CompuBlab

If it's computer related, we'll blab about it!

Month: September 2011

Email Server Follies!

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On September 25, 2011

In Software

Over the last two weeks I have been embarking on quite an adventure (or perhaps “misadventure” would be a better word) trying to get a small email server up and running on my Linux computer at home. Why would I want such a thing, you ask? Well, I have been setting up automated services on this machine…and I want those programs to be able to email me should something go wrong. That way, I don’t have to keep checking the computer…I know it will contact me if something is amiss.

Given my needs, I only need the ability to send email…not receive it.

So first I tried to configure SendMail, a well known Linux/Unix emailing program, to send emails through to my internet service provider (ISP) for final delivery. WHAT A MESS! I’ve had root canals that hurt less than trying to configure SendMail!

After countless hours of frustration, I deleted sendmail from the computer and installed Exim…a full-featured (and more recent) email server. The configuration for this software is much better documented…but I am still having a lot of problems with the setup. I have not invested anywhere near the amount of time in Exim that I did in SendMail…so there is still lots of exploring to do. I think in time I *will* be able to get Exim to do what I want…with an added bonus.

Also on my home computer network is a DLink NAS: a “network attached storage” device that provides all of the computers in our home with a place to store, backup, and share files on the network (without having to have a dedicated computer handling the traffic…the NAS has all the smarts necessary to make the hard drives available to users on the network). This NAS has features such that I can have it run diagnostics on a nightly basis and then email me the results. Sadly, the firmware on this device ONLY sends email on port 25…a port that is blocked by my ISP. Since there is no way to change this setting (I’ve checked with the manufacturer), I am stuck. However, once I get Exim up and running, I could configure the NAS to send its email to Exim running on my Linux computer, and then have my Linux computer forward the email to my ISP on the special port required.

All of this is fun, and more than just a little bit frustrating! However, I look forward to getting all of this working.

If you are curious as to why it is so complex and difficult to set up an email server, it has to do with the fact that email spam has gotten so bad over the years, that more and more rules and protocols have been instituted to try to cut down on all of that junk email. As such, more and more is required of modern day email servers in order to satisfy these growing requirements. There really won’t be any relief in the future for all of these”anti-spam” kludges until the email protocols themselves (designed way back in the early days of the internet…and with no knowledge of today’s hostile Internet environment) get reworked. However, since SO much software today relies upon the old email protocols, making such a change is difficult.

Until next time…

 

 

A Great O/S for Older Computers

By

On September 8, 2011

In Software

I was putting together a computer for a friend of mine and was trying to figure out what operating system (O/S) I could/should use. The computer is an older laptop using an AMD K6 processor (equivalent in power to roughly a Pentium II processor). The machine still worked (I take good care of my computers), but it runs the venerable Windows 98.

Now, I wasn’t so worried about the Windows 98 O/S except for the fact that when I finished getting everything set up I had a serious problem with the web browser. For one, the computer came loaded with Internet Explorer 5!!! After playing with this version of IE I discovered that:

  1. Facebook would not even let me log in because the version of the browser was so old
  2. IE 5 was crashing left and right
  3. IE 5 couldn’t deal with wide web pages very well at all.

To make matters worse, I had a very difficult time finding a version of ANY browser that ran with any level of decency on Windows 98. Ultimately I decided to use Firefox 2…which works okay…but was plagued with poor memory management problems (which is to say in layman’s terms, it was a memory HOG!). Thus, I was not able to get very good performance out of it (which translates to: It runs very slowly).

Finally, I decided to find out if an alternative operating system might not work better than Windows 98. My search ultimately lead me to a distribution of Linux called “Puppy Linux” (http:\\puppylinux.org). I have to say, I was mighty impressed.

First of all, you should know that puppy linux comes as a “live CD”. What does that mean? It means that you can insert the CD into your computer’s CD drive and boot the operating system directly from the CD without having to disturb what is on your hard disk. In fact, if your older computer supports it, you can also boot puppy linux from a flash drive.

Second, puppy linux was DESIGNED for older computers. It boots a very small footprint (which means, it takes up a very small amount of memory), but yet packs a lot of powerful apps. I was very impressed.

