From joulie at gmail.com  Sun Oct  1 17:00:07 2006
From: joulie at gmail.com (Julie Bovee Hill)
Date: Sun Oct  1 17:06:30 2006
Subject: [Techtalk] CSS absolute positioning and overflow:hidden
In-Reply-To: <20060930183143.GA26252@shallowsky.com>
References: <20060930183143.GA26252@shallowsky.com>
Message-ID: <d57adca90610011000x4dd2e5cap98253c56594b7ef8@mail.gmail.com>

On 9/30/06, Akkana Peck wrote:
> Oh CSS gurus: I'm working on a Javascript project involving
> animation, but I'm running into a snag involving CSS and absolute
> positioning.
>
> The problem is that I want to position some images inside a
> box on a page.  Here's my test page:
>     http://shallowsky.com/bugs/absolute/
>
> I have a containing div (indicated by the inset border) which
> contains a little text plus two flower images. The flower images
> are style="position: absolute; left: 150px; top: 10px;" for the
> first flower, and the same with "left: 450px" for the second.
>
> All the references I've found say that absolute coordinates
> are relative to the containing element, so that "top: 10px"
> should put the top of the flowers inside the div. But instead
> I'm seeing them placed relative to the whole page.
>

Absolute positioning is positioned based on the nearest containing
absolutely positioned element or the browser window if no element is
found, whereas relative positioning is relative to the normal position
of the object. It should not make a difference whether you're using an
inline style, external stylesheet or internal stylesheet.

Also, I've found that you can't rely on Firefox & IE to display the
object in the exact same location on the page with absolute
positioning, but it should at least be close.

Julie
From akkana at shallowsky.com  Sun Oct  1 18:20:56 2006
From: akkana at shallowsky.com (Akkana Peck)
Date: Sun Oct  1 18:20:58 2006
Subject: [Techtalk] CSS absolute positioning and overflow:hidden
In-Reply-To: <d57adca90610011000x4dd2e5cap98253c56594b7ef8@mail.gmail.com>
References: <20060930183143.GA26252@shallowsky.com>
	<d57adca90610011000x4dd2e5cap98253c56594b7ef8@mail.gmail.com>
Message-ID: <20061001182056.GA19242@shallowsky.com>

Julie Bovee Hill writes:
> Absolute positioning is positioned based on the nearest containing
> absolutely positioned element or the browser window if no element is

Yikes! The container has to be absolutely positioned too?
None of the references I saw mentioned that -- but sure enough,
it works (even the overflow: hidden) if I position the container
absolutely.

Of course, that's not an option for a real page, since I
can't predict where the div should be without knowing the
user's fonts and resolution and all that.
I guess there's no way to use absolute positioning if I want
the rest of the page to flow normally and resize properly.
I'll investigate using margin-left instead.

Thanks for clearing that up, Julie! Even if I don't like the
answer, it's good to know why it was happening.

-- 
    ...Akkana
    "Beginning GIMP: From Novice to Professional": http://gimpbook.com
From shirrell at pstat.com  Sun Oct  1 20:10:48 2006
From: shirrell at pstat.com (Shirrell)
Date: Sun Oct  1 20:11:21 2006
Subject: [Techtalk] CSS absolute positioning and overflow:hidden
References: <20060930183143.GA26252@shallowsky.com>	<451ED314.3000605@pstat.com>
	<20060930220815.GE26252@shallowsky.com>
Message-ID: <452020C8.1090702@pstat.com>



Akkana Peck wrote:

>Shirrell writes:
>  
>
>>It you place a style section before the </head> which contains something 
>>like:
>>
>><style
>>one { position: absolute: left:150px; top:10px; }
>>two { position: absolute: left:450px: top:10px; }
>></div>
>></style>
>>
>>and then use somethinkg like:
>>
>><img class="one" src="flower1.gif"  alt=""/>
>><img class="two" src="flower2.gif" alt=""/>
>>
>>the images appear inside the containing box.
>>    
>>
>
>Any idea why it behaves differently when the absolute coordinates
>are in a <style> tag versus when they're attached to the image
>directly?
>  
>
I think I now understand: Quoting from the "Complete Reference" by 
Thomas Powell.

"Typically, absolute positioning uses the upper-left corner of the 
browser as the origin,
but if posiitoned objects are within positioned regions themselves, 
their origin is the
top-left most coordinate of their container.

The containing box in your html is not absolutely positioned and if you 
do position it
you then have to worry about positioning what follows.  

>Using the page style like that sounds a lot harder for a dynamic
>JavaScript page. Is it even possible to change page style (as
>opposed to changing the style of one specific element) from
>JavaScript?
>  
>
I don't use much JavaScript -- HTML with CSS1 and CSS2 does most of what 
I need

>  
>

From lists at semioticpixels.com  Mon Oct  2 06:36:04 2006
From: lists at semioticpixels.com (chris)
Date: Mon Oct  2 06:35:31 2006
Subject: [Techtalk] CSS absolute positioning and overflow:hidden
In-Reply-To: <20061001182056.GA19242@shallowsky.com>
References: <20060930183143.GA26252@shallowsky.com>
	<d57adca90610011000x4dd2e5cap98253c56594b7ef8@mail.gmail.com>
	<20061001182056.GA19242@shallowsky.com>
Message-ID: <1159770964.19613.28.camel@localhost>

Hey Akkana,
for an absolutely positioned element, the containing block is the
nearest ancestor that has a position other than static (iow, absolute or
relative). In the absence of a positioned container the containing block
is the root document element which is what you saw in your example. 

fwiw, if I were doing this page, I'd float the images inside the
container. I posted an example here
http://www.mosshead.com/tests/akkana.html (I'll remove the example in a
day or 2)

Also, it's a good idea to put image width and height attributes into the
html instead of css - it allows image-loading browsers to render a page
before the images are downloaded. It's more of an issue for pages with a
lot of images or large images, but still a good practice in general.

re: using absolute positioning for a more liquid layout - using
percentages instead of pixel lengths should address the issue of varying
font sizes and resolutions. 

hth
chris

From oalfishcivil at yahoo.com  Tue Oct  3 19:48:21 2006
From: oalfishcivil at yahoo.com (Yuefei Wu)
Date: Tue Oct  3 19:55:07 2006
Subject: [Techtalk] Wireless scan
Message-ID: <20061003194822.55948.qmail@web52807.mail.yahoo.com>

Is it possible to scan nearby wireless signals under slackware ?
Could anyone tell me how to do that?
Thanks


 		
---------------------------------
Talk is cheap. Use Yahoo! Messenger to make PC-to-Phone calls.  Great rates starting at 1?/min.
From meredydd.luff at googlemail.com  Thu Oct  5 21:30:14 2006
From: meredydd.luff at googlemail.com (Meredydd Luff)
Date: Thu Oct  5 21:36:26 2006
Subject: [Techtalk] Wireless scan
In-Reply-To: <20061003194822.55948.qmail@web52807.mail.yahoo.com>
References: <20061003194822.55948.qmail@web52807.mail.yahoo.com>
Message-ID: <e488884c0610051430y43501472yede4f45cee9c7d5e@mail.gmail.com>

Hey there,

Sorry to be so slow to reply; you've probably found the answer
already. But just in case, the command you're looking for is "iwlist
eth0 scan" (substitute your interface for eth0, obviously).

If you don't have anything called "iwlist" on your system, the package
you need is the Wireless Tools. ("wireless-tools" in debian, can't
remember the name in slack - SWARET or similar should help you out
there).

Meredydd


On 10/3/06, Yuefei Wu <oalfishcivil@yahoo.com> wrote:
> Is it possible to scan nearby wireless signals under slackware ?
> Could anyone tell me how to do that?
> Thanks
>
>
>  		
> ---------------------------------
> Talk is cheap. Use Yahoo! Messenger to make PC-to-Phone calls.  Great rates
> starting at 1?/min.
> _______________________________________________
> Techtalk mailing list
> Techtalk@linuxchix.org
> http://linuxchix.org/mailman/listinfo/techtalk
>
From maria at shadlen.org  Tue Oct 10 20:36:30 2006
From: maria at shadlen.org (Maria McKinley)
Date: Tue Oct 10 21:06:49 2006
Subject: [Techtalk] gigabit nic cards with linux (debian)
Message-ID: <452C044E.4090606@shadlen.org>

Hey there,

For some reason, I'm having a difficult time finding anything relevant 
on the web. Does anyone have any experience with gigabit nic cards in 
linux? I have been using 3com nic cards for years, but apparently they 
are getting out of the nic business. :-( So, now I am looking for 
something else that will play well with linux, specifically debian. Any 
ideas?

thanks,
Maria
From maria at shadlen.org  Tue Oct 10 21:07:11 2006
From: maria at shadlen.org (Maria McKinley)
Date: Tue Oct 10 21:07:14 2006
Subject: [Techtalk] Re: gigabit nic cards with linux (debian)
In-Reply-To: <452C044E.4090606@shadlen.org>
References: <452C044E.4090606@shadlen.org>
Message-ID: <452C0B7F.2050400@shadlen.org>

I think I am going to go with Intel? PRO/1000 MT Server Adapter 
PWLA8490MT. I haven't found anything saying anyone had real problems 
with it and debian, and Intel says it works with the linux kernel I 
have, so I'm going to take that to mean it should work...

thanks,
maria


Maria McKinley wrote:
> Hey there,
> 
> For some reason, I'm having a difficult time finding anything relevant 
> on the web. Does anyone have any experience with gigabit nic cards in 
> linux? I have been using 3com nic cards for years, but apparently they 
> are getting out of the nic business. :-( So, now I am looking for 
> something else that will play well with linux, specifically debian. Any 
> ideas?
> 
> thanks,
> Maria
> 
From elwing at elwing.org  Tue Oct 10 21:21:02 2006
From: elwing at elwing.org (Elwing)
Date: Tue Oct 10 22:02:00 2006
Subject: [Techtalk] gigabit nic cards with linux (debian)
In-Reply-To: <452C044E.4090606@shadlen.org>
References: <452C044E.4090606@shadlen.org>
Message-ID: <59838234-03AA-4832-8D5E-8D324DCCCD39@elwing.org>

I've got an onboard broadcom, an onboard realtek, and a PCI netgear  
card all running under Debian of some sort (both AMD64 experimental  
and stable).

