Paul's Time Sink

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portsentry

Paul Westbrook | 30 January, 2006 22:43

Last night I found Portsentry that will notice port scans and will block future accesses from those hosts. I followed these instructions to install Portsentry 1.2, and it went very well. The only problems that I had was I had to remove an extra newline in portsentry.c when the compile failed, and the sample init script has an extra '<' character in it.

After I installed it, I wanted to test this out to make sure that it was working, so from my home machine, I ran nmap against it. This recognized the port scan, and blocked it with iptables. I knew that if I restarted iptables, the rule would be wiped out. But when I tried that, I still couldn't ssh into the machine. It took me a while, but I realized that Portsentry added an entry to hosts.deny. Once I removed that entry, everything worked fine again.

Technorati Tags: iptables, portsentry, system admin

Installed DSPAM

Paul Westbrook | 28 January, 2006 21:37

I finally got around to installing DSPAM, that I wrote about before, on the MailBarricade servers. This offers an additional spam filter to the Bayesian filter supplied by SpamAssassin.

I was able to follow these instructions for compiling DSPAM for use with amavisd-new, and they worked very well. In addition, I trained the database with the SpamAssassin Public Corpus (link on this page).
(More)

running command detached from console

Paul Westbrook | 28 January, 2006 18:57

I had used this command before, but I forgot it. nohup is a program that lets you run a command and lets it continue even when even when the user logs out.

The way you use this command is:

nohup <command to run> &

Then you can see the output by tailing nohup.out.

[via Compaq ProLiant Servers and Linux]

Technorati Tags: nohup

Switched to Speakeasy VoIP

Paul Westbrook | 27 January, 2006 21:01

Today, I finally switched to Speakeasy VoIP service. I finally got upset about Vonage, as they decide to start blocking incoming phone calls that have CallerID blocked, without warning us.

The switch was very easy. I just connected the ATA to a switch connected to my DSL modem. Speakeasy had allocated a new public IP address for the ATA, so I didn't have to switch the configuration of my firewall.

(More)

disable pop3 from cyrus

Paul Westbrook | 26 January, 2006 02:36

I don't use pop3, pop3s, or imap to access my mail server, but only use secure imap. The other ports have been blocked by iptables, but cyrus-imapd runs all the daemons by default.

If you want to disable some of these services, you can comment out the services you don't want in /etc/cyrus.conf.

Technorati Tags: cyrus imapd, imap, imaps, pop3, pop3s, system admin

eAccelerator

Paul Westbrook | 26 January, 2006 02:29

The page that has the optimizations for mysql also has a link to a walkthrough for setting up eAccelerator. eAccelerator is a php extension that caches compiled php scripts, so that the web server doesn't have to compile the scripts for every access.

Technorati Tags: eAccelerator, php, system admin

mysql optimization for VPS

Paul Westbrook | 26 January, 2006 02:23

Recently, I have noticed that the performance of my web sites have been pretty poor. It appeared that any pages that connected to my mysql database, were the major problem. When I looked at the output from top, I saw that the CPU usage for the VPS was reaching 100% when these performance problems were happening.

The main problem is the processes running in my VPS did not add up to using even anywhere close to that much CPU. It appears that some other VPS or the host itself was using a high processor time, and the process priority was not set correctly.

While I was trying to work around the problem, I found this page that describes a configuration for mysql that works well in a limited resource VPS. These settings seem to work for me.

Update: It looks like the problem was some other VPS, or the host. The host was rebooted, and the problem hasn't happened since

Technorati Tags: mysql, VPS, system admin

iPod thoughts

Paul Westbrook | 26 January, 2006 02:12

I have been using my iPod for a while and I really like it. It is a very cool, but pretty pointless device. I have copied all of the music from my laptop onto it, have purchased some TV Shows from the iTunes Music Store, and have converted some videos with iSquint.

During this time I have thought of some things that I would like:

Larger selelection of TV shows on the iTunes Music Store. This post describes an error in the guide data that caused my Stargate Atlantis Season Pass to not record the latest programs. I wish I could have just purchased these episodes.
Extended battery pack. You can only watch about 2 hours of video on the 30 Gb iPod.
An Alpine iPod adapter that would support video output. The iPod is a more compact and resilient way to store videos for viewing in the car than DVDs
An Apple iPod Universal Dock, to make it easy to connect the iPod to my laptop at work.

Technorati Tags: iPod, iTunes

Thank you Ronald

Paul Westbrook | 25 January, 2006 02:28

Thank you for spoiling such an incredible granddaughter, that I am lucky to have married. Thank you for welcoming me into the family. Thank you for showing the same love to your great-grandkids.

I will miss you. We all will miss you. But you will be in our hearts, and I know that you will be watching us.

Update on phpBB and PostNuke permissions

Paul Westbrook | 21 January, 2006 23:26

I just found out today that the page, linked from this post, that described how to make phpBB respect PostNuke permissions is not up. Here are the instructions that I used, as I remember them.

Update the following files:

faq.php, index.php, memberlist.php, search.php, viewforum.php, viewonline.php and viewtopic.php

and add the following chunk of code to the beginning:

// Begin PNphpBB2 Module
if (!defined("LOADED_AS_MODULE")) {
         die ("You can't access this file directly...");
}
// Security check
if (!pnSecAuthAction(0, 'PNphpBB2::', '::', ACCESS_READ)) {
   include 'header.php';
  echo '<div align="center"><center><table border="0" width="400" height="100%">
<tr><td height="300" width="100%" valign="middle">&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; In or
der to protect the privacy of the home owers, you must login in order to access
the forums.</td></tr></table></center></div>';
   include 'footer.php';
   return;
}

Technorati Tags: phpBB, PostNuke, security

iPod Video Guide

Paul Westbrook | 21 January, 2006 22:40

This page is a great guide about getting and playing video on the iPod.

Technorati Tags: iPod

BugMeNot

Paul Westbrook | 19 January, 2006 20:36

The BugMeNot Firefox extension is now compatible with Firefox 1.5.

[via roachfiend.com]

Technorati Tags: BugMeNot, Firefox

MailPictures

Paul Westbrook | 19 January, 2006 20:31

There is a new version of MailPictures that is compatible with Mail 2.0 in Mac OS X 10.4. This allows you to include your photo in your emails that you send. Also, it will automatically import pictures from emails that you receive into your Address Book.

[via Hawk Wings]

Technorati Tags: MailPictures

One of the "cool" kids

Paul Westbrook | 19 January, 2006 13:56

So now I am one of the "cool" kids. My family got me a 30Gb iPod with Video. I am in the process of copying the music, videos and photos onto it.

Since the iPod doesn't have firewire, and my laptop doesn't have USB 2.0, the transfer is taking several hours. On the plus side, when the transfer is done, the battery will be fully charged.

Technorati Tags: iPod

Growl notification for S.M.A.R.T. status

Paul Westbrook | 15 January, 2006 20:26

I added growl notifications to the script that emails the S.M.A.R.T. status of a Mac OS X machine. I just added the following line:

echo -e $SMART | /usr/local/bin/growlnotify -t "S.M.A.R.T. status"

Technorati Tags: growl, S.M.A.R.T.

Paul's Time Sink

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portsentry

Installed DSPAM

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Switched to Speakeasy VoIP

disable pop3 from cyrus

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mysql optimization for VPS

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Thank you Ronald

Update on phpBB and PostNuke permissions

iPod Video Guide

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