Norbert Tretkowski - Miscellaneous

Trackback spam

norbert@tretkowski.de (Norbert Tretkowski) — Wed, 11 Jul 2007 08:31:38 +0200

I just disabled trackbacks for articles older than one month in this blog (they just get rejected instead moderated), after I received 41 trackback spams last night. Maybe there are better ways to handle trackback spam in Serendipity, but I don't think trackbacks for older articles are so important that it's worth to spend my time on it.

Migrated to ejabberd

norbert@tretkowski.de (Norbert Tretkowski) — Wed, 20 Jun 2007 21:38:00 +0200

Last week the Berkeley DB used by the Jabber server of our local linux user group crashed again. It was the second database crash in six months. But this time even db_recover was unable to repair the database, so I did what I had on my TODO list since the first crash: Migrate to ejabberd, which I was already using on two other Jabber servers.

Meanwhile the service and all transports are back up again. There's only one visible change compared with the old setup, for security reasons connecting through port 5222 now requires starttls.

XMPP/Jabber with Ruby

norbert@tretkowski.de (Norbert Tretkowski) — Fri, 25 May 2007 10:28:00 +0200

I was looking for a XMPP/Jabber implementation for Python since a while, but wasn't happy with the available libraries. Yesterday in the evening I stumbled across xmpp4r, a XMPP/Jabber librabry for Ruby, which looked like it has everything I need. And indeed, after a few hours playing around with xmpp4r, I decided to use Ruby for this special project.

ICQ policy

norbert@tretkowski.de (Norbert Tretkowski) — Tue, 20 Feb 2007 23:51:00 +0100

While talking about the ICQ transport on jabber.lusc.de... if you're still using ICQ, please take a look at their Acceptable Use Policy, it contains an important clause:

You agree that by posting any material or information anywhere on the ICQ Services and Information you surrender your copyright and any other proprietary right in the posted material or information. You further agree that ICQ Inc. is entitled to use at its own discretion any of the posted material or information in any manner it deems fit, including, but not limited to, publishing the material or distributing it.

I don't think it's necessary to comment this.

New features on our Jabber server

norbert@tretkowski.de (Norbert Tretkowski) — Tue, 20 Feb 2007 23:46:00 +0100

During the last two weeks I spent some time to add a few new features to jabber.lusc.de, the Jabber server of our local Linux User Group. The new features are ICQ, AIM, MSN and IRC transports and a file transfer proxy. Just use the discover service function of your Jabber client to use them.

Still on my TODO list are pubsub, pyrss, a user directory and multi user chats.

Broken newsreaders

norbert@tretkowski.de (Norbert Tretkowski) — Thu, 18 Jan 2007 00:38:00 +0100

If you upgraded to slrn 0.9.8.1pl1-22 or newer and now realize that you see question marks instead diacritical chars (e.g. german umlauts) in the subject and/or in the authors name when looking at the article overview, please read #406210 before filing yet another bugreport. This is not a bug in slrn, but a bug in the newsreader which was used to write the corresponding article.

Update: 0.9.8.1pl1-25 contains a workaround for this problem, see NEWS.Debian.gz for details.

SLES10 as a mailserver

norbert@tretkowski.de (Norbert Tretkowski) — Thu, 28 Dec 2006 16:51:00 +0100

Using SLES10 as a mailserver is a bad idea, especially when you want to use virtual users and domains with postfix, courier and mysql. Why? SLES10 ships neither a courier-authlib-mysql package, nor a postfix-mysql package, nor a maildrop package. I really wonder what the 'E' in SLES stands for...

IPv6 enabled

norbert@tretkowski.de (Norbert Tretkowski) — Tue, 14 Nov 2006 18:08:00 +0100

Thanks to my new employer (for those who didn't notice, I left Teamix and work for IP Exchange since September), this server has a native IPv6 connection since I moved it to it's new colocation about two weeks ago.

Configuration files in /usr/lib/

norbert@tretkowski.de (Norbert Tretkowski) — Mon, 16 Oct 2006 12:36:00 +0200

Why does SuSE still ship configuration files in /usr/lib? Here is the answer.

Dying hardware

norbert@tretkowski.de (Norbert Tretkowski) — Sat, 14 Oct 2006 12:55:00 +0200

Yesterday evening, shortly after I fired up a build of gcc-4.1 on one of my alphas to test a patch from Falk Hueffner, the filesystem was mounted read-only and the kernel barfed:



scsi(0): Resetting Cmnd=0xfffffc000b449b80, Handle=0x0000000000000202, action=0x2

scsi(0:0:0:0): Queueing device reset command.

Looks like either the harddisk or the SCSI controller is dying... :-/

Package management next generation, second part

norbert@tretkowski.de (Norbert Tretkowski) — Wed, 04 Oct 2006 11:27:00 +0200



ipx12345:~ # time rug install mutt

Waking up ZMD...

ERROR: 'mutt' is not available, or is fully up-to-date.



real    9m35.167s

user    0m10.013s

sys     0m0.540s

Package management next generation

norbert@tretkowski.de (Norbert Tretkowski) — Fri, 08 Sep 2006 13:42:00 +0200



ipx12345:~ # time rug install screen

Resolving Dependencies...



The following packages will be installed:

  screen 4.0.2-60 (http://mirror/ftp.opensuse.org/distribution/SL-10.1/inst-source/suse/)



Transaction...

                                                                                             100%

Transaction Finished



real    3m32.491s

user    0m5.116s

sys     0m0.144s

Activity in the slrn cvs repository

norbert@tretkowski.de (Norbert Tretkowski) — Tue, 15 Aug 2006 18:52:00 +0200

Last week Thomas Schultz added a patch from Felix Schueller which adds iconv support for incoming and outgoing postings to the slrn cvs repository. I already prepared an updated package for experimental and uploaded it. Use it with care, there are known bugs.

Ghost^WIRC in the shell

norbert@tretkowski.de (Norbert Tretkowski) — Tue, 20 Jun 2006 09:01:00 +0200

And I thought, using an editor as IRC client is strange... but this is even more strange.

Why you really should use ssh-agent with darcs

norbert@tretkowski.de (Norbert Tretkowski) — Fri, 27 Jan 2006 15:06:00 +0100



tretkowski@kyllikki:~/repos/pkg-ion3% darcs pull

Password:

Password:

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Password:

Pulling from "rollcage.inittab.de:repos/pkg-ion3"...

Password:

Password:

Password:

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Password:

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Fri Jan 27 13:50:07 CET 2006  Norbert Tretkowski <norbert@tretkowski.de>

  * Copy ion3-dev lintian override file.

Shall I pull this patch? (1/1) [ynWvpxqadjk], or ? for help: y

Finished pulling and applying.