Blog on Lime Daley

Wordpress xmlrpc.php and Spammers

Fri, 18 Sep 2026 19:23:55 +0000

Spammers love the xmlrpc.php - I just checked one server, and it has ~60K over the last month, and it is only that small because I block 100% of the hits to them and then my firewall blocks the IP addresses if people try multiple times. And basically all of those requests are trying to hack into wordpress sites by testing usernames and passwords. But, the reason for this post is that today I had an actual customer who wanted to use it for a legitimate purpose - he has a 3rd party site that he wants to allow backend access into his site through automated means.

Nifty ssh/config Entry

Sat, 14 Mar 2026 10:01:48 +0000

I've done some interesting things in the past with the config file for the ssh client, but ChatGPT pointed out a neat way to manage an ssh server for which you have two ssh keys and want to be able to login easily to each one at different times. In my case, I'm using Subversion, and use the svn+ssh method of connecting. And I have two users (one for the main LifeType source code and one for my customizations.

In the Never-Ending Saga of the Good Guys vs the Spammers...

Sat, 14 Mar 2026 09:55:36 +0000

I just recently discovered Cloudflare's Turnstile app, which is their answer to stopping spam, and it looks to work quite well, and was easy to code, so I added it to my contact plugin for LifeType. Commenting on LifeType has generally worked pretty well, and we rarely get any spam, but the spammers have recently figured out my hidden input plugin, which was created just over 20 years ago, so it has lived a good life, stopping almost 100% of the spam.

Improved Spam Detection

Fri, 15 Aug 2025 07:07:35 +0000

I recently noticed that unblocked spams had gone up and that our mail server was getting error reports from a spam checking service konwn as "validity". Which is yet another list that tries to promote good internet behavior by listing good and bad actors. However, reportedly, they have changed their free service layer from a reasonable number of hits down to 13 per hour. This causes three rules to be hit in the default configuration of SpamAssassin to be hit: RCVD_IN_VALIDITY_CERTIFIED,RCVD_IN_VALIDITY_RPBL, and RCVD_IN_VALIDITY_SAFE, two of which are negative rules (negative means a good email), and thus emails that would have otherwise been tagged as spam were now being marked good.

Lets Encrypt / Dehydrated retry

Tue, 02 Aug 2022 06:54:06 +0000

I get sporadic errors when running dehydrated -c from my regular cron job. The errors I get vary from time to time, but they are: ERROR: Problem connecting to server (get for https://acme-v02.api.letsencrypt.org/directory; curl returned with 35) ERROR: Problem connecting to server (post for https://acme-v02.api.letsencrypt.org/acme/authz-v3/xxxx; curl returned with 35) It seems to happen to some servers more than others, particularly newer ones (Debian 11). [@more@] I added this to /etc/dehydrated/conf.

Receiving MMS Messages Is More Reliable Now

Wed, 06 Apr 2022 23:53:01 +0000

After a long time of not being able to figure out why some MMS messages don't come through well, and others are fine, I finally figured it out. PHP's mail() function doesn't do anything with line-wrapping and some email clients and servers have trouble with long lines. The RFC standard is 80 characters (78 plus the carriage return/line feed), and Amazon (which is where the MMS images get hosted temporarily) uses really long lines in their URLs - over 1,000 characters, so I suppose it is reasonable that mail servers don't like emails that go past the standard by 12X.

Programming Classes

Tue, 05 Oct 2021 08:55:09 +0000

I've done informal programming classes in the past, but I've been thinking lately of making it more formal. There are a few professional coding classes available, and we've tried some with our own kids Khan Academy is great, though Jonathan was disappointed when he discovered the "fake" javascript world that coding system lives in isn't that practical for making actual programs. Scratch is pretty great too, and I think the best introduction to programming that currently exists, particularly for young kids, because you don't even need to be able to read that well to be able to program proficiently there.

Gourmet Printing

Mon, 21 Dec 2020 02:52:16 +0000

For those of you using Gourmet on a system that doesn't have python-poppler that was removed and so then printing no longer works, there is an easy solution. Simply find an older version of the package python-poppler, and reinstall it. I looked into why poppler was removed, but I forgot the reason, but I need to be able to print my recipes... This will probably break at some point, but hopefully gourmet will be updated to python3 by that point and we'll get to keep using it.

