The Blog - Tech Things category

Updated the Email Server

Fri, 26 Dec 2008 22:32:00 GMT

I've been using ASSP for while now as our email proxy service. It's kept us clean and clear of tons of spam while OS X's email service has been filtering out the viruses thanks to ClamAV.

The server project over this holiday season was to disable OS X's virus scanner and go with ASSP doing everything. The OS X email service will be responsible for solely delivering email. The advantage to this is that viruses will never go through ASSP, then to OS X, and then get scanned and rejected. Instead ASSP will drop them at the front door and that will be that.

After installing a bunch of Perl modules for the new version of ASSP, it's working, and working very well. ASSP is still even using the version of ClamAV that shipped with OS X, which has the added bonus of less work for me. Apple often updates the ClamAV binary as part of it's Software Update process, so I will know that it will always be up-to-date.

Channel Changing via Firewire...

Fri, 29 Aug 2008 16:29:00 GMT

Getting prepared for HD with my home brew PVR has been fun. The final piece of the puzzle was getting GB-PVR, my PC, and Time Warner HD box talking. Items needed:

Tim Moore's firestb Package
ExDeus' STB Firewire Driver Package

Since I'm using GB-PVR and not MCE, Tim's package needs to be installed using the following arguements: msiexec /i firestb.msi IDENT=”1”

Next, if you're like me, you'll find Tim's package of drivers are a bit dated, you'll need to use ExDeus' package if you have a modern HD receiver. Just follow standard "Add new Hardware" protocol once you connect your receiver via Firewire.

Finally, test your install using the channel command and the instructions provided. I learned, although it is not clearly documented, that there are several different ways to send channel commands to a receiver. These are accomplished using the -a flag. For example, to change to channel 300 the command for my 4250HDC would be: C:\channel -f -a0 2 300

All done! Just use GB-PVR's built in exe caller for channel changing to call the channel program and execute the commands!

Drobo

Wed, 30 Apr 2008 17:04:00 GMT

As an early gift for my birthday I received a Drobo "Storage Robot." This is a little USB 2.0 storage device that holds up to 4 hard drives, but is seen as only one drive to your computer with lots and lots of storage. Plus, it has redundancy so that if a single drive fails, your data is still there. "Ah, RAID" you're thinking. Yes and no. Usually with RAID you're stuck with a fixed size disk. If you use 250GB drives x 4, and one fails, you can only replace it with another 250GB disk; do so with anything larger and it's wasted space. The Drobo lets you use a combination of different sized disks and when you start getting low on space, simply remove the smallest disk and replace it with a larger one - and it's space is instantly available.

While still a little pricey, it's a zero maintenance solution that can grow as your storage needs do. I could have (and had!) done my own RAID system and was maintaining it just fine, however when I had to grow the storage it was always a pain. I'm starting to value my time over tinkering with hardware and Drobo just works so I can do more important things.

Back to Adium...

Sun, 23 Mar 2008 23:40:00 GMT

Late this afternoon I decided to give Adium a try. This wasn't the first time, I've used it in the past, but before their 1.0 milestone. I grew tired of the team's apparent lack of interest in Voice and Video chat, and since Apple's iChat has all of that and every Mac I use has a built in camera, well - Adium got tossed to the wayside so I could do all those spiffy things.

But I missed all the cool things I could do with it. The great sounds - including many I created and uploaded to the Xtras Site (oh how I missed my Myst soundset!) - the custom status icons, the custom buddy and message views with transparency and more.

Sure, Chax made some of these things possible with iChat, even bearable, and while iChat did become much more functional to me with it along with Apple's additions to it in Mac OS X 10.5, as a friend of mine liked to say often, "it's like putting lipstick on a pig."

With that said, Adium still hasn't progressed on the AV chat front, although they claim 2.0 will have it, but have no estimated date as to it's release. Also, the mouse-overs on the buddy list still spill over into my virtual desktops from time to time when Adium is in the background.

