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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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 »

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 »