Tag: Technology

Posted on

The end of running my own server

After many years of running my own server, it is finally time for me to wind things down and let the professionals maintain my server tasks. Monday, while away in New Jersey, my mail server stopped responding. I tried to ping it, but the neither the cable modem nor the server responded which lead me to believe that the cable modem hiccuped. Luckily my father was able to goto my house and reboot the cable modem and life was grand again (my server has been running constantly for 4 months, so the issue was connectivity). However, this was the last straw in running my own server. In August, I moved all my web services to a virtual server at VPSLink and it has been running flawlessly. As my virtual server has limited RAM and space, I decided to leave mail running on my own server and since SMTP has automatic retries when mail delivery fails due to connectivity issues, downtime wasn’t a big deal, or so I thought. While the mail wouldn’t be lost, it would be delayed which I now realize is just as problematic.

So, I’ve decided to give Google’s Google for Small Businesses a try. The basic account is free and gives each user their own account with 2 GB of space. I simply have to set it up and point my DNS to it. Over the course of the next week or so, I’ll do 2 things. First, I’ll change all my DNS handling to GoDaddy as their Total DNS Control comes free with each domain registration (currently I run BIND and do my own DNS with a backup DNS elsewhere) and then I’ll move over to Google. In addition, GoDaddy will handle incoming email and redirect it, so I can setup email addresses on a few of the domains to point to other places without actually having to have mailboxes. I have 11 domains to deal with, so this change over is going to take a little bit of time. I’m going to setup 3 separate Google accounts (each account can have multiple email boxes) and then lump mail from the other domains into those accounts. This is something that I need to do carefully or I’ll make a mess and I’ll drive myself crazy trying to fix it.

After I move everything, a few questions remain. I still run my own Asterisk based PBX; should I keep this or simply just have my Polycom phone hooked into the VOIP provider without having my own IVR system and multiple extensions? Second question is about my cable modem account. I have a business cable modem account which costs twice what a residential account does, but lets me run a server. Is this still worth it? I have 5 static IP addresses with the account. I just checked my email and this is a moot point for another year as I signed a 3 year contract for my cable modem. OK, maybe next December I’ll change my service. Third, I run my Squeezeboxes off my server. I could setup an old Shuttle box I have which will be quieter and more efficient which is an option. Fourth, I have my server backup my virtual private server every day and my MacBook Pro backs up to my server daily. So, maybe I still need my server running, but if it goes down or the connection to it goes down, the consequences are minor (if the connection is down, my VOIP provider has voicemail which will pick up calls). Writing this out, helped me decide to keep my server. However, I might be able to scale back on the configuration as RAID1 is no longer as important, nor is a secondary hard drive, nor is a huge box, nor is a 1500 VA UPS.

Posted on

Frustration with Windows

Yesterday I had to install some maps onto my Garmin iQue 3600 for a trip back east. I had everything installed on my Windows machine, but wanted to put it in VMWare on my Mac so I could finally get rid of the Windows machine. I downloaded all the installers from the web and tried to install, but kept getting an error message that it couldn’t connect to installengine.com to download some component. After searching and futzing for several hours, I finally gave up and installed from the original CD which worked fine. I then did all the upgrades and live was fine. For some stupid reason, InstallShield (one of the most popular installer technologies for Windows), has the install engine separate from the installer. While this sounds like a great idea so that the engine can be installed separately, it isn’t if you’re dealing with an installer that is several years old. Apple’s Installer on Mac OS X does something similar, but the difference is backwards compatibility and the engine is built into the OS. Why is everything so much harder on Windows? Is it simply that I’m not familiar with it or does it really suck?

Compounding my frustration, I went to wipe down the Windows machine to give to my father and when I went to reinstall the OS, I couldn’t figure out how to install the drivers. The OS (Windows XP) installed fine, just all the drivers didn’t want to install. I ended up just making it my father’s problem and gave him all the CDs and said good luck. All the drivers were on the CD, but I had to pick and choose which ones I needed. On the Mac, you insert the CD/DVD and install the OS. Granted you need drivers for scanners and other 3rd party stuff, but not for networking or the video like there is on my Dell machine.

