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Posts tagged software
Exim4 Remote Domain Mailing
Aug 27th
Yesterday we changed the domain on on of our services from .net to .com as well as setup Google Apps to handle email and such. Everything worked great until the web server hosting the domain tried emailing anyone at the new .com domain. It would return an error message:
remote host address is the local host
And basically would let me know the email address was not routable. I believe this was related to the fact that the domain was also listed in /etc/hosts so exim was trying to use the domain as a local domain instead of trying to deliver out the email remotely. After about 3 hours of troubleshooting I finally was able to use the hubbed_hosts router from exim to get exim to understand this was a remote domain. I edited the following file:
/etc/exim/conf.d/router/150_exim4-config_hubbed_hosts
I changed it so read:
hubbed_hosts:
debug_print = “R: hubbed_hosts for $domain”
driver = dnslookup
domains = “domain.com”
same_domain_copy_routing = yes
transport = remote_smtp
So any instances of those domains would be delivered remotely. I also setup aliases so that anything like root, postmaster, www would go out to real addresses as well. To be honest I am not even sure if this is the best way to accomplish remote domain emailing, but it’s working.
That said, it’s definitely time to start my weekend…enjoy yours!
iptables on Ubuntu 10.04
Jul 31st
I’ve always had issues with using iptables on Ubuntu. Why they make it such a pain in the butt to work with iptables is beyond me. That said, if you’re using Ubuntu 10.04 the normal ‘iptables save’ does not seem to work the way it think should. It seems to require an extra parameter for it to save correctly.
Running the following should save your chains and rules and make them available for when the system or iptables itself is restarted:
/etc/init.d/iptables save active
I am not too sure why this extra bit is needed as our Gentoo servers and even our Debian server simply allows just the save command to be used. However, I hope others find the above useful when working with iptables in Ubuntu. I am hoping the Ubuntu team fixes this (as well as the init.d scripts from the client version of Ubuntu if they haven’t already). I really hope even with the introduction of the ‘ufw’ (Ubuntu Firewall) software they don’t dumb down the functionality of iptables to where someone who knows what they’re doing is no longer able to do so.
Crystal Tech For The Win!
Jul 21st
Ever since switching our big sites (Scribbld & SceneJournal) over to CrystalTech we’ve had no issues and when any ones have arisen they’ve taken VERY good care of us. We rely on their services and superb network to give us 99.999%+ uptime! We’ve pushed 600+GBs out of our servers and very much appreciate CrystalTech for providing us with such great dedicated services!
Visit them at: http://crystaltech.com/.
Google Chrome OS
Nov 20th
Someone posted a link to the Google Chrome OS on Twitter this afternoon. Since it was for either VMWare or VirtualBox, I thought why not give it a go? The download itself is about 300MBs and was really quick. However, the VirtualBox image from GDGT didn’t work for me, so I ended up snagging this image instead. This one did work. You should note that these builds weren’t compiled by me or people at Google by but someone else. You may wish to make yourself an extra Gmail/Google account to try this out.
Please note, if you’re getting the “No Network Connection, Offline Login Failed” you might want to try restarting the virtual machine or even your computer. Restarting my computer seemed to fix the issue, I believe that VirtualBox doesn’t complete it’s network (virtual adapters) setup until your computer is restarted but I could be wrong. Once you’ve actually gotten the image to boot you’re prompted to login. use your GMail account info, or if you have a normal Google account (@Google.com) this will work as well.
Upon logging into the system, you’re basically presented with the Google Chrome web browser. This is pretty much it. There’s a Google Short links, which I assume will basically give you short cuts to all the Google Apps (Docs, Sites, Calendar, Gmail, etc…), but yeah that’s pretty much it. Seeing as how this is probably pre-alpha, I guess it’s a start in the right direction. I am not sure what the final goal for the Chrome OS is, whether it be simply a portal to your Google applications or a bit more of a fully featured OS. It may indeed simply be something you toss on a netbook, boot into and have almost instant access to your calendars, emails, documents from Google, but I am not sure.
