repak shawahb
people who speak in metaphors can shampoo my crotch

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rsw@jfet.org


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Mon, 24 Jan 2005

total hotness

Those of you who run your own mailserver might be interested to learn that I've slogged through the (surprisingly pleasant) installation of a webmail interface on positron that manages to coexist perfectly with my normal method of access, viz., ssh+mutt. Moreover, in the process I ended up setting up a SSL/TLS-enabled IMAP server so that I can actually use mutt (or some other SSL-enabled IMAP client) on pretty much any machine and it'll make a secure connection and (with an appropriate .muttrc) behave just like the local one.

First things first: imapd. This is incredibly easy: 

[root@positron ~]# apt-get install uw-imapd-ssl

You may be asked to install some ancillary packages. Use your best judgement. After that, assuming you already have apache2, SSL, and mysqld up and running (not gonna help you with this; a google search should suffice), just 

[root@positron ~]# apt-get install imp3

Note that you'll need a bunch of other stuff as well (e.g., horde2, php4-mysql or -pgsql, et cetera), but apt will happily inform you of all this.

In fact, it's only now that we get to the part that apt doesn't just do for you, but this part is easy, too. First, there ought to be a file called /etc/horde2/apache.conf which needs to be symblinked into /etc/apache2/sites-enabled/. I'd recommend inserting a line saying simply SSLRequireSSL just after the allow from all line. This will ensure that you can't accidentally send your password to the server in cleartext.

After reloading the Apache configuration, you ought to be able to connect to https://localhost/horde2/imp/ (but not to http://&c) and get a login screen. Unfortunately, you won't be able to log in yet, because imp3 will silently fail when presented with the self-signed certificate that dpkg-configure generated for you back when you installed uw-imapd-ssl. You need to modify /etc/imp3/servers.php to include a different file, e.g., /etc/imp3/servers-debian.conf which is a copy of the automatically-generated file /var/lib/imp3/servers-debian.conf except that you need to change the value of the 'protocol' argument to 'imap/novalidate-cert'. Your other option, of course, is to convince the php4-imap-ssl module that your key is a valid signing key, but since I didn't do this, I can't exactly tell you how without working it out myself (which kind of defeats the purpose, viz., laziness, of having done it this way in the first place).

If you have an inordinate number of files under ~/mail/ (as I do), the "folders" view will probably cause the php backend to exceed its maximum memory allocation. This is controlled by the memory_limit variable in /etc/php4/apache2/php.ini; you'll know you need to do this if, after logging in, clicking the "Folders" icon does nothing.

Now comes the real hotness: MIMP. It's Imp for your WAP phone. Once I get some more time, I'm totally going to play around with this. If all goes according to plan, I'll be able to access my mail through any SSL-enabled IMAP client, any web browser, or my cell phone while retaining all my current procmail/spamassassin/&c filtering and the ability to keep using mutt locally on positron.

Hotness.


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more pictures...

...now available. The seventh and second-last pictures are the two DJs at Elysium on Sundays; they're awesome. Picture #8 is Stephanie, whom you've seen before, with her ex-roommate Cat, whom you haven't. The blonde in the last picture is Anne, who was mightily disappointed that I didn't go up and talk to her immediately upon my arrival last night; I made it up to her by doggedly insisting on taking her picture with Casey and two guys named Dave. Note also Casey's new haircut.

The second picture is in Mike's house; from left to right, there's Brady, Cyrus's girlfriend (whose name escapes me; sorry!), Cyrus, and Jud(d?).

Yay.


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I love Douglas Adams

I've been reading—or rather, listening to recordings of—lots of Douglas Adams while at the gym recently. My most recent find, Last Chance to See, is a non-fiction romp around the world locating endangered species which is really mostly one long rumination on the human condition. It's pretty entertaining. For example:

Foreigners are not allowed to drive in China, and you can see why. The Chinese drive, or cycle, according to laws that are simply not apparent to an uninitiated observer, and I'm thinking not merely of the laws of the Highway Code, I'm thinking of the laws of physics. By the end of our stay in China I had learned to accept that if you're driving along a two-lane road behind another car or truck, and there are two vehicles speeding towards you, one of which is overtaking the other, the immediate response of your driver will be also to pull out and overtake. Somehow, magically, it all works out in the end.

What I could never get used to, however, was this situation: the vehicle in front of you is overtaking the vehicle in front of him, and your driver pulls out and overtakes the overtaking vehicle just as three other vehicles are coming towards you performing exactly the same maneuver.

Presumably, Sir Isaac Newton has long ago been discredited as a bourgeois capitalist running-dog lackey.


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