One of the things which makes Linux more appealing is the capability to send email from command line, without logging to a webmail account or configuring your mail client like Outlook express. While working on the command line, you can send an attachment too, but the problem with this is file attachments like pdf or jpg appear as garbled text to the receiver. The solution? Another cool opensource software: uuencode. Download uuencode from this site for ubuntu: http://packages.ubuntu.com/dapper/i386/sharutils/download.
Usage: Suppose you want to send a pdf file(‘climatechange.pdf’) to a recipient address mrxyz@hisdomain.com. Then type the following command:
$uuencode climatechange.pdf climatechange.pdf | mails -s "climate change document" mrxyz@hisdomain.com
The pdf document wil appear as an attachment on the recipients side. Read More
Net Neutrality wars…”If cable and the Bells can’t negotiate special deals, neither can Google.” opponents of Net neutrality.
Are all packets created equal? It is more like asking is the Internet neutral by design? The answer is no. It seems to favor text than voice, for instance. The more you hear this debate on Net neutrality, it is easy to realize that it is a battle between two giants – Cable companies(especially AT&T, Comcast) and Content providers (particularly Google). After the Federal Courts decided unanimously that the FCC doesn’t have the authority to tell Comcast on how to manage its network, the FCC has been trying hard to find a legal loophole which gives it the authority to regulate the Internet. Many proponents suggested the FCC reclassify the broadband Internet into the telecommunications services rather than the previous Information services, which is outside FCC’s regulatory authority. But the FCC seems to have decided to take a ‘third way’ without reclassifying broadband Internet. Time will decide whether this new path will be challenged in courts too.
What makes Net neutrality interesting is it is a partisan issue, the Democrats are pushing the FCC to take whatever means available to it legally to preserve the openness of the Internet, while the Republicans, on the other hand are threatening it with ‘see you in court’ remarks. But here is an addition to the debate, a claim made by a Republican representative – if the Cable companies are not allowed to make deals with their clients for a preferential treatment of their traffic based on price, then the Content providers(read as Google) should not be allowed to discriminate among content…like Google’s ranking of search results (that is not neutral ;)). Read more.
If you are looking for a lightweight, lean&mean operating system oriented towards web applications, then download and play with Peppermint Linux. It has just been released in the last few days.
http://peppermintos.com/
If your ftp server is behind a NAT router, the regular ftps configuration steps you find in most tutorials in the Internet may not work for you. Hope these steps help.
1. Chroot (chain or jail) users to their home directory by adding the line below to proftpd.conf
DefaultRoot ~
2. Generate certificate keys, in this case, in the directory /etc/proftpd/ssl/
$openssl req -new -x509 -days 365 -nodes -out /etc/proftpd/ssl/server.cert.pem -keyout /etc/proftpd/ssl/server.key.pem
3. Add this lines to proftpd.conf
TLSEngine on
TLSLog /var/log/proftpd/tls.log
TLSProtocol SSLv23
TLSOptions NoCertRequest
TLSRSACertificateFile /etc/proftpd/ssl/proftpd.cert.pem
TLSRSACertificateKeyFile /etc/proftpd/ssl/proftpd.key.pem
TLSVerifyClient off
TLSRequired on
4. Allow a range of passive ports to be forwarded to your ftp server by the firewall and set those ports in your ftp config file – proftpd.conf in this case.
PassivePorts 60000 60100
5. Masquerade the ftp server’s address to the external IP of the NAT server/router.
MasqueradeAddress x.x.x.x
Just came across a traditional Eritrean ‘kuda’ dance. Very entertaining & made me nostalgic! Enjoy.
Filed under:
Miscellaneous
Got this advice from a CTO – hot topics for system administrators:
1. performance monitoring
2. capacity planning
3. virtualization
4. Disaster recovery(DR) planning
