July 7, 2008
We decided to setup a mail server based entirely around the courier suite of mail applications on debian. This should end the incessant problems we are having with our poorly designed Qmail based mail server, hopefully.
Step 1 was to get user authentication working (via LDAP) against our local Domain Controller/Active Directory box - so far, so good (I’ll be sure to describe that struggle in another post).
Step 2 was getting the Aliases setup, which was a bit more involved.
We installed a local copy of openldap and courier’s ldap plugins using apt-get:
sudo apt-get install slapd courier-ldap
Next, to delete all the example data that came with openldap (NOTE: This will remote the contents of your ldap data folder! If you have anything important in there, back it up first!)
cd /var/lib/ldap/ && sudo rm -rf *.* alock
We’ll go ahead and import the base ldap structure. Referencing some old ldap data, we came up with this dump for the domain ‘example.local’, and stored it in /root/base.ldif :
dn: dc=example,dc=local
objectClass: top
objectClass: dcObject
objectClass: organization
o: example
dc: example
structuralObjectClass: organization
dn: ou=aliases,dc=example,dc=local
objectClass: top
objectClass: organizationalUnit
ou: aliases
structuralObjectClass: organizationalUnit
Great! Let’s load it in the into ldap!
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May 20, 2008
From time to time I must admit that, as hip as I think I am, I retreat into my corner of the net, refusing to acknowledge any new trends or technologies out there. It’s even more shameful that I consider myself a web entrepreneur, hell bent on bringing the world the next awesome web service.
Apparently I’ve been ignoring Facebook, and FOR SHAME! It’s great!
Why?
- No songs playing
- No seizure inducing backgrounds
- No autoplay videos
- Intelligent contextual prompts
- Consistent, fast loading css layout
- Small font
- Advertising is minimally invasive
That’s enough to get my vote.
Posted in Rants No Comments »
May 17, 2008
Facebook, Blogger, MySpace, TypePad - how many times have we heard the importance of leveraging the viral potential of Apps and Widgets to attract an audience? Many, many times, to be sure.
There is good reason though. Widgets and mini-apps allow companies to distribute portable, stylish technology packages to whomever wants to use them, getting their name out there, increasing their website traffic statistics, and earning the trust of users from demographics and niches they probably wouldn’t reach on their own.
I’m looking into developing a few small widgets, just to get my feet wet, and discovered Widgetbox . This site is the first step for anyone interested in seeing the potential of widgets, for creative inspiration, or to download and add high quality widgets to their own blogs and social networking profiles
http://www.widgetbox.com/
Posted in Programming, Tools 1 Comment »
May 16, 2008
This morning Google’s Official Blog announced it would be expanding its incredible Google Translate services, adding 10 more languages.
Now, users can view and cross-translate pages in Bulgarian, Croatian, Czech, Danish, Finnish, Hindi, Norwegian, Polish, Romanian and Swedish.
Recently I had a great experience with Google Translate - while working onsite at a client’s office, it came to my attention that one of the phones wasn’t configured properly. As usual, no one had any idea who to contact for the setup details or maintenance password… After about 5 minutes of google searching I found an obscure page, in Chinese, with the factory default password and troubleshooting steps (albeit occasionally hilarious ones).
Read more at the Google Official Blog article on this topic.
Posted in Tools 4 Comments »
May 11, 2008
As reported by TechCrunch here, a San Francisco based startup named PowerSet is all set to launch pretty soon, albeit with limited abilities. This company’s product focuses on natural language searching, allowing users to search for information the same way they would in English
Most of us have heard of how this sort of thing will one day change the way we look for information, but thus far no company has really shown us a product that lived up to the hype. The good news is that the wait shouldn’t be much longer, as the market is ripe for a well implemented search technology to raise the bar for the rest of the industry.
You can sign up to become an Alpha tester on PowerSet’s main site, or visit their blog and leave a few comments. Good luck guys.
Posted in Companies No Comments »
May 9, 2008
When I think of an enjoyable, relaxing Friday night, I do not envision running around my company’s data center, tracing cables, logging into switches and routers via console trying to track down a network loop.
So, it’s 10pm now, and the problem has been resolved. Only 3 hours, too!
Network loops are particularly annoying with less-than-ideal network configurations, or networks that are using overloaded and/or aging products. We use a couple of Foundry BigIrons as our core switches, and no matter how many Foundry technicians we throw at them, they always seem to have spanning tree problems.
I’m sure many of you would have words of wisdom for me, but let’s just say that I’ll be a happier person when we move on to a more stable, modern, and solid network configuration. (Note: I’m not slighting Foundry, just our particular *use* of this Foundry equipment.
Posted in Programming, Rants No Comments »
May 9, 2008
Many people have blogged before, but each perspective is a new angle, a new reality, a new outlook on this world. I humbly submit some of my own thoughts, theories, rants, advice and observations loose in the ether, and look forward to seeing what it returns.
Posted in Rants No Comments »
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