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December 2002 Archives

December 6, 2002

Postfix, SASL and TLS.

  • So after having bitten the bullet and installed FreeBSD, I had an excuse to install Postfix and play around with it. I've used qmail pretty much exclusively for a long time, and before that, sendmail, but not much recently. I like Postfix a lot... It has more standard style configuration files, is still being actively developed, and supports SASL and TLS almost out of the box. I've finally gotten it configured to properly authenticate via SASL over TLS today, and so this means that I can relay mail from anywhere, regardless of what my IP address is, just by authenticating to Postfix, securely over TLS. Although, since SASL is tied to the PAM at the moment, using saslauthd, it only supports AUTH LOGIN and AUTH PLAIN. Most mail clients seem to support those, including Outlook, Outlook Express, Netscape, Mozilla and Eudora.
  • It looks like MessageWall can do lots of the same things, but is new, and Postfix can do everything that MessageWall can do rolled into one.
  • Found a bug in mon the other day at work, it just so happens that the 'alertafter <time interval>' directive doesn't work because of a slight bug in the code. After having submitted the patch to both the mon bug tracking database on SourceForge and also to the mon mailing list, I haven't gotten a response.
  • It's Christmas -- err, holiday time! Lots of family are heading this way for the at least part of December, my cousin Nicholas is getting married on the 21st of December. It's going to be a busy month!

    • Posted by Adrian Chung on December 6, 2002 11:07 AM | | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

    December 7, 2002

    Rogers called, the problem's fixed.

  • Got a message from my cousin yesterday that Rogers called and they said that they'd fixed the problem. The only ticket I had open with them was one that I asked them to reopen about NNTP download speeds rivalling a 56K modem.
  • So I went down to my computer and attempted to download headers, and a binary from alt.binaries.sounds.mp3. A whopping 6kB/s. So it definitely looks to me like the problem's fixed. So I called Rogers to ask what the problem and resolution were.
  • They claim that they've checked my modem and connection, and there's no known issues with their news server, so the problem has been fixed.
  • I now no longer feel bad about posting every Rogers related issue I have here, or anywhere in public, since I can't even begin to feel sorry for the lack of knowledge absolutely every tech at Rogers displays. I even escalated this issue three days ago because I was getting nowhere. Now, after escalating, I'm even worse off.
  • Be thankful you're a monopoly and that there is no competition for ISP services over cable. It's a shame to run a business the way Rogers does.

    • Posted by Adrian Chung on December 7, 2002 11:32 AM | | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

    December 10, 2002

    centerICQ

  • A co-worker of mine pointed me at centerICQ, an ncurses-based instant messaging client for Linux/BSD. It's interface isn't quite as quick to navigate as mICQ, but it's a bit more feature rich, has menus and supports not only ICQ, but also Yahoo, AIM, MSN, IRC and Jabber. So I can now pretty much communicate with everyone from the comfort of my always running IM client inside of a screen session.

    • Posted by Adrian Chung on December 10, 2002 1:26 AM | | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

    December 16, 2002

    Are you lost?

  • So maybe Friday the 13th really does bring bad luck sometimes... We set out for a weekend in Ottawa on Friday, and as I pulled off the 401 just outside of Kingston, the steering wheel made a funny noise, and got really tight to turn... Hoping it would go away, we made for the bathroom, but when we went back to the car, and I popped the hood, there was definitely something leaking, and it looked like steering fluid. We figured it was best to not drive the car at this point, and Dad said that he'd take a look at it if we left it there.
  • After calling CAA, who offered to either tow us, or put us in touch with Hertz car rentals, we tried Hertz, who was closed, followed by Discount, and Budget. Finally, we got in touch with Avis, who was closing at 7:00PM (it was 6:50PM), and agreed to stay open until 7:10PM, but no later. Having 20 minutes to get into Kingston and to Avis before they closed, we called the first cab company we found in the yellow pages, only to find that the two people who answered the phone at the other end obviously had never left Kingston...:

      (me): Hi, I need a cab, can you send one?

      (operator #1): Where are you?

      (me): I'm at the service center at the 401 just before Kingston, so west of Kingston.

      (operator #1): You're where?

      (me): At the service center at the 401, as you head from Toronto into Kingston.

      (operator #1): I don't know where that is...

