found drama

so, in an attempt to one-up kr8n, I have been attempting to bring my blog (shall we say) a little closer to home. you may start seeing me post the F_D URL as founddrama.blogsite.org in and around various locales. unfortunately, that’s just webhop shorthand for this same old locale with the all-too-long-and-tedious-to-type URL. ANYWAY the point was to hook up thru DynDNS.org and use one of the many client apps (or the client app built into my Netgear router) to automatically update the IP assoc’d w/ my listing. Effectively turning F_D into a home hosted blog on good ol’ Detonator-3 w/ a fun URL like founddrama.dnsalias.net or (eventually) straight-up founddrama.net… alas I can’t get the damn thing to work — the test host (detonator-3.dnsalias.net) doesn’t bother to come up. Process:

1. Installed Apache 2 on D-3 (this was a while ago) including modules for PHP, Perl, etc.
2. Created an account at DynDNS.org (after much research) and decided on a hostname to use w/ one of their many domains.
3. Enabled wildcards.
4. Confirmed account creation.
5. Setup port forwarding in the router for 80 and 8000 thru 8080, sending all that traffic to the private IP assigned to Detonator-3.
6. Activated the DynDNS client app w/in the router to update the listed public IP on the DynDNS.org name servers.
7. Reconfigured Apache on D-3 to listen for traffic on those ports.
8. Reconfigured ZoneAlarm to allow traffic on those ports.
9. Restarted Apache.
10. Waited for the host’s address to go through the name servers. Re-read my terms-of-service ;P
11. Tried to hit detonator-3.dnsalias.net from another computer. Didn’t work. Figured that Adelphia blocks traffic on port 80, tried it on ports 8000 and 8080. Neither worked.
12. Downloaded Mike Hacker’s Dynamic DNS client. Installed and configured it for DynDNS.org services.
13. Restarted Apache. For kicks.
14. Tried to hit D-3 from another machine on the network. No success. Still.
15. Tried to his D-3 using the private IP. Success. Tried it w/ the private IP on the alt ports. Worked.
16. Shut down the DynDNS client in the router (to prevent it fr/ interfering w/ the software client on D-3). Restarted the network. Shut everything down. Restart the Surfboard. Restart the router. Restart the computers starting w/ D-3.
17. Try it again. Try to hit Detonator-3 from KetelOne. Nothing. “Server cannot be found.”
18. Setup Apache to listen on port 3000. Restart Apache service.
19. Setup ZoneAlarm to allow HTTP requests on port 3000.
20. Setup the router to forward HTTP requests on port 3000 to D-3’d private IP. Configure the router to ALWAYS assign that IP to D-3’s MAC address. Always.
21. Restart network (see above).
22. Try again. Nothing.
23. Remove the port 3000 nonsense from everything.
24. Remove port 80 since the ISP is almost certainly blocking it anyway. Re-read terms of service.
25. Setup WebHop “detonator-3.webhop.net” to point to “detonator-3.dnsalias.net:8080” w/o cloaking.
26. Wait.
27. Try it. Nothing.
28. Restart network.
29. Shower.
30. Throw in the towel for the day, week, etc.

Not sure what I’m doing wrong but I’ll get to the bottom of this somehow. There’s got to be a reason. GOT TO BE…

About Rob Friesel