PINE / Alpine Decrypting Password Files

Mon, 26 Oct 2020 20:43:27 +0000

I have an instance of Alpine 2.0 that still has the old-style .pine-passfile that is fairly insecure, but I couldn't find a utility to decrypt it for me, so I grabbed the source code from imap.c from version 2.01 of the alpine source, and modified it to just read in a password file and output the passwords in it. (See below for how to decrypt the newer versions as well)

Amazon Fresh API: PHP/cURL Woes and a Final Solution!

Wed, 29 Jul 2020 20:09:48 +0000

I just spent four hours trying to get the Amazon API to work properly. The documentation is pretty poor, and just has the one example, which as I finally figured out in the end, works completely differently than the "landing" URL, which is the one you actually need to use. How I thought it would work is that I would send my ingredients off to Amazon and they would return a customized link (in the form of the green button like on the verify page) and then I could display that to the visitors.

Script to Generate Self-Signed Certificates Automatically

Sun, 26 Jul 2020 13:30:48 +0000

I always have trouble remembering how to make self-signed certificates, and there are a million different webpages devoted to doing so, but they all do it a little differently, and don't always, work, so here is the millionth-and-one web page, but at least it will work for me. The features I care about are using private IP addresses, private DNS names, public DNS names, a root authority that needs to be imported into the browser's trusted certificates, and remembering/auto-filling passwords automatically.

ltsp-build-client error on tcsh: VENDOR environment variable set to unknown

Thu, 09 Mar 2017 04:41:28 +0000

I'm not sure where VENDOR gets set - maybe just in the default tcsh binary, but when I su to root (bash) it saves the environment variable, and the ltsp-build-client script looks to see if the VENDOR variable is set, and if it is, uses that value, which in my case is set to "unknown" which then results in the output of ltsp-build-client to be: /usr/share/ltsp/plugins/ltsp-build-client/common/010-etc-hosts: line 3: /opt/ltsp/amd64/etc/hosts: No such file or directory

Fun with Pointers (or maybe Fun with Engineering Students)

Tue, 20 Sep 2016 13:39:47 +0000

I was a teaching assistant for 18-349, Introduction to Embedded Engineering for three semesters in college and I really enjoyed it. One semester, the professor asked each of the TAs to create a test problem, and I had quite a lot of fun with that, though my students didn't. Only two students out of 100+ got it entirely correct, though maybe 30% got most of the problem correct. Students always have trouble with pointers, and understanding how their are addressed, de-referenced, etc.

Planet Memory Review

Mon, 17 Mar 2014 16:47:33 +0000

I have a server that is apparently considered "old", as in, the RAM in it is old enough that manufacturers aren't making much of it any more, and so the prices are starting to go up. I had purchased the machine only half full of processors and RAM with the idea that it would be a cheap upgrade later once I needed it. I'm getting to the point of "

How is Lime Daley Like a Trappist Monk?

Mon, 20 Jan 2014 00:50:40 +0000

While the headline sounds like it might be the beginning of a bad joke, the Trappist Monks from Moncks Corner, SC were mentioned in a sermon this morning, and so I thought I would look up the article referenced, as it sounded pretty good: The Business Secrets of the Trappist Monks. The article might be long for some of you, so I'll quote the highlights (though you should at least go read the seven bullet point "

Hack the Hackers

Fri, 20 Dec 2013 21:33:28 +0000

I have a customer who installed a machine with the administrator/root password very weak, and left it open to the internet. Someone guessed the password, logged in, and then helpfully ran 'screen', so I could watch what he did (presumably - he might have been smart enough to do other things, and we will format the drive, but it was neat to see all of his commands, including typos, and guessing at some commands, because he must not have been familiar with CentOS).

"What's the Worst Thing That Could Happen?"

Thu, 30 May 2013 13:46:02 +0000

For those of you who know me, you know I find it useful to ask the question, "What's the worst that can happen?" when thinking about whether to do something or not - particularly when it comes to a matter of walking by faith in a particular situation. I find that the answer to that question is usually, "I could get embarrassed", or "I might lose some money", or other such things that don't matter all that much.

