Migrating and upgrading mailserver

I have new and powerful server for mail server. So now I am in the process of migrating my mail data and settings to the new server. But it is not as simple as copying a directory. It involves many things. Luckily some of them, you can just copy to the new server.

I am most concerned with the mail messages as they contain important messages for day-to-day operations and conversations. I will tell you more after the migration is complete.

cheers,

Perl: Terminal does not support AddHistory

If you see the error when running Perl shell, you need to install Term::ReadLine::Perl.




That's all there is to it. Have fun!.

changing manually wireless connection to be controlled by knetworkmanager

knetworkmanager is a Network Manager for KDE4. It is hated or liked by users and usually not in between. I personally like it although it has its fair share of bugs. But I like Mandriva's net_applet more. It is stable and more reliable. It is prefered by many Mandriva users. However, if you are stuck with recent problems (bug?) of perl in Mandriva Cooker like me, you are forced to use command line of wpa_supplicant or iwconfig or using gui application like knetworkmanager. 

In Mandriva, you can change which network manager control the wireless connection by changing the option in net_applet or you can manually change in file /etc/sysconfig/network-scripts/ifcfg-wlan0. If you want knetworkmanager in control of it, you just have to change this line to yes:

NM_CONTROLLED=yes

Connecting to wireless AP with WPA/2 security using wpa_supplicant

Recently, my cooker updated perl packages and it broke all of drak* family especially drakconf and net_applet. net_applet is the network manager for Mandriva in applet form. I can also use draknetcenter. Now the problem is I cant open net_applet and knetcenter due to this error:

/usr/bin/perl: symbol lookup error: /usr/lib/libDrakX/auto/c/stuff/stuff.so: undefined symbol: Perl_Gthr_key_ptr

So how do I connect to wireless AP? I dont know how to use iwconfig to connect to such AP or can I? After googling, I found a solution: wpa_supplicant. In Mandriva, I just have to run this command (as root):

wpa_supplicant -Dwext -iwlan0 -c/etc/wpa_supplicant.conf &

If you have setup the connection before with draknetcenter, you dont have to edit the file wpa_supplicant.conf. If not, you have to manually edit the file to suit your environment. it is heavily documented. 

Then you have to run dhclient to get IP address from the AP or other dhcp server:

 dhclient wlan0

wlan0 is my wireless interface. Please change it according to your environment. I bet the broken packages will be updated sooner so that I can use net_applet again.

Have fun!

Happy New Year and distros for router

Happy New Year everbody. Hope 2012 will be a great year for Linux. In 2011, I tested several distros for different purposes. For routers, I found several free distros that serve as a really good gateway for my network. Among others are:

1. Zentyal - this is the best distro for routers. Fully featured with webcache, url filtering, load balancing for multiple lines and has 32-bit and 64-bit version. It is based on Ubuntu.
2. ClearOS - Also the best but it doesn't have 64-bit version (at the time of this writing. recently there's a 64-bit release but still in beta stage). Has many features as Zentyal. Based on Redhat.
3. pfSense - this is not Linux-based. It is freeBSD-based firewall and router. It has bug with my servers pertaining to PCI-E. So I dumped it. It's good but the bug prevent it from being operational.

Others:

• Untangle - didn't try it because the free version has no webcache feature.
• Zeroshell - tried it but a little awkward to use.

So I chose Zentyal as my distro for my server router and info from its web, I need to add more RAM and bigger hard disk to serve more than 500 users.

Happy New Year everybody! Thanks for reading.

Changing konqueror web browser's engine to WebKit

Konqueror is a native KDE web browser and it uses KHTML as the rendering engine. Fortunately, the smart developers of Konqueror has made it possible to change not only the interface but also the engine that renders the webpage we visit and so far only webkit is supported. We hope many more in the future. or maybe not. :)

What is Webkit?

Webkit engine is derived from KDE's KHTML engine and contains many enhancements that made it better than its mother. It has been used for Apple's Safari and Google's Chrome web browsers.

For Mandriva 2011 users, to be able to change the engine to Webkit is by installing the engine package. It's called webkitkde. (for other distro, the package name might be a bit different) You might have installed it. Install it using this command:

urpmi webkitkde

Now open Konqueror (or restart if it is open) and go to Settings --> Configure Konqueror --> General --> Default web browser engine. You should have 2 options in there. KHTML and WebKit. Screenshot below.

*UPDATE:
For KDE 4.10.x, for Mageia, the package name is kwebkitpart. So,

urpmi kwebkitpart

That's all there is to it. You should now enjoy browsing the web using WebKit engine.

Mandriva 2011 codenamed Hydrogen is out

I just copy this as announced on Mandriva blog:

Hooray! As promised earlier, we are happy to announce that Mandriva 2011 is out. You can download ISO images from here.

When downloading an iso-image, perhaps you will want to read the Release Notes.

We prepared a small manual of how to upgrade to the new release for users of the Mandriva Desktop 2010.2.

If you have never tried Mandriva, take a look at the Mandriva 2011 Tour.

Happy upgrading :)