I went to resurrect my dynamic DNS configuration on my OpenWrt router. The idea was sparked from a reader comment, so I wanted to follow-up on using nsupdate.info with OpenWrt for a DIY Dynamic DNS setup.

Before I began, I thought I should see if there’s a newer OpenWrt version my router can run. I always start on the Supported Devices page of the wiki, but on this visit I was treated to a warning:

If you read the 4/32 warning, the crux of the matter is that there may not be enough RAM to run OpenWrt without crashing. And the small flash area means possibly not having enough room to install LuCI, the web interface, and the packages to access LuCI via HTTPS. Also, there’s this:

Previous versions of OpenWrt (such as earlier versions of 17.01.x, 15.05.x “Chaos Calmer” and prior) contain now-known security vulnerabilities in the kernel, wireless implementation, and/or application code. […] In many cases, these known vulnerabilities are being actively targeted, potentially including by advanced, likely state-sponsored or state-affiliated actor or actors.

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So you’re getting ready to move your website. You’ve got the new hosting plan purchased, and you’ve got the files and data copied over. You set up your hosts file to point to the new host, but something doesn’t look quite right 😕

You could keep editing your hosts file and refreshing your browser to try to figure out what is different… Or you could take 5 minutes to set up a socks proxy so you can view both the new and old site in two different browsers at the same time! Here’s how to do it:
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I set up a new testing environment for IE11 through VirtualBox on my computer running Ubuntu. But I couldn’t get to any of my sites that are served by the Ubuntu host. I had to do some tricks to get this working on my old work Mac, and the same principle applies for Ubuntu.

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When the internet really started catching steam, email was one of it’s flagship services. Back then it was simple but somewhat archaic – it’s goal was to be redundant enough to get your message through even if it required several tries. It was the digital equivalent of:

Neither snow nor rain nor heat nor gloom of night stays these couriers from the swift completion of their appointed rounds.

Think of all the stuff that has been added atop of email such as encryption and MIME encoding to send attachments. But it was our must-deliver mantra that was used by the spammers for their personal gain. Then even more layers for spam and virus filtering were added. Spammers have sort of negated that “must deliver” image of email to where I click send and think, “I hope it will be delivered.”

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This article assumes you fave a few things:

  1. A Linux server with:
    • root SSH access
    • BIND installed
    • a domain already set up and working with BIND
  2. An OpenWrt router at home to send updates

The OpenWrt router isn’t strictly necessary.  You could, of course do the dynamic DNS updates with a cheap Linux firewall, but I’ll cover the configuration for OpenWrt.

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