Argh – Postfix refuses to do stuff

Postfix is a mailer, it needs a lot of help with spf – thats dns, and dkim message signing but email is still reveleant.  However one day all our dns lookups stopped, apache (a webserver)  was using it but not postfix.  It was time to troubleshoot.  Nothing had changed in our configurations* and dig lookups to the block list service returned what they should [dig ip.some.blocklist.at.a.tld].

I check the config commands and they are also the same.   Its a silly thing, so one evening the thought resolv.cfg pings into my monkey head. and that’s it when next day i update it and discover that network manager changed it knocking out nameserver 127.0.0.1, after some copying of the file to the right place – postfix demands a copy in a non /etc directory and things start looking up in postfix land.

Client host [209.43.22.5] blocked using bl.spamcop.net

Argh well at least postfix was not to blame and network manager was and networking has not changed either.  Oddly dkms signing with private keys and a public key in dns kept working so although that’s not part of native postfix dns stuff was working in a manner.

* note plural not singular

regrading adsl, and its mixed benefits

The fast broadband myth had to be tested.here at the monkey house.  A free regrade by our existing provider was offered -not fibre (my blog) although there where offers and so it would have cost.

However the information was a little scant and the ‘up to’ higher speeds featured prominently opposed to the real world.  Being assured that nothing would change config wise i decided to give it a go.

I did get to slash our costs by losing our unlimited download* for a monthly capacity on our rather slow connection.  The regrade happened within a day its results are not that impressive with the upload speed not really changing.

Download speed is double what it was but nowhere near the mythical up to speed and does not say much, and ping is down by a 33%.  So it has improved but the marketing of up to leaves a lot to be desired, and i can see why it is now ‘free’.  So i am glad i did not pimp this upgrade to the alpha ape and pay for such unimpressive results.

Fibre would have been nice, however it would require a new router, and probably not support ipv6** so again with the marketing speak of ‘maybe fast, or about the same’ we will hang on for that.

Overall the change was competently handled and i like our supplier who is not British Telecom.

Better marginally technical performance with less resending and queuing requests -  i suppose but nothing to brag about as i notice the usage of it made  has remained the same per month seemingly with less data..

* within reason ** we want both ipv4 and ipv6 – and that’s not yet available

Guess time between cups and hplip

I bang on and on about HP and hplip being a bit shit, hplip says both the genuine hp inks [colour aand black] are ‘good’. And a last its an meme.

With best before ink, suicide bombers in ink cartridges which one is it. Alas it appears that HP want not to tell us.  Thats ok with us as it means less usage of the printer which also hurts HP as less ink is used while the printer is not working for a good week* or so.

Print something and cups says otherwise…..

* these are special order, dont expect to walk into a retailer and find them to take away,

Dual layer disks found!

corruption in utah

I have finally found dual layer dvd disks for sale (the 8.5 gb disks opposed to the 4.7gb size) and at a reasonable price and not from a specialised dvd media outlet.

Progress! and they work too I suppose it validates the hardware supporting it – eventually after years of being hard to find and at the wrong price.  Mind you i bet there are some in the copyright lobby frothing at the mouth right now they can be assured that i have no plans to buy blueray as it is sony and very much drm’ed to death.

Its strange that ‘progress’ here means buying media that have been supported in the device for years but has been hard to find for reasons that others just dont want you to have it..

The obsolete sd card reader, and hp photosmart printer

In about 2003 the zoo purchased an card reader for digital camera transfers.  It did not get a heavy workload and is good to have, i have a cf card with an very low 4mb of storage that also works in it.  Recenlty the zoo obtained a newer sd card that the reader could not id, so it was time to buy a new one which was 10% of the price it was in 2003.

That brings me to the photosmart 7550 printer (a castoff using non hp and drm free 56,57 and 58 cartridges) that is also a bit of antique which has a camera usb port and card reader, which i did not test as it has no ink in it, i imagine that too is obsolete and the usb port would need an adapter to connect to the 2012 camera.

IT stuff is amazing – its sometimes like a fashion show and this stuff which you assume should work then does not.  We dont need a more modern printer in the case of the photosmart 7550 since it works via a print server  as a printer and does a fairly decent print job with ink in means it wont be replaced.

However a good chunk of its internal workings are now junk through micro usb connectors and a card reader that’s also obsolete.

Breaking debian testing and learning some stuff as well

I changed repos and things began to break or have missing things- The solution is do not use backports in testing. it will break it.  Fixed now.

Professor goes back to cables

Professor had his house insulated and one of the drawbacks is that he lost most of the wifi coverage.  We visited and any efficiency savings of an single n router are out of the question.  He will have to rely on the wifi access point and poe points that we where going to dump.

so much for n.

Capchta and the old

I got a call that apparently the internet was broken with funny letters and numbers on screen from an old zoo employee.  Being that there old and the words ‘internet not working ‘i decided to pay them a person visit being i probably not get  a lot of sense out of them as you would with a young person (example ask what are your dns servers, or what ones do the router use. You get my point.

So bananas leaves the monkey house not really knowing what to expect.  I get there and find the internet is not broken.  Being a windoze household (opposed to my linux) i discover that the webmail thing is using capchta’s – some debate is had over whether the isp will change and dump the funny letters and numbers which are causing the internet to be broken.

I say forget it, while updating software, running spybot [some issues] and a free virus check which may or may not be truthful on the matter.

Deciding to use the microsoft assets already on disk i decide to install the email client as part of office which theere be be several version of.  I succeed but then i have no product key, i have found microsoft bloat.  Time for thunderbird.  I get passwords and connect to the webmail servers which solves the ‘broken’ internet issue.

Having fixed funny stuff not using microsoft crap made both of us happy.

Warzone 2100 revisited after newtown

ook repulsive man

I originally did the game here (my blog) and it has ‘better’ graphics that only support those horrid nvida cards that i have never owned but have billions of security holes in and it still works on normal cards as well.

I like this game still with the changes i note seem to indicate that abuse of the game by some with a notice that it is foss, and a screen on exit.  Interesting changes mind you but as i have yet to shoot twenty people because the nra (my blog) say i should as it is a video game..

Mind you shooting humans might save a few endangered species – so what should an ape do ?

I have had it with gnome

Several months ago I changed to kde on the zoos server to kde on the odd occasion when it get used.

That terminates any liking of gnome (my blog)