Wanadoo hijacks DNS!
I have just discovered that Wanadoo has recently set up wild card records for non-existing domain names on their DNS servers. This means that when a users wants to visit a non-existing website (eg “nonexistingdomainname.com”, she is automatically redirected to “www.aide-a-la-navigation.net”.
I have sent them an e-mail, nut I really doubt that they will answer.
This can be avoided by changing DNS servers to 193.252.19.3 and 193.252.19.4 instead of 80.10.246.1 and 80.10.246.2!
Is this a legal practice?!
Update: As of 06/02, it seems that Wanadoo changed their mind, and deactivated this redirection. Note that I haven’t (yet?) received any answer from Wanadoo.
Update: As of 12/02, it is now worse than before: instead of a standard error message, Wanadoo now proposes sponsored links based on the keywords of the non-existing domain! I cannot accept that.
New laptop
Yesterday, I bought a new laptop: a Toshiba Satellite M40X-141 (link in French, as this product seems to be only available here). I bought it in a hypermaket for €399 (with a 50% discount!).
I first booted once to bundled Windows XP, and checked everything was usable (wifi, video card, sound etc.). Then, I installed Debian Etch thanks to the debian-installer Etch beta 1, and run the install without any major problem (except maybe the ata_piix module preventing access to DVD drive, which is very easy to fix by loading the ide-cd and isofs modules at the first install screen).
So far, everything is working fine, even the Atheros wifi card, thanks to madfiwi drivers.
I will soon write an article on www.kirya.net to detail all the installation process and configuration for this laptop.
Debian packages
Some various news about my packages:
- Tovid: Eric simply forgot to include the icons/ directory into the 0.24 release. I asked him if he can accept to release a 0.24.1 version including the missing files, but got no answer for the moment. I don’t want to include the icons in debian/, as it would mean using uuencode/uudecode so that diff complies with the binary files. If Eric cannot accept my proposal, I think I will need to wait for a 0.25 version.
- Altermime: as planned, I removed the package from my repository, as it will enter unstable in the next hours.
Removed bootsplash packages
I decided to remove the bootsplash-related packages from my repository, following to an e-mail I received today, telling me that bootsplash-common postinst script caused an error, making the packaging uninstallable.
I don’t want to maintain these unused packages anymore, and other solutions exist: for those still willing to use bootsplash, you can find Debian packages on http://www.bootsplash.de/files/debian; of course, there is also Splashy, next generation boot splashing system which doesn’t need any kernel patch.
Working on tovid-0.24 packages
Tovid 0.24 was released last week, with a lot of changes from the previous version. I am currently working on packaging this new version for Debian unstable, but I would need some time to have reliable packages.
I have added an experimental branch to my repository, where I will upload the packages that are not mature enough to enter the unstable distribution.
I will upload some tovid 0.24 packages to experimental later this week.
Christoph Haas just uploaded altermime to unstable. I will thus remove this package from my repository once it leaves the new queue, which should take around 1 week.
Thanks to Christoph for his help.
And… happy new year!