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dpns.dutch-star.eu - why calling from pistar

Posted: Thu Dec 19, 2019 3:00 am
by N6XVZ
I'm running pi-hole on my network to block advertising and limit by bandwidth utilization for stuff I'm not interested in.

Today my pistar came up to the top of the list for the last 24hours with 1417 calls to:

dpns.dutch-star.eu

Why does pistar reach out to this domain? It's calling every one minute...

Re: dpns.dutch-star.eu - why calling from pistar

Posted: Thu Dec 19, 2019 6:33 am
by kc7ngc
I know why....but don't know WHY.

When the ircddbgateway comes up is the DplusAuthenticator thread attempts to authenticate to auth.dstargateway.org and dpns.dutch-star.eu. (Callsign servers?). It succeeds to contact auth.dstargateway.org on tcp port 20001.

At least for me It fails to contact dpns.dutch-dstar.eu on tcp port 20001. So it goes into a loop where it periodically tries to connect to dpns.dutch-dstar.eu. Which fails with a "Cannot connect the TCP client socket, err=111"

Associated with the authentication to dpns.dutch-dstar.eu there is a poll timer (https://github.com/g4klx/ircDDBGateway/ ... icator.cpp lines 78-81) which fires off every minute and tries to send a single 56 byte udp packet to dpns.dutch-dstar.eu on udp port 20001. Since this is UDP, and since there isn't a response, it's hard to tell if anything is on the other end listening at all to the udp traffic.

I don't think its a pi-star issue as dpns.dutch-dstar.eu just isn't listening on tcp/udp port 20001 anymore? Started in January 2019?

DPNS stands for dplus name server and appears to be so DVAR access points could find each other. http://www.dutch-star.eu/network/index.aspx (click on DPNS button). It's possible that the service they are running has hit EOL and been shut down?

Re: dpns.dutch-star.eu - why calling from pistar

Posted: Thu Dec 19, 2019 11:02 pm
by N6XVZ
Well done kc7ngc!

Thanks for the very lucid explanation.

I wonder how we can get attention to this for elimination or remediation....

B^)

Re: dpns.dutch-star.eu - why calling from pistar

Posted: Fri Dec 20, 2019 3:39 pm
by M1DNS
Ircddbgateway, the 'dstar gateway' software that looks for this assett is not something we (pistar) has control over. It is programmed at source. If it is truley failing to find the online asset. It could be the asset is offline, or no longer available. it might be an idea to post in one of the official MMDVM project group's to bring this to their attention. Any fixes there will then naturally feed into pistar. Or similarly it might bring it to the attention of the owner of the asset that is offline.

Sent from my SM-G935F using Tapatalk



Re: dpns.dutch-star.eu - why calling from pistar

Posted: Sat Dec 21, 2019 1:55 pm
by N6XVZ
Thank you Andrew for the quick insight.
I shall root around over on MMDVM.

https://github.com/g4klx/MMDVM/issues/218 Issue created.

Re: dpns.dutch-star.eu - why calling from pistar

Posted: Wed Jan 01, 2020 1:58 am
by kc7ngc
Looks like issue been fixed in source:
https://github.com/g4klx/ircDDBGateway/ ... d505e1b284

So will be resolved once new binaries trickle down as part of future pistar updates.

Good effort everyone.

Re: dpns.dutch-star.eu - why calling from pistar

Posted: Fri Jan 03, 2020 2:30 am
by N6XVZ
Thanks for pointing out the code delta. I apparently posted my issue in the wrong branch but someone fixed it anyway!

Re: dpns.dutch-star.eu - why calling from pistar

Posted: Mon May 25, 2020 1:48 pm
by N6XVZ
Running 4.1.2 and Zumspot Firmware 1.4.17 - it's still pinging away every minute every hour that my pi-star is running... fyi

How does this get integrated into pi-star? It looks like it was committed to the ircDDBGateway back in December. I blindly assumed by now it would have made its way into pi-star - figuring the latest major releases would include it. Is there actually something Andy has to proactively do to get this integrated or is it just in a branch we don't benefit from. Any insights into when this might get incorporated?

Or am I missing a step I should be taking....

Curious....


Thanks!

Re: dpns.dutch-star.eu - why calling from pistar

Posted: Mon May 25, 2020 2:38 pm
by G8SEZ
If you have a look here:

https://github.com/AndyTaylorTweet/Pi-S ... naries_Bin

you'll see that the ircDDBGateway stack is about 11 months old, it was merged on 1st July 2019.

I don't know how much effort it is to update all this, but Andy is about and has been busily working on Pi-Star for a few weeks now, so he might well notice this thread.

You could also send him a private message as a heads up.

Re: dpns.dutch-star.eu - why calling from pistar

Posted: Mon May 25, 2020 8:02 pm
by MW0MWZ
He has, I'll get to it soon :)