I didn't have problems with any of them, and haven't yet *crosses  
fingers*

Elwing



On Oct 10, 2006, at 4:36 PM, Maria McKinley wrote:

> Hey there,
>
> For some reason, I'm having a difficult time finding anything  
> relevant on the web. Does anyone have any experience with gigabit  
> nic cards in linux? I have been using 3com nic cards for years, but  
> apparently they are getting out of the nic business. :-( So, now I  
> am looking for something else that will play well with linux,  
> specifically debian. Any ideas?
>
> thanks,
> Maria
> _______________________________________________
> Techtalk mailing list
> Techtalk@linuxchix.org
> http://linuxchix.org/mailman/listinfo/techtalk

From lcpickering at optusnet.com.au  Sat Oct 14 10:09:29 2006
From: lcpickering at optusnet.com.au (Lee Pickering)
Date: Sat Oct 14 10:07:37 2006
Subject: [Techtalk] Perl Web Proxy Help 
Message-ID: <002201c6ef78$d7a7a500$0402a8c0@digi>

Howdy everyone,

Wondering if anyone can give me a hand to write a perl script for a web proxy.  It needs to have certain features, so if anyone can help, can you please email me at
lcpickering@optusnet.com.au

Thanks everyone.

Lee
From lcpickering at optusnet.com.au  Sat Oct 14 10:11:49 2006
From: lcpickering at optusnet.com.au (Lee Pickering)
Date: Sat Oct 14 10:09:55 2006
Subject: [Techtalk] Perl Web Proxy Help
Message-ID: <004801c6ef79$2a1d4380$0402a8c0@digi>

Howdy everyone,

Wondering if anyone can give me a hand to write a perl script for a web proxy.  It needs to have certain features, so if anyone can help, can you please email me at
lcpickering@optusnet.com.au

Thanks everyone.

Lee
From finne at cassia.be  Sun Oct 15 20:47:52 2006
From: finne at cassia.be (Finne Boonen)
Date: Sun Oct 15 20:48:01 2006
Subject: [Techtalk] computer hangs,
	underlying clock problems? (ubuntu edgy)(also observed with gentoo)
Message-ID: <91ca6cdf0610151347h3d32c33ewf8725770a2e82ab5@mail.gmail.com>

Meep,

I have a very curious problem with my computer. Programs 'hang' (X
becomes kinda unworkable because the windows don't take new commands
anymore), programs run on the console wait before executing, often
needing a new enter (the key).

Some digging has shown that my clock is acting bizar, jumping
backwards in time and then forwards again and backwards again (see
http://hekla.Rave.org/temp/datum.txt  for the output of while true; do
date >> datum.txt; done):

Sun Oct 15 17:59:44 CEST 2006
Sun Oct 15 17:59:46 CEST 2006
Sun Oct 15 17:59:47 CEST 2006
Sun Oct 15 17:59:48 CEST 2006
Sun Oct 15 17:59:44 CEST 2006
Sun Oct 15 17:59:45 CEST 2006
Sun Oct 15 17:59:46 CEST 2006
Sun Oct 15 17:59:47 CEST 2006
Sun Oct 15 17:59:48 CEST 2006
Sun Oct 15 17:59:49 CEST 2006
Sun Oct 15 17:59:50 CEST 2006
Sun Oct 15 17:59:51 CEST 2006
Sun Oct 15 17:59:47 CEST 2006
Sun Oct 15 17:59:48 CEST 2006
Sun Oct 15 17:59:49 CEST 2006
Sun Oct 15 17:59:50 CEST 2006
Sun Oct 15 17:59:51 CEST 2006
Sun Oct 15 17:59:47 CEST 2006
Sun Oct 15 17:59:48 CEST 2006
Sun Oct 15 17:59:49 CEST 2006
...

(all of the above repeated several times before moving on to the next line)

I use a medion md41300 laptop which has a dual core Pentium IV 3.06Ghz
processor, I think this might have something to do with how the kernel
deals with dual coar processors but have not yet managed to figure out
what the problem was. The kernel that comes with a standard ubuntu
drake installation didn't have this problem, the one that comes with
an edgy installation does. I've encountered the same problem before on
gentoo, but there I solved it by going to an earlier kernel, which i'm
not keen to do now as some of my fancy keys finally work now.

any help appreciated,
Finne/henna


-- 
"Maybe you knew early on that your track went from point A to B, but
unlike you I wasn't given a map at birth!" Alyssa, "Chasing Amy"
From gsmraxe at gmail.com  Wed Oct 18 01:32:29 2006
From: gsmraxe at gmail.com (gossamer axe)
Date: Wed Oct 18 01:32:37 2006
Subject: [Techtalk] bash question
Message-ID: <126b338e0610171832u7c32053eqc2a700c61a2c48f2@mail.gmail.com>

I'm not sure if this is ok to post this here...But I have a bash question...

My ISP (pacbell) is great for going down, I seem to lose something with the
name server.  I can get to the internet, but typing host
www.google.comdies.  I run a dynamic name on my server and I seem to
be forever losing
it.  I've tried several rewrites of scripts to fix this...but I can't seem
to get my name server back up...

This is the script I've been fussing with for a while now:  dnstest2.sh  I
also run these in crontab */5 minutes

#!/bin/sh

RMM="/sbin/rmmod"
MDP="/sbin/modprobe"
START="/usr/sbin/adsl-start"
STOP="/usr/sbin/adsl-stop"

EXTIF="ppp0"
EXTIP="`/sbin/ifconfig $EXTIF | grep 'inet addr' | awk '{print $2}' | sed -e
's/.*://'`"
HOSTIP="`/usr/bin/host gypsy.sytes.net | awk '{print $4}'`"

if [ "$EXTIP" != "$HOSTIP" ]; then

   /usr/sbin/adsl-stop
   NPID="`ps aux | grep noip2 | grep nobody | awk '{ print $2 }'`"
   /usr/local/bin/noip2 -K "$NPID"

   /usr/sbin/adsl-start
   /etc/rc.d/rc.firewall
   /usr/local/bin/noip2
   /usr/local/bin/dynubasic.sh
fi
exit 0

So, basically, I try to see if I can host "gypsy.sytes.net" and if I can't
stop everything and re run it.  I also used to unload the network module and
modprobe for it again, but that seemed like overkill.  The first 4 variables
are leftover from earlier scripts.  They do nothing now.

This next one I just wrote 10 minutes ago, I tested it and it seems ok...I'm
not sure if it will work 100% of the time

#!/bin/sh

IMUP="`host www.google.com`"

if [ -n "$IMUP" ]; then

   /usr/sbin/adsl-stop
   NPID="`ps aux | grep noip2 | grep nobody | awk '{ print $2 }'`"
   /usr/local/bin/noip2 -K "$NPID"

   /usr/sbin/adsl-start
   /etc/rc.d/rc.firewall
   /usr/local/bin/noip2
   /usr/local/bin/dynubasic.sh
fi
exit 0

The NPID is to kill noip2 daemon which is supposed to listen for changes in
my IP# and get the new one for gypsy, doesn't seem to work too well tho =D
So now, just see if I can host google, if it's not able to get to it,
restart everything.  Does anyone else have any ideas?  I'd like to be able
to ssh to my machine and work on my website from work, but I'm unable to
most of the time.  I also can't figure out why I can't host something but I
can get out to the internet and use firefox to go to www.google.com but I
can't access my machine.  I don't want to email my ip# to myself either...I
just wanted something easy (but I know it's not working out to be) so I can
access my machine from anywhere.

thank you!


-- 
Gossamer Axe
gsmraxe@gmail.com
http://gypsy.sytes.net/
From conor.daly-linuxchix at cod.homelinux.org  Thu Oct 19 00:09:07 2006
From: conor.daly-linuxchix at cod.homelinux.org (Conor Daly)
Date: Thu Oct 19 00:09:17 2006
Subject: [Techtalk] bash question
In-Reply-To: <126b338e0610171832u7c32053eqc2a700c61a2c48f2@mail.gmail.com>
References: <126b338e0610171832u7c32053eqc2a700c61a2c48f2@mail.gmail.com>
Message-ID: <20061019000907.GB19289@Hobbiton.cod.ie>

On Tue, Oct 17, 2006 at 06:32:29PM -0700 or so it is rumoured hereabouts, 
gossamer axe thought:
> I'm not sure if this is ok to post this here...But I have a bash question...
> 
> My ISP (pacbell) is great for going down, I seem to lose something with the
> name server.  I can get to the internet, but typing host
> www.google.comdies.  I run a dynamic name on my server and I seem to
> be forever losing it.

I don't know if this is relevant to your situation but I had to allow my
firewall to get its name server info by dhcp and point my internal name
server at my firewall (smoothwall).  With that in place all goes
smoothly...

Conor
-- 
Conor Daly <conor.daly@cod.homelinux.org>
-----BEGIN GEEK CODE BLOCK-----
Version: 3.1
GCS/G/S/O d+(-) s:+ a+ C++(+) UL++++ US++ P>++ L+++>++++ E--- W++ !N
PS+ PE Y+ PGP? tv(-) b+++(+) G e+++(*) h-- r+++ z++++ 
------END GEEK CODE BLOCK------
http://www.geekcode.com/ http://www.ebb.org/ungeek/
From gsmraxe at gmail.com  Thu Oct 19 00:45:47 2006
From: gsmraxe at gmail.com (gossamer axe)
Date: Thu Oct 19 00:51:59 2006
Subject: [Techtalk] bash question
In-Reply-To: <20061019000907.GB19289@Hobbiton.cod.ie>
References: <126b338e0610171832u7c32053eqc2a700c61a2c48f2@mail.gmail.com>
	<20061019000907.GB19289@Hobbiton.cod.ie>
Message-ID: <126b338e0610181745s587bd146k6e898fb01dcbd79f@mail.gmail.com>

>
> I don't know if this is relevant to your situation but I had to allow my
> firewall to get its name server info by dhcp and point my internal name
> server at my firewall (smoothwall).  With that in place all goes
> smoothly...


I'm not sure either...I've been running my server for some years with static
info.  I'm using pppoe to connect to my isp.  But the nameserver info is in
/etc/resolv.conf  that hasn't changed in the many years I've had this.