Apparently you also cannot change the resolution, so you’re stuck at the awful 800×600 for the moment. There’s not much tweaking you can do to the system, you can see the battery status (which makes me think this is geared to netbooks/notebooks, and you can check on the network status (see if WiFi/Ethernet is connected or not). You can also play with the settings of the web browser (which is essentially the only thing on the system haha). That said, it’s a neat idea and I certainly wouldn’t mind tossing this on one of my netbooks when it goes final. When I use my netbook I’m never usually doing anything outside of my web browser, unless it’s in a terminal so this would work quite well. I’m definitely excited to see it develop and mature!
Xbox LIVE: Fall 2009 Preview
Oct 27th
After hearing about all the goodies like Twitter, Facebook and Last.FM integration within the Xbox 360 dashboard, I was quite excited. Of course my friend said, I was already on Twitter and Facebook enough as it was so he didn’t quite like how now I could also access both of them when using my Xbox! When these features where announced, I had expected them to released quite shortly thereafter. Of course they weren’t…one Xbox LIVE Preview came and went with no Twitter/Facebook. I was pretty disappointed that they could announce that and not even put the features in one of their betas. They even mentioned that it wouldn’t make it into the dashboard until December or so.
Finally just the other week, Major Nelson announced a new Xbox LIVE Preview and that it would include Twitter/Facebook features. Quite surprised and happy, I quickly signed up and a few days later I received an email letting me know I had been accepted! Been a semi-relatively busy girl, I wasn’t able to log in to LIVE and download the update until a few days later.
Well worth the wait though! I must say, I did have a bit of course finding the actual applications once I had installed the dashboard update. I could be completely wrong on this, but it looks like there’s a new “My Community” section which includes the Twitter and Facebook applications. In fact, I am not sure what to call them, is applications okay, or simply extra panels?
Anyways…the Twitter application is pretty straight forward, login with your Twitter username and password. One thing I didn’t like about this is it brings up that ugly Microsoft entry screen. Although I guess this is necessary for people who don’t have the chatpad or a keyboard connected to their Xbox. Once logged in you’ll see a timeline of your tweets along with your friends’ tweets. You can search through tweets and even show the trending topics. You can also see your @replies as well as Direct Messages. These are pretty much the features I look for in a decent twitter client, so I am pretty happy with the progress so far. As long as I can see my friends, @replies and Direct Messages, I am happy!
The Facebook application is also pretty well built. When you login you have the options to display your Xbox LIVE information on your Facebook as well as have the application automatically login. The Home panel basically is your news feed showing you latest status updates, your status, recent photos and your friends lists. The Facebook application is broken down into essentially 4 areas, Home, Profile, Friends and Photos.
The Profile area lets you review your profile and update your status if you’d like. You can also see any photos you’ve uploaded. In the Friends section you can browse through all your friends and even the friends lists you’ve created. Xbox even added a list which shows you your friends from Facebook who are also on Xbox LIVE. You can click into friends and view their photos and their profile information. Unfortunately it doesn’t look like you can write on their wall, leave comments on wall postings or like any status updates from here. You can however comment and like status updates from the News Feed on the Home panel. I’ll assume they’ll be building these features in so you can do it when viewing someone profile in the final update.
Overall, I am pretty impressed with the Facebook application. It definitely feels a bit odd navigating through Facebook via the panes, but once you understand where each item is and what you can do in each panel, it’s not so bad. I think it’s needs a bit more polishing, then I have a feeling it’ll be much better.
There was one more application added, which was Last.FM. However to be honest I didn’t really play around with it much since I am not a subscribed member of their service. This results in ads being shown every time I switched stations and such. You can pretty much listen to stations you’ve created, recommended ones and popular stations from the website. The application also supports scrobbling so it’ll report back to the Last.fm website with anything you’ve listened too. Minus the subscription issue, it’s a decent application.
