The weblog of an IT pro specializing in virtualization, storage, and servers
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As part of the process of trying to clean up all the various accounts and subscriptions and what not that I have out there, I have switched to a new del.icio.us account. You can now find my bookmark list at del.icio.us/slowe.
Does anyone know how to close an old del.icio.us account?
Now that I have Perdition up and running (although not in the way I really wanted; see my post titled “Perdition Working Now”), I’m moving on to setting up an internal news server.
Before I can get the internal news server up and running, though, I must first address the issue of e-mail submissions to these newsgroups. See, right now I can send an e-mail to newsgroupname@domain.com (this is obviously an invalid address) and that message will be posted to the newsgroup. This works well because the mailboxes and the newsgroups live on the same server and the mail gateway can route all messages to this server.
If I setup a separate news server, however, I’ll need some e-mail addresses to be directed to the mail server, but other e-mail addresses (the e-mail addresses for the newsgroups) to a different server altogether. I think that Postfix can do this, but I don’t know that for certain yet. I suspect that the answer lies somewhere in the mystery of virtual_alias_maps, but I just can’t wrap my head around it right now. Of course, it is getting late here so that may explain it.
Have you ever prayed a prayer, only to have God answer that prayer in the most unexpected, most unplanned way possible? Today, on Pentecost Sunday, the day in which we celebrate the giving of the Holy Spirit, God answered a prayer for me. In one of those really weird ways that only make sense when viewed through the eyes of faith, God blessed me with a burden. And through this burden I will have the opportunity to show His love, His grace, and His mercy. Praise the Lord.
Tags: Christianity, Personal
I finally managed to get Perdition working. Still unable to confirm if Mac OS X’s Mail.app supports STARTTLS (my experience thus far says No), I had to resort to using Stunnel to wrap IMAP inside an SSL tunnel, then forward the IMAP traffic to Perdition on the same host. The Perdition proxy then passes the traffic to the back-end mail server. It’s not the solution that I really wanted, but it will do for now. At least the Exchange Server 2003 IMAP server isn’t exposed directly to external networks.
On a slightly related note, the Slipstick Systems web site has a link to an IMAP proxy server that implements STARTTLS as a workaround for Exchange’s lack of native support for STARTTLS. The IMAP proxy can be found at http://www.slipstick.com/files/imapproxysvc.zip. So, if you have an IMAP4 client that supports STARTTLS and want to connect it to Exchange, you can use this IMAP proxy. At least, until Microsoft puts STARTTLS support into Exchange directly.
Tags: Encryption, Exchange, IMAP, Messaging, Microsoft, OSS, Security, SSL
In my experiments with Perdition, I learned a couple of very interesting facts. First, the IMAP4 implementation on Exchange Server 2003 does not support the STARTTLS command, as described in RFC 2595 and re-affirmed in RFC 3501. Instead, Exchange expects an SSL session to be established immediately, and then IMAP is spoken. This is similar to the “smtpd_tls_wrappermode” directive that Postfix supports.
Second, it appears that the Mac OS X Mail application (commonly referred to as Mail.app) also uses this IMAP-over-SSL approach, since I’ve been using Mail.app to connect to Exchange using IMAP with SSL for quite some time. I’m trying to confirm that now, but having precious little luck finding any definitive information one way or the other. If anyone knows for certain, please let me know. I’m going to keep searching.
This is one of those things that just makes me crazy.
Tags: Encryption, Exchange, IMAP, Messaging, Microsoft, Security, SSL, Standards
In my copious spare time (fellow parents out there know this is a joke), I’m working on a couple of miscellaneous technical projects:
Internal news server: I’m having so many problems with NNTP-based access from Unison to Exchange Server 2003 that I’ve decided to setup an internal NNTP server using Linux and INNd. Linux I’m familiar with; INNd is completely new to me. Wish me luck.
IMAP proxy: This would use Perdition to proxy IMAP4S requests to my mail server. I’ll probably have Perdition handle IMAP4S and then pass IMAP to the back-end server, offloading the SSL work to the proxy.
Squid log analysis: I’m looking for a way to parse down the logs from my Squid web cache. Once I find a way to do this, then I can really begin offering Squid and SquidGuard as a content filtering solution to some of my customers.
I’m sure this stuff is probably old hat to some of you out there. Feel free to contribute some helpful information or URLs. I’ll keep you posted on how things proceed with these and other projects as they develop.
Tags: Messaging, Microsoft, Newsgroups, OSS, Web
I believe that we should support adoption as an alternative to abortion. In the absence of a serious medical need to abort a baby, there seems no reason to me to kill a baby when lots of couples would love to adopt that child and raise it as their own. That’s especially true when they can’t have children of their own naturally. Of course, when it comes to a subject like this everyone has their own opinion. That’s OK.
If you believe like I do, then I would encourage you to look into supporting Shaohannah’s Hope. This organization, launched by Steven Curtis Chapman and his wife, Mary Beth Chapman, seeks to encourage adoption as a Christian ministry. It’s something worth praying about.
Tags: Christianity, Personal
I’ve decided to try a weblog of my own. As indicated in the title, I can’t promise regular updates, I can’t promise any consistency in the topics I’ll post about, and I can’t promise that I won’t say something that might offend you.
If you’re OK with all of these caveats, then please read on.
First, some general background about me. I’m an IT professional running my own company, Mercurion Systems, based in the Raleigh, NC area. We’re currently a pretty small company, but hoping to grow in the near future.
I’m also a dad, trying hard with my wife to raise our family. I won’t go into detail on my family here, such as providing names or ages of kids, or anything like that, because (to be perfectly honest) none of you really need to know that kind of information. Suffice it to say that it is a large family and that I am blessed to have them.
And that leads me to my final (and perhaps most important) piece of information, and that is that I am a Christian. That I am going to openly discuss my beliefs and my religion here will probably offend some people, but my Christianity and my faith are interwoven into all that I am and all that I do. It’s impossible to speak honestly here and not involve my faith.
In any event, I hope that something you find here will a) help you solve a technical problem; b) encourage you as a parent; or c) lift you up in your faith. At the very least, it should help you occupy some time.
Tags: Personal
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