Archive Page for Wordpress Blogs

Tue, 14 May 2013 03:27:44 +0000

A customer wanted a "site index" page for their Wordpress site, which in blog terms means an "archive" page. You can use the wp_get_archives() function, but that doesn't give you much in the way of customization. I thought about using the "format=custom" parameter, and try to parse the information afterwards, but that seemed like a pain, so I threw away that function call, in favor of calling get_posts, and then doing all of the setup myself.

Changing Paths While Migrating Subversion Repositories

Tue, 13 Mar 2012 21:55:03 +0000

Note: This is extremely hacky, and you had better make sure you have a backup, as it is quite easy to wreck the repository. Scenario: I was moving a subversion repository from one server to another, and in the process, I also wanted to update the paths, since the first repository had been a general purpose repository, and the second was only for one particular customer, and so didn't need the extra path info at the beginning.

Groan: New International System of Units

Tue, 19 Apr 2011 14:44:54 +0000

A little humor for your day, courtesy of Jack Gannsle. Ratio of an igloo's circumference to its diameter = Eskimo Pi 2000 pounds of Chinese soup = Won ton 1 millionth of a mouthwash = 1 microscope Time between slipping on a peel and smacking the pavement = 1 bananosecond Weight an evangelist carries with God = 1 billigram Time it takes to sail 220 yards at 1 nautical mile per hour = Knotfurlong 16.

Procmail Recipe to Filter Addresses in the From Field

Wed, 13 Apr 2011 02:32:17 +0000

I've noticed a common spam method lately, which I'm not quite sure what the idea is since it is so obviously spam, and trivially filterable that it doesn't seem like it will last very long, but a couple have ended up in my inbox, and since I really don't like emails in my inbox I decided I would write a filter to keep this type out. :0: * ^From:[^@]+@[^@]+@

Simple TinyMCE Integration Into Moodle 1.9.x

Thu, 24 Jun 2010 18:15:28 +0000

There are a handful of solutions out there to integrate TinyMCE and Moodle, but some of them are obsolete, and some contain all sorts of things other than the TinyMCE files. So, I started by reading this entire page, and then figuring out which versions no longer worked, and finally settled on John Stabinger's version (link to stabinger.us was removed, since it appears the site was bought by SEO spammers), which was pretty good, though it contained a lot of extra stuff.

Minor Change to the Apache2 Configuration: DirectoryIndex

Thu, 20 May 2010 15:54:44 +0000

We don't think it will affect anyone's current websites, but we've turned off DirectoryIndex'ing by default for security* reasons. If you desire this behavior in a certain directory, you can turn it back on by adding (or editing an existing) .htaccess file and adding the line: Options +Indexes And the old functionality will be restored. * Where "security" is defined as security through obscurity, and not any real definition of security at all, but it keeps the script kiddies away.

HOW-TO: Get Your Facebook Application to Show Up on a Page's Wall and Boxes Tab

Sat, 30 Jan 2010 04:22:41 +0000

It about to be deprecated, so this information won't be worth much in a month or two, but for some reason, the documentation on how to post stuff to a page's wall is really sparse, and took me a while to figure out, so here goes, and I'll try to add in the keywords that I searched for while trying to find the answer.[@more@] The problem: I have an application that can successfully post to a user's wall, boxes and separate tab (If you haven't gotten that far, you have other issues, probably related to using an old API, or not filling in the setFBML parameters appropriately), but the application will only post to a fan page's tab, and not the wall or boxes tab.

The Secret to Upgrading osCommerce from 2.2ms2-2006-08-17 to 2.2rc1

Wed, 20 Jan 2010 17:17:02 +0000

I've been working with a customer to upgrade his osCommerce installation. The interesting points of the upgrade are that he has a highly customized installation, both in the template and code. Subversion comes to the rescue for all of that. And I got his source code checked in (had to first figure out what version he was running, since it turns out he originally installed 2.2ms1, and had partially upgraded to 2.