Posted on

Leopard, one week later

Now that I’ve been using Leopard for a week, I’m started to get used to it and like many of the features. However, there are few things that I don’t like.

Likes

  • Preview You can add, remove and re-arrange pages in a PDF. This actually made me stop a product I was developing as Apple’s implementation is so slick.
  • Time Machine While I still do a daily backup with SuperDuper!, having another, automatic backup is nice. I bought a 250 GB Western Digital Passport drive just for Time Machine and to have an extra SuperDuper! clone of my drive.
  • iChat I like that iChat shows which buddies are mobile as I have a number of buddies that use the mobile feature.
  • Xcode 3.0 So far the coolest feature is the ability for Interface Builder to automatically read the Class files from the header file without having to manually tell IB to read in the file.
  • Mail IMAP Idle is cool, but sometimes it just doesn’t seem to work. I also like that the Mail Activity can be put in the lower left of the main window. Like any geek, I like to see what is happening.
  • Stacks Yes, I sort of like them. I created a folder with my current projects in it and added that to the Dock. Now I can quickly get to my current projects.
  • AirPort Utility You read that correctly. The new AirPort Utility has a feature that shows the current list of DHCP Clients. Right now I see 11 DHCP clients on my network. In addition, you can see the signal strength for any wireless client.

Not sure about

  • iChat I’m not sure I like tabbed chats. I know I can turn them off, but I use iChat all the time and a ton of windows can get distracting. I know I can put them in a Space, but I’m not sure about that either.
  • Spaces I like the concept of Spaces, but am having trouble getting used to it. I use the Finder a lot and Spaces (by default) puts the Finder windows in whatever space you created them in. I thought that applications could only be in one space. Someone suggested that I tell Spaces to put Finder windows in all Spaces. I’ll give that a try (the Finder is in /System/Library/CoreServices if you need to add it to Spaces). The problem with the Finder windows being in different spaces is that I drag files to other programs that may be in other spaces requiring me to start dragging, command tab to the other app and then drop it. In addition, I notice that sometimes Spaces just switches the current Space on me if an alert pops up or something like that.
  • Terminal The tabs in terminal are interesting, but I’m just not sure about them. I use terminal all the time with multiple windows open. Tabs would clean up the clutter, but then again so would Spaces.

I guess I didn’t have anything that I completely disliked which is good. All in all, I think that Leopard is a good upgrade and hope all my users switch to it so that I can drop Tiger support and take advantage of all the cool developer things in Leopard!

Posted on

Leopard upgrade is a disaster

I started my Leopard upgrade by doing a backup with SuperDuper! as who knows what can happen when installing software. I decided to do an archive and install as that would preserve my info and get me up and going faster. Well, that seems to have been a mistake. For whatever reason, after I restarted, my default keychain was hosed (20 minutes later I was able to repair that), then I went to remove components from the previous system. This seemed to sort of work, but launching apps gave me a -10810 error. The problems likely stemmed from some of the apps I carried over from before, but this upgrade has been a disaster. So, I now erasing my drive and doing a clean install. I’ll start rebuilding my system after things are installed. I really hate doing this, but I’m out of options that don’t require a larger time investment and lots of frustration.

Posted on

Video Conferencing and my wacky network

Yesterday, my mother-in-law had a cable modem installed so that she could video conference with us and see our son (she just got a new 20″ iMac the other day). Video conferencing is easier said than done with NAT routers. I’ve used a Linux box as a router for a long time so I have full control over everything; the problem is that having more than 1 person do a SIP based connection is tricky. I had my iptables setup to route SIP traffic to my Mac, so things worked fine. Well, UPnP on my Linux box didn’t seem to work, so I finally plugged a router right into my cable modem only to have mixed results. As a last resort, I plugged an Airport Extreme base station into my cable modem and presto, everything started working. So while Apple’s router costs 3 times more than any other home based router, it sure is worth it as I think I spent over 8 hours to fix this issue. Below is a diagram of my wacky network; it is a bit strange in order to have my server running and have the Airport Extreme base station working. I’m almost surprised it all works. Networking is an art, not a science.

