Sct. George's Day.
Artificial Intelligence #olduse.net
Plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose: <1379@aecom.YU.EDU>, AI 1987.
I ♥ Free Software #free software
GNU Emacs,
Debian GNU/Linux,
Linux,
X.Org,
Postfix,
Perl,
Python,
PostgreSQL,
OpenSSH,
Firefox,
Apache,
ejabberd,
Dovecot,
git,
GnuPG,
XMonad,
GHC,
Gnus,
jabber.el,
rdiff-backup,
LaTeX,
Gimp,
lots of GNU -
the list goes on an on - thanks everybody!
Updating BIOS on a Lenovo Carbon X1 3rd gen #computers
It is - also - the season to upgrade your BIOS, it seems. Lenovo released an update for the Carbon X1 3rd, 1.21, just before new years. Here's a short note-to-self/reminder on how to update:
- Download the file n14ur20w.iso from Lenovo
- Convert it to something usable:
geteltorito -o boot.img n14ur20w.iso - Put it on a usb-stick:
dd if=boot.img bs=128k of=/dev/sdX(wheresdXis the device of your usb-stick, on my machine it wassdb) - Set the BIOS to boot in "UEFI/Legacy: Both"-mode
- Boot from the usb-stick
- Follow the instructions on screen
The "Both"-thing is the one I usually forget (I have it set to Legacy only, normally).
SPF, DKIM, DMARC #email
By following these two guides: "Getting DKIM, DMARC and SPF to work with Postfix, OpenDKIM and OpenDMARC" and "How to eliminate spam and protect your name with DMARC" - I have installed and configured opendkim and opendmarc on my server, configured them (and Postfix) and added the accompanying DNS records, so now emails from koldfront.dk and asjo.org get signed wit DKIM and I have set up DMARC records for the domains. (I had SPF-records set up a long ago already.)
Yay!
Next year I'll get around to DNSSEC, I'm sure.
Update: if you have people with email adresses on your domain who use Gmail, they need to configure Gmail to use your smtp-server, and in /etc/opendmarc.conf this option is needed: IgnoreAuthenticatedClients true. Seems to work.
Tumble drying Dovecot #debian #free software #ilovefs
Last summer I was tumble drying my pillows and duvet, to try and keep allergy-triggering bugs down.
I usually never use the dryer, because it makes my clothes smell weird. But for the pillows etc. it was needed.
Unfortunately the tumble dryer kept triggering the RCD, turning power off in my apartment. This would happens around 4½ to 5 minutes after turning the dryer on, and to dry everything took quite a while longer. So it happened a number of times.
This meant that my cupboard server lost power aruptly. It coped remarkably well with that, except for one thing: one of the Dovecot mailboxes got corrupted: "Inconsistency in map index".
A quick search revealed that the tool to fix that is doveadm force-resync - "Repair broken mailboxes".
So I ran that on all the mailboxes, and it failed on one of them. Bummer.
More searching and reading up on mailing lists, I found someone reporting the same problem, and a note saying it was fixed in Dovecot 2.2.32 in commit c8be394.
This was a very nice piece of information, as I could quickly check that the version of Dovecot on my server was 2.2.27, and thus the fix could very well fix my problem as well.
I did not feel like upgrading Dovecot to a newer version, as I run Debian and rely on the security updates from the project, so I took a look at the commit, to see if the change was small enough that I could apply it to the Debian package locally.
Fortunately it is a 3-line change, so I got the source of the Dovecot package (apt source dovecot), used quilt to add the patch, built the package with debuild and added it to my local package repository using reprepro.
After installing the patched package on the server I ran the force-resync command again, and lo-and-behold, the mailbox was fixed.
I 🖤 Free Software.
Open position in Novozymes #biotech #free software #programming
One of the sister-departments of the department I work in at Novozymes has an open position:
We work on and with Linux machines, use all the Free Software we can, and besides having quite a say on how to solve the problems, you also get to interact with a variety of smart colleagues from around the organisation - so you get to learn some microbiology as well.
If you're a curious developer who is good at programming and would like to work in Bagsværd - get in touch and send an application.
Update: time's up; deadline passed.
Testing strategies #email #programming
Here are two approaches to testing code that sends email, that I have stumbled over recently:
- Ethereal "is a fake SMTP service, mostly aimed at Nodemailer users (but not limited to). It's a completely free anti-transactional email service where messages never get delivered."
- Test mail server on Ubuntu and Debian.
The difference in approach is thought provoking.
Why would you spend the time to implement something that simulates a real mail server, when you can just install a real mail server, and use it to test against?
Why would you test against a simulation (which might have its own set of quirks and shortcomings), rather than the real thing?
Kind of mind boggling to me. But that's apparently what's en vogue.
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