Steve’s Tech Log

I’m testing a trial of Antigen 9.1.1097 SP1 paired with Microsoft Exchange 2003. I really wish someone had written a review of this software. Granted we are using an evaluation copy, I wouldn’t have wasted my time on this lousy piece of junk.

I have read the best practices documentation and done the following:

1. Set the SpamCure Engine to update every 15 minutes (although this seems a little ridiculous to me)
2. Configured 3 RBLS: sbl-xbl.spamhaus.org, dnsbl.njabl.org, and bl.spamcop.net
3. Aggressively configured (SCL 7 - block, SCL 3 - move to Junk folder) and enabled IMF in Exchange
4. Updated IMF through Windows Update
5. Setup some Keyword filters
6. Forwarded some false negatives to Spam.mail-filters@antigen.microsoft.com

Microsoft recommends that you install Antigen on every Exchange server you have in your organization. But it’s a resource hog, requiring 1GB of RAM. I don’t know about you, but my Exchange servers don’t have an extra gig to spare. Because of this, it does not scale well to a large number of users.

The interface is poorly organized and SLOW. It has locked up on me several times.

Antigen does not have a spam score setting. Messages are tagged as either spam or ham, without a grey area. SpamAssassin can be comfigured to rewrite the header of the email to include the tests failed. If you find spam still going to your mailboxes there are no tweaks you can make on the back end.

Here I come SpamAssassin.…

If you are looking for a Mac OS X driver for a Logitech QuickCam Chat, use macam.

http://webcam-osx.sourceforge.net/

I recently discovered SynergyKM which is a Mac OS X (works on Leopard) frontend for Synergy. All SynergyKM does is write out the config file for Synergy and manipulate the daemon. I noticed that SynergyKM is bundled with Synergy 1.3.0. There was a specific OS X bug in 1.3.0 that was fixed in 1.3.1. Here is how to upgrade the SynergyKM to version 1.3.1.
Read the rest of this entry »

Linksys WRT54G (and variants WRT54GS, WRT54GL, and WRTSL54GS) is a popular Wi-Fi capable residential gateway from Linksys. The device is capable of sharing Internet connections amongst several computers via 802.3 Ethernet and 802.11b/g wireless data links. I created a small application to emulate the Linksys web interface (aka http://192.168.1.1). I’m sure that tons of things don’t work, but it still gives you a feel for the Linksys interface. The user name and password are the same as the Linksys defaults:

Username: admin
Password : admin

http://stevehorbachuk.com/linksys

My previous article mentioned slow loading roaming profiles due to the virus scanner. Another obvious reason for slow loading profiles is size. Aside from the obvious large “Desktop” and “My Documents” folders, there are some other things you can do.

I found the following directories to be using a lot of disk space. Each can be safely cleared.

C:Documents and Settings%USERNAME%Application DataSunJavajdk1.6.0_03
C:Documents and Settings%USERNAME%Application DataAdobeLogs
C:Documents and Settings%USERNAME%Application DataAdobePatcherLogs
C:Documents and Settings%USERNAME%Application DataOperaOperaprofilecache4
C:Documents and Settings%USERNAME%Recent

For a while I’ve been dealing with the issue of slow logins on our 2003 domain. The problem seemed to be with roaming profiles. When the user logs in, the profile is copied from the server to the client. Windows profiles can become large, and can contain a lot of files. I tried to to minimize the size of the profile, but logins were still slow. I took a look at the RAM utilization and I figured out that as the profile was being copied from the server to the client, it was being virus scanned. Scanning through all these files is what was slowing the logins.

If you are suffering from slow domain logging with roaming profiles, check your virus scanner settings.

I recently setup MySQL 5 replication between two RHEL servers. I made a small writeup on what I had to do to get things working. In my configuration I am loading the initial database from the master, as opposed to manually copying it (via SCP). I’m assuming you have two working MySQL servers. Both with the mysql root password set, and “skip-networking” etc. commented in the configuration. I also assume open communication (iptables or otherwise) between servers. Remember you can test communication like this: telnet your-server 3306

Note: The slave server has to be equal or greater than the master version.

Do the following on the Master:

1) Insert this into your /etc/my.cnf (this is the most common location for this file, yours may be elsewhere):

[mysqld]
log-bin=mysql-bin
server-id=1

2) Open a mysql connection:

mysql -u root -p
mysql> GRANT ALL ON replicationdb.* TO slave_user@'%' IDENTIFIED BY 'slave_password';
mysql> FLUSH PRIVILEGES;
mysql> GRANT REPLICATION SLAVE, REPLICATION CLIENT ON *.* TO slave_user@'%' IDENTIFIED BY 'slave_password';
mysql> GRANT RELOAD ON *.* TO slave_user@'%' IDENTIFIED BY 'slave_password';
mysql> QUIT;

3) Replace “replicationdb” with the database you want to replicate. Use * for all. Replace “slave_password” with a password.

