Articles by Scott Hebert

1. Courier Announces Updates

   Posted on April 22, 2007 in System Administration

   Sam Varshavchik with the Courier Mail Server project announced updates for all their major software packages including courier-imap, courier-authlib, and maildrop, in addition to the Courier MTA. The major fix common to most packages appears to be the plugging of a memory leak which only came into play once a …

2. Postfix 2.3 and clamav-milter

   Posted on April 22, 2007 in System Administration

   You've probably been using Postfix and ClamAV for a long time. Prior to Postfix 2.3, you had to have an AMaViS daemon running to act as the glue between Postfix and ClamAV.

   As of version 2.3, Postfix now supports Sendmail 8 Milter protocol. Now you can cut AMaViS …

3. Installing MySQL On Mac OS X Via Terminal

   Posted on April 20, 2007 in System Administration

   Note: This install occured on a Mac mini. If you are using a Power PC based system, make sure you get the proper version of MySQL.

   Important commands: hdiutil, installer, wget

   Download

   For some reason, MySQL's main page has become nearly unreadable. Therefore, you might find it easier to go …

4. Enabling Firefox's Session Restore

   Posted on April 19, 2007 in Software

   One of the features of Firefox 2 is Session Restore. By default, if Firefox needs to restart for an update (or crashes), it will restore your session to the state it was in at the time of restart. That means your tabs and windows will be just like you left …

5. Server Naming Conventions

   Posted on April 18, 2007 in System Administration

   Every machine needs a name. As soon as the second server is ready to go, the name SERVER no longer seems like a great idea. When deciding how to name servers, there are two primary conventions: functional names and unique names.

   Functional Names

   Functional names take the job assigned to …

6. UDLD In Radio-Based Metro Ethernet Rings

   Posted on April 17, 2007 in Networking

   <acronym title="UniDirectional Link Detection">UDLD</acronym> is a Cisco protocol designed to detect and disable unidirectional links in Ethernet (fiber or twisted-pair). In the case of a radio-based Metro Ethernet ring, UDLD goes the extra mile in preventing Spanning-Tree loops and user service interruption.

   In this simple network of …

7. VoIP Hairpinning Issues

   Posted on April 16, 2007 in voice

   When using Asterisk and a remote bank of <acronym title="Primary Rate Interface">PRI</acronym>s (or any other form of <acronym title="Public Switched Telephone Network">PSTN</acronym> connectivity for that matter), you may encounter an issue known as hairpinning. Hairpinning describes what happens when a call coming from …

8. Courier authdaemond Breaks On Hidden Whitespace

   Posted on April 15, 2007 in System Administration

   A buddy of mine was recently setting up a new installation of Courier with virtual user support via MySQL. He ran into an issue when trying to get authdaemond to connect to a remote MySQL installation. No matter what he changed in authmysqlrc, the following kept appearing in his mail …

9. Command Logging is Vital to System Administration

   Posted on April 14, 2007 in System Administration

   If you're like me, it probably seems obvious that command logging is an important part of system administration. Any change I make, whether it's on a router or server, is logged somewhere. Although folks give plenty of reasons why they don't use tools like sudo for super-user functions (inconvenience and …

10. Preparing Mac OS X For Production Remotely

    Posted on April 13, 2007 in System Administration

    Note: I recently had to prepare a Mac mini for use as a network testing device. The system was installed in a remote location and only reachable via SSH.

    Important commands: hdiutil, installer, softwareupdate, shutdown

    When preparing a system for production, there are three main tasks that need to be …