Posted by Ceri Davies
Tue, 20 Sep 2005 20:02:00 GMT
I’ve decided to move the web log to Typo, purely so that I can stop running MySQL (because it keeps spinning on EAGAIN on some pipe or other), the worst excuse for a database I ever came across.
The process of doing so has only confirmed that I am doing the right thing; for example, you’d think that the --compatible=postgresql or even the --compatible=ansi options to mysqldump would produce SQL that PostgreSQL would understand. No. All that does is leave out the MySQL-specific storage clauses and quote things with with real quotes rather than backticks. The data types are not converted into something that PostgreSQL understands.
For example, PostgreSQL doesn’t understand int(n) as a datatype; integer is what it wants to see. --compatible=postgresql doesn’t know that for some reason. I count that as pretty basic.
Anyway, the point is that for now, all the articles have not been moved. They will be, I just have to work out the best way of doing it. For now, old web log is at http://submonkey.net/wordpress/ and the new one is at http://typo.submonkey.net/.
The gardening news is that I finally got hold of the site supervisor and I’ll be picking my new plot next Wednesday.
Update, 20/09, 22:48: Turned out to be easier to migrate all the posts by hand. Some comments were lost but I’m not bothered.
Posted in Gardening, General, Software | 2 comments
Posted by Ceri Davies
Fri, 09 Sep 2005 21:36:00 GMT
I like to send mail direct from my home network for various reasons, not least being that I used to work on my current ISP’s mail servers and I know that they are in and out of blackholes these days like Hawking radiation. By sending mail directly from my dynamic block, the results are at least somewhat consistent.
Some may suggest changing ISP, but I am happy with every other aspect of their service, and there is no guarantee that any other ISP won’t run in to the same problems at any point in the future. Exim makes it easy for me to maintain a list of domains that do require me to use my ISP’s smart host, and even has the decency to read it dynamically, so it’s little hardship for me to:
echo painintheass.net >> /usr/local/etc/exim/smarthost.domains
for those domains that do need it.
Occasionally, however, I run into problems whereby the recipient that I am trying to mail won’t accept mail from me or the upstream smart host at the ISP. In the past, that has meant that I’ve been stuffed, which would normally be the would-be recipient’s problem, but every so often I really, really want to send them the message.
This just happened twice in the space of ten minutes, so I worked out how to get exim to relay mail via smtp.gmail.com:
First, enable POP for your gmail account. You do that in the “Forwarding and POP” section of the settings. Strangely enough.
Next, add a domain list to your exim configuration:
domainlist use_gmail_domains = /usr/local/etc/exim/gmail.domains
This domain list will hold the list of domains to send via gmail, one domain per line. If you don’t have any to add now, create the file empty with touch(1) so that you don’t forget later. Exim won’t complain either way.
Create an authenticator. Note that although we’re using the plaintext mechanism here, we’ll force TLS in the transport so your details will not get transferred in the clear:
gmail_login:
driver = plaintext
public_name = LOGIN
client_send = : YourGmailUsername@gmail.com : YourGmailPassword
Note that in a default exim configuration there are usually no authenticators, so don’t forget the begin authenticators statement if this is your first one.
Add a router:
send_via_gmail:
driver = manualroute
domains = +use_gmail_domains
transport = gmail_smtp
route_list = "* smtp.gmail.com byname"
Add a transport, forcing it to use AUTH and TLS:
gmail_smtp:
driver = smtp
hosts = smtp.gmail.com
hosts_require_auth = smtp.gmail.com
hosts_require_tls = smtp.gmail.com
That’s all it requires. You may now need to lock down the permissions on your configuration file to stop anyone reading your username and password from it. Advanced exim users can work out how to put this information in a separate file easily enough.
Posted in Mail, Software | 2 comments
Posted by Ceri Davies
Sun, 15 May 2005 13:32:00 GMT
Colin Percival finally presented his paper on HyperThreading and information leakage via caches, a problem that is clearly hardware related and operating system non-specific. Secunia, among others, instantly misinterpreted (or plain didn’t bother to read) the paper and issued a FreeBSD specific advisory.
Colin must be really annoyed; I know I am.
Posted in FreeBSD, Software | no comments
Posted by Ceri Davies
Thu, 28 Apr 2005 19:40:00 GMT
Quick braindump:
Heard about these crazy “pro-life” pharmacists on Radio 4 last night. Arrogant pro-life-the-way-I-say-so idiots.
Tiger is released tomorrow, and since this is a blog I have to list the new features I think might actually be useful:
Xgrid: apparently it’s absurdly easy to cluster Macs now. Xcode’s distributed compilation was neat, but this looks great (proviso the lack of documentation today; we’ll see tomorrow)
Inkwell: I shyed away from tablets because they looked like a pain in ass to use. No longer
Xcode 2.0: Remote debugging looks nice
That’s pretty much all. I’m sure that the other enhancements are great, but I won’t be rushing out to buy it on the strength of this.
Buying a house == PITA (yes, still)
Where is FreeBSD 5.4-RELEASE? Well, there is a networking regression that needs working out. We have a pretty lengthy list of new features too. There’s an upgrade I can recommend.
Update:
The aforementioned bug has been fixed, and FreeBSD 5.4-RELEASE should be unleashed on May 9th.
Posted in Apple, FreeBSD, General, Software | no comments
Posted by Ceri Davies
Mon, 07 Feb 2005 21:22:00 GMT
Mostly for my own benefit, here is a list of the (non-base) applications I’ve found most useful on the Mac this week, along with where to get them.
Virtue: Virtual Desktop manager for MacOS X (which I’m a little disappointed isn’t standard, but then it may be confusing for Gran). I’ve made a little .mov format film of it working (QuickTime is not the POS that it is on Windows either)
GPGMail: A dirty hack to get GPG integrated into Apple’s Mail.app
Believe it or not, iTunes. I don’t even have an iPod, and this still outshines everything similar
Firefox. Whatever.
Not a long list, but it hasn’t been a week yet.
I’ve been through a huge amount of shit too; it’s good to know that the spirit of Open Source is not dead. The nice thing about MacOS X seems to be that you can put a GUI round anything (let’s say chown(8), for example) and release it as ShareWare. This time next year, we’ll all be millionaires!
Posted in Apple, Software | no comments
