Entries in Life

Ok, it's been a couple of weeks since I posted the 64bit Linux installer for Google Gears. And some people have asked for the diff or a smaller installer. Fair enough. There they are.

The directions for compiling your own are simple enough. Here is a cut-n-paste list of directions:

svn co http://gears.googlecode.com/svn/trunk gears
cd gears
curl http://mah.everybody.org/gears.diff | patch -p0
chmod +x third_party/gecko_1.9/linux/gecko_sdk/bin/xpidl
cd gears
make

If you look at the diff, you'll see there is nothing particularly 64bit-ish about it. Its mostly just fixing warnings and declarations.

So the real question I have is: Why doesn't Google offer 64bit builds?

(Now, if only I could come up with an Ubuntu package for this…)

Often, when setting up email on a server, you want to receive email from local processes (cron jobs, etc) but don't want email accounts to be abused by spammers.

For example, on Ubuntu systems you might have a cron job that runs as www-data that you want to get mail from, but you don't want spammers sending email to www-data@example.com. I just had a client ask me to fix this problem for them, so I thought I'd share the solution I came up with.

Typically, the /etc/aliases file directs mail from all these extra accounts (like www-data, nobody, etc) to root and you're expected to set up an forwarder for root (e.g. mah@example.com).

Instead of directing mail for all these accounts to root, I created a locked out account. The only purpose of this account is to verify that only locally generated email is sent on to the end recipient. No more Viagra spam for www-data@example.com!

To set up the locked out account:

$ sudo /usr/sbin/useradd localmail
$ sudo /usr/sbin/usermod -L -s /dev/null localmail
$ echo '"|exec /usr/bin/procmail"' | sudo -u localmail tee ~localmail/.forward
$ echo <<EOF | sudo -u localmail tee ~localmail/.procmailrc
# replace example.com with whatever domain locally generated email has
:0:
* !^Return-Path: .*example.com
/dev/null

:0:
!root
EOF

This works with postfix, but I haven't tried other MTAs.

Since I run 64bit Ubuntu, I couldn't use use Google Gears. Which was annoying. The Google Gears site says 64bit OSes are not supported.

But it is open source.

So I grabbed the source code, tweaked a few things here and there and I now have Google Gears up and running on my 64bit OS. It hasn't crashed and burned yet, but I haven't really tested it heavily yet, either (suggestions welcome).

Anyway, here's the XPI to install it. I'll post the source soon. Or maybe just the diffs to the Google Gears list.

Amber, a non-technical mother, tries Ubuntu. This sounds like dvfmama's use of Ubuntu. I'm a geek (like her husband) and my wife wants to learn how to use Linux. The amazing and amusing thing (to me) is that she when I installed Ubuntu on our kids laptops, dvfmama was the one who began talking to them about the philosophy of Free Software and the obligations of the GPL.

I wish Amber the best and hope that she can join the ranks of other "normal" people I know who use Ubuntu: my mother, my friend, Jim Bonewald, my cousin, Jeremy Stein (and the rest of his family), and of course, dvfmama and my kids.

Linux users may not yet be measurable, but we're growing. And a lot of credit goes to Canonical and Ubuntu.

My son was annoyed that his school-provided laptop includes NetNanny configured in such a way to keep him out of game sites like PopTropica.

Now, I understand the desire to censor our children's forays onto the Internet. There is a ton of stuff out there that is a lot easier to get to than when I was a kid. And, often, as adults our first instinct is to protect them from where we know their curiosity will lead them.

But blocking game sites? Now you've gone too far!

Since I like to pretend I'm somewhat subversive, I was completely ready to let him install Ubuntu on the laptop. It plays into one of my goals for 2009: teaching my kids to program. I mean, sure, you can do it under Windows, but I'm just so much more comfortable with Linux.

There was one snafu: I neglected to backup and defragment the disk before starting, so we lost some files. But, once his sisters saw the wobbly windows they just had to have it installed on their laptops, too.

So now every laptop in the house runs Ubuntu. My daughter summed it up nicely: "I just feel so grown up now that I'm using Ubuntu like Mom and Dad!"

As if to make sure I wouldn't become too proud, she did add that she became acutely aware that I wasn't quite the Super Geek she imagined me to be when I managed to lose her weather charting homework.

Win some, lose some, I guess. But I count this as mostly a win.