahjava@chatteau ~]$ sudo tcptraceroute smtp.gmail.com -p 995
traceroute to smtp.gmail.com (209.85.133.111), 30 hops max, 40 byte packets
 1  172.16.0.1 (172.16.0.1)  1.479 ms  2.408 ms  3.352 ms
 2  rasBTNLDel-static-135.215.56.202.mantraonline.com (202.56.215.135)  20.312 ms  22.271 ms  23.240 ms
 3  rasBTNLDel-static-230.215.56.202.mantraonline.com (202.56.215.230)  33.203 ms  34.168 ms  36.131 ms
 4  rasBTNLDel-static-162.215.56.202.mantraonline.com (202.56.215.162)  48.099 ms  50.066 ms  51.032 ms
 5  203.101.95.181 (203.101.95.181)  52.985 ms  53.949 ms  60.921 ms
 6  203.101.100.29 (203.101.100.29)  84.881 ms  61.776 ms  65.554 ms
 7  203.101.100.237 (203.101.100.237)  99.229 ms  101.843 ms  107.750 ms
 8  202.56.223.29 (202.56.223.29)  103.664 ms  108.346 ms  3062.296 ms
 9  203.208.147.45 (203.208.147.45)  3303.216 ms  303.740 ms  298.521 ms
10  203.208.149.57 (203.208.149.57)  321.219 ms  296.750 ms  297.529 ms
11  * * *
12  209.85.130.6 (209.85.130.6)  337.195 ms  295.753 ms  296.539 ms
13  66.249.95.212 (66.249.95.212)  362.315 ms  352.741 ms  354.526 ms
14  72.14.238.155 (72.14.238.155)  375.188 ms 72.14.239.19 (72.14.239.19)  378.140 ms  386.085 ms
15  216.239.43.13 (216.239.43.13)  379.977 ms 216.239.49.22 (216.239.49.22)  401.926 ms  402.796 ms
16  209.85.133.111 (209.85.133.111)  1969.214 ms  1969.046 ms  1969.025 ms
[wahjava@chatteau ~]$ sudo tcptraceroute smtp.ncr.airtelbroadband.in -p 25
traceroute to smtp.ncr.airtelbroadband.in (202.56.230.30), 30 hops max, 40 byte packets
 1  172.16.0.1 (172.16.0.1)  1.593 ms  2.507 ms  3.457 ms
 2  rasBTNLDel-static-135.215.56.202.mantraonline.com (202.56.215.135)  398.424 ms  399.378 ms  403.343 ms
 3  rasBTNLDel-static-230.215.56.202.mantraonline.com (202.56.215.230)  404.307 ms  406.274 ms  408.237 ms
 4  rasBTNLDel-static-162.215.56.202.mantraonline.com (202.56.215.162)  414.203 ms  416.167 ms  435.135 ms
 5  203.101.95.181 (203.101.95.181)  433.101 ms  434.066 ms  439.032 ms
 6  * * *
 7  smtp.airtelbroadband.in (202.56.230.30)  5374.574 ms  5374.184 ms  5374.113 ms
[wahjava@chatteau ~]$ dig +short smtp.ncr.airtelbroadband.in
202.56.230.27
202.56.230.30
[wahjava@chatteau ~]$ telnet smtp.ncr.airtelbroadband.in smtp
Trying 202.56.230.27...
Connected to smtp.ncr.airtelbroadband.in (202.56.230.27).
Escape character is '^]'.
220 ****************************************************************
^]
telnet> quit
Connection closed.
[wahjava@chatteau ~]$ sudo tcptraceroute smtp.ncr.airtelbroadband.in -p 25
Password:
traceroute to smtp.ncr.airtelbroadband.in (202.56.230.27), 30 hops max, 40 byte packets
 1  172.16.0.1 (172.16.0.1)  1.434 ms  2.346 ms  3.297 ms
 2  rasBTNLDel-static-135.215.56.202.mantraonline.com (202.56.215.135)  263.255 ms  268.210 ms  271.172 ms
 3  rasBTNLDel-static-230.215.56.202.mantraonline.com (202.56.215.230)  270.139 ms  274.102 ms  276.069 ms
 4  rasBTNLDel-static-162.215.56.202.mantraonline.com (202.56.215.162)  280.034 ms  280.991 ms  285.953 ms
 5  203.101.95.181 (203.101.95.181)  287.920 ms  288.886 ms  290.852 ms
 6  203.101.100.198 (203.101.100.198)  291.817 ms  321.753 ms  322.518 ms
 7  smtpout.airtelbroadband.in (202.56.230.27)  973.533 ms  973.181 ms  973.111 ms

As clear from the above dump, that outgoing TCP packets to smtp port are dropped at 202.56.215.162, but 202.56.215.162 allows packets to smtp.ncr.airtelbroadband.in. So, what do you conclude from this ? Anyways, I reported this to their customer care, but customer care representative told me that they’re currently having some problem with some 3rd party websites. And he told me that issue will be resolved tomorrow. Let’s hope it get resolved soon.

apt-cacher on Fedora

First of all let me clear that, this is not apt-cacher serving as package caching tool for Fedora Core packages (i.e. RPMs). This is for those who want to cache Debian or Ubuntu packages on their Fedora Core box. So, here I’ve created an RPM (md5sum: a02c35fe10ee9bab1da8f743cf586417) and SRPM (md5sum: a4900595efe997fc926aebb04396a0fd) for apt-cacher on Fedora Core 6.

I also created an init script for apt-cacher for Fedora Core using skeleton available in /usr/share/rpmdevtools/template.init (available from rpmdevtools-0-5.3-1.fc6 package).