[Cerowrt-devel] Dave needs to get better at pushing out patches

[david at lang.hm]

On Thu, 8 Dec 2011, Dave Taht wrote:

> On Thu, Dec 8, 2011 at 1:18 PM,  <david at lang.hm> wrote:
>> On Thu, 8 Dec 2011, Dave Taht wrote:
>>
>>>> as a holdout pine user I understand your frustration :-)
>>>>
>>>> have you considered doing something like setting up openvpn to connect to
>>>> the bufferbloat.net server and then configuring the mail server to trust
>>>> mail arriving form the VPN clients?
>>>>
>>>> I know this is horrible overkill for such a trivial job, but it avoids
>>>> all
>>>> the problems of doing authentication for the SMTP connection (and the
>>>> fact
>>>> that many locations block outbound connections from dhcp addresses to
>>>> port
>>>> 25)
>>>
>>>
>>> Both 25 and VPNs are blocked at lincs. 567 works. Neither certs nor
>>> sasl from postfix worked. So far I've figured out
>>
>>
>> openvpn works over any port you want.
>
> udp is completely blocked here. a tcp implementation of openvpn works,
> but at 170ms latencies, it's pretty horrible, and I don't know if
> openvpn can do both udp and tcp at the same time.

I don't think a single connection can do both, but if all you really need 
to do is to send e-mail, why do you care what the latency is? it could be 
1000ms and you would probably barely notice. I'm not saying that you need 
to use this VPN for all your communications, you can setup a VPN 
connection that only routes the traffic to the server over it, and the 
'server' can be a separate RFC IP address bound to loopback that you only 
use for mail delivery. this would let you use normal SSH and everything 
else to the server's public IP address(es) without the overhad of the VPN.

>> but if it's just a careless network config (they allow anyone to connect to
>> it, but then block specific ports outbound), I feel no guilt over
>> establishing connections over oddball ports :-)
>
> No, they are highly paranoid here. They have grad students to cope with,
> and after exposure to them, I kind of understand.
>
> I can get stuff out to the submit port, and it's just remote auth that's
> failing me. I'm getting there, but I've had to yank out a lot of hair so
> far.

unless you are worried about other grad students using the server to send 
spam, just establish trust for your IP range and disable the 
authentication for that range.

David Lang

> (thx for listening)
>>
>> I just took an openvpn class, and one of the upcoming features is the
>> ability for openvpn to work over ping, so I'll bet that you can make it work
>
> Heh. Even tunneling over DNS is blocked. I had never heard of someone
> using ping before now.
>
>
>> (odds are really good that it will work over port 443 from just about
>> anywhere, and anyone who has security setup well enough that you can't do it
>> over 443 is probably a place where youreally shouldn't be doing it anywhay
>> :-)
>
> 443 is kind of in use on all servers I have.
>>
>>
>>> That the last 'update' from ubuntu wiped out my certs on my main
>>> email box.
>>>
>>> That dovecot sieve sucks compared to procmail
>>>
>>> that they've created a new abstraction for mail handling
>>> for doing sasl that doesn't want to work
>>>
>>> and I forget what else.
>>>
>>> I mean, mail used to 'just work'. Even with bang
>>> paths it would mostly just work. Nowadays you have
>>> to be a rocket scientist to run your own server,
>>> and damn it, I LIKE running my own mail server.
>>>
>>> Or at least, I used to.
>>
>>
>> It's not quite that bad, but yes, the spammers have required significant
>> changes.
>
> If postel had lived, he'd have found a solution.
>
>>
>> If the problem is doing this from one particular network (and one that you
>> trust to be sane, like your office), why not just configure the mail server
>> to allow unauthenticated mail from that IP (or IP range)?
>
> Not going to be at this office much longer, am mostly on the road.
>
>
>>
>> David Lang
>
>
>
>