OpenDNS + Bind = Turbocharged DNS resolving

At first I would like to thank my friend Autunu for informing me about OpenDNS.

"OpenDNS offers DNS resolution for consumers and businesses as an alternative to using their Internet service provider's DNS servers. By placing company servers in strategic locations and employing a large cache of the domain names, DNS queries are processed much more quickly, thereby increasing page retrieval speed."

Here is a quick howto to on using open DNS with bind in linux. For those who don't know, bind is the standard domain name server solution in linux.

In Debian/Ubuntu:
#apt-get install bind9

This will install bind server in your PC.

Now we want to use our local server as the DNS server. So open the following file: /etc/resolv.conf, erase all the contents and add the following line:

nameserver 127.0.0.1

Now here is the DNS forwarding trick to OpenDNS servers:

Open the following file /etc/bind/named.conf.options and look for the lines like this:

options {
forwarders {
  ............;};
};

Change those lines to look like this:

options {
forwarders { 208.67.222.222; 208.67.220.220; };
...
};

Restart bind server:

#/etc/init.d/bind9 restart

Walla! Done. After browsing for some time, you shall start to see the difference.

Here is what happens after you have done the above mentioned things:

When you try to open a web page, first the request is sent to your local server, if the DN of the page is not found then bind forwards that request to OpenDNS server and the DNS is fetched from there. As we know OpenDNS is generally faster that conventional DNS server you get here a speed boost. But then, that DN gets saved in your local bind server. So when you try to visit the page for the second time, your local server can resolve the request by itself and the page loads instantly, again providing another speed boost.

A complete howto on configuring OpenDNS in windows is covered here, in Autunu's blog,

Accessing Mobile Phones in Sid

I had been searching for a software that could enable me to access the contents of my Siemens M65. Today I came across Gammu that enabled me to do it all. Wammu is a gtk frontend that makes things easier.

This is how I installed and configured those two:

#apt-get install wammu gammu

Now I had to make a configuration file for my M65:

#vim ~/.gammurc

Now added these lines there:

[gammu]
port = /dev/ttyUSB0
connection=at115200
name=M65
model=at

Now I ran wammu and from the phone menu selected connect. Now I was able to do all the cool stuffs in linux that I was used to doing in windows from mobile phone manager sofware. The most important feature is the backup mode that enbles one to create backups of messages and contacts.

Here is a sreenshot from the message section: