Author: Dave Shevett

This is primarily so I can remember how to do this. I have yawl set up as a postfix host here at Chez Geek, but my smart mailhost is actually off in colocation land.

So with my problems with Thunderbird still unresolved, it was time to try setting yawl up as a smarter mail client.

First things first, make sure postfix is installed. With Ubuntu, it comes installed by default, but not enabled.

Second, set up an /etc/postfix/main.cf file, and put in there:

relayhost = my.smarthost.name.com

myorigin = name.com

Obviously substitute in whatever domain you're using normally for 'name.com'.

Restart (or start) postfix:

/etc/init.d/postfix start

Make sure there's no problems:

tail /var/log/mail.log

And off you go!

Update : several hours later... this has NOT resolved the slow performance problem with Thunderbird, and its' maddening. T-bird on my windows box runs perfectly fast over an ssh tunnel to the same host (cept using securecrt there). Very frustrating

Before I scooted off on my last business trip, I got the little blinky notification on yawl that a full upgrade was available from Edgy Eft, the Linux distribution I was using, to the latest release, called by version number ‘7.04, but referred to as “Feisty Fawn“. I thought it would be a bad idea to do an entire OS upgrade just before I left on my trip, so I deferred the process until I had some more time this week.
On Thursday I decided it was time to hit the button, and off I went.

Continue reading “Ubuntu Feisty Fawn Upgrade from Edgy Eft” →

A little further down the path spearheaded by my USB bus runneth over post, I’ve hit a snag that, while minor, is starting to infuriate me in that “little pointy bit in your clothing that keeps jabbing you” way.
When clipper is docked, the docking station links it up with the vast array of USB devices I have scattered about my desk. Windows usually happily gives me the ‘baDOINK!’ sound of “I just reconnected to something” and occasionally I’ll get the little popup window saying something has happened (like a network device came online).
Recently though, while the laptop is sitting idle, I’ll get the USB ‘baDINK…. baDOINK’ sound from Windows. This is the sound made when something disconnects and reconnects, usually via USB. Cept I haven’t touched anything.
Okay, fine, some USB device is in ‘marginal’ mode, or may not be powered properly, or I have a twitchy port. All I need to do is find out which device is it. So I went looking for how to do that.
And looked.
And looked some more.
There doesn’t seem to BE a way to find out what devices are connecting and disconnecting.
Sure, I can find out what Windows thinks is connected (My Computer->Properties->Hardware->Device Manager->USB), but that is a static reference. If the device disconnects while I happen to be looking at that screen, I’m not even sure if it’ll update dynamically. But remember, these disconnects are happening randomly. I’m not going to spend my day staring at a device screen. I have a life to live.
Okay, fine. Must be in the Event manager. A device being connected to the system or disconnected must log the event somewhere, right? Okay, off I go to the ever-so-easy-to-find Start->Settings->Control Panel->Administrative Tools->Event Viewer, where I see ‘Application’ ‘Security’ ‘System’ and ‘Internet Explorer’ (IE is apparently so important it ranks it’s own logging category. Go figure)
It was a good theory. These baDOINK / baDINK system events apparently happen without leaving any form of audit trail as to what’s happening. The Event Log shows things where I undocked and redocked the laptop, but there is no mention of any event around the time I -know- this sound was happening (Just after I went to bed last night, about 12:30am. It was easy to remember because it annoyed me, and I had to get up and turn the sound off on the laptop). Event log? “Nope, everything is COPACETIC man! Nothing wrong here!”
Grr.
As a last slap in the face of Windows, how would I diagnose this problem in Linux?
$ tail /var/log/messages
No doubt Microsoft will come out, sometime in the future, with a USB Logging and Analysis tool for debugging missing USB events – furthering their pattern of system ‘improvement’ via the whack-a-mole technique.

As if the week couldn’t get even more enjoyable.
I’ve been frustrated trying to find free wireless hotspots during my travels. Frequently I find myself parked outside my son’s school waiting for him to finish up something, and would like to get online and do, you know, those things I do online. Mail… and stuff.
Glancing at my Treo the other day, I did the “Hey, wait a sec. I have broadband access on that. I should just be able to use it as my modem and connect up. Piece o cake!” realization.
Hah. Fool that I was.
Apparently the Treo 650 does not function as a broadband modem in ‘tethered mode’ (ala, via a USB cable). The Treo 700w and 700p do, but, ya know, I don’t have either of those. I could probably have used the Bluetooth DUN (Dial Up Networking) function in the phone, which was put there explicitly for this sort of operation, but Verizon, in it’s infinite… well, Verizon made a decision to deliberately disable that function (no one really knows why they’ve done this. One would assume it would drive -up- usage of the phone and broadband services, which would benefit… Verizon. )
I could also get one of Verizon’s PCMCIA broadband access cards, but that would require me to renew my contract for two years, fork over the $50 for the card (though this card is now outdated, I should get a newer one for $100), AND up my data plan to the ‘unlimited’ plan, which would increase my bill by $50 a month.
At the end of which, I’d still be stuck with a phone that is rapidly aging, and will most likely need to be replaced in the next 12 months.
Interestingly enough, Verizon is continuing this policy even with the 700-series, by disabling the DUN functions, so you’ll buy another 3g subscription. Can you feel the love?
I have little reason to think I’ll stick with Verizon for my phone and mobile data usage come mid-June.

This Sunday Zach comes into my room asking about how he can further his plans to build his own space ship. He was looking for motors and wings and combustibles. Boy is ready to go. After some discussion, he asked “Dad, I understand electricity, and how power gets to motors and batteries and lights, but how does the electricity make the motor turn?”
I hearkened back to my physics class days and remembered building my own motors out of nails, dowels, and simple power sources. A little digging on the net brought us to this series of pages, where you could assemble a small motor in about an hour using some wire, paperclips, a magnet, and a battery.
Zach was all over it, and about an hour later, we happily had a spinning rotor running on my desk. He understood how brushes are used to reverse the polarity of the rotor as it passes the magnet, and we had an example of a wire coil acting as an electromagnet. We also had a direct example of what happens when a motor gets power applied to it but is not actually turning, in the form of nice curling smoke. That was a nice object lesson, for sure.
All in all, a really interesting exercise, and I still like seeing the little spinning wire object whirring away. “I made that. Cool.”