zouric.com

sonic.net is the ISP that makes the most sense in my area. With all the media friendzy around IPv6 deployment those days, I am patiently waiting for Sonic to deploy native IPv6 over their DSL offering. While this is apparently not making too many progress, Sonic offers an unsupported feature which lets you run IPv6 over an IPv4 tunnel. The only problem is that this requires manual configuration of the IPv4 tunnel endpoint behind an authenticated SSL portal. Although the inconvenience is workable in case you subscribe to their overpriced static IP offering, it breaks down as soon as you move to the less expensive dynamic service.

I tackled this problem the past few days and came up with a quick bash script that automatically updates the portal with your new dynamic address whenever your IPv6 tunnel goes down. I am running this using the native Win7 task scheduler on boot then every hour thereafter. Note that I had a hard time figuring out why eventcreate, which writes events in the Windows Application log, was giving me an « Access denied » error. The fix that worked for me was to set the RunLevel task option to HighestAvailable. Note that to execute this script on cli, you will have to run your terminal emulator as Administrator.

Step 1
Get cygwin and install wget

Step 2
Save the sonic-endpoint-update.sh file below under your ~/bin directory and make it executable:
[bash light="true" toolbar="false"]
$ chmod +x ~/bin/sonic-endpoint-update.sh
[/bash]

Step 3
Configure your wget certificates root store and verify its sha256 matches the below sum.
[bash light="true" toolbar="false"]
$ wget -q -O /etc/ca-bundle.crt http://curl.haxx.se/ca/cacert.pem
$ grep -v "^## Converted at: " /etc/ca-bundle.crt | sha256sum
b9ae94e8cc91d9f8135f0d84dc3cf0d91456e99288fcb7b2ea3bb27d50378a68 -
$ cat >> ~/.wgetrc
ca_certificate = /etc/ca-bundle.crt
^D
[/bash]

Step 4, which requires a Post Vista version of Windows
Create a task by saving the below xml file, adjust the highlighted lines to your setup, then issue:
[bash light="true" toolbar="false"]
$ schtasks /XML sonic-endpoint-update.xml /TN "Sonic Endpoint Update"
[/bash]

Click to expand code below:
[bash title="sonic-endpoint-update.sh" collapse="true" light="true" toolbar="false"]
#!//bin/sh
# In order for this script to function you have to download and configure a certificate bundle, if you don’t have one already:
#
# $ wget –output-document=/etc/ca-bundle.crt http://curl.haxx.se/ca/cacert.pem
#
# Verify the sha256 of the ca-bundle.crt file with:
#
# $ grep -v "^## Converted at: " /etc/ca-bundle.crt | sha256sum
# b9ae94e8cc91d9f8135f0d84dc3cf0d91456e99288fcb7b2ea3bb27d50378a68
#
# Configure your wget to point to that ca-bundle.crt file
# $ cat >> ~/.wgetrc
# ca_certificate = /etc/ca-bundle.crt
# ^D

# Testing IPv6 connectivity
testping () {
ping -n 1 ipv6.google.com > /dev/null
if [ $? == 0 ]; then
log SUCCESS "IPv6 ping: Success"
exit 0
else
log WARNING "IPv6 ping: Failure"
fi
}

# Logging to console and windows eventlog facility
log () {
if [ $1 == "ERROR" ]; then
echo $2 >&2
else
echo $2
fi
if [ $OS == "Cygwin" ]; then
eventcreate /l application /t $1 /so $DOLLARZERO /id 1 /d "$2" > /dev/null
fi
}

DOLLARZERO=$(/usr/bin/basename $0)
OS=$(/usr/bin/uname -o)
testping

# Retrieving command line arguments
while getopts ‘u:p:’ OPTION; do
case "$OPTION" in
u)
USER=$OPTARG
;;
p)
PASSWORD=$OPTARG
;;
esac;
done;
if [ -z "$USER" -o -z "$PASSWORD" ]; then
log ERROR "Usage: $DOLLARZERO -u username -p password"
exit 1
fi

log INFORMATION "Updating sonic.net endpoint tunnel."

