Introducing ViMbAdmin – Virtual Mailbox Administration

Open Solutions are pleased to announce the immediate availability of our latest free and open source web application, ViMbAdmin, a web based interface which will allow you to manage mailboxes, virtual domains and aliases.

Open Solutions are pleased to announce the immediate availability of our latest free and open source web application, ViMbAdmin (vim-be-admin). ViMbAdmin is a web based interface which will allow you to manage mailboxes, virtual domains and aliases.

ViMbAdmin is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the terms of the GNU General Public License version 3, or (at your option) any later version.

ViMbAdmin was entirely funded by Open Solutions and developed by our staff. If you find this application of value, please consider making a donation to our chosen charity.

Do you want to see it in action? We have a live demo which you can access here. You can also browse screenshots by clicking the image on this page.

ViMbAdmin was written in PHP using our own web application framework which includes the Zend Framework, the Doctrine ORM and the Smarty templating system with JQuery on the frontend.

ViMbAdmin is hosted on its own Google Code project page where you can find documentation, browse the source code and access our Subversion repository. We have set up a Google Groups discussion group and you can read our ViMbAdmin blog posts.

ViMbAdmin can work as a slot in replacement for Postfix Admin with a few MySQL ALTER statements.

Features

  • Super admin(s) user level with full access;
  • Admin(s) user level with access only to assigned domains and their mailboxes and aliases;
  • Super admins can create and modify super admins and admins;
  • JQuery Datatable throughout for quick in browser searching and pagination;
  • Create, modify and purge domains including limited the number of mailboxes and aliases a non-super admin can create per-domain;
  • Activate / deactivate admins, domains, mailboxes and aliases at the click of a button;
  • Full logging;
  • Facility for users (mailbox owners) to change their password;
  • Forgotten Password / Password Reset function for admins;
  • Very configurable including:
    • set default values for quotas, number of mailboxes and aliases for domain creation;
    • templated welcome and settings email for users;
    • either plain or MD5 mailbox password support;

 

Querying for DNS Glue Records (using dig)

On a project I’m working on, I need to establish if a domain has IPv6 glue records or not. If I had to do it on a once off, a whois lookup would answer that nicely:

$ /usr/bin/whois opensolutions.ie
<snip>
nserver:     dns1.dns.opensolutions.ie 87.232.1.40 2a01:268:4::40
nserver:     dns2.dns.opensolutions.ie 87.232.1.41 2a01:268:4::41
nserver:     dns3.dns.opensolutions.ie 87.232.16.61 2a01:268:3002::61

However, in this case, I will need to do it many times on many domains and do not need to have to worry about whois servers limiting the queries or parsing the output from different whois servers.

After some digging, it looks like the nameservers of TLDs return glue records in the additional section. Let’s look by example on opensolutions.ie. First, find the TLD servers for .ie:

$ dig NS ie
<snip>
;; ANSWER SECTION:
ie.                     172800  IN      NS      gns1.domainregistry.ie.
ie.                     172800  IN      NS      uucp-gw-1.pa.dec.com.
ie.                     172800  IN      NS      uucp-gw-2.pa.dec.com.
ie.                     172800  IN      NS      ns3.ns.esat.net.
ie.                     172800  IN      NS      banba.domainregistry.ie.
ie.                     172800  IN      NS      ice.netsource.ie.
ie.                     172800  IN      NS      gns2.domainregistry.ie.
ie.                     172800  IN      NS      ns-ie.nic.fr.
ie.                     172800  IN      NS      b.iedr.ie.

Now query one of these for the nameservers for opensolutions.ie:

$ dig NS opensolutions.ie @banba.domainregistry.ie.
<snip>
;; AUTHORITY SECTION:
opensolutions.ie.       172800  IN      NS      dns3.dns.opensolutions.ie.
opensolutions.ie.       172800  IN      NS      dns2.dns.opensolutions.ie.
opensolutions.ie.       172800  IN      NS      dns1.dns.opensolutions.ie.

;; ADDITIONAL SECTION:
dns1.dns.opensolutions.ie. 172800 IN    A       87.232.1.40
dns1.dns.opensolutions.ie. 172800 IN    AAAA    2a01:268:4::40
dns2.dns.opensolutions.ie. 172800 IN    A       87.232.1.41
dns2.dns.opensolutions.ie. 172800 IN    AAAA    2a01:268:4::41
dns3.dns.opensolutions.ie. 172800 IN    A       87.232.16.61
dns3.dns.opensolutions.ie. 172800 IN    AAAA    2a01:268:3002::61

As you can see, the authority section contains the nameservers for opensolutions.ie which are all on the opensolutions.ie domain. We then find the glue records for these nameservers in the additional section.

Useful RANCID Debugging Tips

I always find it difficult to find a good reference for RANCID debugging strategies and, after spending the afternoon on doing same on one installation, put together my own list.

I always find it difficult to find a good reference for RANCID debugging strategies and, after spending the afternoon on doing same on one installation, put together my own list.

