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Richard Stallman explaining Why IPads and Cell Phones are bad for freedom

Wednesday, July 11th, 2012

It is a public secret that Mobile Phones which does us very good and generally makes our daily lifes way easier are also a big enemy to our natural ihnibited freedom. Life has become such that it is almost inevitable to do any business or do a daily simple jobs without using Mobile Phone. There is almost none practically today that has wilfully rejected to use the mobile phone on any basis, almost anyone except some strangers like Richard Stallman and probably few others security freaks.

I've been shocked to find out the Father of Free Software (Richard Mathew Stallman), well known in the hacker dome as RMS does not own and didn't use any mobiles. The concerns he pointed are very much logical and rightful. Owning a mobile is a great security hole in personal privacy (mobile phones can be easily sniffed by Mobile Operators) as well as anyone wearing a mobile can be tracked up to 5 to 2 meters to the exact location where he is based on the mobile phone cells to which the mobile is connected.

Many people are not aware actually of the severeness of the issue of constant tracking of people everywhere through this call "goodies". Many mobile operators are already running a software which is building place behaviour patterns of every user of their mobile network. In other words, as we're used to bring and use the mobile everywhere in automated program is creating a map for each number assigned in some of the mobile operators. The gathered data about our location going habits can then be easily used as a indicator for predicting our future behaviour, bying habits (how many times we go to super-market), how many times we go to cinema, what kind of interests we hold etc. etc.
This combined with Google, account monitoring could possibly create a system similar to the old movies Big Brother, where all people goods and even attitudes or desires is monitored, influenced and controlled ….

The severeness of the future implications of this constant "personal surveillance and tracking device" as Stallman use to call it is very dangerous for our freedoms.

I tried to live without a mobile phone, just like Stallman for about months, and to tell you the truth the world around seems completely different when you decide not to use 'em. The time I lived wihtout a mobile, clearly show me we have come to the point we cannot any more live without GSM. We fall the trap of dependanding the little "talk box" communication for absolutely everything, obviously sacrificing privacy and freedom for convenience.
Mobiles are just one side of the coin, as the non-free software which is ruling the software market and the use of computers puts another treat and takes away many foundamential freedoms we used to have in the less technological world.

Apple as a vendor of software and hardware also denies and breaks our freedom very badly, as the company tracks everyone who owns anything created by apple connected to the internet. Besides that non-free software producers, could change the user software with a press of a button giving them the opportunity to decide what is good and bad for us, leaving us at a state of a helpless dependable users.

The topic of technological little-by-little enslavement, we're going through nowdays and the denying freedoms, we experience while being convinced by companies that we became more free by each next mambo-jambo gadget or by owning the latest smart-phone is very huge and complex but unfortunately underseen in society. I don't understand why, is it due to the low technical skills of mass users is it due to a "not-care what will happen in future" attitude, but obviously people openly discussing or protesting the technologization taking away our freedom is almost zero ….

Here is the video I found in youtube in which Stallman is asked few, questions on Ipads (IBADS) and Mobile Phone use. I believe his short explanation synthesizes the problem quite well ;;;;

I just wonder after you check the video, Would you still accept an Ipad as a birthday gift ? 🙂
Do you still think cell-phones are "good" freedom safe and reliable ?

Tags: attitudes, Auto, basis, behaviour patterns, big brother, cells, desires, Draft, exact location, Father, freaks, Free, freedom, goodies, google, GSM, hacker, ipads, life, location, mathew, Mobile, mobile network, mobile operators, mobile phone, Mobile phones, none, number, Operators, personal privacy, place, Privacy, quot, richard stallman, rms, security hole, show, software, surveillance, system, time, trap, video
Posted in Business Management, FreeBSD, Various | No Comments »

Color Trick Microsoft and Google use to keep their users loyal and happy unwalfully

Tuesday, June 12th, 2012

Color mind influence has been longly researched. It is researched and there are some findingings on how we people react on colors. This researches are not much known and most of them are not put on the internet (??) One model claiming to have explained how colors influence is called HBDI – Herrmann Brain Dominance Instruments.

In the picture beginning of this post, I have presented a quick "Personal Profile" of HBDI on how one think in order to determine in "which colors" one tends to think more ___

In short HBDI model claims to explain how people think in another model.
My personal view of it is it is like most science nowdays more based on faith than on a clearly conducted scientific research and facts. We know pretty well many people tried to explain how brain operates and many people give models to explain it however none of the models could grasp in completeness the complexity of human brain. Hence Businessman people who use this model in their daily life and they push it to us has put the model in action not that they know it is working but rather they believe it does .., Saying this few words as introduction I will contninue onwards to explain you about HBDI as in the business world it is considered as a "Strategic Asset" for a company success. Hence the use of richest companies of the model has a serious impact on us the common people and unknowing (uninformed) computer users.

Some of the companies who integrated the HBDI to their models we all know are of course not strangely Microsoft and Google
;;;

Below I present you a picture showing the HBDI The Whole Brain Model |||

Next I show you Microsoft Windows OS worldly "infamous" flag |||

You can see for yourself the basic color from HBDI WHOLE brain model are integrated in the Microsoft flag, only the order of colors present and the color gamma is different;;;;

The basic colors in HBDI model to explain how human brain works is separated in 4 segments as you can see from above screenshot. There are a number of tests one can do to determine what is his exact HBDI profile, and in abstract terms in which kind of colors he prefers to think.

There are a whole "army" of people involved into this sect like philosophy (I call it philosophy as surely every model that tries to explain everything is doomed to fail it is the nature in which God created the universe so complex and he put us be part of it and not controllers of it that any Universal model trying to explain it has never succeeded so far. The HBDI has some fruits for the only reason it is believed to work well by the people with money.

As you see in the colors HBDI claims there are 4 segments corresponding to four basic colors

BLUE
YELLOW
GREEN
RED

Each of the colors is an indicator on how the person tends to think the BLUE people as HBDI practicioners (believers) calls them are —

Analytical, Fact Based, Logal, Quantitative

The YELLOW oriented people are claimed to be —

Holistic, Intuitive, Integrating, Synthesizing

The GREEN ones in model terms are interested in —

Organizing, Sequentiality, Planning, Detailizing facts

Finally the RED Ones are said to be —

Interpersonal, Feeling based, Kinesthetic, Emotional

Now as you can understand this model though it looks like promising is based on a philosophy which rejects the existing of spirit realm God Angels or good or evil. It claims everything we're are or we want to be can be achieved following the HBDI to develop your own brain.

This model as every human made model however does reject the fact that besides internal factors and brains we're put into external environment most of which we cannot control and therefore even if we try our best to have certain goals and complete them the external uncontrolled facts can be a reason to stop us to complete our goals.

Now back to my point, that Google, Microsoft and probably many other products and physical goods are heavily using the HBDI color scheme ;;;
Here is the Google Inc. Logo the color trait of HBDI is there:

For those doubting that Google Inc. and Microsoft Inc. are along the false believers of HBDI color scheme brain ideology I present below the Logo of Google Web Browser =- Google Chrome

It is evident 4 colors used as a main ones in the HBDI tool are present in Google Chrome just like in Microsoft Windows logo flag, the only difference is in the order of colors.
Also it is interesting the name Chrome that Google Chrome took is most likely taken from Aldous Huxley's – Brave New World (A book depicting a short future highly conditioned society) , the book story line goes around a society programmed to do the things they do.