-- 
Gossamer Axe
gsmraxe@gmail.com
http://gypsy.sytes.net/
From conor.daly-linuxchix at cod.homelinux.org  Thu Oct 19 10:47:00 2006
From: conor.daly-linuxchix at cod.homelinux.org (Conor Daly)
Date: Thu Oct 19 10:47:09 2006
Subject: [Techtalk] bash question
In-Reply-To: <126b338e0610181745s587bd146k6e898fb01dcbd79f@mail.gmail.com>
References: <126b338e0610171832u7c32053eqc2a700c61a2c48f2@mail.gmail.com>
	<20061019000907.GB19289@Hobbiton.cod.ie>
	<126b338e0610181745s587bd146k6e898fb01dcbd79f@mail.gmail.com>
Message-ID: <20061019104700.GB2965@Hobbiton.cod.ie>

On Wed, Oct 18, 2006 at 05:45:47PM -0700 or so it is rumoured hereabouts, 
gossamer axe thought:
> 
>    I'm not sure either...I've been running my server for some years with static
>    info.  I'm using pppoe to connect to my isp.  But the nameserver info is in
>    /etc/resolv.conf  that hasn't changed in the many years I've had this.

In my case my isp updated their servers and didn't tell anyone.  They
simply updated the dhcp server's config and assumed that all of their (MS
Windows) clients were using dhcp for everything as instructed.  Silly me
had used dig to find out what their name servers were last year and
hard-coded that...

Conor
-- 
Conor Daly <conor.daly@cod.homelinux.org>
-----BEGIN GEEK CODE BLOCK-----
Version: 3.1
GCS/G/S/O d+(-) s:+ a+ C++(+) UL++++ US++ P>++ L+++>++++ E--- W++ !N
PS+ PE Y+ PGP? tv(-) b+++(+) G e+++(*) h-- r+++ z++++ 
------END GEEK CODE BLOCK------
http://www.geekcode.com/ http://www.ebb.org/ungeek/
From maria at shadlen.org  Tue Oct 24 07:30:34 2006
From: maria at shadlen.org (Maria McKinley)
Date: Tue Oct 24 07:56:38 2006
Subject: [Techtalk] spam filters
Message-ID: <453DC11A.8060709@shadlen.org>

Hi there,

I am currently using spamassasin to filter spam on our mail server. 
Lately it has not been doing a very good job. I keep trying to update 
it, but I always seem to be at the latest release. Does anyone have any 
suggestions? Either an alternate spam filter or some secret knob to turn 
to make it work better? ;-) I have the spam level at 5 right now, but I 
  don't think turning it further down would help much, because most of 
the spam getting through seems to be a 2.5 or less (and a depressing 
amount of them are at 0!). Any advice? Has anyone tried turning it down 
as low as a 2? What sort of false positives do you get?

thanks,
maria
From trish at thefrasers.org  Tue Oct 24 08:29:24 2006
From: trish at thefrasers.org (Patricia Fraser)
Date: Tue Oct 24 08:59:32 2006
Subject: [Techtalk] spam filters
In-Reply-To: <453DC11A.8060709@shadlen.org>
References: <453DC11A.8060709@shadlen.org>
Message-ID: <453DCEE4.2010204@thefrasers.org>

Hi Maria,

> I am currently using spamassasin to filter spam on our mail server. 
> Lately it has not been doing a very good job. I keep trying to update 
> it, but I always seem to be at the latest release. Does anyone have any 
> suggestions? Either an alternate spam filter or some secret knob to turn 
> to make it work better? ;-) I have the spam level at 5 right now, but I 
>  don't think turning it further down would help much, because most of 
> the spam getting through seems to be a 2.5 or less (and a depressing 
> amount of them are at 0!). Any advice? Has anyone tried turning it down 
> as low as a 2? What sort of false positives do you get?

Do you have sa-learn installed? I think it's part of spamassassin-tools;
I've been using it for so long I've forgotten. I have a little script
set up to point at the spam folder (I'm using Sylpheed-Claws, and it has
this nice little menu item you can associate with a script) - so each
time a new bunch of spam looms on the horizon, I gather the spams in the
folder, run the script and hey presto!

(Sorry about the double-post, Maria!)

Cheers,
-- 
Trish Fraser, GWQSQ RP7NG
-0.89565946117158
52.2512169430698
(sometimes)

From rudy at edsons.demon.nl  Tue Oct 24 08:55:09 2006
From: rudy at edsons.demon.nl (Rudy Zijlstra)
Date: Tue Oct 24 09:17:08 2006
Subject: [Techtalk] spam filters
In-Reply-To: <453DC11A.8060709@shadlen.org>
References: <453DC11A.8060709@shadlen.org>
Message-ID: <Pine.LNX.4.64.0610241051430.10975@nedra.edsons.demon.nl>

Maria,

On Tue, 24 Oct 2006, Maria McKinley wrote:

> Hi there,
>
> I am currently using spamassasin to filter spam on our mail server. Lately it 
> has not been doing a very good job. I keep trying to update it, but I always 
> seem to be at the latest release. Does anyone have any suggestions? Either an 
> alternate spam filter or some secret knob to turn to make it work better? ;-) 
> I have the spam level at 5 right now, but I  don't think turning it further 
> down would help much, because most of the spam getting through seems to be a 
> 2.5 or less (and a depressing amount of them are at 0!). Any advice? Has 
> anyone tried turning it down as low as a 2? What sort of false positives do 
> you get?

You are expressing my own frustration. I also noticed that most of what 
gets through have a lot of almost sensible sentences which go about 
nothing, and the actual spam content is in an embedded gif.

I've done the same as you, reinstalled spamassassin, with sofar the same 
unsatisfying result. I've also noticed you can nowadays use razor, and 
still need to double check whether i've got that correctly installed and 
enabled.

Good luck, and please share if you find a solution!

Regards,

Rudy
From jd at disjunkt.com  Tue Oct 24 09:51:58 2006
From: jd at disjunkt.com (Jean-Daniel Pauget)
Date: Tue Oct 24 10:09:19 2006
Subject: [Techtalk] Re: spam filters
Message-ID: <20061024095158.GC5177@disjunkt.com>

> On Tue, 24 Oct 2006, Maria McKinley wrote:
> >I am currently using spamassasin to filter spam on our mail server. 
> >Lately it has not been doing a very good job.

    recently I turned on greylisting on my MXs :
	http://projects.puremagic.com/greylisting/
    by using that one :
	http://www.gasmi.net/gld.html (postfix + mysql)

    and really it works rather well, more spam are filtered on a saner 
    basis than bayasian filters. I still have my bogospam enabled because 
    the above won't filter spam incoming from mailing lists, mail forwards 
    (old acounts here and there), open relays etc... but still 90% of spams 
    are filtered by the above (2950 per day at home) 6% with bogospam and 
    the cleverest spams have to be manually eliminated (about 15 per days).

    with this method you have to manually whitelist some IPs (like lkml) 
    that produce a lot of valid mails with a lot of different originating 
    from addresses...

    you also need to do that on all your MX, if you don't do it on 
    secondaries, spam will come from there.

-- 
    Jean-Daniel Pauget

    T?l: +33 (0)2 33 17 20 16
    2, rue Andr? PELCA
    50580 Denneville-Plage
    France

From david at aeolia.co.uk  Tue Oct 24 09:40:41 2006
From: david at aeolia.co.uk (David Sumbler)
Date: Tue Oct 24 10:09:30 2006
Subject: [Techtalk] spam filters
In-Reply-To: <453DC11A.8060709@shadlen.org> (Maria McKinley's message of
	"Tue, 24 Oct 2006 00:30:34 -0700")
References: <453DC11A.8060709@shadlen.org>
Message-ID: <m3vemajbl2.fsf@ceres.staly.plus.com>

Maria McKinley <maria@shadlen.org> writes:

> I am currently using spamassasin to filter spam on our mail
> server. Lately it has not been doing a very good job. I keep trying
> to update it, but I always seem to be at the latest release. Does
> anyone have any suggestions? Either an alternate spam filter or some
> secret knob to turn to make it work better? ;-) I have the spam
> level at 5 right now, but I don't think turning it further down
> would help much, because most of the spam getting through seems to
> be a 2.5 or less (and a depressing amount of them are at 0!). Any
> advice? Has anyone tried turning it down as low as a 2? What sort of
> false positives do you get?

This doesn't answer your question, but, since the spam filtering
system you are using doesn't seem to be doing a very good job, I
thought people might be interested in a simple alternative, which
works extremely well for me.  It wouldn't be so useful or successful
on a server which is handling mail for a large number of people, but
for anyone sorting mail for a small group (say, a family), it works
fine.

In a typical day I get, say, a dozen emails from friends, a hundred
from various email groups I subscribe to, and several hundred spam
items offering to enlarge bits of my anatomy (some of which I haven't
even got!) etc., as well as bounces from mail servers which have
received spam containing my address on the "From" line.

I use my own Procmail recipes to filter all of this (and I use Gnus as
my email client).  Firstly, just in case I accidentally delete
something which I shouldn't have, a copy of every incoming email is
added to a "backup" folder, where it is automatically deleted after 31
days.

Next the "From" line is checked, so that e-mails from personal friends
etc. are sent to an appropriate folder.  Then I check for messages
from my various email groups (including Techtalk, of course), which
are sent to individual folders for the more important groups, or
oterwise to a general "Groups" folder.

Then I check the "To" line: an enormous amount of spam is addressed
not to "david@" my domain, or any other valid recipient, but to
someone like "w3kc8as@" my domain.  So this gets sent to /dev/null.

Finally, I check the content for obvious spam-type words (e.g. price,
viagra, weight, mortgage, software, sex, teen, enlarge, and a lot more
you can think of).  These go to a folder called "spam".  Anything left
after all that goes to a folder called "unsorted".

I find that about 99.9% of my spam is found in one of those last two
folders - hardly anything gets through to the "bona fide" folders.
And 99% of what is in those folders is spam, so it is quite easy just
to run my eye down the senders column and/or the subject column to see
if, by any chance, some bona fide mail has ended up there.  There very
rarely is anything.  About 90% of the spam is in the "spam" folder,
with just the remaining 10% in "unsorted".  And any genuine e-mails
from new correspondents (or friends who have just acquired a new email
address) are usually in the "unsorted" folder, so are easily spotted.