From a selection of top flight browsers, to a spreadsheet program, a database program, a document creation/editing program, and a ton of other useful applications, this O/S is just right for making use out of those older computers that may not have a powerful processor or a lot of memory.

I have always been annoyed at the fact that as we progress with later versions of Windows, the memory and hardware requirements just keep going up and up and up at an insane rate. I’m sorry, but unless you have some specialty application such as video editing, or major league photo editing, or sound editing, I just can’t see why I should buy an entirely new computer just to run the latest version of Windows. Within a certain limit, yes…it makes sense to periodically upgrade your hardware. But it seems like each new version just requires more and more and more.

Perhaps the best part about puppy linux is that it is 100% free!

Now, from time to time (and perhaps more often as of late) you will see me make posts on this site regarding what I feel to be the evils of this country’s patent system. One of the big reasons I oppose the current patent system is that large corporations are trying to use the patent system to prevent people from giving away free software such as puppy linux! I don’t want to go into that right now (there are already a wealth of other posts on CompuBlab.com that address this issue…and no doubt there will be more in the future). Just know that when I post regarding the problems with the US Patent system, THIS is what I am talking about.

At any rate, the point of this post is to point out that if you have an older computer that you don’t want to junk (maybe you want to allow your kids to use it for their own purposes, or perhaps you want to give it to someone who just wants basic email/web surfing/and letter writing), you have an operating system alternative that you can try out without even disturbing whatever is already on the hard drive.

I should point out that in the case of the computer I was configuring for my friend, I ultimately had to leave Windows 98 on the computer. The problem was that:

  1. The bios of the laptop did not support booting from a flash drive (it was too old)
  2. I couldn’t burn a CD that the CD-ROM drive on that machine could read (know that in the early days of computing with CD-ROM drives, many of those older drives cannot read the CD-RW discs that you can burn in a computer’s CD drive today).

I was looking for a solution to these problems so my friend could use puppy linux, but I ran out of time (he drove in from out of town) and he decided he would take it as is with Windows 98 loaded on it. I will most likely continue to dabble with puppy linux until I figure out how to get it running on that computer.

Anyway, now you know that thanks to Puppy Linux, you have options for what to run on those older computers.

For Secure Computing, the US Dept of Defense Promotes a Bootable Linux O/S

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On September 6, 2011

In Computer Security, Translated Tech News

I have to say, this was an idea I had thought about years ago. If you want to be free of viruses and trojan horses and other malicious software while surfing the internet, the BEST way to go about it is to boot your operating system from a non-writable CD-ROM disk. The US Department of Defense so believes in this technique that they have created their own version of Linux specifically for this purpose!
(click here for the original article that inspired this post)

So technically, how does this work? Well, when you start your computer, the usual steps involved include your computer starting your operating system (like some variant of Microsoft Windows) from your hard disk. Once that is started, you are free to go about your computing business. But malicious software that makes its way onto your computer wants to be run every time you turn on your computer. So how does it do this? It modifies the startup files to your operating system on your hard disk so that every time you turn on your computer, the malicious software becomes active each time.

Well, the folks from the Department of Defense are suggestion that instead of booting your computer from a hard drive, you insert something called a “live CD”, which is an operating system (perhaps like windows) that starts up from a CD ROM disk (or DVD), rather than the hard drive. The key here is that the disk used to start the operating system is NOT WRITABLE. Since CD ROM and DVD-ROM discs cannot be written to after they have been created (assuming here that you have correctly created the CD-ROM disc, closed the writing session, etc.). It then becomes much more difficult for the malicious software to get “entrenched” onto your computer such that it will activate each time you start your machine.

Of course, in the world of technology there are few (if any) “absolutes”, but this method *IS* a powerful one to prevent having one’s computer from being infected by malicious software.

I don’t know if there are any “live CDs” of Windows operating systems. I don’t know because I personally don’t use Windows in that manner. However, there are many Linux “live CDs” out there in the world. Linux is a different operating system from Windows, but for simple surfing the internet and similar tasks, it is fairly easy to get running (indeed, in most cases you just insert the live CD and power up the machine).

Anyway, I just thought I would comment on this story as I felt it was worth understanding how and why booting from a CD or DVD was a good idea under the right circumstances.