I assume it is very likely that Google's founders Sergey Brin or some of their subordinate working for Google are very much into the idea of conditioning people just like in the book and this is most likely the reason they choose the Chrome as a title for Google's browser ,,,

The 4 Colors from HBDI yellow, green, blue, red are embedded also in the google .ico file (the little icon showing in browser URL bar), below is a screenshot of a tab where google is opened showing the .ico image:

Do you remember the good old Windows XP start button, have you noticed the Windows flag embedded in it, if not let me show you;;;

But wait the Windows flag placed on the left bottom of Ms Windows-es is not only on XP it is also on Windows 3.11 cover, Winblows 98, Vista, Windows 2003, Windows 2007 and actually all the M$ operating systems ever produced since the very early days M$ become a top OS producer :::

Here is also the 4 colored (a bit like Nazi like looking) flag on M$ Win-doze 7 |||

Also the Microsoft Flag is positioned on the bottom left screen on purpose. It is well known fact that most of the world (except Arabic) are used to read the text from Left to Right

, therefore it is natural for our eyesight to look for the text on the left side. I just wonder why they placed the START on the bottom and not on top. It is natural we read text and books from the most top to the most bottom ,,,.,

Even Apple Computers nowdays Macs has most likely used the HBDI as the main 4 colors and some gamma from rainbow colors are present on their Classical Apple Computer logo

Makes me wonder if Jobs employed the HBDI model in his company. Well what is the reason for people loving so much this rainbow colors combination. If we think for a second outside of HBDI's brainwashing ideology for what each color would stand for. Well it is simple is comes from our young years most of the people between age 2 and 50 years has been more or less exposed to the so colorful Kids Cartoons, which are all so colorfully painted. Since our very early age we've placed in us a love for colorfulness outlook (well again not all of us for example I prefer less colors, I'm sure there are plenty of people who don't like the heavy colors we see in almost everywhere around us).

The problem with this 4 colors use on purpose and all this unnatural color placing everywhere is that it is unnatural and not in good synergy with our surrounding natural environment. Therefore I personally think using a colorful color paintings on everywhere in both computer programs and the physical world plays us a bad joke and is one of the reasons so many people are on the virge to get crazy nowdays and many have already had already cracked out.

It is my firm believe more and more people should be educated on the harm of HBDI and the fact that, we're forced to 'live it' unwilfully every day by using even as "simple things" as computers and daily technology or buying food in the super market ,,,

Tags: action, Auto, brain, brain model, business world, businessman, Chrome, colors, common people, company success, completeness, complexity, computer users, course, Draft, everything, Fact, faith, few words, gamma, god created the universe, google, HBDI, herrmann brain dominance, human brain, human brain works, Instruments, Microsoft, microsoft windows os, nature, none, number, person, personal view, philosophy, reason, researches, scheme, science, science facts, screenshot, sect, segments, trick, Universal, universal model, whole brain
Posted in Business Management, Everyday Life, SEO | No Comments »

How to add visitor/visitors counter in Joomla based website using the VINAORA joomla plugin

Wednesday, December 29th, 2010

One of the websites based on Joomla, that I’m managing, had to have the option to show a Visitors Counter on the page bottom.

I did some research online to check for some Joomla plugins that are capable of aiming my Joomla installation with the Visitor Counter feature.

There are a couple of plugins available out there that are able to provide a Joomla installation with a Web Counter, however I’ll just mention the few which I have tested myself.
The ones I’ve tested myself are;

1. VCNT
2. Count your Visitors
3. Cool Hits Counter
and finally the one that I really liked the most:

4. VINAORA

All the prior 3 aforementioned VCNT, Count your Visitors and Cool Hits Counter, are actually working right after installation. I haven’t had the time to test them thoroughfully but from a first look they appear to be counting the visitors.

The Count your visitors – joomla plugin’s download main page was in German with no option to revert to English, so that wasn’t nice.

Though the plugin seems to work fine after just downloaded and installed and configured from

Extensions -> Module Manager

The configuration options for Count your visitors are quite obscure but if you’re a looking for a really simple way to count your Joomla based website visitors it might be a good choice. The plugin is based on the initial Joomla module called Statistics.

By the way I’ve read some reports online that actually Joomla 1.5 also includes some kind of minimal integrated web counter embedded in itself throughout the Joomla Statistics module .
However I personally couldn’t really follow the methods describe to take advantage of the Joomla install integrated Statistics module, however if somebody has already succeeded in using the Statistics default joomla module I’ll be glad, if he shares with me.

I’ve found the VCNT visitor statistics plugin a handy one, but this module had this major problem that the VCNT 1.5 text which was appearing as a heading before the statistics was hard to wipe out of my web page, so eventually I got pissed of and thought and tested the Cool Hits Counter.

The Cool Hits Counter is actually a simplistic module which presents a counter about visitors on the web site in numeric digit numbers.
These module uses the integrated Joomla 1.5 module mod_stats the only difference is the support for numeric digit numbers.

As I’ve said none of the above modules wasn’t flexible enough and therefore wasn’t what I was looking for, thus I decided to use my installed VINAORA Joomla web(users) counter plugin.

The VINAORA is actually quite straight foward to configure, right after installation to start with the configuration I had to navigate to:

Extension -> Module Manager -> Vinaora Visitors Counter -> Module Parameters

Since I wanted just a simple counter without any external statistics I personally prefered using Vinaora’s counter with the optionsDisplay Mode: Simple as well as the Zero-Statistics turned on to (Yes)

Some of the other options I found to be best matching my desires for the Visitors Counter was:

Show Title: No and Position: Left

Now I had this shiny visitors statistics in my Joomla installation but there was the annoying Link in my Visitors Counter appearing on the page, thus in order to remove the default link Visitors Counter which was pointing to the VINAORA’s web page, I had to edit the file:
modules/mod_vvisit_counter/tmpl/default.php located in my Joomla Document Root directory.

First I’ve edited the code on line 21 where I’ve removed out the Vinaora string since I didn’t wanted any reference to Vinaora to occur in my Joomla HTML code.

In line 162 in the code:

$html .= ….

By removing it I’ve completed scraped out the annoying references to VINAORA and their link to http://vinaora.com website and thus made the Visitors counter a look a bit more professional.

Now the counter is working with a graphical numeric digits and everything is just fine with my Web counter Joomla counter thanks to VINAORA 🙂

Tags: configuration options, configure, count your visitors, download, Extension, feature, file, How to add visitor/visitors counter in Joomla based website using the VINAORA joomla plugin, installation, mod, Module, none, option, optionsDisplay, page, page bottom, Parameters, plugin, right, show, statistics, support, text, time, vcnt, visitor counter, website visitors, Zero
Posted in Joomla, Linux, System Administration, Various | 3 Comments »

How to take area screenshots in GNOME – Take quick area selection screenshots in G* / Linux and BSD

Thursday, March 15th, 2012

Quick Area screenshot in GNOME how to make quick area selection screenshots in Linux and FreeBSD gnome-screenshot shot

Often when, you do something on your PC, you need to make a quick screenshot of a screen area.. Yes GNOME's feature to take complete screenshots of Screen with Print Screen SysRQ and consequential picture edit with GIMP is one way, but this is far away from quick. This method to chop out of a complete display screenshot usually takes from 40 secs to 1 minute to properly cut and save a selection of the whole picture.
Another common use, that I love in GNOME is the ALT + Print Screen SysRQ key combination. alt+ print scr sysrq is handy while taking a single window screenshot is desired. Anyways often you only need to make a screenshot of a tiny area of the screen. Many people might think this is not possible currently in GNOME, but they will be wrong as there are no impossible but hard things to achieve on Linux / FreeBSD 😉

There are at least two ways using a predefined command for taking quick area screen snapshot.

1. Taking quick area screenshot by using ImageMagick's import command

To use import you will need to have installed ImageMagick – swiss army knife of command line image manipulation 😉
For area screenshot with import, press ALT+F2 and type inside Run Application box:

Screenshot GNOME run application GNU / Linux Debian ImageMagick import area screenshot

import -frame screenshot.png

Now make the selection of the exact screen area you would like to screeshot in file screenshot.png
Note that screenshot.png file will be saved by default in your home directory as it is read from $HOME shell variable:

hipo@noah:~$ echo $HOME/home/hipo hipo@noah:~$ ls -al screenshot.png -rw-r--r-- 1 hipo hipo 4950 Mar 14 21:11 screenshot.png

You see my $HOME equals /home/hipo, therefore screenshot.png just grabbed is saved in there.