I have used this system for several years, and rarely need to tweak
it, except to add the addresses of new friends or groups.  It really
is a low maintenance system!

Of course, if you tend to get a lot of bona fide e-mails from
strangers, (for instance if you are receiving orders for a product),
then it wouldn't work if set up as I have suggested.  But even then,
you can ask people to include some particular word or phrase in the
subject line or the text which Procmail can then search for to
establish the genuineness of the message.  Virtually all spam is
automated, and won't adhere to that sort of requirement.

David

-- 

david@aeolia.co.uk

From kmactane at gothpunk.com  Tue Oct 24 13:14:06 2006
From: kmactane at gothpunk.com (Kai MacTane)
Date: Tue Oct 24 13:19:48 2006
Subject: [Techtalk] spam filters
In-Reply-To: <453DC11A.8060709@shadlen.org>
Message-ID: <4.3.2.7.2.20061024061113.01babe60@mail.gothpunk.com>

At 12:30 AM 10/24/2006, Maria McKinley wrote:

>I am currently using spamassasin to filter spam on our mail server. Lately 
>it has not been doing a very good job. I keep trying to update it, but I 
>always seem to be at the latest release. Does anyone have any suggestions?

Adding some (or all) of the rules from the SpamAssassin Rules Emporium has 
been very helpful for me. This will essentially add a bunch of custom rules 
that jack up the number of points most spam messages score; the core SA 
project considers these rules a bit too experimental to include in the core 
release, but I've had little or no trouble with them.

See http://www.rulesemporium.com/.

                                                 --Kai MacTane
----------------------------------------------------------------------
"Then, when they spill the demon seed
  Turn and face into the wind.
  All along you still believed...
  Believed you were immune."
                                                 --Thomas Dolby,
                                                  "The Flat Earth"

From kat_lists at katspace.homelinux.org  Tue Oct 24 13:04:29 2006
From: kat_lists at katspace.homelinux.org (Kathryn Andersen)
Date: Tue Oct 24 13:36:16 2006
Subject: [Techtalk] spam filters
In-Reply-To: <Pine.LNX.4.64.0610241051430.10975@nedra.edsons.demon.nl>
References: <453DC11A.8060709@shadlen.org>
	<Pine.LNX.4.64.0610241051430.10975@nedra.edsons.demon.nl>
Message-ID: <20061024130428.GA26041@katla.katspace.homelinux.org>

On Tue, Oct 24, 2006 at 10:55:09AM +0200, Rudy Zijlstra wrote:
> On Tue, 24 Oct 2006, Maria McKinley wrote:
> 
> >I am currently using spamassasin to filter spam on our mail server. Lately 
> >it has not been doing a very good job. I keep trying to update it, but I 
> >always seem to be at the latest release. Does anyone have any suggestions? 

My own system works pretty well for me.  Note that I have my own domain,
and my own server, so some of the things I do may not fit everyone.  It
has a few layers of filtering.

Postfix:
I have the "smtpd_recipient_restrictions" set to a long list of things
which filters out mail coming from
(a) unknown/invalid hosts
(b) dynamic IPs
(c) blacklisted IPs

I admit, I basically cut-and-pasted the settings from our setup at work
(which was set up by a savvy guy who has since left, alas)

This is what I have in my main.cf:

smtpd_recipient_restrictions = permit_mynetworks,
    reject_non_fqdn_hostname,
    reject_non_fqdn_sender,
    reject_non_fqdn_recipient,
    reject_rbl_client sbl-xbl.spamhaus.org,
    reject_rbl_client relays.ordb.org,
    reject_rbl_client dnsbl.njabl.org,
    reject_rbl_client dnsbl.ahbl.org,
    reject_rbl_client dnsbl.sorbs.net,
    reject_rbl_client relays.visi.com,
    reject_rhsbl_client blackhole.securitysage.com,
    reject_rhsbl_sender blackhole.securitysage.com,
    reject_rhsbl_client rhsbl.ahbl.org,
    reject_rhsbl_sender rhsbl.ahbl.org,
    reject_rhsbl_client rhsbl.sorbs.net
    reject_rhsbl_sender rhsbl.sorbs.net,
    reject_rhsbl_client block.rhs.mailpolice.com,
    reject_rhsbl_sender block.rhs.mailpolice.com,
    reject_rhsbl_client dynamic.rhs.mailpolice.com,
    reject_rhsbl_sender dynamic.rhs.mailpolice.com,
    reject_rhsbl_client bogusmx.rfc-ignorant.org,
    reject_rhsbl_sender bogusmx.rfc-ignorant.org,
    reject_rhsbl_client dsn.rfc-ignorant.org,
    reject_rhsbl_sender dsn.rfc-ignorant.org
    reject_rbl_client list.dsbl.org,
    reject_unknown_sender_domain,
    reject_unauth_destination

This cuts out quite a bit of spam, but occassionally causes problems for
friends who have things like hotmail addresses (which tend to get
blacklisted).  Since they never actually read the bounce messages that
get sent back, they just ask me if I've changed my email address (which
of course I haven't).
I guess if too much isn't coming through, then one could reduce the
number of blacklists this uses.

Spam Assassin + Maildrop + Mutt:

I run Spam Assassin through my maildrop filter, rather than on a server-wide
basis, since I'm the only one who uses my server.  This means I can tune
it to my own preferences; in my user_prefs file, I beef up some scores
for things that my friends don't send me, such as HTML-only email.
I also set the spam score to 4.

Then in my maildrop filters, I do a few things:
1) anything which is flagged as spam (that is, with a score of 4 or
more) gets deleted.

        xfilter spamassassin
        if (/^X-Spam-Status: Yes/:h)
        {
                log "tagged spam! DIE!"
                exit
        }

2) anything which has a score of two or three (which I can check by
counting the '*' in the X-Spam-Level: header) gets refiled into the junk
mail folder.

        if (/^X-Spam-Level: \*\*\*/:h)
        {
                log "Dubious; refiling"
                to "$MAILDIR/.Incoming.junk/"
        }
        if (/^X-Spam-Level: \*\*/:h)
        {
                log "Somewhat dubious; refiling"
                to "$MAILDIR/.Incoming.junk/"
        }

3) anything which is sent to a particular address which got spammed to
death a few years ago, also gets sent to the junk folder

4) I do some filtering to particular folders depending on where it's
sent from (such as, all mail from "Cron Daemon" gets sent to the cron
folder, all email sent from livejournal.com gets sent to the lj folder
and so on).

5) anything which has an "In-Reply-To:" header which indicates that it's
a reply to an email of mine, gets sent to the main folder.  There's a
trick one can do with mutt to set your message id so that it has a
recognisable string which will then be used in the "In-Reply-To:"
header.

In my .muttrc:

# set my hostname to a fake hostname
# which should be used to set the Message-ID
set hostname=(someprefix).(my-real-hostname)
set hidden_host=yes

6) anything which has an X-Spam-Level of one, gets refiled to the "bulk"
folder (since it's only somewhat dubious, but probably isn't personal
email so it can be looked at later).  I also do another level of
refiling to other folders depending on senders and addresses the mail
was sent to.

I find that the "junk" folder is 99% junk mail, and not only that, but
90% of the junk mail is stuff that was sent to the "spam-listed"
address.  I go through it anyway, just in case it is wrongly marked as
"ham", which I then correct with sa-learn; likewise with the rare legit
mail which is marked as spam, which needs to be listed as ham.
Likewise, if, rarely, spam gets through to my main folder, I use
sa-learn to mark it as spam.

Protecting email addresses:
I learned my lesson from the email address that got spammed to death.
1) Never get a .com domain; they're huge targets for dictionary attacks
2) Never put an unprotected email address on a website.
   a) if you have to give an email address to someone who is going to
      carelessly put it on a website, then make it a special "email
      address for giving to naieve people"
   b) put protections in place for email addresses that need to be on a
      website.
3) I have a separate email address (and account, actually) which I only
use for mailing lists.  It has its own set of filter rules, for refiling
the various mailing list mails into different folders for each list.  It
also uses the In-Reply-To trick.  That generally takes care of most
things, since the only legitimate mail to that address is either mailing
list mail or replies to my own mail that I've sent to mailing lists.

Well, there's my 20c worth...

Kathryn Andersen
-- 
 _--_|\     | Kathryn Andersen	<http://www.katspace.com>
/      \    | 
\_.--.*/    | GenFicCrit mailing list <http://www.katspace.com/gen_fic_crit/>
      v     | 
------------| Melbourne -> Victoria -> Australia -> Southern Hemisphere
Maranatha!  |	-> Earth -> Sol -> Milky Way Galaxy -> Universe
From raquel at thericehouse.net  Tue Oct 24 14:11:32 2006
From: raquel at thericehouse.net (Raquel)
Date: Tue Oct 24 14:22:42 2006
Subject: [Techtalk] spam filters
In-Reply-To: <453DC11A.8060709@shadlen.org>
References: <453DC11A.8060709@shadlen.org>
Message-ID: <20061024071132.38c6d304.raquel@thericehouse.net>

On Tue, 24 Oct 2006 00:30:34 -0700
Maria McKinley <maria@shadlen.org> wrote:

> Hi there,
> 
> I am currently using spamassasin to filter spam on our mail
> server.  Lately it has not been doing a very good job. I keep
> trying to update  it, but I always seem to be at the latest
> release. Does anyone have any  suggestions? Either an alternate
> spam filter or some secret knob to turn  to make it work better?
> ;-) I have the spam level at 5 right now, but I 
>   don't think turning it further down would help much, because
>   most of 
> the spam getting through seems to be a 2.5 or less (and a
> depressing  amount of them are at 0!). Any advice? Has anyone
> tried turning it down  as low as a 2? What sort of false positives
> do you get?
> 
> thanks,
> maria
> 
> 

Do you continue to train the bayesian filters with SPAM that gets
missed?  What rulesets do you use?