Posted on

The GSM buzz isn’t all that bad, now

I previously wrote about the GSM buzz on my speakers and decided today that maybe my 10 year old Apple Design Speakers might be part of the problem; a lot has changed since I got those speakers. I picked up a pair of Altec Lansing VS2320 speakers. I plugged them in and haven’t heard a buzz! I’ll see how things go, but knock on wood that the buzz is gone. Wow, what a difference a decade makes in electronics.

Posted on

Burglars got what they deserved

About 2 weeks ago, my dad brought his iMac G4 (the goose neck one) over for me to look at as it kept kernel panicking. After examining it, I pretty much determined that it was toast and time for a new one. My father saw this coming and actually wanted to replace it with an Intel based machine so he could run Windows stuff, if needed. I yanked the hard drive from the iMac and set my parents up with a Mac mini until they could order their new one (I wanted them to vote until Leopard’s release was imminent so that they could get it for $10). My parents received their new machine on Friday and my dad had placed the iMac in his car (sans hard drive and barely put back together, but definitely not working). My mom called me today to tell me that burglars broke into my dad’s car and stole the iMac. That’s all that took; unfortunately they broke 2 of the windows. The burglars will sure get a surprise when they try to use the computer! Stupid burglars.

Posted on

Greylisting to fight spam

Awhile ago, someone mentioned the concept of greylisting to fight spam. The concept is that the first time an email server connects to my mail server, my server would reject that connection for a delay message saying that the server should try again later, typically 4 hours later. The premise is that most spam servers or trojan horses try to send spam once and then don’t try again. Great in concept, but it would delay my email the first time someone sent me email. I didn’t implement it because I didn’t want the delay.

Recently, the IT guy for one of my clients started implementing this on their server, so I took another look. He pointed me to milter-greylist and it looked interesting; it was interesting as I could determine which addresses would use greylisting. So, I implemented it and set it up so that some of my secondary addresses would get greylisting support. I saw about a 20% drop in number of messages that were hitting dspam. This is excellent as it reduced server load.

I still wish more ISP would do more to prevent random users from sending mail via SMTP from home machines and more companies would implement SPF. Speaking of SPF, I ordered some stuff from BabyCenter.com and was surprised when I didn’t get my order email. I tracked down the problem; they published an SPF record:

babycenter.com. 3600 IN TXT “v=spf1 a:mailers.babycenter.com -all”

This means that all email comes form mailers.babycenter.com. That’s a problem as their online store is run off another server, so email from it doesn’t come from mailers.babycenter.com. Since my server uses SPF, it rejected the email. Nice try, babycenter.com, but please get a clue before implementing an anti spam technique.

Posted on

Strange markings on cables

Most people don’t look at the markings on the side of cables, but sometimes I do to see if it is Cat5 or Cat6 and see what other ratings are on it. Today as I was helping my dad with his dying computer, I look at the GeekSquad cable he brought over (I’m not a fan of anything from BestBuy) and start reading. “FIREWIRE 6-6 CABLE-6′ • GEEKSQUAD.COM • IF YOU NEED TO DETAIN A BURGLAR UNTIL THE AUTHORITIES ARRIVE, THIS FIREWIRE® CABLE CAN RENDER APPROXIMATELY THREE PERPETRATORS IMMOBILE WHEN PROPERLY HOG-TIED • 1 800 GEEK SQUAD • © 2004 GEEK SQUAD”

Wow, I wonder how that go through marketing and got put on shelves. What’s more interesting is that the product page for a similar item actually has that text on the page.

Posted on

iPhone not syncing on dock (Solution)

I noticed that my iPhone didn’t launch iTunes when I dropped it in the dock even though I specified automatic sync. It dawned on me that in the past I saw an iTunes Helper app as a Login Item. Sure enough, this wasn’t in my Login Items. I dug into iTunes.app/Resources, launched iTunes Helper and also dragged it to Login Items. Now when I dock my iPhone, it syncs automatically. You’d think that Apple would make sure that the iTunes helper is always running, say on each launch of iTunes. Anyway, I have a solution to my problem.