So…new applications, awesome, right?! Yeah, pretty much! Biggest gripe…they don’t run in the background…so each time you want to access one you need to quit whatever you’re doing to access them. I think it’d be awesome to set up hot keys for both Twitter and Facebook. How awesome would it be to update your status while sniping someone in Call of Duty 4 with that amazing Barrett .50cal?! Of course you better be quick about your status updates. That’s definitely something Chris would fear and likely hate me for…updating my statuses while playing CoD4 rounds! :P It’d also be nice to have a radio station from Last.fm playing in the background while you’re gaming. I guess one can dream right?! Microsoft is definitely off to a great start with these new Xbox LIVE applications. If you haven’t been able to get into the latest Preview which includes these, I’m afraid you may need to wait until December when they’re rolled out for everyone. Don’t worry though it’ll come soon enough!
Google Wave – Flatline :(
Oct 20th
Ever since I heard about Google Wave back in the Spring, I was super excited to get my hands on it to play with. Finally last week I got my invite and I started playing with it right away. Unfortunately, the playing with lasted only about 20 minutes. I honestly cannot figure out what to use Google Wave for. Currently I have 5 or 6 Waves which really seem to be conversations about, what wave is and how we should be using it.
At this time, I guess I am not really sure what to think of Google Wave. The issue could simply be that there’s not enough people that I know on Wave, so using it at the moment, or at least using it to its full potential is just not possible. I can certainly see how one can use Google Wave under the right circumstances, and it sure looks like it might be a great tool for collaborating on projects. I am hoping that within the next 6 months, I am able to actually use the product. I feel quite let down at the moment, so I am really hoping Google comes through on this! Lots of big hype but nothing super fantastic yet :(
Best Buy – Remove *ware For a Fee?!
Sep 12th
This is just a mini rant. The other day I was in Best Buy (trust me I try not to shop there often) but I needed some dual-layer DVDs and that was the fastest way to obtain them. I really hate having to go into the computer section and having list to the poor saps ask about Windows this and Windows that and virus this and malware that…there’s been a couple times where I’ve actually interrupted the sales people to remind them of their Apple section…as small as it is…but this isn’t about that.
This story is about how Best Buy charges people to removed pre-installed, YES, PRE-INSTALLED malware on their systems. I almost shit my pants when I heard this….How does one sell a computer with malware ALREADY installed on it?! This put me into shock. I mean…it’s bad enough Windows already gets infected the second you put it on the Internet, but hell, now you don’t even have to do that! You can purchase a BRAND NEW computer and it already comes with it! I guess that’s a new feature or something…
Please someone enlighten me if I heard wrong though!
Twitter Sucks?!
Sep 9th
Lately Twitter has really been getting on my nerves. Not only did they have some system glitch that reduced tons of people tweet counts but even a month and a half later they’ve still not fixed the issue for many of these people including me.
After replying to the help thread multiple times (10-15) my tweet count has still not been fixed.
On top of issues like these, there seems to have been a lot of API issues and third party apps are having troubles connecting to Twitter. I’ve noticed this issue on both Twitterrific and Tweed.
I am hoping that by the end of this month Twitter gets their act together and resolves this issues. As much fun as I have opening Tweed 5-6 times just to get it to work properly…or replying to help thread multiple times…I do have better things I could be doing…
My New OS X Netbook – Dell Mini 9
Mar 22nd
After hearing about a sale ($50 off their Dell Mini) that Dell was having on their netbook line, I just had to get one. Of course in the process I managed to talk my friend into getting on too. Our plan? To install Mac OS X Leopard on these machines for our very own “ultimate OS X netbooks”! We ordered them at the end of February and just this past Friday (March 20) we got them. Definitely wasn’t too happy about having to wait that long, and as of right now I still don’t have the 2GB memory chip that I ordered from them. Fortunately I did have an extra 1GB PC-5300 SO-DIMM that I’m using for the time being.
I used the guide that Gizmodo wrote up, you can find it by clicking on this link. Pretty much as long as you follow their steps, you’ll be up and running in an hour or less. I highly recommend getting an external DVD drive instead of going the route of the flash keys, although if you have to use a flash key make sure you’ve got at least 2 of them and that one of them at least 8GBs in size, the other one can be small, 512MBs or 1GB.
There were a couple things that happened in my install that I think I feel should be mentioned. First the Gizmodo article did mention that the install might fail and although theirs didn’t and nor did mine, my friends did. Fortunately I told him that it might happen and not to worry. And of course, I was right, his install worked fine. So if you get a “failed to install” message, don’t panic. Just continue to the next step in the guide and it should work fine.