-- 
Raquel
============================================================
He that blows the coals in quarrels he has nothing to do with, has
no right to complain if the sparks fly in his face.
  --Benjamin Franklin

From raquel at thericehouse.net  Tue Oct 24 14:27:31 2006
From: raquel at thericehouse.net (Raquel)
Date: Tue Oct 24 14:27:35 2006
Subject: [Techtalk] spam filters
In-Reply-To: <Pine.LNX.4.64.0610241051430.10975@nedra.edsons.demon.nl>
References: <453DC11A.8060709@shadlen.org>
	<Pine.LNX.4.64.0610241051430.10975@nedra.edsons.demon.nl>
Message-ID: <20061024072731.3a57689e.raquel@thericehouse.net>

On Tue, 24 Oct 2006 10:55:09 +0200 (CEST)
Rudy Zijlstra <rudy@edsons.demon.nl> wrote:

> 
> You are expressing my own frustration. I also noticed that most of
> what  gets through have a lot of almost sensible sentences which
> go about  nothing, and the actual spam content is in an embedded
> gif.
> 
> I've done the same as you, reinstalled spamassassin, with sofar
> the same  unsatisfying result. I've also noticed you can nowadays
> use razor, and  still need to double check whether i've got that
> correctly installed and  enabled.
> 
> Good luck, and please share if you find a solution!
> 
> Regards,
> 
> Rudy
> 
> 

Rudy,

I've been using SpamAssassin on my mail server for a couple of years
and have great success with it.  I train it daily with SPAM which
gets missed.  I ask my users to attach mail (complete with all
headers) to an email and send them to a special address which then
gets picked up and fed to sa-learn.  I also train the filters with
non-SPAM.
$ man sa-learn

The other thing I do is to (automatically) update the rulesets I
use.  Because spammers constantly change their methods, the rulesets
are often updated regularly.
http://www.rulesemporium.com/
http://www.rulesemporium.com/rules.htm
http://www.exit0.us/index.php?pagename=RulesDuJour

There's also a list for SpamAssassin
mailto:users-subscribe@spamassassin.apache.org

-- 
Raquel
============================================================
He that blows the coals in quarrels he has nothing to do with, has
no right to complain if the sparks fly in his face.
  --Benjamin Franklin

From kromagg at gmail.com  Tue Oct 24 14:33:40 2006
From: kromagg at gmail.com (Wim De Smet)
Date: Tue Oct 24 14:40:29 2006
Subject: [Techtalk] spam filters
In-Reply-To: <m3vemajbl2.fsf@ceres.staly.plus.com>
References: <453DC11A.8060709@shadlen.org>
	<m3vemajbl2.fsf@ceres.staly.plus.com>
Message-ID: <64e01c4d0610240733j17c99fdbv6883171825c99fea@mail.gmail.com>

On 10/24/06, David Sumbler <david@aeolia.co.uk> wrote:
> Then I check the "To" line: an enormous amount of spam is addressed
> not to "david@" my domain, or any other valid recipient, but to
> someone like "w3kc8as@" my domain.  So this gets sent to /dev/null.

Just wondering, what do you do with mail that's addressed to someone
else (e.g. you're in the CC) or mail that's a BCC (something like
'Undisclosed recipient' in To)?

Wim
From akkana at shallowsky.com  Tue Oct 24 23:00:20 2006
From: akkana at shallowsky.com (Akkana Peck)
Date: Tue Oct 24 23:00:28 2006
Subject: [Techtalk] spam filters
In-Reply-To: <453DC11A.8060709@shadlen.org>
References: <453DC11A.8060709@shadlen.org>
Message-ID: <20061024230020.GA30230@shallowsky.com>

Maria McKinley writes:
> I am currently using spamassasin to filter spam on our mail server. 
> Lately it has not been doing a very good job. I keep trying to update 
> it, but I always seem to be at the latest release. Does anyone have any 
> suggestions? Either an alternate spam filter or some secret knob to turn 
> to make it work better? ;-) I have the spam level at 5 right now, but I 
>  don't think turning it further down would help much, because most of 
> the spam getting through seems to be a 2.5 or less (and a depressing 
> amount of them are at 0!). Any advice? Has anyone tried turning it down 
> as low as a 2? What sort of false positives do you get?

I switched to spamassassin recently. Previously I'd used a mostly
homegrown set of procmail filters which made decisions based on
pattern matches in the subject, from, to/cc, content-type, etc.
That worked but I was constantly needing to add new patterns
and that got really tiresome (and the list of matches it had
to check for every mail message was huge).

With the default settings, I found that spamassassin didn't
filter much of anything. I mean, I would get messages like
"Subject: ENLARGE YOUR PEN!S"
and they would score zero! The only messages that got scored
were ones that matched a blacklist, like sorbs or spamcop (it checks
quite a few of them by default, at least on Ubuntu; I'm not sure how
I feel about that but at least it isn't completely rejecting
messages based on blacklists, like some sites do).

I bumped the thresholds much lower: instead of sending scores of
15 or more asterisks to the "almost-certainly" folder, I cut it
down to 8 and have never seen a false positive there (though I've
mostly stopped checking that folder; I only use it for training).
I set the tag for spam (which gets moved to the "probably" folder)
at 3.4, and I almost never see a false positive there either.

But I was still seeing lots of spam in my inbox. I edited
.spamassassin/user_prefs to bump up some of the default scores:

score DRUGS_ERECTILE 3
score IMPOTENCE 3

score HTML_SHOUTING3    .3
score HTML_MESSAGE      .1
score HTML_FONT_INVISIBLE       1.5

# The ALL_TRUSTED test seems to trust everybody, including dynamic
# IPs from random ISPs like c-71-201-212-73.hsd1.il.comcast.net.
score ALL_TRUSTED       0

# The autolearning thresholds don't work: it sometimes decides
# to autolearn (wrongly) from messages outside the thresholds.
# Turn autolearning off completely:
bayes_auto_learn        0

Then I trained it on all my ham and spam for a while, and after
about a week it started getting quite a bit better.

But I was still getting tons of asian-charset spams: none of
spamassassin's default settings seemed to help with that, nor
did the bayesian training. There were quite a few rules that
looked relevant, so I tried setting them:

score HTML_COMMENT_8BITS        1
score UPPERCASE_25_50           1
score UPPERCASE_50_75           1
score UPPERCASE_75_100          1
score BODY_8BITS                1.7
score HEADER_8BITS              3.2
score SUBJ_ILLEGAL_CHARS        3
score CHARSET_FARAWAY_HEADER    .5
score NONEXISTENT_CHARSET       2
score CHARSET_FARAWAY           3.2
score HTML_CHARSET_FARAWAY      2.5

but none of them made a bit of difference: I was still being flooded
with asian-charset spams and none of them ever triggered any of
these rules. Eventually I gave up on ever getting spamassassin to
block those, and added a procmail rule I'd used with my old system:

# Hiding the subject in another charset so it's not filterable:
:0:
*^Subject: =\?..*-..*\?
spam/charsets

I also added a rule to check for the To line pointing to three names
which spammers have somehow associated with my address (I have no
idea who Lindsay Hursty is or why anyone would think she's at my
address, but I get tons of spam that obviously thinks I'm her,
or two other people I also haven't heard of).

Now, training spamassassin regularly (on ham as well as spam),
my daily spam load looks something like:
5-10 false negatives landing in Inbox
50 in "probably" (have to check in case of the rare false positives)
300 in "almost-certainly" (never seen a false positive there yet)
100 caught by the charset rule
75 caught by the duplicates rule

The false negatives are sometimes the "random text with an attached
gif", but sometimes they're subjects you'd really think any sensible
spam filter should have caught, like "w From  Rolex, Cartier,
Breitling, Bvlgari, Omega, Patek Philippe, Tag Heuer, Officine
Panerai, Audemars Piguet, Franck Muller purpose matter" or
"Rock hard erections". I mean, come on, how is it that a spam
system can't recognize those? But the only rules flagged by the
"rock hard" one were
score=2.1 required=3.4 tests=BAYES_60,HTML_MESSAGE,URIBL_SBL
I really wonder who chooses these rules, sometimes.

	...Akkana
From maria at shadlen.org  Wed Oct 25 05:23:48 2006
From: maria at shadlen.org (Maria McKinley)
Date: Wed Oct 25 05:23:50 2006
Subject: [Techtalk] spam filters
In-Reply-To: <20061024230020.GA30230@shallowsky.com>
References: <453DC11A.8060709@shadlen.org>
	<20061024230020.GA30230@shallowsky.com>
Message-ID: <453EF4E4.20705@shadlen.org>

Thanks for all of the great advice everyone! I was not the one who set
up spamassasin on our mail server, so I have no idea how it is curretnly
configured, and obviously there are a lot of things I can tweak! I'm
going to look around and see what I can do, although I am currently
dealing with a high priority firewall issue, so it may be a couple of
weeks before I can spend much time on it. I will be sure to update you
all on my ongoing fight against spam.

cheers,
maria

From david at aeolia.co.uk  Wed Oct 25 14:39:34 2006
From: david at aeolia.co.uk (David Sumbler)
Date: Wed Oct 25 14:39:47 2006
Subject: [Techtalk] spam filters
In-Reply-To: <64e01c4d0610240733j17c99fdbv6883171825c99fea@mail.gmail.com> (Wim
	De Smet's message of "Tue, 24 Oct 2006 16:33:40 +0200")
References: <453DC11A.8060709@shadlen.org>
	<m3vemajbl2.fsf@ceres.staly.plus.com>
	<64e01c4d0610240733j17c99fdbv6883171825c99fea@mail.gmail.com>
Message-ID: <m3ac3kihnd.fsf@ceres.staly.plus.com>

"Wim De Smet" <kromagg@gmail.com> writes:

> On 10/24/06, David Sumbler <david@aeolia.co.uk> wrote:
>> Then I check the "To" line: an enormous amount of spam is addressed
>> not to "david@" my domain, or any other valid recipient, but to
>> someone like "w3kc8as@" my domain.  So this gets sent to /dev/null.
>
> Just wondering, what do you do with mail that's addressed to someone
> else (e.g. you're in the CC) or mail that's a BCC (something like
> 'Undisclosed recipient' in To)?

OK, I was simplifying!  I check the Cc and Bcc lines too.

But if the To line contains "@aeolia.co.uk" without a valid string
before the "@", then the mail gets rejected.

