LincolnBlogs

From the twisted mind of me!

Sep 28

Webmail

ilohamail

Some times you run into some software that does just what you wanted and no more. ilohamail does just that.

For a long time now I have been running my own mail server of sorts. The short explanation is I use fetchmail to aggregate my email from various sources to my own local home server, which runs imap so that I can get my mail off of it there. It’s a great system with only a couple drawbacks. The first is that I have to use my ISP’s smtp server (they block port 25 to anyone but them). The second is you always have to have access to a mail client, well, until now that is.

Having access to a configurable mail client is not normally a problem, however, there are some times you just want to check your mail somewhere and all you have is a web browser. Tough to do with my setup unless you run some sort of webmail on your home server. Now in the past, that hasn’t been too difficult either, except since I have to push mail through my ISP’s smtp server and don’t run my own, I can’t send mail.

Last night I was browsing around the web and ran into ilohamail (no, it’s not Hawaiian, it’s actually Japanese). Anyway, one of the things that caught my attention about it was you could specify an external smtp server. The other thing was it seemed easy enough to get going, requiring only a webserver and php4 or better.

I actually installed the Ubuntu package, but I can’t imagine installing the source would be any different since it’s all php. Simply enough, you just make the packages ‘source’ directory web enabled. I did that by creating a symlink from my webserver/webmail to that source directory. You can adjust some settings if you wish in the include/local.php file. Other than that, it’s up and running and working! Yay!

Seriously though, I had been looking for something like this for a long time and I have installed several webmail systems to test them out. Nothing has installed as fast and easy as this program. This was literally a 5 minute install and works great!

Sep 24

New LinuxPlanet.Org Logo

By linc LinuxPlanet No Comments »

Special thanks to Richard Querin who designed and contributed the new logo for LinuxPlanet.Org! It’s fantastic! Richard has come through many times with his “mad grfx skilz” for different projects and his contributions always rock. This one definately gives the LinuxPlanet site a real professional type feel, which is what we were looking for (well, what I was looking for anyhow).

Now I just need to get a hold of him for some graphics for some of my *other* projects

Sep 23

Putting your money where your mouth is, or How to piss off everyone

By linc Humor, Internet, Linux, LinuxPlanet No Comments »

Yesterday, a buddy and fellow podcaster, Dave Yates emailed a bunch of people, myself included, about an idea he had. His idea was to have a “planet” for the podcasters. A “planet” for those uninitiated is an aggregated weblog/feed where many people’s separate content is merged together in one place for convenience sake (mostly).

Everyone joined in with a resounding “that sounds cool” and the topic progressed about how and where we could get something like that going. I figured I would put my money where my mouth was, and after checking with my hosting company, purchased a domain and offered to host the thing as well. I purchased http://linuxplanet.org. It was getting late in the evening, but I took a few minutes to research and slap up a mockup/test site, which was met with kudos from the crowd.

Today, after my dns was working, I quickly set up the site for real and added a few feeds. I posted a note for people to check it out and that’s where the real fun began. Apparently there was some misunderstanding between parties about the intent of the site. I was under the impression that we were going to aggregate the peoples blogs, and others were under the impression that we were going to aggregate podcast feeds. Suffice it to say that after many emails telling me that I was completely wrong, I decided to make 2 websites. One of the sites aggregates Linux blogs. You can find it at http://linuxplanet.org/blogs. The other site aggregates Linux video/podcasts. You can find it at http://linuxplanet.org/casts The funny part about the whole thing is Dann IMing me during the process. You see we have been doing projects like this together for some time and we have both been privy to the nastygrams that invariably come. Anyway, Dann would make some snide comment in jest about not having this site set up the way he wanted and how he felt slighted or some such thing and no sooner would he send that to me than I would get an email from someone saying almost the exact same thing

I never learn my lesson I guess Anyway, please take time to check the new sites out. I believe they are going to be big hits. They do, of course, need your help too. They need your content, your suggestions, your graphical talents, and, of course, your patronage too! Don’t be afraid to send me emails at lincdotfessendenatgmaildotcom!

Sep 20

Linux PPC and WPA

By linc Apple/Mac, Home Life, Linux, Security, Slackintosh, Ubuntu No Comments »

Crap. That’s my final thought on the subject.

