My version of gphoto2 doesn't include support for Wendy's digital camera. Googling shows that this camera supports two transfer modes: mass storage and PTP. Mass storage is where the camera shows up as a removable drive. PTP is a protocol developed by Kodak(?) for transferring data from cameras.

Gphoto2 supports PTP on other Nikon Coolpix cameras, just not the 5200 model. In freebsd, I use usbdevs(8) to show me the usb vendor and product id.

% sudo usbdevs -v | grep NIKON
 port 1 addr 2: full speed, power 2 mA, config 1, NIKON DSC E5200(0x0205), NIKON(0x04b0), rev 1.00

The vendor id is 0x04b0 and the product is 0x0205. Looking around online finds the Nikon Coolpix 5400 with a product id of 0x0119. gphoto2 allows you to force a given usb vendor:product key to be treated as another. Super useful.

The following will download all media files from the camera, masquerading the 5200 model as 5400.

gphoto2 --usbid 0x04b0:0x0206=0x04b0:0x0119 -P

I've still been swamped with work, life, more work and more life. As as result, I've posted much less frequently lately than I have in the past.

This is mostly due to lacking time to spend on research. I've learned many new things in recent weeks that I'm eager to post about, but I haven't had time to sit down and actually write.

So. This site has very few regular visitors, but to those of you who do read: What should I post about next? Ideas would be much appreciated. :)

I'm also working on a new site layout and planning on putting more time and effort into research and posts here. We'll see how far that actually goes, though. Site layout should be done soon. My awesome (?) GIMP-fu created a new logo. Thoughts and suggestions welcome.

Happy Halloween, folks. It's been 20 days since my last post. I've been incredibly busy with work and haven't had a chance to write. As a gift, I give you a rant.

I've been through no less than 3 DNS service providers in the past week, and all of them suck. They suck hard.

The first one I looked at was no-ip. No-IP claims they support 'dynamic dns' - they don't. The first thing you must realize about almost all dns providers is that while they claim they support "dynamic dns" and/or "round robin," what they really mean is their support of 'dynamic dns' is based solely around one single use case. One.

What is that use case? The following picture comes from dynu.com:

What is this? This use case of one computer updating it's own hostname with whatever IP it happens to have at that moment. Businesses can't possibly find this useful. It doesn't scale. If you have more than one server you want to put on a single hostname, this use case fails you miserably.

I've looked at no-ip, dyndns, dnspark, and several others. Trash.

Keep in mind, this rant is becuase both free AND pay-for dns providers suck. Both kinds. Free services actually have an excuse - you get what you pay for.

As a precursor, let me explain what I need from a dns provider:

1. The ability to add and remove dns entries of any record type, at any time.
2. The ability to add multiple entries for the same record

Many claim these features. Those I tried fail miserably.

If you are in the market for a real dns provider, as I am, you'll find many dns providers claiming what I listed above. "Sure! We support round robin!" they advertise, "We support dynamic dns!"

What they don't tell you in the same paragraph is that you have to use their own HTTP-based means of pushing dns changes. They absolutely don't tell you that their pathetic attempt at providing this "dynamic" service via a cgi-like interface is absolutely crippled.

Several providers allowed you to mutate records dynamically. However, none of them I tried let me add multiple entries for a single record using the dynamic interface.

An important realization is that my definition of dynamic is not the same as these dns providers' notion of dynamic. This so-called dynamic dns ability hinges on customers who want to be able to host crap out of their dynamic-ip-giving ISP. As such, most of the interface is just "Hey DNS provider! Please update www.foo.com with whatever IP this packet is coming from! Thanks!" This is intolerable!

What is my definition of "dynamic dns," exactly? Let's call it RFC 2136. Heck, I don't care if it's not RFC 2136, just that I'm able to do most things that update specification provides.

To quote ZoneEdit customer support regarding my issues with their service and in particular how to properly use their crippled dynamic update interface:

"You can atleast update hourly .

Updating too often with the same IP address gets your account locked up."

WHAT?! Once hourly? Shit. DNS is hard. Let's go shopping instead.

Doing this right is not hard. For example, I recently posted an article on how to setup dynamic dns and make your dhcp server talk sweetly to dns. I use this same configuration in my apartment. MY APARTMENT. My apartment is considerably smaller than, say, a multidatacenter dns provider. Why doesn't anyone at any of these dns providers have a freaking clue about running a dns server? Let me put it plainly:

I will give you money and you will give me a dnssec key and a server on which to use it. That shall be the extent of our relationship

That's all I want. The worst part is that it doesn't matter who you go with. There are plenty of free dns providers who provide you the same crappy service as give-us-your-money providers.

Really. Come on kids.

Look at it this way - To enable dynamic dns updates, you don't need to write any code. A few tiny named.conf changes. To provide a pathetic http interface you label as "dynamic dns" requires lots of lines of code, lots of testing, and $$$ invested in this kind of product.

To further show how stupid this is. Microsoft supports this properly. Microsoft. You know, that company everyone hates-on for proprietary protocols and ignorance of standards? Microsoft DNS will send updates using BIND's update protocol. How do I know this? I've had a primary dns server running BIND and Microsoft DNS running as a secondary. I told Active Directory that it's primary dns was the BIND server. Guess what happened? Active Directory happily submitted updates to my BIND server. Correctly.

You might be thinking to yourself, "Why don't you just host dns yourself?" Because I dont' have any servers on a static IP address. And no, this isn't running out of my apartment.

Am I the only one who can't find a dns provider that doesn't suck?