David

-- 

david@aeolia.co.uk

From conor.daly-linuxchix at cod.homelinux.org  Thu Oct 26 06:29:11 2006
From: conor.daly-linuxchix at cod.homelinux.org (Conor Daly)
Date: Thu Oct 26 06:29:18 2006
Subject: [Techtalk] low bandwidch X forwarding protocol?
Message-ID: <20061026062911.GB452@Hobbiton.cod.ie>

Hi all,

At work we are about to run a test of a remote access server.  The
proposed GUI forwarding method is citrix based on its low bandwidth
consumption.  However we will have full network access from linux clients.
X forwarding and VNC are apparently much more bandwidth intensive.  Are
there any free protocols out there that will let me access my work desktop
(FC5) with as low bandwidth consumption as citrix?

Ta,

Conor
-- 
Conor Daly <conor.daly@cod.homelinux.org>
-----BEGIN GEEK CODE BLOCK-----
Version: 3.1
GCS/G/S/O d+(-) s:+ a+ C++(+) UL++++ US++ P>++ L+++>++++ E--- W++ !N
PS+ PE Y+ PGP? tv(-) b+++(+) G e+++(*) h-- r+++ z++++ 
------END GEEK CODE BLOCK------
http://www.geekcode.com/ http://www.ebb.org/ungeek/
From terri at zone12.com  Thu Oct 26 07:51:31 2006
From: terri at zone12.com (Terri Oda)
Date: Thu Oct 26 07:51:40 2006
Subject: [Techtalk] spam filters
In-Reply-To: <Pine.LNX.4.64.0610241051430.10975@nedra.edsons.demon.nl>
References: <453DC11A.8060709@shadlen.org>
	<Pine.LNX.4.64.0610241051430.10975@nedra.edsons.demon.nl>
Message-ID: <33109dc3864033f559cc66ccb596c620@zone12.com>

On 24-Oct-06, at 4:55 AM, Rudy Zijlstra wrote:
> You are expressing my own frustration. I also noticed that most of 
> what gets through have a lot of almost sensible sentences which go 
> about nothing, and the actual spam content is in an embedded gif.

This reminds me, I'd been meaning to find out if anyone had written 
some OCR (optical character recognition) to plug into spam assassin for 
these stupid image-spams.  I guess since updating spam assassin hasn't 
helped with the problem, the answer is probably no.

I might have to write it myself if no one gets one working in the next 
couple of weeks.  I'm not a huge fan of graylisting because I get a lot 
of time-sensitive stuff from dubious sources (that is, my students, who 
use quite a variety of mailservers which may be horribly 
mis-configured) so my mail admin let me opt-out of that, but these 
image spams simply aren't interesting anymore, so it's time to get them 
out of my inbox and quarantined with the rest of the trash.

  Terri

From andreas.berglund at home.se  Thu Oct 26 09:41:15 2006
From: andreas.berglund at home.se (Andreas Berglund)
Date: Thu Oct 26 10:02:29 2006
Subject: [Techtalk] low bandwidch X forwarding protocol?
In-Reply-To: <20061026062911.GB452@Hobbiton.cod.ie>
References: <20061026062911.GB452@Hobbiton.cod.ie>
Message-ID: <454082BB.8050906@home.se>

Conor Daly wrote:
> Hi all,
> 
> At work we are about to run a test of a remote access server.  The
> proposed GUI forwarding method is citrix based on its low bandwidth
> consumption.  However we will have full network access from linux clients.
> X forwarding and VNC are apparently much more bandwidth intensive.  Are
> there any free protocols out there that will let me access my work desktop
> (FC5) with as low bandwidth consumption as citrix?
> 
> Ta,
> 
> Conor

Hi Conor, have you looked into NX from www.nomachine.com, it is supposed 
to be low bandwith and low latency. I don't know anything about citrix 
so I don't know how it compares but it might be worth checking out.

cheers
Andreas
From agoats at compuserve.com  Thu Oct 26 11:26:21 2006
From: agoats at compuserve.com (agoats)
Date: Thu Oct 26 12:27:17 2006
Subject: [Techtalk] spam filters
In-Reply-To: <33109dc3864033f559cc66ccb596c620@zone12.com>
References: <453DC11A.8060709@shadlen.org>
	<Pine.LNX.4.64.0610241051430.10975@nedra.edsons.demon.nl>
	<33109dc3864033f559cc66ccb596c620@zone12.com>
Message-ID: <45409B5D.8080207@compuserve.com>

I don't know of any.

gocr/jocr works pretty good as an OCR, you might have some issues with 
the font style and size, they pick some that might not be in the 
library. Color of font may also be a problem.

Just a heads up on the task.

Alvin

Terri Oda wrote:
>
> On 24-Oct-06, at 4:55 AM, Rudy Zijlstra wrote:
>> You are expressing my own frustration. I also noticed that most of 
>> what gets through have a lot of almost sensible sentences which go 
>> about nothing, and the actual spam content is in an embedded gif.
>
> This reminds me, I'd been meaning to find out if anyone had written 
> some OCR (optical character recognition) to plug into spam assassin 
> for these stupid image-spams.  I guess since updating spam assassin 
> hasn't helped with the problem, the answer is probably no.
>
> I might have to write it myself if no one gets one working in the next 
> couple of weeks.  I'm not a huge fan of graylisting because I get a 
> lot of time-sensitive stuff from dubious sources (that is, my 
> students, who use quite a variety of mailservers which may be horribly 
> mis-configured) so my mail admin let me opt-out of that, but these 
> image spams simply aren't interesting anymore, so it's time to get 
> them out of my inbox and quarantined with the rest of the trash.
>
>  Terri
>
> _______________________________________________
> Techtalk mailing list
> Techtalk@linuxchix.org
> http://linuxchix.org/mailman/listinfo/techtalk
>
From conor.daly-linuxchix at cod.homelinux.org  Thu Oct 26 13:10:14 2006
From: conor.daly-linuxchix at cod.homelinux.org (Conor Daly)
Date: Thu Oct 26 13:10:26 2006
Subject: [Techtalk] low bandwidch X forwarding protocol?
In-Reply-To: <454082BB.8050906@home.se>
References: <20061026062911.GB452@Hobbiton.cod.ie> <454082BB.8050906@home.se>
Message-ID: <20061026131014.GB14775@Hobbiton.cod.ie>

On Thu, Oct 26, 2006 at 11:41:15AM +0200 or so it is rumoured hereabouts, 
Andreas Berglund thought:
> Conor Daly wrote:
> >
> >At work we are about to run a test of a remote access server.  The
> >proposed GUI forwarding method is citrix based on its low bandwidth
> >consumption.  However we will have full network access from linux clients.
> >X forwarding and VNC are apparently much more bandwidth intensive.  Are
> >there any free protocols out there that will let me access my work desktop
> >(FC5) with as low bandwidth consumption as citrix?
> 
> Hi Conor, have you looked into NX from www.nomachine.com, it is supposed 
> to be low bandwith and low latency. I don't know anything about citrix 
> so I don't know how it compares but it might be worth checking out.

Yep, just did.  Very impressed with its behaviour...

Conor
-- 
Conor Daly <conor.daly@cod.homelinux.org>
-----BEGIN GEEK CODE BLOCK-----
Version: 3.1
GCS/G/S/O d+(-) s:+ a+ C++(+) UL++++ US++ P>++ L+++>++++ E--- W++ !N
PS+ PE Y+ PGP? tv(-) b+++(+) G e+++(*) h-- r+++ z++++ 
------END GEEK CODE BLOCK------
http://www.geekcode.com/ http://www.ebb.org/ungeek/
From akkana at shallowsky.com  Thu Oct 26 16:55:28 2006
From: akkana at shallowsky.com (Akkana Peck)
Date: Thu Oct 26 16:55:31 2006
Subject: [Techtalk] spam filters
In-Reply-To: <33109dc3864033f559cc66ccb596c620@zone12.com>
References: <453DC11A.8060709@shadlen.org>
	<Pine.LNX.4.64.0610241051430.10975@nedra.edsons.demon.nl>
	<33109dc3864033f559cc66ccb596c620@zone12.com>
Message-ID: <20061026165528.GA20309@shallowsky.com>

Terri Oda writes:
> This reminds me, I'd been meaning to find out if anyone had written 
> some OCR (optical character recognition) to plug into spam assassin for 
> these stupid image-spams.  I guess since updating spam assassin hasn't 
> helped with the problem, the answer is probably no.

I haven't seen one. It sounds like a CPU load on the server, though.

For a while, a lot of those spams called their messages "img001.gif",
so I got the bright idea of blocking any message with an attachment
of that name. I mean, what real person would attach an image with
a name like that?

That didn't last long. Turns out tons of people do that, for images
that contain things like a blue-sky background image for their html
mail (I'm so glad I use mutt and read messages in plaintext), or
their company logo. You'd think they'd name the image sky.gif or
logo.gif or something, but noooo. When I started seeing mail from
Google recruiters including images by that name (for the company
logo) I decided filtering it was probably a bad idea.

-- 
    ...Akkana
    "Beginning GIMP: From Novice to Professional": http://gimpbook.com
From gsmraxe at gmail.com  Thu Oct 26 17:27:32 2006
From: gsmraxe at gmail.com (gossamer axe)
Date: Thu Oct 26 17:34:53 2006
Subject: [Techtalk] text parsing question
Message-ID: <126b338e0610261027y12a65aa9hd75ca53f68376f7a@mail.gmail.com>

Hi!

I have a text file that looks like
,
question
,answer
,question2
,answer2
,
Now, I have to hand edit it to bring
,
question
,answer
to one line.  I was wondering if I can do something like that with sed
automatically...Based on the fact that each future line will have 3 present
lines.

What I'm looking to do is to import this to a mysql table which has 3
fields... id,question,answer but having the lines split like that makes it
imposible to import.  Even doing --fields-terminated-by=\n or \r or both
doesn't work.

So either making the text file automatically bring up two bottom lines to
the first or someway of importing newline delimited fields into mysql.  I
suppose a bash script to read each line in and maybe write it to a file
$var1,$var2,$var3 on one line.

