Using mail command to send email using SMTP AUTH and no SSL

This is the command to send email using mail server with SMTP AUTH.

mail -v -s "Testing SMTP AUTH from mail command" -S smtp-auth=login -S smtp=smtp://mysmtpmailserver.com:587 -S from=me@mysmtpmailserver.com -S smtp-auth-user=me -S smtp-auth-password=mypassword mybuddy@somehost.com


-v = verbose
-s = subject
-S = option

For more options and info, please type man mail or info mail.
The last email address is the recipient address.
You can replace mail with mailx.

This command is useful to test your mailserver setup without login to GUI.

Have fun! :)

Apache redirection

I want to redirect all of my users who go to www.mywebmailserver.com to webmail.mywebmailserver.com. I have learned that from my googling, there are 2 popular ways to do it in apache web server. First, by using mod_rewrite and second, I can use redirect. The latter is the simplest. So I chose it. :)

Put this in vhost container.

NameVirtualHost www.mywebmailserver.com
<virtualhost www.mywebmailserver.com>
ServerName www.mywebmailserver.com
Redirect 301 / http://webmail.mywebmailserver.com/
</virtualhost>

In Mageia 4, the file is located in /etc/httpd/conf/vhosts.d and the file name is 00_default_vhosts.conf

That's it. Restart or reload apache for the changes to take effect.

Have fun!

Mageia 4 and HP Laserjet P1102 can't print

Hi all,

Since upgrading my Mageia 3 to 4, I never test my printer. It worked in Mageia 3. I never knew that it was going to give me a headache LoL. It didn't work!. I tried reinstalling the CUPS, the driver, and even changing the USB cable. It was after 2 weeks of busy schedule, I thought I wanted to try to find a solution.

After googling a bit, I found out from a post which I didnt remember to bookmark it, the culprit was the usblp module. Remove it by rmmod usblp and the printer could print again. I could say the problem is the module conflicts with the HP printer driver. Your mileage may vary.

Have fun!

Chromium becomes sluggish

For so many months now I find my Chromium becomes sluggish. I thought it is because of scripts that I installed to play games on Facebook but I never tried to search for a solution until recently. A blog post by Kostya Vasilyev here reveals the real culprit. Since I disabled the plugin, my Chromium becomes stable and fast again. Thanks buddy. The steps are the same although the plugin name is not.

Here are the steps:

1. Type  chrome://plugins in the address bar
2. Find the plugin named Chromoting Viewer
3. Disable it
4. Done.

You may want to restart your browser although it is not necessary.

Mageia 4

Mageia 4 has been released on Feb 3rd 2014. For Mageia 3 users, you will get a notification to upgrade. Just click on it and after answer a few questions, you're set to go. I just did that and at the time of this writing, I'm using Mageia 4. 

From my point of view, I didn't notice any major differences in terms of usability beside the usual change of wallpapers, screensavers and a little bit of widgets. I'm sure, overtime I will find more and more. The Welcome dialog (see below) is a very good approach for newcomers and newbies alike to Mageia world. 

For those who are in search of a distro, Mageia is worth to try.

Enjoy!

ralink firmware

In Mageia, not all packages from non-free repo are installed by default. One of them is ralink-firmware. In Mageia 2, various ralink wireless firmwares are separated in many packages like rt61-, rt2860-, rt2870-, rt3090-, rt73-. Now they are bundled in one package.

If you connect external wireless hardware that uses those rt chipsets family, you have to install this package. Please examine your syslog for the error in loading the driver such as this:

Dec 24 18:54:00 localhost kernel: ieee80211 phy1: rt2x00lib_request_firmware: Info - Loading firmware file 'rt2870.bin'
Dec 24 18:54:00 localhost kernel: ieee80211 phy1: rt2x00lib_request_firmware: Error - Failed to request Firmware

Install the firmware by issuing :

urpmi ralink-firmware

or you can use rpmdrake GUI for that.

Cheers.

I like this :

Google hopes that Quick UDP Internet Connections (QUIC), recently added to Chrome Canary, will help speed up HTTP traffic on the internet. The goal here is not to compete with SPDY, the protocol introduced four years ago, but to work in tandem with it by replacingTCP (Transmission Control Protocol), the current transport method, with UDP (User Datagram Protocol).

TCP makes sure that no data packets go missing at the protocol level and that they all land at their destination in the correct order. In Google's opinion, that's a disadvantage when combined with SPDY, in which several data streams between a browser and a web server flow over a single TCP socket – just one misplaced packet would block all of the data streams. The TCP stack in this case would also slow down the transmission of all of the streams.

QUIC uses the simpler UDP, which does not guarantee the transmission of individual packets. That means that the new protocol has to take care of this itself, but unlike with TCP, connections not affected by a particular loss don't have to wait for a new transmission. QUIC is designed to ensure fast connections, reduce packet losses with transmission pacing and minimise latency in the case of retransmission of a packet with forward error correction, and like SPDY, it only allows encrypted connections.

An extensive Google Docs document lays out the details and considerations behind QUIC. The Chromium source code includes a sample implementation for the server and the code for the client-side.

Source

The key terms are : transmission pacing and forward error correction. 

Do you know their meanings? :)