Procmail Programming

Thu, 07 Jan 2010 17:53:02 +0000

I've written a couple procmail scripts over the years, and I thought I should publish them since it might help someone. The following script goes in /etc/procmailrc which allows users to disable the spam check for whatever reason - perhaps they use a different program or otherwise don't need the spamassassin check. (see next script, where my virtual users use a different spamd, since the user doesn't actually exist, so I need to change the username in spamc, and call a different spamd which is listening on a different port than the default spamd) :0fw

Wordpress: Cache RSS Feeds to Lower CPU Usage

Wed, 09 Dec 2009 22:23:28 +0000

I did some work for a client who was having high CPU load issues with their tiny (20 posts, no comments) Wordpress installation. They already had the super-cache plugin installed (I think that should be shipped by default in wordpress), but the super-cache plugin (as of version 0.9.6.1) doesn't cache RSS feeds, so for each of the ~5000 viewers of the RSS feed, the feed is regenerated each time, causing this tiny site to be the largest CPU usage of all sites on this particular shared server.

Welcome to Apollo and AT&T Callvantage customers

Fri, 28 Aug 2009 17:47:55 +0000

Lime Daley often acquires new customers when they leave a previous provider who either doesn't provide support, or the support that is provided consists of mostly trying to figure out what language they are speaking. The person doesn't want to have to know technical details of why their site is getting the infamous 503 Internal Server Error, nor why their emails sometimes take 15 or 30 minutes to be delivered, and they are attracted to Lime Daley because they know they will get an engineer on the phone immediately, and problems are taken care of without hassle.

Asterisk: Audible Caller ID

Sat, 06 Jun 2009 15:29:11 +0000

In addition to hosting phone services for other people, I also host my own phone numbers (personal and business). I prefer to not have different phones for each line, but I like any phone to be used for either number at any given time. I haven't gotten around to setting up distinctive ringing for the different lines, but instead, our home computer audibly announces the caller's name and number, and, for the business calls, which menu choice they made.

Asterisk: Recording Custom Sound Files

Sat, 06 Jun 2009 15:25:59 +0000

Some of my customers have a hard time creating the space-efficient .gsm files for their voice menus, so I created a simple extension where they can call up the Asterisk server, and record the menu as they want it, and then it can be placed into their dialplan. (The number of voice menus that are created are small enough so I haven't gotten around to making the system more robust, where it would automatically move the file into a customer accessible place (and keep track of which customer recorded which menu).

Asterisk: Blacklisting For Multiple Users

Sat, 06 Jun 2009 15:00:37 +0000

There are a number of tutorials for people trying to setup blacklisting for their Asterisk server, but they all seem to assume that there is only one user on the server, or at least all users want to share the same blacklist. Since I host for multiple, unrelated people, they don't necessarily want to share the same blacklist, so I had to come up with a configuration that would work for all customers.

CMS Choices

Fri, 29 May 2009 16:26:27 +0000

I've not been happy with any of the choices that are available for content management, but lately I've been warming to Drupal. Each system has its downfalls, and upgrades seem to be pretty bad on all of the ones I've used extensively (webgui, drupal, joomla).[@more@] I haven't tried to do major upgrades on newer versions of webgui, and its probably gotten better (it couldn't have gotten worse) than the 6.

ALPS Touchpad Configuration in Debian

Thu, 09 Apr 2009 11:25:24 +0000

After spending hours trying to get the HAL/FDI method to work, I resorted to modifying the xorg.conf directly, though I was able to only add a couple lines, since my current xorg.conf is basically empty, with everything being auto-detected. The main difference that I wanted (from lots of other posted information) was that I liked the fdi method of configuring things (xorg.conf has always been a scary file to play with) and so I didn't want to have to hard-code everything, which means, as far as I could figure out, to not have a ServerLayout section at all since once I added that to get the touchpad to work properly, it broke everything else.

Thinking In "Blog"? Nope. But Thinking In Code? Yes.

Wed, 25 Feb 2009 17:35:25 +0000

Some people have been talking about whether they think in blogging, as in: "this is so much fun, I should blog about it", or, "look how cute the kids are being, I should grab a camera so I can post it on flickr", etc. I didn't particularly relate to that, but this morning I re-discovered a cipher book I liked as a kid, and thought it would be fun to go through some of it.

Recovery Rebate Calculator

Tue, 17 Feb 2009 18:41:41 +0000

The IRS hasn't published their calculator yet, and I have been reading about lots of people trying to figure out what to do with line 70 on their 1040 (ie. the famous RRC that is causing probably more time wasted than was worth the money that was sent out last year. So, I wrote a calculator this morning. I went through a bunch of cases, so I think I got all of them, but of course, who knows, with all of the tax tricks, etc.