The next thing was that upon my first boot into my OS X install, WiFi nor sound didn’t work. As per Gizmodo this was was normal too, but after doing a reboot again with the “-f” option it should work. Well I tried that 3-4 times but it failed to get WiFi or the audio working. I did some searching around on the MyDellMini forums and came across a few posts detailing fixes for this issue. What I ended up doing was again booting up using the “-f” option, then I ran the DellEFI application and rebooted. Upon that reboot, my WiFi and sound worked fine. Odd, as it was supposed to work right after install, but either way, I’m happy that it works perfectly fine now.
I’m extremely pleased with the Dell Mini 9 as an OS X netbook. It’s very easy to get working (so long as you can follow directions and have the right tools), all of the main features (Bluetooth, Airport, screen brightness, sleep, audio, WiFi, Ethernet) are supported almost out of the box. The larger 16GB drive is amazing. Being able to use my retail OS X Leopard disk was great too.
Now, my biggest gripe about the Mini is the keyboard. It’s absolutely terrible. The keys are small, have odd placement and just all around annoy me. Fortunately I ordered my Mini with a Bluetooth chip installed. I’ve finally found a use for the $80 Apple keyboard I purchased almost a year ago and barely ever used since then. Bluetooth pairing worked just as if I was on a real Apple machine and took seconds to setup and get working. This is a really great solution for when I’m just sitting at my desk, for when I’m not, I think I’ll just have to learn to deal with the built-in keyboard. The photo above compares the HP Mini keyboard to the Dell Mini, I much prefer the HP to the Dell. If the audio had worked in the HP I would probably be using that instead of the Dell.
Both the Dell and the HP are relatively the same size. They’re about the same thickness, but the HP is a tad bit wider then the Dell. I believe it’s that little bit that gives it the better keyboard.
Overall I am quite impressed with the Dell Mini 9. If the keyboard had been a bit better, this truly would have been the ultimate OS X netbook. So, I guess now I’ve gotta get an MSI Wind and try it out on there? Haha. Here’s to hoping that Apple just comes out with one.
Boxee: Round 2!
Mar 12th
It’s been a while since I last used Boxee, but after hearing so much more about it, I’ve decided to give it another try. Now, I wouldn’t call this a full-blown review, or test of the latest version of Boxee as I’ve really only picked through the application settings and used Last.fm radio, but I must say, it feels A LOT more stable, and refined. It hasn’t crashed once yet and seems a lot easier to navigate and control.
After downloading the latest version, I logged in and started messing with the settings, namely the one which controls which mode (full screen or windowed) Boxee ran in. I usually opt for the windowed mode when I’m on my desktop or laptop, that way I can use Boxee and surf the web or work in whatever other applications I need to.
In any event, I managed to easily change the screen resolution, and also turn off the visualizations for when music is playing. Once that was done, I fired up Last.fm Radio and plugged in my user details. Then I did a quick search for one of my favorite bands, but instead of playing some artists similar to the one I typed in, it displayed a list of similar artists. Totally fine though, I just picked one and it started playing some music. I love how you can view the lyrics to the song too, although, I do wish the font used for that was a bit smaller haha. I’m not blind…yet… :)
Another thing, I didn’t really like was how when you open a section of the application, be it the settings, or music or whatever it seems to stay open, so when you hit Esc to go back, you’ll have to go through all the previous things you’ve opened to get back to the main screen.
I haven’t tried out any of the other features, but I think if Boxee keeps it up, they’re definitely going to land a spot on my AppleTV! :) I might even give it a go tonight, should it be easy enough to revert. Something I also wonder is if you can still access things like the iTunes Music Store, and also if you can connect it to other iTunes shares. I guess I’ve got a bit of researching to do!
Overly I am quite impressed with the newer versions of Boxee, keep up the great work guys!
Update: Apparently you can hit the ‘H’ key which will return you to the home screen, or you can hit the ‘S’ key to exit from anywhere. Also the ‘\’ key will toggle between fullscreen and windowed mode.
Thanks Andrew!