One downside of taking the screenshot with import is that picture snapshot is not further edittable, if it has to be further processed with GIMP or some other graphic editor program.

In the screenshot, below I show you one screen area of my XMMS taken with import -frame screenshot.png cmd:

XMMS Screen Area Screenshot import screenshot

Trying to open the screenshot.png, file with GIMP displays the following error in GIMP:

PNG image message PNG the file specifies offset that caused the layer to be positioned outiside image GIMP screenshot

Not all area snapshots taken with import -frame, create this issue sometimes screenshots are opening in GIMP but only area of the screenshot.png is visible in gimp.

Thanksfull, there is work around to this issue by converting the import generated PNG format picture to JPEG with ImageMagick's convert and then edit the .JPEG with GIMP etc.:

hipo@noah:~$ convert screenshot.png screenshot.jpg

Hence to permanently work around it, in case you intend to apply (GIMP modifications), once area snapshot is made instruct import to save its output picture in .jpeg, e.g.:

hipo@noah:~$ import -frame screenshot.jpeg

2. Taking quick area screenshot using gnome-screenshot cmd

Once again invoke the GNOME command Launcher by pressing Alt+F2 (holding alt and pressing F2) and type in the launch box:

gnome-screenshot -a

gnome-screenshot Run Application in GNOME 2.30 on Debian GNU / Linux

Below is a small area from my desktop, chopped with gnome-screenshot 🙂

GNOME desktop area chop screenshot with gnome-screenshot on my home Debian Linux

You see on above screenshot a tiny (picture) icon one of the greatest, if not the greatest bulgarian saint – saint John of Rila. St. John's lived as hermit for many years in Rila mountain and by God's grace possessed incorruptable body. His incorruptable body is still kept and can be venerated in Rila Monastery. The monastery is located 160 km from Bulgaria's capital city Sofia

St. Johns first Bulgarian established monastery Rila Monastery is currently the biggest functioing monastery in Bulgaria. The saints monastery is considered one of the most holy places in Bulgaria. If you have a travel or plan a holiday in Bulgaria, I warmly recommend you go there and venerate the saint incorruptable relics.

3. Binding keys to allow quick area screenshot taking with gnome-screenshot in GNOME

This configuration is for GNOME 2.x and is tested to work on my Debian (Squeeze 6.0), GNOME ver. 2.30.2, it should work in earlier Ubuntu versions shipped with GNOME 2.2.xx too. As I've red on the Internet it works well with Ubuntu 10.10Binding a key for screenshot area grab, should be working properly also on any GNOME 2.2.x supporting OS, including the BSD family OSes (FreeBSD, OpenBSD, NetBSD)…

a) setting gnome-screenshot key binding for interactive screenshot area grab

Navigate the mouse cursor to GNOME main menus panel in left top, where you see (Applications, Places, System).
Therein use menus:

System -> Preferences -> Keybord Shortcuts -> Add ->

Alternatively if you prefer you can directly invoke the Keyboard Shortcuts configuration with command:

hipo@noah:~$ gnome-keybinding-properties

Further on, assign a shortcut by filling in something like:

name: grab-screen-area command: gnome-screenshot -i -a

GNOME add keyboard shortcut map key for area interactive screenshot

press Apply and next map a key to the new defined key binding:

GNOME add keyboard shortcut map key

Under the Shortcut column click on Disabled and assign some key combination to invoke the cmd for example Ctrl+F4

The command gnome-screenshot -i makes gnome-screenshot, show interactive make screenshot dialog like the one in below screenshot.

GNOME screenshot interactive screenshot select area grab shot

b) creating gnome-screenshot -a area screenshot key binding for quick area screenshots "on the fly"

The procedure is precisely the same as with adding interactive screenshot; Under Keyboard Shortcuts GNOME config assign new key binding by pressing Add button and adding:

name: grab-screen-area1 command: gnome-screenshot -a

Once again in Shortcut column in line starting with grab-screen-area1 add your desired key switch. I personally like Ctrl+Print Screen SysRQ as it is close to the default GNOME key combination assigned for taking screenshot for a Windows Alt+Print SysRq

It was logical, that this key binding should work and a direct selection mouse cursor to appear once Alt+Print SysRQ is pressed, however for some reason this is not working (hmm, maybe due to bug) ??

Thanksfully it is always possible to substitute the just assigned gnome-screenshot -a key binding with import -frame /home/hipo/Desktop/screenshot.png

If you have followed literally my article so far and you did tried to place a bind for gnome-screenshot -a, modifty grab-screen-area1 to be something like:

name: grab-screen-area1 command: import -frame /home/hipo/Desktop/screenshot.png

Where modify the path /home/hipo/Desktop/screenshot.png, to wherever you prefer the region screep capture to be stored.

c) bind keys for delayed screenshot

This also a handy binding, especially if you every now and then need to make screenshots of screen with a few secs interval.
Add one more keyboard shortcut;

name: grab-screen-area2 command: gnome-screenshot -d 5

Assign a key to make a screenshot of the active display after a delay of 5 seconds. I prefer Ctrl+F5

Onwards every time you would like to make an area screenshot, just use the defined keys:

Ctrl+F4 - will prompt you interactively for the precise type of screenshot you would like to take Ctrl+Print SysRQ - will prompt you for a direct area to select and once selected will immediately screenshot it Ctrl+F5 - would do delayed screenshot of entire screen after a delay of 5 seconds

4. Adding border and drop shadow effects with gnome-screenshot Actually, there is plenty of interesting things to do with Screenshots which I never thought were possible.
While reading gnome-screenshot's man page, I've stumbled to an interesting argument:

-e, --effect=EFFECT, Add an effect to the outside of the screenshot border. EFFECT can be ``shadow'' (adding drop shadow), ``border'' (adding rectangular space around the screenshot) or ``none'' (no effect). Default is ``none''.

This would have been a nice feature but as of time of writting this article, untofrtunately it is not working in GNOME 2.30.2. I'm not sure if this is a local Debian bug, however I suspect on other Linux distributions with different GNOME build configuration, this features might be working well. My guess here is drop shadow effect and border effect are not working because, gnome-screenshot was compiled without (support for ImageMagick?).
Anyways the way the feature is supposed to be work is by invoking commands:
:

hipo@noah:~$ gnome-screenshot --border-effect=shadow hipo@noah:~$ nome-screenshot --border-effect=border

The same basic effects, are also available through GIMP's menus:

Image -> Effects

5. Setting default behaviour of gnome-screenshot in gconf-editor GConf (Gnome config registry db)

Experienced, GNOME users should already know about the existence of gconf-editor and the gnome registry database. For those who have don't, coming from MS-Windows background gconf-editor is GNOME (graphical environment) equivalent to Microsoft Windows registry regedit command

gconf-editor can be used to atune the way the screenshots are taken by default. To do so, launch gconf-editor cmd and follow to sub-structure:

/ -> apps -> gnome-screenshot

gconf-editor GNOME screenshot border effect none default gnome-screenshot gnome behaviour

The settings in above screenshot are configurations which are used by default by gnome-screenshot, right after install.
You can play with the options to change the default way PrintScreen SysRQ key press will take screenshots.
Here is one example for changing the gnome-screenshot default GNOME behaviour:

GConf Editor GNOME screenshot, border effect drop shadow and include border option set on Linux Debian

As you can see in above screenshot, I've changed my default gnome-screenshot snap taking to include a drop shadow effect:
Name | Value border_effect | shadow include_border | (tick on) last_save_directory | file://home/hipo/Desktop

As you see you can also control, where by default gnome-screenshot will save its screenshots, by default, its saved in $HOME/Desktop
. If you prefer some custom directory to only contain Screenshots taken for instance $HOME/Screenshots, create the directory:
hipo@noah:~$ mkdir ~/Screenshots

and then change the value for last_save_directory gconf var:

last_save_directory | file://home/hipo/Screenshots

Once settings are applied screenshots with Print Screen SysRQ key will be made with Shadow Border effect and saved in /home/hipo/Screenshots

Strangely enough, changing gnome-screenshot default screenshotting values to include screenshot effects like drop shadow or screenshot border effect works just fine.
Even though gnome-screenshot –border-effect=shadow and gnome-screenshot –border-effect=border doesn't directly affect the current screenshot to be made, I've later noticed writting this two commands in the gnome-terminal, does change the border settings for gconf-editor screenshot border.