Helper Shell Scripts for Worklog

Mon, 08 Dec 2008 20:25:56 +0000

As I wrote earlier, I use worklog to keep track of my time. I use some other scripts to help manage worklog's output, and now that I made one of the scripts work even nicer today, I figured I should post them. [@more@] I use get-time to see where I spent time on a particular day. It defaults to today, but you can give it an argument like "yesterday", "

Software Development

Fri, 14 Nov 2008 14:46:19 +0000

I have been quite behind in my magazine reading, and this morning I caught up to August (2008 - at some points, it has been necessary to specify the year when saying how far behind I am). There is an interesting article in Dr. Dobbs, by Scott Ambler, regarding methods of estimating costs of software development, and whether the typical, fixed price model is even ethical.[@more@] "fixed price refers to a project where the cost, schedule and scope are set early in the lifecycle.

SSH Login Attempts

Wed, 09 Jul 2008 03:40:22 +0000

I think I have written before about DenyHosts, but this evening, it prevented somewhere around twenty thousand individual hosts trying to login to one of my servers. The hackers have gotten smarter - that they used to just try from one host, which was trivially blockable, even manually. But, thanks to denyhosts (and the fairly easily trackable behavior by the hackers), they think they get a couple chances to guess a password before being blocked.

VMWare 1.0.5 Server patch for 2.6.25 kernel

Fri, 18 Apr 2008 04:28:25 +0000

I had the privilege of installing VMWare 1.0.5 on a brand new 2.6.25 kernel. I downloaded the 2.6.XX patch for vmware 1.0.4, applied the one change from asm to linux in vcpuset.h. That had worked for me before when using 1.0.5 on a 2.6.24 kernel, but today I downloaded a 2.6.25 kernel for someone and of course, someone changed something slightly, causing the vmware module (vmnet) to no longer compile.

LifeType 1.2.7 released

Mon, 31 Mar 2008 00:38:10 +0000

After a slightly hectic day yesterday, when I noticed some strange behavior on one of my servers, we released a new version of LifeType. While I am not impressed that the bug existed in the first place, I think it is pretty neat that a development fixed was released within 4 hours of the bug being discovered, and an official release within 36 hours. The last time we had a security issue, we released the fix in less than 24 hours, but it is harder on a Sunday.

Debian Installed Relatively Painlessly on my Sony Laptop

Fri, 28 Mar 2008 15:56:39 +0000

I am sure this will excite many of our normal readers, but I have finally (after four years) switched my laptop to Linux. Now that I am using it everyday, it is much nicer to be in this environment, instead of having putty windows all over the place. Perhaps if I had a better window manager for windows, I would have been alright, but anyway... I have a Sony PCG-V505DC2 for those search engines to help other folks trying to figure out any issues with installing Linux, and Debian specifically.

Note to Self

Fri, 21 Mar 2008 01:27:36 +0000

When a customer says that he has a smaller project than the one I just did, don't pay attention, and think about the quote, rather than simply estimating the time as less than the previous project. Yesterday, I did a project for a friend (one who let me have better access than average to the real estate listings) and it took an hour and a half and was 107 lines of code.

Parcel ID parser

Tue, 18 Mar 2008 02:13:00 +0000

I don't know if it is only relevant to Allegheny County or if it is more universal, but a friend asked me to write a parcel id (parcel/block/lot) parser to help him out in his real estate searches. It was kind of a fun project (3 hours) and it was neat to see how well it worked out in the end. It takes stuff on the right, and turns it into the stuff on the left: 0318-C-00080-0000-00 <= 318 C 080

Perl Debugging

Thu, 17 Jan 2008 20:16:45 +0000

Our photo album wouldn't publish on this last update, and it took quite a while to figure out what the problem was.[@more@]Originally, the error had to do with the library Encode not being compiled correctly, and I had to run enc2xs on the Encode module. I am not sure whose "fault" that was, cpan or Debian, though a recent Debian upgrade is what caused the problem to show up. After I fixed that error, another error showed up, "$text is undefined in XML::RSS::_encode().

VPNC / Resolvconf / Set search string

Tue, 15 Jan 2008 04:06:40 +0000

I found what I would call a bug in resolvconf today, though probably most people don't run a VPN server like I wanted to, so no one ever noticed before.[@more@] The internal DNS server at one of my clients somehow loses its connection to folks connected via the VPN. That is an unsolved problem, and I haven't been able to figure out why that happens. So, I now host the DNS outside of the building, even though they are local (192.