Last night I decided to finally update my wireless infrastructure and start using WPA instead of just using mac filtering. It’s not that I am uber concerned about the security aspect of it because, let’s face it, the only way to really have a secure box and network it to shut it off. What drove me to this is my cheap router only has 25 slots for mac addresses to filter and I had them filled up. I decided if I couldn’t do that then I ought to bring things up to speed with the WPA instead (plus it’s much easier to remember a passphrase than bunches of hexidecimal octets.

I had no problem with my Mac Mini, my Ubuntu 8.04 laptop, my wife’s Ubuntu laptop, my kid’s eMac, or my new Linpus laptop. I ran into serious issues with LinuxPPC though. I was running Slackintosh on my iBook but after researching the net a bit I was disappointed to find that WPA has been an issue for a long time on the airport card. I thought, well maybe Ubuntu has it better, so I installed Ubuntu 8.04 for PPC and, although the desktop was quite nice, there was no support for WPA there either. My only option at that point was to put OS X back on the iBook. What a bummer.

Sep 20

RIP Mark Hoekstra

By linc Internet No Comments »

Just saw this article about Mark Hoekstra of Geek Technique. Aparently, Mark, who just turned 34 recently, suffered a heart attack and passed away this morning. I have long enjoyed being a reader of Mark’s blog. His hacks, projects and love of old cool hardware have been a source of interest for not only me, but countless others as well. This truly is a bummer.

Sep 16

Gettin over on the man

By linc Home Life, Linux No Comments »

I have to tell you that I almost feel bad about this…. almost.

I just purchased the Acer Asrpire One. I purchased it at the local Microcenter as it seems they are sold out everywhere else around here. I, of course, bought the one with the 8gb solid state drive, Linux (Linpus Lite) and 512mb of ram. Initially, however, I was giving serious consideration to buying the XP version and just installing Linux on that because that version comes with 1gb of ram for a mere $20 more. It didn’t have the solid state drive though, so it sort of loses something there.

I looked up online how to do a ram upgrade because I arbitrarily decided that 512mb of ram would not be enough for me – even though I hadn’t even used it yet. Better to be safe than sorry I suppose. Well, before I went to pick up the computer, I called to see if I bought the Linux version there, could I get them (Microcenter) to upgrade the ram for me. They said that they would do so for a measly $20. After watching the video (linked to above), I decided I would let them do so.

This is what I thought was so funny. In that video you see that you have to go through 3 or four layers of screws and such. You have to practically disassemble the entire machine to add that stick of ram. All that for $20. I had to chuckle. Especially when, after a half hour at it, the salesman came and got me to tell me that “there was no place to add more ram in that laptop”. Quite to the contrary, I assured him that there was and he proceeded to take me in the back to the service table and ask me where the slot was. It was still underneath the main motherboard, which they hadn’t lifted up yet. I told them the instructions were on the web and helped them find them, lest I spend another couple hours there. They did finally get that ram in about a half hour later. Somehow I doubt they will be doing those ram upgrades for only $20 anymore

Sep 15

The One

By linc Home Life, Internet, Linux, Programming No Comments »

A good while ago I remember voicing my opinion on the show about those new Netbooks, the sub-compact notebooks/laptops that everyone was buying. It was my opinion that they were underpowered and pricey for what they actually offered. After all, why buy a mini notebook when you can get a fairly good regular notebook for the same price?

Well, things have changed a bit over time and so has my opinion. Dan was the first one on the band wagon with his EeePC, which he and his family loved so much, they bought a second. He kept touting that it was so convenient and easy to tote around and use. Next was Allan, with his Acer Aspire One, which he gave stellar reviews on (yes, Allan does speak occasionally). And in between those two was Pat, who didn’t get a Netbook, but DID get a wicked nice Linux laptop.

You see, after all this, I started to get laptop envy. Being a “man of some stature”, I find it extremely difficult to use a normal size laptop in a train seat. There just isn’t enough “lap room” available to me and I end up with the screen tilted toward me from the seat in front. Needless to say, it’s extremely difficult to work that way. I also thought it would be so nice to have an ultra portable to haul with me at work if there were notes I needed to take somewhere or information to reference (I hate hauling and generating paperwork). The Netbooks really started to appeal to me.

Then, this weekend it happened. I went to a computer show and saw a lovely IBM Thinkpad x31 (I think that was the model). It’s this tiny Thinkpad, gorgeous really. It was probably just the right size foe the job, and at $250, the price was pretty good as well. The only problem was that it had a slightly cracked bezel, would need more memory (only 512mb) and was, of course, used. Now there isn’t anything at all wrong with buying used computers, except in this case I knew for another $100 I could get a new one with a warranty, so I held off. I spoke at length about it over the weekend with my wife and noticed that the local Microcenter happened to have 4 of the Linux version of the Acer Aspire One left. My wife, after I teetered on the decision for a while, told me to just go and get one and stop procrastinating. I did just that.