-- 
Gossamer Axe
gsmraxe@gmail.com
http://gypsy.sytes.net/
From gebhard.dettmar at student.hu-berlin.de  Thu Oct 26 19:13:43 2006
From: gebhard.dettmar at student.hu-berlin.de (Gebhard Dettmar)
Date: Thu Oct 26 19:06:48 2006
Subject: [Techtalk] spam filters
In-Reply-To: <20061026165528.GA20309@shallowsky.com>
References: <453DC11A.8060709@shadlen.org>
	<33109dc3864033f559cc66ccb596c620@zone12.com>
	<20061026165528.GA20309@shallowsky.com>
Message-ID: <200610262109.27119@cl>

On Thursday 26 October 2006 18:55, Akkana Peck wrote:
> Terri Oda writes:
> > [...]
>
> For a while, a lot of those spams called their messages "img001.gif",
> so I got the bright idea of blocking any message with an attachment
> of that name. I mean, what real person would attach an image with
> a name like that?
>
> That didn't last long. Turns out tons of people do that, for images
> that contain things like a blue-sky background image for their html
> mail (I'm so glad I use mutt and read messages in plaintext), or
> their company logo. You'd think they'd name the image sky.gif or
> logo.gif or something, but noooo. When I started seeing mail from
> Google recruiters including images by that name (for the company
> logo) I decided filtering it was probably a bad idea.

The question is if was you who had the "bad idea"
SCNR
Gebhard
(who blocks both html mail and gif attachments in Kmail and has really few 
mismatches with it)

-- 
A day for firm decisions!!!!!  Or is it?
From conor.daly-linuxchix at cod.homelinux.org  Thu Oct 26 19:33:32 2006
From: conor.daly-linuxchix at cod.homelinux.org (Conor Daly)
Date: Thu Oct 26 19:33:41 2006
Subject: [Techtalk] text parsing question
In-Reply-To: <126b338e0610261027y12a65aa9hd75ca53f68376f7a@mail.gmail.com>
References: <126b338e0610261027y12a65aa9hd75ca53f68376f7a@mail.gmail.com>
Message-ID: <20061026193332.GA25432@Hobbiton.cod.ie>

On Thu, Oct 26, 2006 at 10:27:32AM -0700 or so it is rumoured hereabouts, 
gossamer axe thought:
> Hi!
> 
> I have a text file that looks like
> ,
> question
> ,answer
> ,question2
> ,answer2
> ,

This file looks inconsistent from here.  Is it the case that there is no
comma on a line by itself between ,answer and ,question2 ?  If so you have
a harder task.  If there is always a comma by itself on a line, you have a
suitable separator. 

> So either making the text file automatically bring up two bottom lines to
> the first or someway of importing newline delimited fields into mysql.  I
> suppose a bash script to read each line in and maybe write it to a file
> $var1,$var2,$var3 on one line.

This would be my approach, not from any innate superiority of the method,
more from a lack of sed knowledge.  My bash script would do something
like:

exec < file

read LINE

echo $LINE | grep '^,$' > /dev/null

if [ $? .eq 0 ]; then
read LINE2
read LINE3
echo "$LINE $LINE2 $LINE3" > outfile
fi

and something to iterate over the file...

Conor
-- 
Conor Daly <conor.daly@cod.homelinux.org>
-----BEGIN GEEK CODE BLOCK-----
Version: 3.1
GCS/G/S/O d+(-) s:+ a+ C++(+) UL++++ US++ P>++ L+++>++++ E--- W++ !N
PS+ PE Y+ PGP? tv(-) b+++(+) G e+++(*) h-- r+++ z++++ 
------END GEEK CODE BLOCK------
http://www.geekcode.com/ http://www.ebb.org/ungeek/
From gebhard.dettmar at student.hu-berlin.de  Thu Oct 26 18:48:08 2006
From: gebhard.dettmar at student.hu-berlin.de (Gebhard Dettmar)
Date: Thu Oct 26 19:36:34 2006
Subject: [Techtalk] text parsing question
In-Reply-To: <126b338e0610261027y12a65aa9hd75ca53f68376f7a@mail.gmail.com>
References: <126b338e0610261027y12a65aa9hd75ca53f68376f7a@mail.gmail.com>
Message-ID: <200610262020.50901@cl>

On Thursday 26 October 2006 19:27, gossamer axe wrote:
> Hi!
>
> I have a text file that looks like
> ,
> question
> ,answer
> ,question2
> ,answer2
> ,
> Now, I have to hand edit it to bring
> ,
> question
> ,answer
> to one line.  I was wondering if I can do something like that with sed
> automatically...Based on the fact that each future line will have 3
> present lines.
>
> [...]
Hmm, just to make sure I understood your question - you want to bring 
,
question
,answer
to
question, answer
(=one line)
This should work in sed with \n
Unfortunately it doesn't (with my GNU sed version 3.02 ). So I took perl, 
which is the only language I understand Regexes with (at least sometimes 
;-)

Having this in 'testfile',
---snip---
,
question
,answer
,question2
,answer2
,
---snap---
perl -pi -e 's/(,$)|([nr2])\n/$2 /' testfile
brings
question ,answer ,question2 ,answer2

Maybe this points you in the right direction
Regards,
Gebhard


From maria at shadlen.org  Thu Oct 26 20:11:14 2006
From: maria at shadlen.org (Maria McKinley)
Date: Thu Oct 26 20:11:18 2006
Subject: [Techtalk] logging problem at boot
Message-ID: <45411662.9090301@shadlen.org>

Hi there,

I feel like I should be able to figure this out, but somehow it just 
isn't working for me...

When I boot up my machine, I see a bright red failed, and something 
about syncookies, but it flies by too fast to tell what it is all about. 
So I looked in the logs, but can't find anything. It seems that not 
everything that flies by at boot up is logged. I thought that all of the 
stuff that went by on the screen was logged to dmesg, but this doesn't 
seem to be the case. What can I do to ensure this message is saved 
somewhere when I boot?

thanks,
Maria
From kmactane at gothpunk.com  Thu Oct 26 22:34:05 2006
From: kmactane at gothpunk.com (Kai MacTane)
Date: Thu Oct 26 22:36:20 2006
Subject: [Techtalk] logging problem at boot
In-Reply-To: <45411662.9090301@shadlen.org>
References: <45411662.9090301@shadlen.org>
Message-ID: <7.0.1.0.0.20061026153151.01cbc090@gothpunk.com>

At 01:11 PM 10/26/2006, Maria McKinley wrote:
>When I boot up my machine, I see a bright red failed, and something 
>about syncookies, but it flies by too fast to tell what it is all about.

You don't mention what distro you're using, but "a bright red failed" 
sounds to me like Red Hat, Fedora, or a derivative. In which case, if 
it's already reached the point where it's doing the pretty ANSI 
colored display, it may be logging into syslog/messages already. Have 
you checked there?

                                                 --Kai MacTane
----------------------------------------------------------------------
"Playing dead and sweet submission,
  Cracks the whip deadpan on cue."
                                                 --Siouxsie and the
                                                   Banshees,
                                                  "Peek-a-boo" 


From brat at magma.ca  Fri Oct 27 00:54:29 2006
From: brat at magma.ca (Angelina Carlton)
Date: Fri Oct 27 01:01:25 2006
Subject: [Techtalk] logging problem at boot
In-Reply-To: <45411662.9090301@shadlen.org> (Maria McKinley's message of "Thu\,
	26 Oct 2006 13\:11\:14 -0700")
References: <45411662.9090301@shadlen.org>
Message-ID: <87ejsupohm.fsf@magma.ca>

Maria McKinley <maria@shadlen.org> writes:


> When I boot up my machine, I see a bright red failed, and something
> about syncookies, but it flies by too fast to tell what it is all
> about. So I looked in the logs, but can't find anything. It seems that
> not everything that flies by at boot up is logged. I thought that all
> of the stuff that went by on the screen was logged to dmesg, but this
> doesn't seem to be the case. What can I do to ensure this message is
> saved somewhere when I boot?

Hi Maria

If you are on a Debian (or derivative) system you can set the
/etc/default/bootlogd variable 
BOOTLOGD_ENABLE to yes and then examine /var/log/boot

,----[ /etc/default/bootlogd ]
| # Run bootlogd at startup ?
| BOOTLOGD_ENABLE=Yes
`----



-- 
-----Angelina Carlton-----
orchid on irc.freenode.net
     brat@magma.ca
web:bzgirl.bakadigital.com
--------------------------
From johnc+linuxchix at kirriwa.net  Fri Oct 27 05:28:46 2006
From: johnc+linuxchix at kirriwa.net (John Clarke)
Date: Fri Oct 27 05:35:19 2006
Subject: [Techtalk] spam filters
In-Reply-To: <33109dc3864033f559cc66ccb596c620@zone12.com>;
	from terri@zone12.com on Thu, Oct 26, 2006 at 03:51:31 -0400
References: <453DC11A.8060709@shadlen.org>
	<Pine.LNX.4.64.0610241051430.10975@nedra.edsons.demon.nl>
	<33109dc3864033f559cc66ccb596c620@zone12.com>
Message-ID: <20061027152846.A1537@kirriwa.net>

On Thu, Oct 26, 2006 at 03:51:31 -0400, Terri Oda wrote:

> This reminds me, I'd been meaning to find out if anyone had written 
> some OCR (optical character recognition) to plug into spam assassin for 
> these stupid image-spams.  I guess since updating spam assassin hasn't 
> helped with the problem, the answer is probably no.