# Creating session cookie temp file
COOKIE=$(/usr/bin/mktemp)
trap "/usr/bin/rm -f $COOKIE" EXIT TERM INT QUIT
/usr/bin/printf "members.sonic.net\tFALSE\t/\tTRUE\t0\tPHPSESSID\t" > $COOKIE

# Logging in to sonic.net
/usr/bin/wget –load-cookies=$COOKIE \
–save-cookies=$COOKIE \
–keep-session-cookies \
–post-data="user=$USER&pw=$PASSWORD" \
–quiet \
–output-document=- \
https://members.sonic.net/ \
| /usr/bin/grep –quiet "logged in as <strong>$USER"
if [ $? == 0 ]; then
log SUCCESS "Logged in as $USER"
else
log ERROR "Loggin failure"
exit 1
fi

# Retrieving current external IP
MY_IP=$( \
/usr/bin/wget –quiet \
–output-document=- \
http://www.whatismyip.com/automation/n09230945.asp \
)
log INFORMATION "Current external IP: $MY_IP"

# Updating external IP to sonic.net
ENDPOINT=$( \
/usr/bin/wget –load-cookies=$COOKIE \
–post-data="endpoint=$MY_IP&rdns_server=none&change=1&action=step1" \
–quiet \
–output-document=- \
https://members.sonic.net/connections/ipv6tunnel/ \
| /usr/bin/egrep -o ‘([[:digit:]]{1,3}\.){3}[[:digit:]]{1,3}’ \
)
log INFORMATION "New endpoint IP at sonic.net: $ENDPOINT"

testping
[/bash]

[xml title="sonic-endpoint-update.xml" highlight="5,18,44,45" collapse="true" light="true" toolbar="false"]
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-16"?>
<Task version="1.2" xmlns="http://schemas.microsoft.com/windows/2004/02/mit/task">
<RegistrationInfo>
<Date>2011-02-06T23:34:36.4279416</Date>
<Author>COMPUTER\WINUSER</Author>
</RegistrationInfo>
<Triggers>
<BootTrigger>
<Repetition>
<Interval>PT1H</Interval>
<StopAtDurationEnd>false</StopAtDurationEnd>
</Repetition>
<Enabled>true</Enabled>
</BootTrigger>
</Triggers>
<Principals>
<Principal id="Author">
<UserId>COMPUTER\WINUSER</UserId>
<LogonType>Password</LogonType>
<RunLevel>HighestAvailable</RunLevel>
</Principal>
</Principals>
<Settings>
<MultipleInstancesPolicy>IgnoreNew</MultipleInstancesPolicy>
<DisallowStartIfOnBatteries>false</DisallowStartIfOnBatteries>
<StopIfGoingOnBatteries>true</StopIfGoingOnBatteries>
<AllowHardTerminate>true</AllowHardTerminate>
<StartWhenAvailable>false</StartWhenAvailable>
<RunOnlyIfNetworkAvailable>false</RunOnlyIfNetworkAvailable>
<IdleSettings>
<StopOnIdleEnd>true</StopOnIdleEnd>
<RestartOnIdle>false</RestartOnIdle>
</IdleSettings>
<AllowStartOnDemand>true</AllowStartOnDemand>
<Enabled>true</Enabled>
<Hidden>false</Hidden>
<RunOnlyIfIdle>false</RunOnlyIfIdle>
<WakeToRun>false</WakeToRun>
<ExecutionTimeLimit>P3D</ExecutionTimeLimit>
<Priority>7</Priority>
</Settings>
<Actions Context="Author">
<Exec>
<Command>"C:\Program Files (x86)\cygwin\bin\bash.exe"</Command>
<Arguments>-c "/cygdrive/c/users/WINUSER/bin/sonic-endpoint-update -u sonicusername -p sonicpassword"</Arguments>
</Exec>
</Actions>
</Task>

[/xml]