If you enjoyed, this article and you intend to become "a professional screnshotter" :), you might also enjoy my two other articles:

Happy screenshotting 😉

Tags: Alt, area, Auto, Binding, body, border, BSD, command, consequential, cursor, Desktop, Display, downside, Draft, drop, exact screen, f2, feature, freebsd, GIMP, Gnome, graphic editor, home shell, image manipulation, import, import command, JPEG, key, line image, Linux, minute, noah, none, png file, Print, quot, Rila, scr, screen, screen snapshot, screenshot, secs, selection, shadow, shell variable, snapshot, something, swiss army knife, sysrq, time, tiny area, two ways, type, Ubuntu, use, way
Posted in Linux, Linux and FreeBSD Desktop, System Administration, Various | No Comments »

Fix to mail forwarding error “Received-SPF: none (domain.com: domain at maildomain does not designate permitted sender hosts)

Tuesday, October 18th, 2011

I’m Configuring a new Exim server to relay / forward mail via a remote Qmail SMTP server
Even though I configured properly the exim to forward via my relaying mail server with host mail.domain.com, still the mail forwarding from the Exim -> Qmail failed to work out with an error:

Fix to mail forwarding error "Received-SPF: none (domain.com: domain at maildomain does not designate permitted sender hosts)

I pondered for a while on what might be causing this “mysterous” error just to realize I forgot to add the IP address of my Exim mail server in the Qmail relay server

To solve the error I had to add in /etc/tcp.smtp on my Qmail server a record for my Exim server IP address xx.xx.xx.xx, like so:

debian-server:~# echo 'xx.xx.xx.xx:allow,RELAYCLIENT="",QS_SPAMASSASSIN="0"' >> /etc/tcp.smtp

The QS_SPAMASSASSIN=”0″ as you might have guessed instructs Qmail not to check the received mails originating from IP xx.xx.xx.xx with spamassassin.

Finally on the Qmail server to load up the new tcp.smtp settings I had to rebuild /etc/tcp.smtp.cdb and restart qmail :

– reload qmail cdb

linux-server:/var/qmail# qmailctl cdb Reloaded /etc/tcp.smtp. - restart qmail
linux-server:/var/qmail# qmailctl restart Restarting qmail: * Stopping qmail-smtpdssl. * Stopping qmail-smtpd. * Sending qmail-send SIGTERM and restarting. * Restarting qmail-smtpd. * Restarting qmail-smtpdssl.

This solved the issue and now mails are forwarded without problems via the Qmail SMTPD.

Tags: cdb, com, Configuring, domain, exim, forward mail, Forwarding, hosts, issue, Linux, mail, mail domain, mail server, none, Qmail, qmailctl, qs, quot, quot quot, relay, relay server, RELAYCLIENT, relaying mail, sender, Sending, server ip address, serverTo, SMTPD, smtpThe, spamassassin, SPF, var, while
Posted in Everyday Life, Linux, Qmail, System Administration, Various | No Comments »

Fix vnstat error “eth0: Not enough data available yet.” on Debian GNU / Linux

Monday, November 21st, 2011

Vnstat GNU Linux console terminal traffic statistics logo

After installing vnstat to keep an eye on server IN and OUT traffic on a Debian Squeeze server. I used the usual:

debian:~# vnstat -u -i eth0

In order to generate the initial database for the ethernet interface used by vnstat to generate its statistics.

However even though /var/lib/vnstat/eth0 got generated with above command statistics were not further generated and trying to check them with command:

debian:~# vnstat --days

Returned the error message:

eth0: Not enough data available yet.

To solve the eth0: Not enough data available yet. message I tried completely removing vnstat package by purging the package e.g.:

debian:~# apt-get --yes remove vnstat ... debian:~# dpkg --purge vnstat ...

Even though dpkg –purge was invoked /var/lib/vnstat/ refused to be removed since it contained vnstat’s db file eth0

Therefore I deleted by hand before installing again vnstat:

debian:~# rm -rf /var/lib/vnstat/

Tried installing once again vnstat “from scratch”:

debian:~# apt-get install vnstat ...

After that I tried regenerating the vnstat db file eth0 once again with vnstat -u -i eth0 , hoping this should fix the error but it was no go and after that the error:

debian:~# vnstat --hours eth0: Not enough data available yet.

persisted.

I checked in Debian bugs mailing lists and I found, some people complaining about the same issue with some suggsetions on how the error can be work arouned, anyways none of the suggestions worked for me.

Being irritated I further removed / purged once again vnstat and decided to give it a try by installing vnstat from source
As of time of writting this article, the latest stable vnstat version is 1.11 .
Therefore to install vnstat from source I issued:

debian:~# cd /usr/local/src debian:/usr/local/src# wget http://humdi.net/vnstat/vnstat-1.11.tar.gz ... debian:/usr/local/src# tar -zxvvf vnstat-1.11.tar.gz debian:/usr/local/src# cd vnstat-1.11 debian:/usr/local/src/vnstat-1.11# make & make all & make install debian:/usr/local/src/vnstat-1.11# cp examples/vnstat.cron /etc/cron.d/vnstat debian:/usr/local/src/vnstat-1.11# vnstat -u -i eth0 Error: Unable to read database "/var/lib/vnstat/eth0". Info: -> A new database has been created.

As a last step I put on root crontab to execute:

debian:~# crontab -u root -e

*/5 * * * * /usr/bin/vnstat -u >/dev/null 2>&1

This line updated vnstat db eth0 database, every 5 minutes. After the manual source install vnstat works, just fine 😉

Tags: amp, bin, bugs, cron, debian gnu, dpkg, error message, eth, ethernet interface, eye, file, GNU, gnu linux, hourseth, initial database, installdebian, lib, Linux, none, package, quot, Returned, rf, root, scratch, squeeze, statistics, tar, tar gz, time, traffic, vnstatdebian, wget, work, zxvvf
Posted in Linux, System Administration, Various | 6 Comments »

How to make pptp VPN connection to use IPMI port (IPKVM / Web KVM) on Debian Linux

Wednesday, July 27th, 2011

If you have used KVM, before you certainly have faced the requirement asked by many Dedicated Server Provider, for establishment of a PPTP (mppe / mppoe) or the so called Microsoft VPN tunnel to be able to later access via the tunnel through a Private IP address the web based Java Applet giving control to the Physical screen, monitor and mouse on the server.

This is pretty handy as sometimes the server is not booting and one needs a further direct access to the server physical Monitor.
Establishing the Microsoft VPN connection on Windows is a pretty trivial task and is easily achieved by navigating to:

Properties > Networking (tab) > Select IPv4 > Properties > Advanced > Uncheck "Use default gateway on remote network".

However achiving the same task on Linux seemed to be not such a trivial, task and it seems I cannot find anywhere information or precise procedure how to establish the necessery VPN (ptpt) ms encrypted tunnel.

Thanksfully I was able to find a way to do the same tunnel on my Debian Linux, after a bunch of experimentation with the ppp linux command.

