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A possible issue with SPF

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This problem may already have been addressed, and I’ve no doubt that other people have also given it thought – but I’ve not been able to find any information pertaining to it, so if it has the answer hasn’t been widely disseminated. However I think there is an issue with how SPF relates to non-mail servers and non-existent sub-domains. First a bit of background though – the purpose of SPF is to prevent sender address forgery and correctly configured it does achieve this for domains and subdomains both for those you intend to send e-mail from and those you don’t. To prevent abuse of domains, and presumably sub-domains that you don’t send e-mail from the SPF FAQ advises that you: “Publish null SPF records for your domains that don’t send mail” http://www.openspf.org/FAQ/Common_mistakes#all-domains They acknowledge that there is a problem with people spoofing non-email sending domains, however the FAQ doesn’t mention… Continue reading

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DNS trouble shooting for beginners

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Introduction DNS generally just works (at least as far as you’re concerned), which is good as the internet would be far less fun without it. However this does mean that many people don’t really know how to tell if a problem is a DNS error or something else – this makes life difficult for support desks and even worse causes work for DNS admins. It needn’t be so! Telling if something is a DNS issue is actually quite simple, and trouble shooting it isn’t much more difficult. To start with there are really only a very few ways that DNS can go wrong ( from a user perspective – from an admin perspective DNS can go wrong in many and varied ways ). Not responding at all Returning the wrong data Not returning a record when it should That from an end users point of view are really the only… Continue reading

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WD MyBrick

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These instructions were put together by Ouglee over on the WD forums. This copy is mainly just to make my life easier in case things go astray. If only because when hacking My Cloud I’ve needed these a few times. If you think you have bricked your WD My Cloud or are getting a lot of errors, Do not turn it off a lot of the time running processes will be fine so you should be able to copy all your data off first. Once you’ve power cycled it if it doesn’t come back retrieving all that data is far more hassle. Also there were some differences in what I saw and did which I’ll note here. When running gparted make a note of the end of your data partition as it saves time later on In step 16 I was asked for an “end” as well as a start.… Continue reading

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Hacking “My Cloud”

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N.B. Doing any of the things in this document will void your warranty and may turn your cloud into a brick. That said the WD My Cloud box is quite a handy little device and as it’s running Debian Wheezy you can do quite a lot of fun stuff with it. How much you want and can do will obviously depend on what you’re using it for, but keep an eye on load and it’s really quite capable. Back everything up! Frequently! Seriously, I mean it make back ups of all the system files before you start doing anything and make backups after each change. The My Cloud device doesn’t have convenient console access so it’s not too hard to lock yourself out. Though the reset/restore function is actually very forgiving and mainly just loses changes to the /etc/password file. I also suggest putting as many of the files (especially… Continue reading