So, at this count there are an even number of EeePCs and Acer Aspire Ones in the techshow family. 2 EeePCs for Dann, and both Allan and I have a One. I have to say that I really like this little thing. After a little tweaking, which I will detail later on, it does just the trick for me. It’s quick (again, more on that later on) and it is fantastic to use on the train. In fact, I am doing that right now!

The verdict, go get one! And stay tuned for more posts on the One as I get the time.

Sep 03

NewBuntu

By linc Home Life, Internet, Ubuntu No Comments »

Yes, I know, It’s about time. Last night I finally got around to upgrading my Ubuntu install on my mail workstation at home from 7.10 to 8.04. Well, I shouldn’t say upgraded, because it was a fresh install.

I used the default graphical install, which basically means that the new install took a long time. Well, to be fair, the initial install wasn’t too long, but the package upgrades took forever. Perhaps I should have installed closer to the release when there weren’t so many upgrades a?

One of my biggest concerns was getting my dual monitors running, and this was actually a breeze. All I had to do was enable the restricted nvidia drivers and then add the twinview stuff to my xorg.conf and I was up and running no problem.

Once that was running to my satisfaction, it was time to get all the packages on there that I need to be able to function. This is what I really wanted to mention here. Long ago I decided to start keeping track of what I installed (and actually used) so that I could replicate a usable install faster. What I did was just write it all up in a script. I thought I would share mine with you all, and perhaps you might find it useful yourself!

#!/bin/bash # Here is the general stuff I need: sudo apt-get install mozilla-thunderbird sqlite rox-filer php5-common php5-cli php-pear subversion openssh-server clusterssh imagemagick alpine vim synergy smbfs curl # This is what you would do if you were LEGALLY able to do so - thus giving you the codecs and utilities # for you to actually watch/listen to the media you have legally purchased. sudo wget http://www.medibuntu.org/sources.list.d/hardy.list -O /etc/apt/sources.list.d/medibuntu.list sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get install medibuntu-keyring && sudo apt-get update sudo apt-get install vlc libdvdcss2 ubuntu-restricted-extras w32codecs mplayer mencoder build-essential # You want to install XMMS - it's just better than everything else, no matter what they say... wget http://launchpadlibrarian.net/11173488/xmms_1.2.10%2B20070601-1build2_i386.deb echo "install xmms_1.2.10%2B20070601-1build2_i386.deb package for xmms!" #Installing stuff for work: sudo apt-get install sqlite luma x3270 ldap-utils dia expect

And that’s it! I hope you enjoy! Make your own script, it’ll save you oodles of time getting things “just right” after your clean reinstall.

Sep 02

New Voip Service

By linc Home Life, Voip No Comments »

The lucky winner of the draw was Inphonex. After a whole lot of searching the web and EULA browsing, I decided to go with Inphonex. What I found was that most of the residential VOIP companies carry the same sort of undesirable EULA that Broadvoice does. On top of that, there appears to be a plethora of hidden fees and vendor locked in equipment as well. The sweet spot for price point is around $25 a month for unlimited US/Canada calling per month, and that’s what you get with Inphonex as well, but what really sold me on them was their stance on BYOD or Bring Your Own Device. They are completely cool with the Asterisk/Trixbox/OpenPBX crowd to the point that they offer working configs on their website. They also do the same for a good selection of VOIP equipment like phones (I have a Grandstream BudgeTone 100) and ATA’s.

These guys are serious about their security. They asked me for a bunch of information and even called me before giving me an account. I was a little put off about how long the process took, but then again, I signed up over a holiday weekend, and in these days of Identity Theft, I did appreciate that they checked me out so well.

As I previously mentioned, they have many config tutorials available on their website, so setup of my phone was a snap. A couple quick config changes and I was able to start using my phone right away without so much as having to send them mac addresses or what have you like I did with Broadvoice.

The quality of the viop service is VERY clear. Much more so using the same equipment than Broadvoice was. The real test will be in the coming days as I call my parents and inlaws, who were always complaining about Broadvoice that they would call our home and consistently get only fast busys.

I can’t say much else about the service just yet because I haven’t had much chance to use it, but stay tuned here for updates!

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