To be able to establish the IPMI VPN tunnel, first I had to install a couple of software packages, e.g.:

root@linux:~# apt-get install ppp pppconfig pppoeconf pptp-linux

Further on it was necessery to load up two kernel modules to enable the pptp mppe support:

root@linux:~# modprobe ppp_mppe
root@linux:~# modprobe ppp-deflate

I’ve also enabled the modules to be loading up during my next Linux boot with /etc/modules to not be bother to load up the same modules after reboot manually:

root@linux:~# echo ppp_mppe >> /etc/modules root@linux:~# echo ppp-deflate >> /etc/modules

Another thing I had to do is to enable the require-mppe-128 option in /etc/ppp/options.pptp.
Here is how:

root@linux:~# sed -e 's$#require-mppe-128$require-mppe-128$g' /etc/ppp/options.pptp >> /tmp/options.pptp root@linux:~# mv /tmp/options.pptp /etc/ppp/options.pptp root@linux:~# echo 'nodefaultroute' >> /etc/ppp/options.pptp

In order to enable debug log for the ppp tunnel I also edited /etc/syslog.conf and included the following configuration inside:

root@linux:~# vim /etc/syslog.conf *.=debug; news.none;mail.none -/var/log/debug *.=debug;*.=info; *.=debug;*.=info; root@linux:~# killall -HUP rsyslogd

The most important part of course is the command line with ppp command to connect to the remote IP via the VPN tunnel ;), here is how I achieved that:

root@linux:~# pppd debug require-mppe pty "pptp ipmiuk2.net --nolaunchpppd" file /etc/ppp/options.pptp user My_Dedi_Isp_Given_Username password The_Isp_Given_Password

This command, brings up the ppp interface and makes the tunnel between my IP and the remote VPN target host.

Info about the tunnel could be observed with command:

ifconfig -a ppp ppp0 Link encap:Point-to-Point Protocol inet addr:10.20.254.32 P-t-P:10.20.0.1 Mask:255.255.255.255 UP POINTOPOINT RUNNING NOARP MULTICAST MTU:1496 Metric:1 RX packets:7 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0 TX packets:12 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0 collisions:0 txqueuelen:3 RX bytes:70 (70.0 B) TX bytes:672 (672.0 B)

One more thing before I could finally access the IPMI’s web interface via the private IP was to add routing to the private IP address via the tunnel other side IP address:

# 10.20.0.1 P-t-P IP address ip route add 10.20.1.124/32 dev ppp0

Now logically one would thing the Web interface to login and use the Java Applet to connect to the server would be accessible but no IT wasn’t !

It took me a while to figure out what is the problem and if not the guys in irc.freenode.net ##networking helped me I would never really find out why http://10.20.1.124/ and https://10.20.1.124/ were inaccessible.

Strangely enough both ports 80 and 443 were opened on 10.20.1.124 and it seems like working, however though I can ping both 10.20.1.124 and 10.20.0.1 there was no possible way to access 10.20.1.124 with TCP traffic.

Routing to the Microsoft Tunnel was fine as I’ve double checked all was fine except whether I tried accessing the IPMI web interface the browser was trying to open the URL and keeps opening like forever.

Thanksfully after a long time of futile try outs, a tip was suggested by a good guy in freenode nick named ne2k

To make the TCP connection in the Microsoft Tunnel work and consequently be able to access the webserver on the remote IPMI host, one needs to change the default MTU set for the ppp0 tunnel interface.
Here is how:

ip link set ppp0 mtu 1438

And tadam! It’s done now IPKVM is accessible via http://10.20.1.124 or https://10.20.1.124 web interface. Horay ! 🙂

Tags: connection, control, debian linux, default gateway, direct access, encrypted tunnel, establishment, gateway, info, information, IPMI, Java, java applet, kernel modules, kvm, linux boot, log, Microsoft, microsoft vpn, modprobe, necessery, none, ppp, ppp linux, ppp options, precise procedure, private ip address, ptpt, root, root linux, screen, server provider, software packages, tab, tmp, trivial task, VPN, vpn connection
Posted in Linux, System Administration | 1 Comment »

How to execute command to Multiple Servers / Establishing passwordless SSH key authentication on 50+ servers

Saturday, July 9th, 2011

Open SSH no password login with SSH key pair

These days, I’m managing many, many servers. The servers are ordered in few groups. Each of the servers in the server groups contains identical hardware, identical Linux distribution as well as identical configuration.

Since managing multiple servers normally, takes a lot of time, applying changes to every single host loosing time in looking for the password is not a a good idea.

Thus I was forced to start managing the servers in a cluster like fashion, by executing commands on a server group using a simple for bash loop etc.
To be able to use this mass execution of course I needed away either to pass on the server group password just once and issue a command on the whole server group or use a passwordless authentication ssh key pair.

Before I switched to using SSH keys to authenticate passwordless, I first tried to use a bit of tools which were claimed to be helpful in the task of executing the same commands to a group of servers. I have tested the tools pssh, sudossh and dsh but none of them was capable of logging in and executing a bunch of commands to the group of remote servers.

I gave my best to make pssh work on Debian and CentOS distributions, but even though all my experiemnts and efforts to make the so much talked about pssh to work were bad!

I’ve seen also another tool called Cluster SSH which was said to be capable of issuing commands simultaneously on a number of hosts.

Cluster SSH looked promising, however the only problem was it’s supposed to run under xterm or some kind of X graphics based terminal and therefore it did not matched my desired.

Finally I got pissed of trying these mostly useless mass command linux server administration tools and decided to come COME BACK TO THE PRIMITIVE 😉 and use the good all known, well established method of Passwordless SSH server login with ssh public/private DSA key auth.

Therefore here the problem come to this to generate one single DSA ssh authenticatoin key and replicate/copy it to the whole group of 50 servers.

These task initially seemed quite complex, but with the help of a one liner bash shell script, it seemed to be a piece of cake 😉

To achieve this task, all I had to do is:
a. Generate an SSH key with ssh-keygen command
and
b. Use a one liner shell script to copy the generated id_rsa.pub file, to each server.
and
c. Create a file containig all server IP addresses to pass to the shell script.

Here are the two lines of code you will have to use to achieve these tasks:

1. Generate a DSA ssh key

linux:~# ssh-keygen -t dsa

Generating public/private dsa key pair.
Enter file in which to save the key (/home/hipo/.ssh/id_dsa): y
Enter passphrase (empty for no passphrase):
Enter same passphrase again:
Your identification has been saved in y.
Your public key has been saved in y.pub.
The key fingerprint is:
b0:28:48:a2:60:65:5a:ed:1b:9d:6c:ff:5f:37:03:e3 hipo@www.pc-freak.net

Here press enter few times and be sure not to fill in any passphrase when asked ’bout it.

2. Create a file containing all server IPs

Just create a file let’s say server-list.txt and make sure you include all the server IPs, one per line.

3. Use the following little script to upload the newly generated id_dsa.pub to the server list

linux:~# while read line; do ssh-copy-id -i ~/.ssh/id_dsa.pub root@"$line"; done < server-list.txt

Now you will have to paste the server password for about 50 times (if you have a file with 50 servers), however the good news is it will be just a wait and paste 50 times, if the servers are all configured to have the same root administrator pass (which was the case with me).

So until you do the boring pasting part, you can start up a nice music and enjoy 😉
Cheers 😉

Tags: administration tools, authentication, BACK, CentOS, course, distributions, DSA, dsh, fashion, file, hipo, host, hosts, Linux, linux distribution, mass, mass execution, none, passphrase, password, PRIMITIVE, pssh, root, server administration, server group, server groups, server login, servers, Shell, ssh server, terminal, time, tool, work, xterm
Posted in Linux, Linux and FreeBSD Desktop, Programming, System Administration | 2 Comments »

How to enable Domain Keys (DKIM) in Qmail toaster based mail server install on Debian Linux

Wednesday, May 25th, 2011

Qmail dkim domain keys logo

Recently the Emails sent by one of the Qmail mail servers running on a Debian host started suddenly delivering in Spam folder in both Gmail.com and yahoo.com public mail services.

