I noticed tonight that my Cisco 837 was using hard-coded DNS servers which were no longer valid, hence breaking my internets. In order to keep them updated automatically, I added the following to the appropriate dialer configuration (interface Dialer0 on an 8xx):

This causes the router to request DNS server addresses when the PPP session is negotiated (when it “dials up” to ADSL).

After reconnecting the PPP session (either reload or shutdown the interface and then bring it back) it is possible to check that DNS servers have been obtained using sh host:

If the router is running a DNS server it is possible to direct DHCP clients at the router IP instead, forcing them to use these same settings.

In a previous message I spoke about training dspam automatically. The script I posted there works, but it’s not brilliant so I started looking for other ways of achieving spam training from the client.
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Recently I have installed and configured dspam on my mailserver. It seems to work nicely but needs occasional training. I wanted to integrate this with Thunderbird so that users could automatically train dspam from their mail client.
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Much of the code I have written as part of my day job uses the rather excellent libnids.  However, there are a few bugs in version 1.23 relating to packets with radiotap headers or code which tries to read from multiple pcap files in sequence.
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The following article is a repost of an original that I wrote for blogs.perl.org.

I thought I would share my experience of submitting a module to CPAN for the first time. In summary: it’s stupidly easy and if I can do it, so can you.
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Since I’d had my iPhone I’ve wanted to be able to sync my contacts with my Horde Webmail install.  This post is about setting up the Funambol application in order to do so.
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I have recently started using the Funambol iPhone app to keep my contacts in sync with my webmail addressbook.  However, some fields aren’t included in Turba by default and need adding.  This post is for system administrators rather than users, so if you don’t run your own webmail then point your friendly geek at this post.
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Tired of seeing repeated attempts to login to a Linux server you run?  There are a number of options, all with their own benefits and disadvantages.  The easiest way is to move the port that the SSH server runs on, perhaps to 2222 instead of 22.  However. this can be annoying behind some firewalls and means that you need to specify the port each time you SSH to a host.  This post looks at denyhosts, a viable alternative.
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In a slightly crazed moment today I decided to write some documentation. Having used Docbook before for my UML Bridging Tutorial, I thought I’d pay it another visit.

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So Windows 7 is here. This blog post is rather outdated as far as that is concerned. What’s missing still is becoming more of a frustration though, as neither the HP P1006 or Canon laser printer I have are currently supported.
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