      (me): You don't know where that is?!? On the 401, west of Kingston, before the first exit?!?

      (operator #1): No, I'm going to have to transfer you, hold on...

      (operator #2): <insert cab company name here>, can I help you?

      (me): I need a cab, I'm at the service center at the 401 just outside of Kingston?

      (operator #2): What's the address there?

      (me): Uh, there doesn't seem to be one, you can't miss it, it's at the 401?

      (operator #2): I don't understand, is that near Division Street? Montreal St?

      (me): No, it's before the first interchange in Kingston, west of Kingston, on the 401!!!

      (operator #2): So there's no address?


  • Guess what I did next? Hung up... And called the other cab company in town, whose dispatcher knew where we were, and sent a cab out for us. Except that by this point in time, it was questionable that we'd make it into Kingston before 7:30PM -- and Avis promised to close at 7:10PM, even after Kelly called back to ask them to stay open.
  • In the meantime, a gentleman approached us, while I was still on the phone, and asked if we were lost. He asked where we were from, where we were going, explained that he was from Toronto as well, and had a healing therapy center, and that he had all night to give us a ride... Kelly and I looked at each other, and while we were walking through the doors, and thinking, he says, "Well, I don't mind giving you a ride, but we've gotta go now!". At that point, I'm seeing images of being tied up in a barn somewhere, with hay, and Kelly's thinking about being chopped up and left in the forest... So we said "Thanks, but no thanks".
  • When the cab finally got to the service center, we figured, we won't make Avis, so we'll go into the train station and grab a train to Ottawa... Off we went.
  • After exiting the 401 into Kingston, my cell phone rings, and the guy from Avis calls back to ask if we're still interested in renting the car -- by this point it's 7:45. I was surprised that they were still opened, and so he said that if we came now, he'd rent us the car. When I hung up, the cab driver agreed to take us to Avis... 20 minutes later, we're at the airport in Kingston, and there's no one at the Avis counter.
  • To make a long story shorter, the cab driver took us to the wrong Avis location, and we were lucky to be able to get in touch with the store manager who was at home, but agreed to come in. Tim, the gentleman helping us before, had gone home 10 minutes earlier, but forwarded the office phone to the manager's house.
  • So we managed to make it back to the right Avis, rent a car and make it to Ottawa... But it was quite the evening!
  • Other than that, we had a good weekend, pretty low key, saw Tony and Jay, Brian, and Anna and Richard, who brought there photos from their year long trip to Australia, NZ, and the far east. Pretty amazing pictures and stories!
  • Back to work this afternoon!

    • Posted by Adrian Chung on December 16, 2002 9:46 AM | | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

    December 25, 2002

    Merry Christmas!

  • Well, today's shaping up to be a nice day. We've got snow on the ground, it's not too cold, and everyone's enjoying themselves!
  • I'm working this year, and Kelly's in Sarnia visiting her family, so we're managing to spend our first Christmas as a married couple apart, but we're happy that we've closed a deal on a new house for August of 2003!
  • Hope everyone has a wonderful holiday season!

    • Posted by Adrian Chung on December 25, 2002 11:39 AM | | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

    December 30, 2002

    It's all about the matches in the bathroom...

  • Went to see Catch Me If You Can at the Paramount downtown yesterday with Kieron and Sarah, then we all went out to dinner at Dos Amigos, a Mexican restaurant. Dos Amigo's was pretty delicious!
  • Afterwards, we had some homemade Lemon Merangue pie and ice cream -- and Kieron let me in on the secret behind eliminating bathroom odours: lighting a match. Works pretty well! ;)
  • Drove by the new house again today (like we do almost every day), they've put our garage door up now.
  • Set up SpamAssassin (spamd/spamc using procmail), which is working pretty well. It's catching almost all of the SPAM I get. Right now, it's not a centralized setup, it's on a per-user basis using procmail until I get the settings right and see how well it works out. I'm using subject rewriting at the moment for those using clients which can't filter mail based on headers, and I'm not using any of the RBL features at the moment. Though I might turn them on, since EG doesn't receive that much mail. I'll post more info about it as time passes...

    • Posted by Adrian Chung on December 30, 2002 12:06 AM | | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

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    About December 2002

    This page contains all entries posted to adrian's home in December 2002. They are listed from oldest to newest.

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