This is pretty nasty as many of the websites which used the local qmail server to deliver emails concerning subscriptions and other kind of services provided by the websites started ending in Span and thus many of the users who used their Yahoo Mail account and Google Mail – gmail accounts was unable to read emails mailed by the various websites forms and scripts which were sending emails.
You can imagine the negative effect all this “minor” mail issues had on website visitors count and the overall websites functionality.
To come up with some kind of solution to this mail issues, I did quite a lot of research to understand if Yahoo and Google Mail services has some kind of mail server delist form or some reporting service where one can delist a specific mail server as a spammer one or get some kind of help, but unfortunately it seems neither google nor yahoo has any kind of web based way to remove hosts or ip addresses of legit mail servers who has mistakenly been recognized as spam servers.

During my efforts to find a solution to the situation I red a lot of posts and forums online as well as Google’s Bulk Sender Guidelines, none if it was too helpful though.

The QMAIL server had a proper:
1. MX Record 2. TXT SPF records 3. PTR Record 4. There are proper correct mail message headers 5. Proper mails charset and encoding 6. The mail server IP is not listed anywhere in any mail blacklists (e.g. www.mxtoolbox.com/blacklists.aspx / spamhaus.org) 7. A correct SMTP greeting which matched the mail server domain name

The only thing which was missing on the mail server (checked against Google’s Bulk Sender Guidelines) was a properly configured DKIM and Domainkeys.

Thus in order to get around the situation I went the way and configured the qmail server to include and send in the mail header also Domain Keys

In this article I will briefly explain step by step how I configured Domain keys (DKIM) signing of my mails:

There are few ways domain keys signing can be implemented with Qmail.

1. By patching qmail binaries to support domain keys signing

I wanted to omit any interventions concerning the well running qmail install so I decided not to go this way.
Plus there are plenty of add-ons for qmail and as I have no time to test them the idea not to temper the existing qmail installation looked wise to me.
2. Use a wrapprer script around qmail-remote that invokes externally domainkeys binaries

This kind of solution was fitting me better and therefore I took this route to enable my qmail DKIM signing.

There are few approaches one can take described online:

Use a perl script wrapper which does does the DKIM signing (http://manuel.mausz.at/coding/qmail-dkim/)

I tried using the qmail-dkim-0.2.pl wrapper script following the exact steps described to be fulfilled to enable my outgoing mails dkim signature, however for some reason after substituting the qmail-remote with qmail-dkim.pl and setting the proper permissions, my outgoing mails failed completely and each mail I sent was returned back by the qmail MAILER-DAEMON

Use a bash shell script wrapper in combination with libdomainkeys‘s with a Mail-DKIM-0.39 .

I gave a try to this approach and thanksfully it worked after a bit of struggle to tune it up.

Here is what exactly I had to do to in order to have the domain keys signing to work using the above described qmail-remote.sh shell script wrapper

1. Install openssl related required debian packages

debian:~# apt-get install openssl libcrypt-openssl-rsa-perl libcrypt-openssl-bignum-perl libmail-dkim-perl ...

2. Create necessery directories and RSA key pairs for DomainKeys

debian:~# mkdir -p /etc/domainkeys/mydomain.com debian:~# cd /etc/domainkeys/mydomain.com debian:/etc/domainkeys/mydomain.com# openssl genrsa -out rsa.private_default 768 debian:/etc/domainkeys/mydomain.com# openssl rsa -in rsa.private_default -out rsa.public_default -pubout -outform PEM debian:/etc/domainkeys/mydomain.com# ln -sf rsa.private_default default debian:/etc/domainkeys/mydomain.com# touch selector debian:/etc/domainkeys/mydomain.com# echo 'default' >> selector

Where mydomain.com is the mail domain I need the DKIM signatures for.

I have written a small shell script which automates the task of adding new domainkeys directories and generating the RSA keys with openssl, you can download my generate_qmail_domainkey_rsa automator script here

3. Set proper permissions and owner to /etc/domainkeys directory

debian:~# chmod -R 0600 /etc/domainkeys debian:~# chown -R qmailr:qmail /etc/domainkeys

4. Generate public domain key for DNS TXT records

debian:/etc/domainkeys/mydomain.com# grep -v ^- rsa.public_default | perl -e 'while(<>){chop;$l.=$_;}print "k=rsa; t=y; p=$l;n";'

“k=rsa; t=y; p=MHwwDQYJKoZIhvcNAQEBBQADawAwaAJhAMlDcYMrpWP9ouQOlFVtCHcFY
+gxrSQ6SegYeP4eeG7NECT/3jBqDtxANIVhaS9ASkEO4yNisGu4yX/DRclTm
nPWknoDtCDiD7IFEzT37qn1JLzcuknTncmFBFMDRUJq6wIDAQAB;”

The above key is used in next step 5 to set it as a TXT DNS record.

5. Create the DNS records in Name server

With BIND DNS server you need to place a records like:

_domainkey.example.com. IN TXT "k=rsa; t=y; o=-;" default._domainkey.example.com. IN TXT " p=MIGfMA0GCSqGSIb3DQEBAQUAA4GNADCBiQKBgQC2RkvFHbhqM/bVbb kBtZ1cZUSYcjC4q+PWjd1tFopT+HXXR9Ctx7FZ1guX5fGboiwYmhCYdVroI KRM3I48/YyQoXxtn3iYZ086v8BHaNtkcBMY+68JeEQ3K0WQkbqQXp/tsnLY SQW1yXiEo9CywxVdpwH+OY94HxK4fAbw6V11cwIDAQAB"

! The above p= key specified is the one generated in step 5.

6. Download and compile & install Mail-DKIM-0.39 ‘s perl extension

As of time of writting latest Mail-DKIM is ver. 0.39, however it’s a good idea to check and install the latest available version available on http://www.cpan.org

a) Download Mail-DKIM

debian:~# cd /usr/local/src debian:/usr/local/src# wget https://www.pc-freak.net/files/Mail-DKIM-0.39.tar.gz ... 2011-05-25 15:09:37 (264 KB/s) - `Mail-DKIM-0.39.tar.gz' saved [87375/87375] ... b) Compile & Install Mail-DKIM

debian:/usr/local/src# chown -R hipo:hipo Mail-DKIM-0.39 debian:/usr/local/src# cd Mail-DKIM-0.39

debian:/usr/local/src/Mail-DKIM-0.39# su hipo
debian:/usr/local/src/Mail-DKIM-0.39$ perl Makefile.PL
debian:/usr/local/src/Mail-DKIM-0.39$ make
…
debian:/usr/local/src/Mail-DKIM-0.39$ exit
debian:/usr/local/src/Mail-DKIM-0.39# make install
debian:/usr/local/src/Mail-DKIM-0.39# cd script
debian:/usr/local/src/Mail-DKIM-0.39/script# cp -rpf * /usr/local/bin; cd /usr/local/src

Note that the dkimsign.pl which is in the Mail-DKIM-0.39 is a very important tool used later by the qmail-remote wrapper script. This perl script is copied in the last command issued in above chunk of code.
In the up-command lines I use my unprivileged username hipo to compile, here use any non-root user is appropriate.
For instance it’s possible that the cpan user is used as a compile time user, I was lazy to configure CPAN thus I choose to use my normal unprivileged user.

c) configure rsa domain key paths in dkimsing.pl

Another thing to do here is to make sure the /usr/local/bin/dkimsign.pl which was just recently installed has a correct set location for it’s KeyFile variable.
This vailable is in the script is located online 64, I changed it to include my rsa domain key file, after I changed it, now it looks like so:

KeyFile => "/etc/domainkeys/mydomain.com/default"

7. Download and install libdomainkeys

a) Download libdomainkeys
For latest version of libdomainkeys make sure you check on http://domainkeys.sourceforge.net/

debian:/usr/local/src# wget https://www.pc-freak.net/files/libdomainkeys-0.69.tar.gz debian:/usr/local/src# tar -zxvvf libdomainkeys-0.69.tar.gz ... debian:/usr/local/src# chown -R hipo:hipo libdomainkeys-0.69 debian:/usr/local/src# cd libdomainkeys-0.69; su hipo

b) Compile and install libdomainkeys binaries

debian:/usr/local/src/libdomainkeys-0.69$ echo '-lresolv' > dns.lib debian:/usr/local/src/libdomainkeys-0.69$ make clean & & make debian:/usr/local/src/libdomainkeys-0.69$ exit debian:/usr/local/src/libdomainkeys-0.69# cp -rpf dktest dknewkey expected makeheader /usr/local/bin/

There is a note to make here, one of the programs part of libdomainkeys called dnstest is not compiled while doing make for unknown reasons?!
I was not able to compile manually dnstest either using gcc like so:

debian:/usr/local/src/libdomainkeys-0.69$ gcc -o dnstest dnstest.c dnstest.c: In function 'main': dnstest.c:11: warning: incompatible implicit declaration of built-in function 'strle' /tmp/ccH78KZ1.o: In function 'main': dnstest.c:(.text+0x2b): undefined reference to 'dns_text' collect2: ld returned 1 exit status

I have absolutely no clue why it fails o_O, but it doesn’t matter since I figured out that domainkeys header signature is properly set even without dnstest.

Let me mark here that echo ‘-lresolv’ > dns.lib you see in above code chunk is absolutely necessery in order to be able to compile libdomainkeys on Debian based distributions. If the ‘-lresolv > dns.lib’ is omitted the libdomainkeys build fails with error:

gcc -DBIND_8_COMPAT -O2 -o dktest dktest.o -L. -ldomainkeys -lcrypto `cat dns.lib` `cat socket.lib` ./libdomainkeys.a(dns_txt.o): In function `dns_text': dns_txt.c:(.text+0x2d): undefined reference to `__res_query' dns_txt.c:(.text+0xc4): undefined reference to `__dn_expand' dns_txt.c:(.text+0x184): undefined reference to `__dn_expand' collect2: ld returned 1 exit status make: *** [dktest] Error 1

8. Install libdkim (source of the libdkimtest binary later used by qmail-remote wrapper script)

debian:/usr/local/src# su hipo debian:/usr/local/src$ wget https://www.pc-freak.net/files/qmail/libdkim-1.0.19.zip debian:/usr/local/src$ wget https://www.pc-freak.net/files/qmail/libdkim-1.0.19-linux.patch debian:/usr/local/src$ wget https://www.pc-freak.net/files/qmail/libdkim-1.0.19-extra-options.patch debian:/usr/local/src$ unzip libdkim-1.0.19.zip debian:/usr/local/src$ cd libdkim/src debian:/usr/local/src/libdkim/src$ patch -p2 < ../../libdkim-1.0.19-linux.patch debian:/usr/local/src/libdkim/src$ patch -p2 < ../../libdkim-1.0.19-extra-options.patch debian:/usr/local/src/libdkim/src$ make && exit debian:/usr/local/src/libdkim/src# make install

The above install will install libdkimtest binary, used by the wrapper script to do the actual DKIM-Signature, the binary gets installed in /usr/local/bin/libdkimtest.
Here is a link to patched version of libdkim 1.0.19 , to use it instead of patching as described above download the archive untar and do a make clean && make && install

9. Download qmail-remote.wrapper (qmail-remote wrapper shell script) and set it to wrap qmail-remote

a) Copy original qmail-remote to qmail-remote.orig

debian:~# cd /var/qmail/bin debian:/var/qmail/bin# cp -rpf qmail-remote qmail-remote.orig

b) Download qmail-remote.wrapper script

Here is the qmail-remote.sh wrapper script that worked for me
Originally the wrapper script is taken from http://www.memoryhole.net/qmail/, big thanks to Russ Nelson for writting the awesome wrapper script.

debian:~# cd /var/qmail/bin/ debian:/var/qmail/bin# wget https://www.pc-freak.net/files/qmail-remote.wrapper Saving to: `qmail-remote.wrapper'

100%[============================>] 1,164 –.-K/s in 0s

2011-05-25 15:46:54 (142 MB/s) – `qmail-remote.wrapper’ saved [1164/1164]

c) Set proper permissions to the qmail-remote.wrapper script

The permissions of qmail-remote should look like so:

-rwxr-xr-x 1 root qmail 1164 2011-05-25 11:05 /var/qmail/bin/qmail-remote*

To set this permissions I used:

debian:/var/qmail/bin# chmod 755 qmail-remote.wrapper debian:/var/qmail/bin# chown qmailq:qmail qmail-remote.wrapper

d) Create /var/domainkeys directory (necessery for proper qmail remote wrapper script operations)

debian:~# mkdir /var/domainkeys debian:~# chown -R qmailr:qmail /var/domainkeys debian:~# chmod 700 -R /var/domainkeys

e) Substitute original qmail-remote binary with the wrapper script:

debian:~# qmailctl stop Stopping qmail... qmail-send qmail-smtpd debian:/var/qmail/bin# cp -rpf qmail-remote.wrapper qmail-remote debian:/var/qmail/bin# qmailctl start Starting qmail

10. Send test email to @gmail.com or @yahoo.com to test if DKIM-Signature is included in the mail header

I used my installed webmail interface squirrelmail and send a test email to my home mail server and as well as to yahoo.com

The headers of the email looked fine, here is how my DKIM signed mail headers looked like:

From - Thu May 26 15:31:37 2011 X-Account-Key: account11 X-UIDL: 1306413169.97071.pcfreak,S=1244 X-Mozilla-Status: 0001 X-Mozilla-Status2: 00000000 X-Mozilla-Keys:

Return-Path: <root@mail.mydomain.com> Delivered-To: hipo@www.pc-freak.net Received: (qmail 97068 invoked by uid 1048); 26 May 2011 12:32:49 -0000 Received: from mail.mydomain.com (83.170.100.100) by mail.www.pc-freak.net with SMTP; 26 May 2011 12:32:49 -0000 Comment: DomainKeys? See http://domainkeys.sourceforge.net/ DomainKey-Signature: a=rsa-sha1; q=dns; c=nofws; s=default; d=mydomain.com;

b=ZnTDdUexnt8fmuHbVNXIC+JDvNLYO1zjzlI3PODe3e1oMS5dRHzVGujrS1
Yk0qqs2oW7DseZg/iHE9KOLZBeInksOnsmLsDBq1Lvzfv2xejikR52LBg6a/uK
ewECJy4jQA4cwMJ/qUxmK8EDwbgj7jqCVB95FK3Z5EdR4HoaqGQ=;

h=Received:Date:Message-ID:From:To:Subject;
DKIM-Signature: v=1; a=rsa-sha1; c=relaxed; d=mydomain.com; h=date
:message-id:from:to:subject; s=default; q=
/etc/domainkeys/mydomain.com/default;
bh=G32d6y8oiLehRzcuIWr9s
S+Jy+g=;
b=TPW5VXq3vlOUf1T7lfxQC00MN0kPJxaASE/gq7LbHyV1Gj/Xj+GLF
UN6hYVeKnsoKKeV108JVGcfvfTaLogsxGyS9XzUXKlLtESBj4wr/DAOQy
OcHCj75
bEOOd9nv+RehOYinXGmx0JUZpCNHGndNZ1AEabbVEiX/NQAL7iKDnE
=
Received: (qmail 28771 invoked by uid 0); 26 May 2011 12:31:30 -0000
Date: 26 May 2011 12:31:30 -0000
Message-ID: <20110526123130.28770.qmail@mail.mydomain.com>
From: root@mail.mydomain.com
To: hipo@www.pc-freak.net
Subject: testing 123

baklavavav
tatta

Notice the two lines in the above pasted header:

DomainKey-Signature: a=rsa-sha1; q=dns; c=nofws;
DKIM-Signature: v=1; a=rsa-sha1; c=relaxed; d=mydomain.com; h=date

This clearly shows that now both Domainkeys and DKIM are being applied to outgoing mail messages 🙂

However to be completely 100% sure the domainkeys and DKIM signing is correct, you should check the online websites which offer a mail domainkey check and DKIM signature check, an example for such a website that I used in order to test that my SSL RSA Domainkeys and DKIM correspond correctly to the ones specified in the DNS server is:
here

The idea for writting this small guide on configuring Domainkeys with Qmail and Linux is seriously inspired by Mariuz’s Blog post dkim wrapper that works using dk Hope this is helpful to somebody, it took me quite a while until I come up with the exact steps of a workable install of Domain Keys, there are so many tutorials and ways to implement this that at a certain point it’s a hell.
Like always with Qmail, even simple things are so complex, the only good thing about qmail is once you make it work well, it works forever … until the next time you will have to spend few days trying to figure it out 😉

I’m very much looking to hear if people followed the tutorial succesfully.

Any feedback concerning the article is mostly welcome!
Cheers!

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Our beloved brother in Christ Ipodqkon Georgi (Atonski / from Mount Athos) has passed away

Sunday, May 22nd, 2011

Ipodqkon Georgi Atonski from Dobrich

Below I post the only picture I have of this beloved brother in Christ ipodqkon Georgi You see our brother on the right side of the Metropolitan of Varna and Great Preslav Kiril.
Georgi served as an ipodqkon in the Church Holy Trinity here in Dobrich and was well known and loved by the Church community there.
He also was a really good loving and decent man completely devoted to our Orthodox faith, standing firm in the faith.
He worked for many months in Holy mount Athos as a repair workers cook, where he cooked for about 70 people.

Before he worked in Holy Mount Athos, he used to be a restaurant chef in Sandanski.
Since about 6 or 7 months time he become sick, his assumption for the sickness was that it might be of a bad sploit old food which was consumed by accident by him and the rest of the workers.
He shared with me that all of the workers felt sick after eating it but all of them except him has vomited the food afterwards.

He gets poisoned and urgently transfered back in a hospital in Bulgaria. Consequently he went under a lot of examinations which failed to proof the exact type of sickness he was suffering from.
He was prescribed to eat only fasting food (some bread, apples, oil and a few of other light meals). He was prescribed a lot of medications he tried but none of them really helped him and he on a numerous times has shared with me he is not feeling weel, though I was not really believing his health situation is so severe.

The exact state he was experiencing was infirmity, headaches, skin rushes, he could hardly stay on his foots for more than few hours, as lastly he shared with me.
He also got rashes from most of the food he consumed. His life was a real tragedy as I remember I saw him just 3 weeks ago and he was about to go to Sofia for some examinations.
Even though his hardships in life, he was not loosing faith and believed all that was happening was according to God’s will and did accepted his sickness with humility.
During the about 7 months he spend in sickness he was many times being hospitalized in Hospitals in Dobrich, Varna and Sofia.

In each of the hospitals he spend a couple of weeks on injections and live sustaining medical systems.
During this periods, when he was in his home here in Dobrich somewhere in Balik, he often chatted with me over Skype, giving me good spiritual advices.
He also often called my landline phone to consult on various stuff concerning his problems with his notebook. As in the last days he could only lay and use the computer.
The computer he had was one of the few possessions he had, in his last days he did not have money at all as all of his savings were spend for examinations and drugs…

I remember still one time when I walked with him towards the bus-station and I was in a terrible desperation, being faithless.
He instructed me I should pray and told me not to despair and stop smoking as I was nervously smoking…
He lived a life similar in many ways to the life of the saints. He had a strong love for monasticism and had the desire to either become a monk or priest.
He told me many miraculous things he has seen and heard when he was in holy Mount Athos.

Last time I saw my beloved brother Georgi near the Church saint George (sveti Georgi) and for my grief I behaved partly as an asshole, and I repent I was not behaving better.

In this last time I saw him he shared for his great gratitude for God that he was allowed to visit the holy Lands (Jerusalem) The Holy Sepulchure church in Jerusalem.
Even in this last days, obviously living in infirmity he had his strong dedication to the Church and come to the Church services for Resurrection / (Easter) and was mostly being present on holy liturgies in Sundays.

The last time I saw him in the Church he did the Gospel and red some psalms. He was always serious and looked for the spiritual in everything, very rare kind of person to meet today.
Georgi blessed me with a couple of small icons (two copies of icons of Saint Georgi [Fanailska and Araviiska] miraculous icons from mount Athos as well as an icon picture of the Altar of Holy Sepulchure Jerusalem church), and I pray in front of them when I pray to God.

These are two of the icons brother Georgi give me as a gift and blessing from Holy Mount athos:

Saint Georgi Zographus miraculous making icon

Saint Georgi Zographus Miracle making icon

Saint Georgi Fanuilska Zographus Bulgarian Monastery miracle making icon

My beloved brother in Christ Georgi (God Forgive him / Bog da prosti) has also blessed me with a wonderful digital movie about the Bulgarian monastery in Holy Mount Athos Zographus. The movie about Zographus is explaining thoroughfully the history of the holy cloister and showing the originals of the Holy miraculous icons and monks who spoke about today’s spirituality and what is it to be a monk on holy mount athos (one of the most holy places on earth today).

I know also that Georgi was a wonderful a really talanted cook (even a chief) as he was responsible to take an eye for 6 cooks during his work as chief in Sandanski.
In the just recently passed away Resurrection day, he has cooked an Easter cakes and banica as well as some other meals using a holy mount athos recipee.

After the Resurrection early Holy liturgy was over we ate together with the brothers and sisters from Georgi’s delicious meals praising God and rejoicing for our Lord has Resurrected from the dead…
I will really miss my namesake (adash) as I used to call him often. I just hope one day I would see him again if by God’s grace I’m allowed to enter Heaven.
Just about 1 year ago his mother passed away, then some few years before his father has passed away and now not more than a year after his parents he is gone as well.
When I look over this tragedy it’s really hard to understand it but using the Holy Scriptures, one can easily understand why it happened that way as,

His early departure from this life is according to the words in the Holy Bible in Isaiah 57:1:

The righteous perish, and no one ponders it in his heart; devout men are taken away, and no one understands that the righteous are taken away to be spared from evil.

I hope ipodqkon Georgi will find grace in front of God to pray for me the sinner and the rest of us who’re still living in ours sins on this sinful earth.

As the memory of the righteous lasts forever he will be forever remembered as I believe he was in the number of the rightous …

Please Orthodox Brothers and sisters pray for ipodqkon’s Georgi’s soul that our merciful God forgives him his trespasses and grants him an ever lasting joy with all the saints in the heavenly church, in paradise!

God forgive you our and my beloved brother Georgi! Let your memory last forever. Amen!

Tags: Auto, beloved brother, bread, brother in christ, chef, cook, decent man, dobrich, Draft, exact state, exact type, firm in the faith, georgi, hardships, health situation, Holy, holy trinity, humility, infirmity, ipodqkon, kiril, light meals, Metropolitan, monk, mount athos, none, orthodox faith, pray, Preslav, repair, restaurant chef, Sandanski, skin, spiritual, time, tragedy, Trinity, type, varna
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