4) Assuming your init scripts are setup correctly, restart the MySQL service:
/etc/init.d/mysql restart
If you don’t have an init script in place, use this:
mysqladmin shutdown; ./bin/safe_mysqld&

Do the following on the Slave:

1) Insert this into your /etc/my.cnf (this is the most common location for this file, yours may be elsewhere):

[mysqld]
log-bin=slave-relay-bin
# Each server must have a unique ID.
server-id=2
# The hostname or IP of your master.
master-host=192.168.5.200
# This user should have the necessary privileges on the database(s).
master-user=slave_user
# The password generated for the slave user.
master-password=slave_password
# The database to be replicated. 
# By default all databases will be replicated. 
# Omit this to replicate everything, including the "mysql" database (users and privileges). 
# Use multiple lines for multiple databases.
replicate-do-db=replicationdb

2) Assuming your init scripts are setup correctly, restart the MySQL service:
/etc/init.d/mysql restart
If you don’t have an init script in place, use this:
mysqladmin shutdown; ./bin/safe_mysqld&

3) Open a mysql connection:

mysql -u root -p
mysql> LOAD DATA FROM MASTER;
mysql> QUIT;

4) To check status of the master:
mysql> SHOW MASTER STATUS;

5) To check status of the slave:
mysql> SHOW SLAVE STATUS;

A little while ago I found an image of a car (specifically a GTO) on the back of an old Maxtor hard drive PCB. I just recently had a chance to take some high res pictures.

Click the above image to see a high resolution image of the full drive.

I recently got a new 24 inch iMac and needed a way to share my keyboard and mouse between Mac OS X 10.5 (Leopard) and Windows XP. Synergy does exactly that. Setting up a Synergy server under XP was simple, but the Mac client was a little more tricky.

Apparently there is a bug in Synergy 1.3.1 with OS X 10.5. When you try to start Synergy (client or server) as a daemon under OS X 10.5 it crashes. Below is a workaround which starts the Synergy client at boot in the foreground (-f) through launchd. Put this file in /Library/LaunchAgents/net.sourceforge.synergy2.plist (needs root privileges):

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<!DOCTYPE plist PUBLIC "-//Apple Computer//DTD PLIST 1.0//EN" "http://www.apple.com/DTDs/PropertyList-1.0.dtd">
<plist version="1.0">
<dict>
    <key>Label</key>
    <string>net.sourceforge.synergy2</string>
    <key>OnDemand</key>
    <false/>
    <key>ProgramArguments</key>
    <array>
        <string>/usr/local/bin/synergyc</string>
        <string>-f</string>
        <string>-1</string>
        <string>--name</string>
        <string>imaczomg</string>
        <string>--debug</string>
        <string>WARNING</string>
        <string>deathstar</string>
    </array>
    <key>RunAtLoad</key>
    <true/>
</dict>
</plist>

Here is what the argument string will look like:
/usr/local/bin/synergyc -f -1 –name imaczomg –debug WARNING deathstar

/usr/local/bin/synergyc - the path to your synergy client binary
-f - run in the foregorund
-1 - do not restart on error (launchd will do this for us)
imaczomg - the name (or IP) of your mac client
–debug WARNING - won’t log every time the mouse moves off the screen
deathstar - the name (or IP) of your server

If you are running a Synergy server on OS X 10.5 please look here.

I came across this blog:
http://meta.ath0.com/2003/11/04/my-top-ten-reasons-why-redhat-sucks/

While the author of this blog has some very valid points, some or outdated or unproven.

RPM. If you think RPM is a reasonable piece of software design, I can only assume you’ve never used Portage, APT or BSD ports. I still have to keep a “cheat sheet” of the bizarre invocations necessary to make RPM perform basic tasks. Then there’s the fact that you can’t just install an RPM; no, you need to find the right RPM for your specific version of RedHat, assuming one exists. And if that’s a pain for you, imagine what a pain it is for developers.

The author is right. RPMs are simply horrible to work with. There are some real show stopper bugs that RPM developers simply refuse to fix. Additionally, the Red Hat repositiories are far smaller than most free distros.

Shoddy workmanship. RPM was discovered to be broken in 2002; it would regularly corrupt its own databases and lock up in such a way that it couldn’t be killed. In spite of that, RedHat went and made two major releases with a broken RPM.

Here is another example of a MAJOR bug. The comments on the bug report are a real joy to read. As a result of the bug report, a developer was fired.