Breezy! Site

I hope this experiment in hosting an online site doesn't become too successful since I'm not, after all, an ISP. I suppose if I keep downloadable content to a minimum and don't, for example, allow files to be posted, I should be OK.

I want this site to be an interesting hangout for people that like shooting the breeze about Linux and networking in general. It is a hobbyist site where we share ideas and don't take ourselves too seriously. I'm striving for a light edgy feel... an Internet Cafe kind of thing where we gather and sip a cup' of Jo...."breezy" to be exact!

So fire up your computer, have some Java beans handy, set your sail and have a bit of fun.

Well, no sooner do I observe that the latest version of NoMachine's own X Client doesn't work with their own (also latest version) X Server than they release a patch. I can now say the 2.1.0.9 version of the client works fine. I've tested so far with my Gnome desktop. I'll try it also with KDE.

download it at here

Oh, one more thing. Make sure that you completely uninstall the old version first, even though you aren't prompted to during the new installation. Also, it wouldn't connect properly until after I had rebooted my client computer.

Today I installed KDE 3.5x on my Ubuntu box. Now I have a choice to use either Gnome or KDE X-Windows managers to access the GUI via NoMachine's X Client.

This leads me to my next point:

I am still finding that accessing the GUI on my Ubuntu box is a hit-or-miss affair when I'm on the road. This is probably because I am doing it through an IPSec VPN. I know what you're thinking....that's unnecessary since the NoMachine connection uses SSH (ie: SSL encryption) but I'm not quite ready to expose my X Server to the Internet until I understand what vulnerabilities, if any, there are in the code. I will also note that ironically, the NoMachine 2.1.x client (the latest) cannot connect properly to their own 2.1.x NX Server for Ubuntu. I've seen some commentary on this and it's a shame that they haven't fixed the Debian package for Ubuntu yet as this problem seems to be with this particular distribution. There is a workaround that involves editing some configuration files on the server but this is inelegant to say the least. Luckily the Nomachine 1.5.x client works. I expect that there will be an update to the NX Server to fix this problem "for real". I'm a bit of noob concerning these things and couldn't really be bothered putting a bunch of cludgy workarounds on my own server.

I installed SpamAssassin on my Courier-MTA mail server last week. I have been experimenting with configuring it...again using my friend Google to find references for how to pipe incoming messages through SpamAssassin before they hit my users' mailboxes.

Essentially this involved changing the following enty in the /etc/courier/courierd file:
[begin quote]
# DEFAULTDELIVERY="|| dotforward
# ./Maildir"
#
# Yes, it's two lines long, with an embedded newline. Of course, you can use
# any default local mail delivery instruction in place of ./Maildir.

DEFAULTDELIVERY="|/usr/bin/spamassassin|/usr/bin/maildrop"

Today I installed / configured the Snort IDS on my Unbuntu box. I also configured the SnortSnarf application which is essentially a perl script that creates html-formatted pages from the snort alert file. These pages can be viewed in a standard web browser.

Like many open source programs I found the installation instructions for the various packages quite cryptic, but most of the issues (I'm thinking SnortSnarf here) I was able to deal with using everyone's favourite search engine, Google.

I also created a script, SnortSnarf.cron, which is executed by the cron daemon every 1/2 hour. SnortSnarf runs only on demand, so that's what I'm doing..."demanding" that it runs every 1/2 hour. I've bookmarked the SnortSnarf html pages in my web browser.

This is now my 2nd day in experimenting with the Drupal Content Management System (CMS). While I am by no means an expert on the PHP language on which Drupal's engine relies, I have found its modularity and configurability to be absolutely awesome.

I read about Drupal for the 1st time in Linux Journal magazine (sounds geeky, doesn't it?). Their whole site is hosted on Drupal. If it's good enough for those gurus then it's good enough for me. Besides, the price is right.....FREE!

Hooray for open source!

/Eric

This is my first attempt at a website that I am likely to keep. It is hosted on an Ubuntu 6.10 "Edgy Eft" Linux box. It is a fairly modest platform, running a Pentium III @ 1GHz and 384 MB RAM with a 250 GB PATA IDE hard drive.

I have several other services running on this platform including:
NoMachine X-Server
Courier MTA (S/IMAP, S/POP3, S/ESMTP)
Pure-FTP
SSH Server
FreeRadius AAA server
MySQL Database Server
SpamAssassin

I'm a hobbyist, but an advanced one. I'm using this forum to advance my skills and gather knowledge and comments from the greater networking and Linux communities.

I have been playing with Ubuntu for several weeks now. 6.06 LTS "Dapper Drake" was the current release of the Ubuntu distribution but there's news! Ubuntu has just released 6.10 (October 26th). While it's not available, at least for now, with long term support (LTS), it *does* feature the latest 2.6.17 Linux kernel and has been absolutely rock solid for me.

You can check out the new release at www.ubuntu.org
Forums can be found at www.ubuntuforums.org

regards

Eric
webmaster and hobbyist
eric@breezy.ca
www.breezy.ca