Fun with Spam

Thu, 13 Dec 2007 14:53:23 +0000

I have been getting a bunch of spam through my contact form over the last couple of days, so I thought I would check out what they are trying to do. The domain's contact information is protected by privacyprotect.org, so we can't know who they are, though I filled out a form showing them their customer is a spammer, we'll see if they actually do give me the contact information or not.

Using tcpd_wrappers with pure-ftpd

Wed, 19 Sep 2007 20:04:10 +0000

pure-ftpd isn't designed to work with TCP wrappers, which is unfortunate, because then I can't simply add an ip address to /etc/hosts.deny to block the hackers when they guess passwords. But, since the hackers have tried to login to my servers thirty thousand times this month, and occasionally get good usernames, and theoretically might guess a right password eventually, I needed to figure out a solution.[@more@]The solution is to use the external authentication method before checking the "real" authentication methods, and simply check the IP address.

"You must dial a 1 for this call to go through"

Tue, 21 Aug 2007 21:25:09 +0000

I have been having lots of fun (that's the bad kind of fun, not the good kind) configuring Asterisk for my new IT job. It has been a pretty big pain getting it to work correctly with a couple different VOIP providers as well as the landlines. I had a good day today, figuring both how to get Teliax to forward the calls to our landline (since I can't seem to register the connection with Teliax, via SIP or IAX), as well as I figured out the problem with outbound calls using the verizon line.

Banned Comments?

Mon, 09 Jul 2007 20:54:11 +0000

For those of you who have gotten an "You entered an invalid URL" message when leaving a comment, no I didn't set out to ban you from commenting - it is that you didn't put an "http://" in front of your URL. Due to some security bugs, the input checking code was tightened up a couple months ago, and part of that changed how the URLs were parsed. After months of procrastinating, I finally got around to working on the problem - and it took all of five minutes to add a new type of filter that checks the URL prior to validation and prepends an "http://" to the beginning if you forget.

LifeType update to 1.1.6

Wed, 14 Feb 2007 03:19:27 +0000

One of the LifeType users reported a security problem in the RSS parser that allowed any file on your system to be read. ick. Oscar has fixed it and 1.1.6 will be released tomorrow. Everyone on my server has been upgraded already and it probably isn't too critical for them, at least in the case of retrieving their mysql password, which was the reported problem, since mysql doesn't allow remote access, so it would have to be a customer of mine.

Subversion Code: Using Vendor Branches to Keep Local Changes Synchronized

Sun, 03 Dec 2006 02:58:40 +0000

I usually end up forgetting how to do this, so here are my instructions of how to keep Usermin, an administration tool I use for my Lime Daley customers, up-to-date with the developers' changes.[@more@]wget usermin-1.240.tgz tar -xzf usermin-1.240.tgz # get the vendor's last version svn checkout /svn/vendor/usermin/current # remove all the files cd current find -type f ! -wholename *\/.svn\/* -exec rm \{} \; cp -r ../usermin-1.240/ . # usermin by default uses perl in the /usr/local/bin directory

SNMPD upgrade error

Wed, 29 Mar 2006 15:11:33 +0000

Since it took me a while to figure out the answer, I will post this here to try to help the next guy who has trouble when upgrade snmpd to 5.2.2. The rest of you won't care about this post.[@more@]could not open /proc/net/if_inet6 cache has existing timer id. Error opening specified endpoint "localhost:161" The first two are warnings (as far as I know) and can be ignored. The last is the important part, and because the latest version (at least on Debian) defaults to checking on localhost, you no longer need to explicitly specify localhost in the snmpd.

Using Alternative Shells in Windows

Fri, 17 Feb 2006 21:07:31 +0000

For my company's next product, we are thinking about replacing the normal explorer shell with our own, but we want to be able to access the explorer.exe for debugging, etc. It turns out that when you start explorer, it checks to see if it is listed as a shell, and if it is, and this is the first instantiation of the explorer process, it loads up the desktop/start menu/etc. If the answer is no to either of those cases, it just loads the "regular" file manager view.