So, I think I'll keep using it for a bit. I spend 98% of my IM client existence text chatting and not using AV. I suppose if I want to I can always fire up iChat for that. For now Adium is like that comfortable pair of slippers you've forgotten about. Sure they might have a couple of holes, but they are comfortable.

vi Cheatsheet

Sat, 11 Aug 2007 18:31:00 GMT

Command Line Options:
vi file	Invoke vi on file
vi file1 file2	Invoke vi on files sequentially
view file or vi -R file	Invoke vi on file in read-only mode
vi -r file	Recover file and recent edits after a crash
vi -t tag	Look up tag and start editing at its definition
vi + file	open file at last line
vi +n file	open file at line no. n
vi -c command file	open file , execute command (which is usually search command or line no. (POSIX)
vi +/pattern file	open file directly at pattern

Marking Position
mx	mark current position as x
`x	move cursor to mark x
``	return to previous mark or context
'x	move to beginning of line containing mark x
''	return to beginning of line containing previous mark

Vi Commands
h, j, k, l	left, down, up, right
w, W, b, B	forward and backward by a word
e, E	end of word
), (	beginning of next, previous sentence
}, {	beginning of next, previous paragraph
]], [[	beginning of next, previous section
0, $	first and last positions of current line
^	first nonblank character of the current line
+, -	first nonblank character of the next and previous lines
n \|	column n of current line
H, M, L	Top, Middle, Last line of screen
nH, nL	n number of lines after Tp line and before Last line

Line Number in Vi
ctrl G	Display current line number
nG	move to line number n
G	move to last line in file
:n	move to line n in file

Scrolling in Vi
ctrl F, ctrl B	scroll Forward, Backward one screen
ctrl D, ctrl U	scroll Down, Up one half screen
ctrl E, ctrl Y	show one more line at Bottom, Top of window
ctrl L	redraw screen without scrolling
z return, z., z-	reposition line with cursor: to Top, Middle, Bottom of screen

Searching in Vi
/pattern, ?pattern	search Forward, Backward for pattern
n, N	repeat last search in Same , Opposite direction
/, ?	repeat previous search Forward, Backward
fx, Fx	search Forward, Backward for character x in current line
tx, Tx	search Forward, Backward to character Before, After x in current line
;	repeat previous current line search
,	repeat previous current line search in opposite direction

Editing Commands

Insert
i, a	insert text Before, After cursor
I, A	insert text Before beginning, After end of line
o, O	open new line for text Below, Above cursor

Yank (copy)
yw	copy word
yy	copy current line
"ayy	copy current line into named buffer a (a-z). uppercase names append text
ymotion	copy text between the cursor and the target of motion
p, P	put copied text After, Before cursor
"aP	put text from buffer a Before cursor (a-z)

Change
r	replace character
cw	change word
cc	change current line
cmotion	change text between the cursor and the target of motion
C	change to end of line
R	overwrite characters
S	substitute: delete current line and insert new text
s	substitute: delete character and insert new text

Other Commands
.	repeat last edit command
u, U	undo last edit, restore current line
J	delete lines

Delete, Move
x	delete character under cursor
X	delete character before cursor
dw	delete word
dd	delete current line
dmotion	delete text between the cursor and the target of motion
D	delete to end of line
p, P	put deleted text After, Before cursor
"np	put text from delete buffer number n after cursor (for last 9 deletions)

ex edit commands
:m	move lines
:co or :t	copy lines
:.,$d	delete from current line to end of file
:.,/pattern/co$	¬†copy from current line through line containing pattern to end of file.
:30,60m0	move lines 30 through 60 to top of file

Time Warner Settings

Wed, 01 Aug 2007 20:56:00 GMT

IP: 72.43.24.138
Gateway: 72.43.24.137
Subnet: 255.255.255.252
DNS1: 24.92.226.11
DNS2: 24.92.226.12

SUNY Potsdam Tech Notes

Sun, 15 Apr 2007 20:54:00 GMT

New Admin Specs
Gateway: 137.143.159.254 Broadcast: 137.143.159.255 Netmask: 255.255.240.0

LDAP server:
ldap.potsdam.edu searchbase: ou=People,o=potsdam.edu?mail,displayName,uid

SMTP Services
Cingular server: cwmx.com
Verizon server: smtp.vzwmail.net

NCID on OS X

Sat, 10 Mar 2007 21:47:00 GMT

The NCID package normally installs in /usr/local/
If a binary package is available copy ncid-VERSION.mac-osx.tgz to the mac, then tar -xzvf ncid-VERSION-mac-osx.tgz -C / (EXAMPLE: tar -xzvf ncid-0.64.mac-osx.tgz -C /)

NCIDSIP on OS X 10.5:

Having upgraded to OS X 10.5 recently I'm happy to report that NCIDSIP works just great on OS X 10.5 without needing Darwin Ports. You'll still need to install the Net:Pcap module, but it will install with the included 10.5 install of Perl.

