Lets see, this morning while trying to clean out files in my downloads directory, I tried out a few of the applications in the gnome audio menu, and discovered JuK.

First I thought it was an iTunes clone, and it could probably be fairly easily turned into one. It seems cool, I love the ability to fix MP3 file tags from the Internet.

It found and fixed almost all of the files that I asked it to, which was impressive.

I left it playinng music for a while, but minimising and restoring it is a real pain, it hangs for a few seconds, and I don't have the patience for that, so I think it's going to only be used to fix the tags on my music.

I had another look for details of running IPCop as an IMAP server, and while searching, I found references to "ClarkConnect", which can run as an internet gateway, and also has modules for Samba, and IMAP.

Hmm, that might be easier, I might just use that instead of trying to hack extra features into IPCop.

I had a look on the existing machine, that I'm intending to rebuild from the standard debian install I did during 2002, to a firewall distribution.

The main things I was interested in was the SSH configuration, I've got a couple of shell scripts I wrote to connect to a remote server, and setup a tunnel, for some applications that are run locally, to connect to a remote database.

The way I do that now, is with a couple of lines in inetd.conf, and by hitting certain ports on the firewall machine, it runs the shell scripts.

I need some way to start this stuff up, and there's no inetd on IPCop. I suppose I could write it as a plugin/addon thing, so there'd be a web function to start/stop the ssh tunnel, but I don't know perl.

I decided to download ClarkConnect. If it works, then it gives me IMAP and Samba, killing 2 of the issues I'm facing.

It might even have an inetd, so I could continue to use the setup that exists now.

I suppose the other way around it, is to setup a user on the machine, and put that shell script in the startup environment, and then setup an ssh key so the PC can login to that account with no password prompt.

I decided to copy some music on to my laptop, I decided to try checking the gnome network browser thing, that never works.

When I tried it, it came up and asked me to login to my IPCop machine. Eh? I didn't think I got samba working on there.

I logged in, and it showed up as an available machine. I tried viewing shares, and had to login again. Now I could see my home directory, and the test /tmp share I setup.

Hmm, why is this now working? I tried to go into my home directory, not expecting it to work, since I don't have one on the IPCop machine, and I got an error, as expected.

After that, I tried to go into the /tmp share, which should work, but got the same error.

I wondered if the whole problem I'd had, had been with smbclient, and not the actual service.

I tried to mount the share, from the command line, but I got exactly the same error as smbclient kept giving me.

Hmm, no such luck. I wondered if it would work on Windows. I vnc'd to my parents' machine, running Windows 98.

I used it to connect, logged in, and was able to go into /tmp, and see the files listed.

Hmm. I don't know why it would work for windows (98 at least) clients, and not linux. I didn't try a windows 2000 client, I don't know if that would have worked.

Maybe it's something to do with the version (2.2) of samba, or the specific compilation options the guy who made the IPCop package of samba used.

If it works with 2000, then maybe it doesn't matter, and I can hack samba support in, and be done with it.

That still leaves me with the other issue though, an IMAP server.

I decided to try to get IMAP running on there, like I did with samba the other day.

I scp'd the imapd binary from my laptop to the IPCop box, and tried to run it:

./imapd: error while loading shared libraries: libc-client.so.2002edebian: cannot open shared object file: No such file or directory

I copied over libc-client.so.2002edebian, and put it in /usr/lib on the IPCop box, and tried again.

This time the error was about missing libpam.so.0, so I copied that across and into /usr/lib.

Then I was back to the old error:

./imapd: /lib/libc.so.6: version `GLIBC_2.3.4' not found (required by /usr/lib/libkrb5.so.3)

Crap, that's the same error I ended up with when trying to put Samba 3.0 on the IPCop box the other day. There goes that idea.

I'm beginning to think that IPCop isn't suited for the application I want it for. I'm hoping that ClarkConnect will do what I need, otherwise I might have to try smoothwall, and see if there's an IMAP server for it.

The other alternative, is that I rely on the crappy firewall within the ADSL modem, and just leave the existing firewall alone, but I want to make it easier for someone else to configure, or so I can tell someone how to do it over the phone.

I suppose I could just setup port forwarding on the ADSL modem, allowing me to login remotely, and configured the firewall, and then I'd only need to worry about being able to tell someone how to configure the ADSL modem over the phone.