Merant OpenMake

Wed, 16 Nov 2005 15:33:04 +0000

Since we paid for the professional license, we get OpenMake for "free", so I figured I would try it out. The conclusion is that it isn't worth anything.[@more@]The longer version is that it, like all Merant products, is quite hard to actually get up and running. When the manual says, "you aren't required to enter the host name for the license manager during install", what they meant was, "we forgot to put the dialog in, so you will have to go hunt for license.

GnuCash / Debian update

Mon, 14 Nov 2005 21:15:56 +0000

I guess I am asking for it, running the gnucash source (1.8.9), but running everything else from Debian testing. I upgraded like usual, somewhere around every week, and didn't think anything of it, because aptitude/Debian always takes care of everything for me. But yesterday, Heather discovered that gnucash wouldn't run any more. oops.[@more@]She got this error: ERROR: In procedure dynamic-link: ERROR: file: "libgw-gnc", message: "libgtkhtml.so.20: cannot open shared object file: No such file or directory"

SMTP Authentication

Tue, 08 Nov 2005 23:59:22 +0000

Like so many other articles on this subject, I will start by saying that I looked at various documents, but none of them worked perfectly for me, so I will write up my own steps. Most of the regular readers of this blog will not care at all about SMTP authentication, TLS, SSL, port 25, 465, 587, postfix (the oldstable postfix-tls) or Debian, though search engines should nicely find those keywords for those people who do care about them.

Readable Code

Wed, 03 Aug 2005 13:37:22 +0000

I think this is the worst code I have ever seen, except where people were trying to make code hard to read. This code is in a video driver, written by Silicon Motion.[@more@]This is the function at the top level, supposedly easy to read, since it is using these lovely macros. POKE_32(DE_WINDOW_SOURCE_BASE, FIELD_VALUE(0, DE_WINDOW_SOURCE_BASE, EXT, m_SMISettings.m_bUMA) | FIELD_VALUE(0, DE_WINDOW_SOURCE_BASE, ADDRESS, VgxSurfAddr(((SMISurf*) (pBltParms->pSrc))->OffsetInVideoMemory())) | 0); Now, to investigate what this does, here are the subsequent macros.

Email Random Signature Generation

Wed, 25 May 2005 12:34:18 +0000

I wrote a random signature generator for Pine, my email client. It worked great for a number of years, but with a recent upgrade of Pine, it started having trouble a couple of times a day, where the signature would be correctly rotated, but Pine would hang prior to sending the message, and would not save the content of the message either.[@more@]I had to kill the process and retype the message.

PHP Zip Uploader Script

Tue, 18 Jan 2005 03:52:42 +0000

I wrote this script a while back to upload (via HTTP) a zip file full of .pbm files, convert all the pictures to bitmaps, put the bitmaps in a zip file, and then send it back to the user.[@more@]I don't know how secure it is, so I wouldn't leave it around published somewhere on a server, but functionally, it works pretty well.

Mail Statistics

Sat, 15 Jan 2005 03:40:14 +0000

I finally got around to fixing up the mail statistics graph, after I accidentally erased all of our personal email for the past year.

Plog Template Update

Mon, 13 Dec 2004 17:36:46 +0000

It had always annoyed me that you couldn't use smarty commands in the stylesheet files in plog. It turns out it wasn't that hard to figure out, and the original authors had it basically done, but if you believe the comments, didn't think it worked yet.[@more@] It is helpful to change /class/template/templateutils.class.php, specifically the "setContentType" function to read: header("Content-Type: " . $mimeType); Then, make a file in your template directory called style.

Version Manager Setup

Wed, 01 Dec 2004 18:14:24 +0000

Whether you know the program as Merant, Serena or PVCS, the setup is difficult, and despite the sales department insistence that you don't need a full-time person to run their servers, I am starting to doubt it. Here are the instructions to setup a new project using the file server model with split archives.[@more@] I am using Version 8.0.2.3, so be aware what stuff applies to you, and what does not.

Test Director Problems

Wed, 17 Nov 2004 14:45:02 +0000

For those of you who have successfully installed Mercury's Test Director, and have it die suddenly, you need to check the IIS/NTFS permissions. (Note, for those of you asking questions, you should read all four pages of comments - there are various questions and answers given throughout the comments, and you will be able to get your answer quicker than waiting for someone to see your question) [@more@] Test Director uses the IIS IUSR_SERVERNAME user by default, and if you haven't set your permissions correctly on your directories, this user will not have access to the files.

