It has been two years since I made the cut at home over to Ubuntu on our laptops and server (with one lonely box running Media Center under XP–hello, J. River, I’m looking at you!) with absolutely no regrets and when Elwood Heavy Industries finds itself a little more flush with cash that box will go dark and I’ll run Media Center either in Wine or on a rogue Win2k install under Qemu. So anyway, CNET poses the question, “Is the Linux operating system for me?” and the answers are balanced as well as helpful. Worth giving it a read, especially if you have any curiousity about using a better and more secure OS.
Archive for the 'Linux' Category
Tonight I was fairly bored, especially while we watched the season finale of Dexter–the ending felt too rushed–so I was looking around for a little something to keep me occupied and maybe trick out my desktop. Enter Conky, a nifty lightweight system monitor application. After scanning this thread and this one for inspiration I ended up with the following setup.
Here’s my .conkyrc.
Though I was filled with doubt Mike posted a comment this afternoon which confirmed that my sendmail configuration indeed worked. Yay me!
One of the main benefits of sympathetic pregnancy insomnia is that I am able to get a jump on all these little projects that I had been meaning to take care of but never had the motivation. Configuring sendmail to use Yahoo Mail as a relay to handle outbound mail from Apache is one of those projects I’ve put off for far to long. Thanks to two HowTos I managed to knock this out in a couple of minutes.
sudo apt-get install sendmail
sudo /etc/init.d/sendmail stop
sudo nano /etc/mail/authinfo and add the following:
AuthInfo:yahoo.com “U:babydaddy@your_ATT_Domain” “I:babydaddy@your_ATT_Domain” “P:password_here” “M:PLAIN”
AuthInfo: “U:babydaddy@your_ATT_Domain” “I:babydaddy@your_ATT_Domain” “P:password_here” “M:PLAIN”
sudo chmod 660 /etc/mail/authinfo to lock it down.
sudo makemap hash /etc/mail/authinfo < /etc/mail/authinfo to make the map file.
sudo nano /etc/mail/sendmail.mc and look for or add the following lines:
define(`confAUTH_OPTIONS’, `A’)dnl
define(`confAUTH_MECHANISMS’, `LOGIN PLAIN DIGEST-MD5 CRAM-MD5′)dnl
TRUST_AUTH_MECH(`LOGIN PLAIN DIGEST-MD5 CRAM-MD5′)dnl
FEATURE(`authinfo’,`hash -o /etc/mail/authinfo.db’)dnl
define(`SMART_HOST’, `esmtp:[smtp.sbcglobal.yahoo.com]‘)dnl
sudo cp /etc/mail/sendmail.cf /etc/mail/sendmail.cf.bak because you can never to too sure.
sudo make /etc/mail/sendmail.cf -C /etc/mail to rebuild your sendmail.cf.
sudo /etc/init.d/sendmail start
To test your set up create a text file that at least includes a To and a Subject:To:ServerMonkey@foo
Subject:Linux Rules Windows Drools
sudo sendmail -Am -v -t < your_text_file to shoot a copy out to yourself.
You should see something like this:
babydaddy@your_ATT_Domain… Connecting to smtp.sbc.mail.yahoo4.akadns.net. via esmtp…
220 smtp110.sbc.mail.re2.yahoo.com ESMTP
>>> EHLO your_domain
250-smtp110.sbc.mail.re2.yahoo.com
250-AUTH LOGIN PLAIN XYMCOOKIE
250-PIPELINING
250 8BITMIME
>>> AUTH PLAIN xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
235 ok, go ahead (#2.0.0)
>>> MAIL From: AUTH=root@your_domain
250 ok
>>> RCPT To:
>>> DATA
250 ok
354 go ahead
>>> .
250 ok 1166057377 qp 49511
babydaddy@your_ATT_Domain… Sent (ok 1166057377 qp 49511)
Closing connection to smtp.sbc.mail.yahoo4.akadns.net.
>>> QUIT
221 smtp110.sbc.mail.re2.yahoo.com
sudo nano /etc/php5/apache2/php.ini so that it knows where sendmail hangs out.
Find the line with sendmail_path, delete the ; and edit it to read:
sendmail_path = /usr/sbin/sendmail -i -t
sudo /etc/init.d/apache2 reload to make the changes stick.
Sendmail is now configured to use Yahoo as a relay! Now, ideally you should be able to massage this to use any external SMTP server that allows plain text authentication.
Today was a bit of a slow day–I still cannot get Media Center 11 to run under Wine–so I thought I might give a shot to get mt-daapd to serve up files to a daap enabled client on Windows. iTunes is the obvious choice for a client but the UI sucks so bad that I want to slam my hands in a drawer and staple my eyes shut but luckily a kind soul has made a plugin for Winamp which makes me happy.
Here’s how it went down:
Server Side:
- Make sure you are running SSH and if your not ask yourself why.
- Grab mt-daapd and take care of any dependencies:
libsqlite0
libsqlite0-dev
gawk
gcc (this will install gcc-4.0)
libid3tag0-dev
libgdbm-dev
- Edit /etc/mt-daapd.conf to your liking such as mp3_dir and servername
- Grab Avahi and take care of any dependencies:
avahi-daemon
avahi-utils
libnss-mdns
- Edit /etc/nsswitch.conf to ensure that mdns is on the hosts line:
hosts: files dns mdns
- Give dbus a kick: sudo invoke-rc.d dbus restart
- Get your avahi-daemon running: sudo invoke-rc.d avahi-daemon start
- Fire up mt-daapd: sudo mt-daapd
Client Side
- Get yourself a copy of iTunes, only if you are a masochist, or snag Winamp with the DAAP plugin if you love yourself.
- Install Rendezvous Proxy and configure it (you need this to fool the client into thinking that the mt-daap server is on the same subnet):
IP Address - 127.0.0.1
Port - 3689
Host Label - Your_DAAP_Server_Name_Here
Service Type - daap - Set up a tunnel with Putty for port 3689, which is just like doing it for TightVNC.
- Fire up iTunes or Winamp and wait for it to stumble onto your DAAP shares.
Well, that’s it in a nutshell.
Cribbed from James Henstridge’s write up about Avahi on Breezy, this thread, and this one.
**Update**
If Avahi seemingly won’t start check /etc/default/avahi-daemon and make sure it reads: AVAHI_DAEMON_START=1
Media Jukebox is a nice start but only if I could figure out how to keep Media Center 11 from endlessly crashing.