Note that in the following, I use clogin and rancid which assumes a Cisco device. Change to the appropriate variations if you’re not trying to work with a Cisco.

  1. Test logging into a device: 
    > clogin rtr1.example.com
  2. Test logging into a device and a single command: 
    > clogin -t 90 -c"show version" rtr1.example.com
  3. Test logging into a device and run a sequence of commands: 
    > clogin -t 90 -c"show version;show calendar" rtr1.example.com
  4. Show what RANCID does with debugging output: 
    > rancid -d rtr1.example.com

    If the above throws some errors (especially a list of missed commands, and if you’re using TACACS, ensure you have authorisation to run all the commands RANCID tries but logging into the router as the RANCID user and executing them one at a time.

  5. Same as (4) but record all router / switch output for analysis: 
    > setenv NOPIPE YES
> rancid -d rtr1.example.com

    and then complete output can be found in the file: rtr1.example.com.raw (in this example).

  6. Run RANCID on a single switch / router tree rather than all: 
    > /usr/local/bin/rancid-run [tree]
  7. Run RANCID normally:
> /usr/local/bin/rancid-run
  1. Don’t forget that logs are available in RANCID’s logs/ directory.

IANA IPv4 Free Pool Exhausted

The IANA IPv4 free pool was exhausted today, 3 February 2011. Each of the Regional Internet Registries (RIRs) has now received one of the final five /8s.

The RIPE NCC updated yesterday that the IANA IPv4 free pool has been exhausted:

The IANA IPv4 free pool was exhausted today, 3 February 2011. Each of the Regional Internet Registries (RIRs) has now received one of the final five /8s. The RIPE NCC has been allocated 185/8.

The RIPE NCC is holding reserves totaling approximately four /8s (around 75 million individual IPv4 addresses), not including 185/8.

RIPE will most likely exhaust their reserves sometime in 2011:

As we unable to anticipate consumption rates, we cannot fully predict how long our reserves will last. However, we would like to reassure you that our supplies will not be exhausted within the coming months.

GIMP: Change Background from Black / White to Transparent

This is one that I find myself Googling for regularly but spend time wading through poor results and solutions:

http://brainsongimp.blogspot.com/2008/03/black-and-white-jpg-to-transparent-png.html

INEX Breaks 10Gbps Barrier – Again

INEX, Ireland’s Neutral Internet Exchange Point, broke the 10Gbps barrier last week coinciding with the Government’s budget announcement. It didn’t quite break the previous record from the announcement of the four year plan.

This traffic spike would have been primarily driven by HEAnet and RTE streaming the Dáil proceedings live to Irish Internet viewers – INEX’s members would account for about 97% of all eyeballs in Ireland.

INEX makes its overall traffic statistics publically accessible.

 

Changing a User’s UID on Apple XServe / Snow Leopard

Due to exporting NFS file systems from Linux boxes to an XServe, I had need to match the new users’ UID on the XServe to the Linux UIDs. Unfortunately this was not so obvious.

There’s a good how-to here:

http://www.inteller.net/notes/change-user-id-on-snow-leopard

Fix for Silly Annoying FreeBSD PHP Ports Errors

The following occurs quite regularly on FreeBSD:

Cannot find autoconf. Please check your autoconf installation and the
$PHP_AUTOCONF environment variable. Then, rerun this script.

and when fixed, it’s followed up by:

Cannot find autoheader. Please check your autoconf installation and the
$PHP_AUTOHEADER environment variable. Then, rerun this script.

The fix is to set those environment variables (as appropriate for the autoconf and autoheader version numbers – the below is my example on FreeBSD 8.1):

export PHP_AUTOCONF=/usr/local/bin/autoconf-2.68
export PHP_AUTOHEADER=/usr/local/bin/autoheader-2.68

in bash of the following in tcsh: 

setenv PHP_AUTOCONF autoconf-2.68
setenv PHP_AUTOHEADER autoheader-2.68

INEX Breaks 10Gbps Barrier

INEX, Ireland’s neutral Internet Exchange Point, broke the 10Gbps barrier last week coinciding with the Government’s launch of their four year plan:

Reaching a new record high, traffic at INEX, Ireland’s Internet Exchange Point, has exceeded the 10Gigabit per second barrier for the first time.  This record, of 12.137* Gigabits per second, comes in a year when INEX is experiencing its greatest growth in traffic in the exchange’s 14 year history.  The traffic peak, which coincided with the announcement of the National Recovery Plan, is an indication of the increase in consumption of rich media content (TV, video, music, conferencing) over the Internet by users in Ireland, including the new wave of mobile internet users. INEX has also welcomed a number of new Members in recent months who have also contributed to the rapid traffic growth.

Read the full release on INEX‘s own website. We’re looking forward to seeing this record being smashed tomorrow with the announcement of the 2011 budget.

Open Solutions (my company) has been a part of INEX’s operations team since April 2008, working with the expanding number of INEX Members and ensuring the smooth running of the exchange. We assist with the administration of the switching frabic, provide member support, and develop INEX’s provisioning and management systems.