Spam: In Perspective

Fri, 05 Nov 2004 04:19:02 +0000

A friend of ours was complaining about spam, and Heather agreed, and said she had been getting tons of spam lately. I questioned her on that, since I am in charge of the filters that filter our spam, and I think they do a pretty good job: maybe 15-20 spams got through in the last two years. She said, well, I got one yesterday, and one today.

Version Control Comparison

Fri, 15 Oct 2004 18:42:29 +0000

I have been evaluating different version control programs for my company for the last month or two. My current evaluation is that all of them are broken, although I hope to discover a good solution someday soon.[@more@] Serena's Version Manager (PVCS) I have spent a lot of time with Version Manager, and it has a number of deficiencies. Unfortunately, this is the product my company uses. They originally switched to VM because has client apps on mac, unix and windows.

Windows Shell Auto-Completion

Wed, 06 Oct 2004 11:49:51 +0000

On all the windows machine I use, I have auto-completion turned on for the dos prompt. Apparently, I must have gotten that behavior from TweakUI, and since I always install it on a new machine, I thought it was on by default, but apparently not.[@more@]If you don't have TweakUI, you can edit the registry key: HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE/Software/Microsoft/Command Processor/CompletionChar and HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE/Software/Microsoft/Command Processor/PathCompletionChar I use a tab key to auto-complete, so I use the value 9, but I think you can use whatever you would like.

RawWrite

Tue, 21 Sep 2004 12:26:55 +0000

I needed to create a floppy disk today, and needed to find RawWrite again, since my Cygwin dd seems to not be making it correctly. I found a nifty GUI version of RawWrite that is nicer than the old command line version. Sure, the command line works fine, and I am all for command-line things, and no mouse usage, but sometimes it is nice to not have to remember the command-line options.

Perl Initialization

Tue, 31 Aug 2004 19:07:35 +0000

When I was installing RT (Request Tracker) I got an error, since I hadn't ever set up CPAN before. After searching for a bit, here is the solution. I figured I would post this here to help others in the future find it in google quicker.[@more@]Error: Number found where operator expected at /usr/lib/perl5/5.8.0/CPAN/FirstTime.pm line 485, near "<= 60 && -s _ > 0". (Missing operator before 0?) Solution: Run "

More Color Stuff

Mon, 23 Aug 2004 12:33:47 +0000

I added a small color changing picker (bottom right of this page), if you don't like my purply colors. Of course, you can only pick the colorsets that I let you, and right now there isn't much interesting, but I will get around to making some more at some point.[@more@]We probably need a crazy color one that would make your eyes hurt, and then maybe one that is calmer.

Adobe Acrobat Slow Loading

Fri, 20 Aug 2004 02:22:43 +0000

Ever notice how it now takes a year for Acrobat Reader to load up? You can speed it up about 20x or so, by moving the plugins you don't use out of the "startup" folder. If you put the files into the "optional" folder, I believe it will still be able to find them when you want to use them, and it will load them then. A reasonable default is to leave ewh32.

Cygwin

Wed, 18 Aug 2004 19:25:49 +0000

Since I just wasted a bit of time trying to figure out how I had configured Cygwin the first time, so as to help someone else set up their account, I figure I will post the instructions here:[@more@]cygwin.bat: @echo off e: chdir e:/progra~1/cygwin/bin set path=%path;e:/progra~1/cygwin/usr/bin tcsh -l /etc/passwd: daleyj:unused:1000:513:Jon Daley,U-DALEYJ/daleyj,S-1-5-21-...:/home/daleyj:/bin/tcsh /etc/csh.login: comment out "set path" set term=cygwin, instead of set TERM=linux ~/.login: #source /etc/csh.login // I guess that means the above change to csh.

RandomSig

Sun, 01 Jun 2003 16:00:06 +0000

Scott Hansma originally wrote a plugin for Eudora in 1997. When he graduated, he asked if I wanted to take over control of the source, as he wasn't interested in working on it any more.[@more@] I said that I was, and I added a couple features, but never got them up to release quality. Now, in 2003, I have started development again, as I still have not found a good plugin for making random signatures, and this one needs some work.