NCIDSIP on OS X 10.4:

NCIDSIP as downloaded for OS X requires the Net::Pcap perl module. Unfortunately, the version of Perl that comes with OS X doesn't have this module. If you try to install it using # perl -MCPAN -eshell and then cpan> install Net::Pcap you'll find one of its dependancies won't compile, probably due to something OS X specific or the PPC processor if you're not on Intel. Enter Darwin Ports (http://darwinports.com).

Install Darwin Ports. After install make sure you're using the latest by opening a shell and entering: sudo port -d selfupdate
Now you're ready to install Net::Pcap. Again, from a shell, enter: sudo port install p5-net-pcap
If this is your first time using Darwin Ports you'll find that it will realize it doesn't have a copy of the latest Perl and install that for you. It's important to note that the Perl installed by Darwin Ports (and it's modules) is in a separate directy than the one that comes with OS X. This can confuse Perl apps written or specifically configured for OS X. I recommend leaving the default OS X version where it is and instead changing the path in your perl script to the Darwin Port install with the modules it requires. In this case, open ncidsip with your favorite editor and change the first line from #!/usr/bin/perl to #!/opt/local/bin/perl

NCIDSIP should now launch successfully.

Note: Most newer Vonage routers use port 10000 to send SIP invites, NCID has the default port set to 5060. If that doesn't work, try 10000 or visit your VOIP user forum!

Add-ons

Contacts: http://gnufoo.org/contacts/
Growl: http://info.growl
OS X CallerID Scripts: http://www.davidlaporte.org/tools.php

Helpful Things:

ncidd -Dv3 (verbose debugging mode.)
ncidsip -v --debug (verbose debugging mode.)

Finished:

With the above Growl scripts you can get a nice display for incoming calls on all of your networked Macs as shown below.

OS X/*NIX Tips

Sat, 10 Feb 2007 21:51:00 GMT

OS X/*NIX Tips

diskutil repairPermissions / repairs permissions via the Terminal, same as using Disk Utility in the GUI.

When creating folders on OS X for WebDAV use, make sure the Owner is _www and the Group is staff.

Making Any App in the Dock Invisible.

Right click on the app and choose show package contents.
Open the Info.plist
Look for a Child called NSUIElement, if there is not one create it under Root
Change it's String Class to 1

sudo grep "failed to auth" /var/log/secure.log | sed "s/^.*user $.*$ for.*$/\1/" | sort | uniq -c to quickly look for failed login attempts.
find <filename> -type f -mtime +10 finds files in a directory greater than 10 days old (in the example).
location of SquirrelMail config /usr/share/squirrelmail/config/conf.pl
location of Java "home" on OS X (example of 1.5 follows) /System/Library/Frameworks/JavaVM.framework/Versions/1.5.0/Home
ssh -N -C -L 5271:server.example.com:548 -f server.example.com
Example of an SSH Tunnel that maps the local port to the destination followed by the port number on the host to be mapped to. -f backgrounds it. The last part is the remote hostname. Switches are: -N no shell; -C compression; -L port forwarding
Disable CrashReporter Dialog: defaults write com.apple.CrashReporter DialogType none
sudo update_prebinding -root / -force updates prebindings in the event of a failed update.
lsof -i:8005 will tell what processes are occupying this port.

*nix Permissions

Fri, 10 Jan 2003 21:49:00 GMT

Examples of *NIX File Permissions

Owner	Group	Everyone
rwx	rwx	rwx
421	421	421

Examples:

Everyone getting read/write/execute privliages would be 777

Owner can execute, but not other would be 766

Group can have full access for write, but others can only read and execute would be 575