Thursday, October 25, 2007

Gmail gets IMAP support


Outstanding - something I (and probably 1000s of others) have been waiting for, for a very long time (ever since first using Gmail): IMAP is now supported. Yay! Not only that - IMAP over SSL. Excellent news for me - this will make managing my email across multiple PCs and my Nokia E61 much easier.

Thanks Google! Death to POP3!

Settings to note:
Incoming server: imap.gmail.com:993 Using: SSL
Outgoing server: smtp.gmail.com:587 Using: TLS

It looks like they are rolling it out to Google Apps users too. The option's not there for me at the moment, so I'll keep checking over the next few days.

I wonder when/if the iPod Touch will ever get the built-in email client.

I found out about it here:
Gmail gets IMAP support - 25 Oct 2007 - NZ Herald: Technology News from New Zealand and around the World

Monitoring Checkpoint Firewalls with SNMP


I've been doing some work for a client with Checkpoint Firewalls (running Secure Platform, or SPLAT), and wanted to monitor them using SNMP. The two main reasons being;

1. To graph Accepted/Dropped/Rejected packets over time and

2. To Poll the Firewalls for status using 3rd Party Management Tools like "Whats Up Gold" and "BMC Patrol".

The information I found in Checkpoint SecureKnowledge was terribly confusing, contradictory and misleading (has lots of info about Nokia IPSO Firewalls which doesn't work when using the SPLAT OS).


So a brief summary of what I had to do to get it to work correctly:
1. Enable SNMPD
chkconfig snmpd on
service snmpd start

2. Edit /etc/snmp/snmpd.conf
Add "rocommunity NotPublicCommunityString 192.168.0.1"
Add "proxy -v1 -c public 127.0.0.1:260 .1.3.6.1.4.1.2620"

3. Edit $FWDIR/conf/snmp.C

Add :snmp_community (
:read (“public”)
:write(“private”)
)

4. Run cpconfig, and enable the cpsnmpd extension

5. Add required security rule to permit access to the firewall from the management server(s) (SNMP-UDP/161) (You don't need to permit access to cpsnmpd-UDP/260)


Following these changes you should be able to do a 'netstat -an' and see the cpsnmpd listening on :260, and perform a local snmp check:
snmpwalk -v1 -c public localhost 1.3.6.1.4.1.2620.1.6

Gotchas to note:

1. The local snmpwalk above uses the "public" string - the one in snmp.C - NOT the one in snmpd.conf

2. snmpwalk from a remote host uses the "NotPublicCommunityString" - not "public"

3. snmpwalk locally (and maybe remotely) using just the OID 1.3.6.1.4.1.2620 causes the cpsnmpd process to die (need to restart it using '$CPDIR/bin/cpsnmpd -p 260' or cpstop, cpstart)

Once the above are done the management servers can query the enforcement module for Checkpoint SNMP OIDs, such as accepted packets, dropped packets and Checkpoint OS OIDs like CPU usage (accurate), memory usage etc. These queries go to the Firewall on UDP/161 and internally the snmpd process proxies the snmp request for OID .1.3.6.1.4.1.2620 (checkpoint) to the cpsnmpd process on UDP/260.

This happens by default in Nokia IPSO, but not on SecurePlatform.

Some good OIDs to Graph:

Active Real Memory .1.3.6.1.4.1.2620.1.6.7.4.4.0
Total Real Memory .1.3.6.1.4.1.2620.1.6.7.4.3.0
Packets accepted .1.3.6.1.4.1.2620.1.1.4.0
Packets dropped .1.3.6.1.4.1.2620.1.1.6.0
Packets rejected .1.3.6.1.4.1.2620.1.1.5.0
Packets logged .1.3.6.1.4.1.2620.1.1.7.0
Current connections .1.3.6.1.4.1.2620.1.1.25.3.0
Processor (System) .1.3.6.1.4.1.2620.1.6.7.2.2.0
Processor (User) .1.3.6.1.4.1.2620.1.6.7.2.1.0

And good OIDs to monitor for status:
Firewall Module State (Installed) .1.3.6.1.4.1.2620.1.1.1.0
Processor Usage .1.3.6.1.4.1.2620.1.6.7.2.4.0

Useful Links:

Cacti - An excellent (+free) web front end to MRTG/RRD-Tool

Cacti Templates Index - Although the supplied Checkpoint/Nokia ones didnt work for me without customisation. I created some more graphs and data sources using the above OIDs.

What's Up Gold - The new version is very nice. Excellent Web based multi-user UI.

Friday, October 19, 2007

Google Maps Mobile for E61

Just on my way South for a Weekend away with the boat (hopefully to get in some fishing & diving), and surfing in the car on my E61. There was a link for Google Maps on the search homepage so I installed it, and its very cool. A proper map application with GPS support! Really fast scrolling between locations too. Can't wait to try it out with the Bluetooth GPS i've got mounted in my car.

I wonder how long it'll be till they release one for the iPod touch (once the SDK is released).

Wednesday, October 10, 2007

Nice DNSCMD Script

I just came across this guy's blog when searching for dnscmd.exe syntax (DNSCMD.EXE = command line modifications to Windows 2000/2003 DNS zones/records). He has a really nice little batch file to enable the creation of both A and PTR records easily from the command line:
fpschultze - Add an A and PTR record using DnsCmd.exe

Looks like he has some other handy little scripts there too.

Wednesday, October 03, 2007

The IDxx European Launch Party Tour

I'm off to Italy this weekend to catch up with friends from the project last year. Should be a pretty cool trip. We're blogging the trip here.