Misnamed Congressional Bill to Track Your Every Move on the Internet

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On September 6, 2011

In Privacy, Translated Tech News

I have noticed that when a major political topic is talked about in the news for some time (such as the debt crisis right now), some lawmakers see it as an opportunity to ram through legislation that any literate American would object too. Now they have done it again. Using a bill named Protecting Children from Internet Pornographer’s Act of 2011,  congress wants to force Internet Service Providers (ISP) to track your every move on the internet, and to keep such logs for at least 12 months (click here for the original story).

I personally cannot think of anyone who would be against a bill that was aimed at protecting children from internet pornography. However, to track every American’s move on the internet, including exposing their credit card numbers and bank account numbers, is going so far past the mark that it is even laughable that they might try to pull this one over on the American people.

Today, ISP’s already track enough information to match up a user with a temporarily assigned internet address, which is what law enforcement officials need when trying to track down someone on the internet who is trying to be anonymous. However, this new bill wants to FORCE the ISP’s to expose all of the following personal information into their logs:

  1. Name
  2. Address
  3. Phone number
  4. Credit Card Number
  5. Bank Account number
  6. Temporarily assigned network (IP) address
  7. EVERY site visited on the internet

The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), a digitally focused civil liberties group, summed it up nicely as follows (click here for the complete EFF statement):

The data retention mandate in this bill would treat every Internet user like a criminal and threaten the online privacy and free speech rights of every American, as lawmakers on both sides of the aisle have recognized. Requiring Internet companies to redesign and reconfigure their systems to facilitate government surveillance of Americans’ expressive activities is simply un-American. Such a scheme would be as objectionable to our Founders as the requiring of licenses for printing presses or the banning of anonymous pamphlets.

One of the reasons I started this blog was to try to make available a layman’s description to those whose career were not in technology of issues that would effect them. I have found over the years that organizations, including governments, prey upon people’s lack of knowledge in order to manipulate them. I am very sorry to say that this is what is going on here.

Most ISP’s (this could be your cable company, AT&T UVerse, etc.) provide you with an internet connection that assigns a dynamic IP address, a network address that is not specific to you, but can change every time you log into the Internet (okay, so technically it is a bit more involved than that, but for the lay person the thing to understand is that your network address could change at nearly any moment). The difficulties that law enforcement officials have had in the past was trying to track down a specific individual’s actions on the Internet.

Let’s say that a person sends as threatening email to the President…which happens to be illegal. Law enforcement officials would want to know who it was that sent that message. With a network address that can change over time, it might be difficult to track down who it was. However, most (if not all) ISP’s keep a log of which network addresses are assigned to which of their customers at any given moment. This gives law enforcement officials the ability to back-track to a specific computer should they need to.

What ISP’s most often DO NOT DO is track/log EVERY SINGLE THING YOU DO ONLINE. There is no need for this with respect to law enforcement. At least none that anyone has been able to explain to me. I certainly invite law enforcement officials to make it clear to me as to why this information is insufficient for their needs.

If you are getting the technical gist but are not understanding the reason for my concern at this point, pick up a copy of George Orwell’s book entitled 1984.

 

You Should All Know Better!

By

On September 6, 2011

In Administrative

Greetings All!

I cannot believe that I let an entire month go by with not so much as a single post. The day job got very crazy for a while there and I just never had a moment to formulate my thoughts on the many subjects that came flying by. In fact, I started 4 or 5 posts and now they don’t make any sense to finish as they are on topics that are too out of date with respect to the news.

But in the intervening time, something HAS come up which will never go out of date…and that is some basic courtesy from those who join this blog.

I am going to amend the general rules here to point out something you should already know…if you wish to create an account and contribute to the discussion…that’s great! However, if you want to promote your own websites and nothing else, you are not welcome here.

Therefore, effectively immediately, user logins whose emails look like they are computer or randomly generated, or log in names that appear to be simply advertisements, will result in the deletion of the account without any notice. Period.

This blog is here for a number of reasons:

  1. A place for me to pontificate
  2. A place for people to exchange ideas (preferably technology oriented, but anything interesting is free game)
  3. A place to try to help less tech-savvy people understand and effectively use technology

If your interest in CompuBlab is nothing more than trying to boost your search ranking in Google, may I suggest you check out this really good book about Search Engine Optimization:

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