Debugging code dependent on Net::LDAP

Well, we had a weird problem in some code that updates LDAP, and I wanted to be able to debug it without actually updating LDAP. You could set up a throwaway LDAP database with your schema and some test data… or override Net::LDAP. Dummy Net::LDAP (wfu.edu) is the solution. Its only methods are “new”, “code”,…

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MailScanner and spamassassin

I’ve set up a small test group of administrators to get their email filtered via MailScanner and spamassassin. I tuned MailScanner as little as possible. Our goal is to delete 40% of spam. Going from no content filtering straight to a “drop email” system is a little intimidating. My only false positives so far have…

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upgraded FreeBSD desktop

At work, the only *BSD computer I know of is my trusty IBM NetVista desktop, which I use to check mail–and all the sundry things that one needs to do that one cannot do very well with Windows. Every few months, I decide I need to upgrade all my ports (because “portaudit” complains), or I…

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There and back again: printconf and file types

We are doing business with a vendor, eVisions, which has a product called FormFusion or FormsFusion. Their product generates output suitable for printers to parse. The only problem is, printconf on Red Hat Advanced Server 2.1 thinks that FormFusion output is “ASCII text (with escape sequences),” and our PostScript print queues happily render the data into line-noise.

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JInitiator and Firefox

McGill University has documentation about installing JInitiator for Firefox, necessary to use SCT’s “Internet Native Banner” product.

SANE

I’m going to SANE next week! I’m really excited.

rpmbuild error

I hit upon bug 85346: in RHAS2.1, if you’re packaging a bunch of files that don’t have an owner known to the OS, you will get getUname: too many uid’s The simple solution was to add a chmod -R root:root $RPM_BUILD_ROOT to the %install section.

RHAS2.1 PXE install

Date: Tuesday September 21, 04 I was getting some weird errors yesterday in my first attempt to automate a Red Hat Advanced Server 2.1 install. There were lots of errors like… attempt to access beyond end of device I added an option to the PXE loader: ramdisk_size=65536 and it works now.