This recent message on the SLUG list says the answer is yes :-)

    http://lists.slug.org.au/archives/slug/2006/10/msg00381.html

and a follow up with a quick procmail hack to block image spam:

    http://lists.slug.org.au/archives/slug/2006/10/msg00382.html


Cheers,

John
-- 
I use shell scripts at ork. Some cow-orkers refuse to touch them, their
excuse is usually "I don't understand perl".  Their fear of perl is such
that all things unknown are also perl.
            -- Andrew Dalgleish
From gsmraxe at gmail.com  Fri Oct 27 14:41:40 2006
From: gsmraxe at gmail.com (gossamer axe)
Date: Fri Oct 27 14:41:48 2006
Subject: [Techtalk] text parsing question
In-Reply-To: <20061026193332.GA25432@Hobbiton.cod.ie>
References: <126b338e0610261027y12a65aa9hd75ca53f68376f7a@mail.gmail.com>
	<20061026193332.GA25432@Hobbiton.cod.ie>
Message-ID: <126b338e0610270741k2b231a85m954b71a40f27136@mail.gmail.com>

I figured this would be the best way...Thank you for you help! =]

On 10/26/06, Conor Daly <conor.daly-linuxchix@cod.homelinux.org> wrote:
>
> On Thu, Oct 26, 2006 at 10:27:32AM -0700 or so it is rumoured hereabouts,
> gossamer axe thought:
> > Hi!
> >
> > I have a text file that looks like
> > ,
> > question
> > ,answer
> > ,question2
> > ,answer2
> > ,
>
> This file looks inconsistent from here.  Is it the case that there is no
> comma on a line by itself between ,answer and ,question2 ?  If so you have
> a harder task.  If there is always a comma by itself on a line, you have a
> suitable separator.
>
> > So either making the text file automatically bring up two bottom lines
> to
> > the first or someway of importing newline delimited fields into
> mysql.  I
> > suppose a bash script to read each line in and maybe write it to a file
> > $var1,$var2,$var3 on one line.
>
> This would be my approach, not from any innate superiority of the method,
> more from a lack of sed knowledge.  My bash script would do something
> like:
>
> exec < file
>
> read LINE
>
> echo $LINE | grep '^,$' > /dev/null
>
> if [ $? .eq 0 ]; then
> read LINE2
> read LINE3
> echo "$LINE $LINE2 $LINE3" > outfile
> fi
>
> and something to iterate over the file...
>
> Conor
> --
> Conor Daly <conor.daly@cod.homelinux.org>
> -----BEGIN GEEK CODE BLOCK-----
> Version: 3.1
> GCS/G/S/O d+(-) s:+ a+ C++(+) UL++++ US++ P>++ L+++>++++ E--- W++ !N
> PS+ PE Y+ PGP? tv(-) b+++(+) G e+++(*) h-- r+++ z++++
> ------END GEEK CODE BLOCK------
> http://www.geekcode.com/ http://www.ebb.org/ungeek/
> _______________________________________________
> Techtalk mailing list
> Techtalk@linuxchix.org
> http://linuxchix.org/mailman/listinfo/techtalk
>



-- 
Gossamer Axe
gsmraxe@gmail.com
http://gypsy.sytes.net/
From maria at shadlen.org  Fri Oct 27 21:45:35 2006
From: maria at shadlen.org (Maria McKinley)
Date: Fri Oct 27 21:45:39 2006
Subject: [Techtalk] logging problem at boot
In-Reply-To: <87ejsupohm.fsf@magma.ca>
References: <45411662.9090301@shadlen.org> <87ejsupohm.fsf@magma.ca>
Message-ID: <45427DFF.6070505@shadlen.org>

Angelina Carlton wrote:
> Maria McKinley <maria@shadlen.org> writes:
> 
> 
> 
>>When I boot up my machine, I see a bright red failed, and something
>>about syncookies, but it flies by too fast to tell what it is all
>>about. So I looked in the logs, but can't find anything. It seems that
>>not everything that flies by at boot up is logged. I thought that all
>>of the stuff that went by on the screen was logged to dmesg, but this
>>doesn't seem to be the case. What can I do to ensure this message is
>>saved somewhere when I boot?
> 
> 
> Hi Maria
> 
> If you are on a Debian (or derivative) system you can set the
> /etc/default/bootlogd variable 
> BOOTLOGD_ENABLE to yes and then examine /var/log/boot
> 
> ,----[ /etc/default/bootlogd ]
> | # Run bootlogd at startup ?
> | BOOTLOGD_ENABLE=Yes
> `----
> 

Thanks you so much. Knew there must be something easy, but searching for 
on google for variates on boot log debian gave me everything but. I did 
find what looks like a nice thing on logging though. Anyone know about this:

http://www.debian-administration.org/articles/278

Has anyone used the advice? Makes sense to me, but wondering if others 
see problems with it.

cheers,
maria
From ehcasey at earthlink.net  Sat Oct 28 04:03:34 2006
From: ehcasey at earthlink.net (Elisa Casey)
Date: Sat Oct 28 04:06:49 2006
Subject: [Techtalk] KMail question
Message-ID: <200610280003.35040.ehcasey@earthlink.net>

I'm currently using KMail under SuSE Linux... but I am switching over to 
Windows since I can't keep up with Linux. ?

I'm planning to use either GMail or The Bat! as my email platform. ?How do 
I export my email so I can open it with either one of those programs? ?
(The Help files for KMail are not working.)

Thanks!!
-- 
-Elisa H. Casey
ehcasey@earthlink.net
From ehcasey at earthlink.net  Sat Oct 28 04:04:21 2006
From: ehcasey at earthlink.net (Elisa Casey)
Date: Sat Oct 28 04:07:33 2006
Subject: [Techtalk] GnuCash question
Message-ID: <200610280004.21619.ehcasey@earthlink.net>

I am in the process of switching back over to Windows since I'm having 
trouble keeping up with Linux.

Currently I am managing my finances with GnuCash under SuSE Linux.?I am 
having difficulty figuring out from the help file there precisely how to 
export my files to Quicken's format. ?Any help appreciated.

-- 
-Elisa H. Casey
ehcasey@earthlink.net
From kromagg at gmail.com  Sun Oct 29 14:04:32 2006
From: kromagg at gmail.com (Wim De Smet)
Date: Sun Oct 29 14:11:46 2006
Subject: [Techtalk] text parsing question
In-Reply-To: <20061026193332.GA25432@Hobbiton.cod.ie>
References: <126b338e0610261027y12a65aa9hd75ca53f68376f7a@mail.gmail.com>
	<20061026193332.GA25432@Hobbiton.cod.ie>
Message-ID: <64e01c4d0610290604l62d001ddr520a790d5e7c859e@mail.gmail.com>

On 10/26/06, Conor Daly <conor.daly-linuxchix@cod.homelinux.org> wrote:
> This would be my approach, not from any innate superiority of the method,
> more from a lack of sed knowledge.  My bash script would do something
> like:
>
> exec < file
>
> read LINE
>
> echo $LINE | grep '^,$' > /dev/null
>
> if [ $? .eq 0 ]; then
> read LINE2
> read LINE3
> echo "$LINE $LINE2 $LINE3" > outfile
> fi
>
> and something to iterate over the file...

something like this maybe:

exec < file
while read LINE
do
 echo $LINE | grep '^,$' > /dev/null
 if [ $? .eq 0 ]; then
  read LINE2
  read LINE3
  echo "$LINE $LINE2 $LINE3" > outfile
 fi
done
From david at aeolia.co.uk  Sun Oct 29 19:26:18 2006
From: david at aeolia.co.uk (David Sumbler)
Date: Sun Oct 29 19:26:34 2006
Subject: [Techtalk] Using Evolution and Pine
Message-ID: <m33b962aat.fsf@ceres.staly.plus.com>

I am about to install Ubuntu 6.10, and am intending to switch to using
this over the next week.  Currently I am using Fedora Core 4.

At present I use Gnus for mail and news.  When I am away from home I
leave sshd running, and use Putty to log in to my computer at home,
using Emacs/Gnus to deal with my mail.

I quite like the idea of using Evolution in Ubuntu.  Unfortunately
Evolution doesn't have (I think) a text interface, so it would be less
suitable than Gnus, Pine, Mutt etc. to use from a remote terminal.

Does anyone know if any of the text-based e-mail clients, such as the
ones I have mentioned, are suitable to use in conjunction with
Evolution (but not at the same time, of course)?  Obviously their mail
file format needs to be the same as Evolution's, and I don't want one
program to screw things up for the other.

David

-- 

david@aeolia.co.uk

From mary-linuxchix at puzzling.org  Sun Oct 29 20:14:39 2006
From: mary-linuxchix at puzzling.org (Mary Gardiner)
Date: Sun Oct 29 20:14:52 2006
Subject: [Techtalk] Using Evolution and Pine
In-Reply-To: <m33b962aat.fsf@ceres.staly.plus.com>
References: <m33b962aat.fsf@ceres.staly.plus.com>
Message-ID: <20061029201439.GF2600@sourdust.home.puzzling.org>

On Sun, Oct 29, 2006, David Sumbler wrote:
> Does anyone know if any of the text-based e-mail clients, such as the
> ones I have mentioned, are suitable to use in conjunction with
> Evolution (but not at the same time, of course)?  Obviously their mail
> file format needs to be the same as Evolution's, and I don't want one
> program to screw things up for the other.

I believe mutt and Evolution can both read the Maildir format. Honestly
though, the most common way to get two different mail clients to share a
mail account is to get them both to talk to it via IMAP which handles
locking and such on the server.

-Mary
From david at aeolia.co.uk  Sun Oct 29 20:41:17 2006
From: david at aeolia.co.uk (David Sumbler)
Date: Sun Oct 29 20:41:30 2006
Subject: [Techtalk] Using Evolution and Pine
In-Reply-To: <20061029201439.GF2600@sourdust.home.puzzling.org> (Mary
	Gardiner's message of "Mon, 30 Oct 2006 07:14:39 +1100")
References: <m33b962aat.fsf@ceres.staly.plus.com>
	<20061029201439.GF2600@sourdust.home.puzzling.org>
Message-ID: <m3r6wqx3bm.fsf@ceres.staly.plus.com>

Mary Gardiner <mary-linuxchix@puzzling.org> writes:

> On Sun, Oct 29, 2006, David Sumbler wrote:
>> Does anyone know if any of the text-based e-mail clients, such as
>> the ones I have mentioned, are suitable to use in conjunction with
>> Evolution (but not at the same time, of course)?  Obviously their
>> mail file format needs to be the same as Evolution's, and I don't
>> want one program to screw things up for the other.
>
> I believe mutt and Evolution can both read the Maildir
> format. Honestly though, the most common way to get two different
> mail clients to share a mail account is to get them both to talk to
> it via IMAP which handles locking and such on the server.

Ha - now that sounds like a good idea which I hadn't thought of, never
having used IMAP.

I need to look into this.

David

-- 

david@aeolia.co.uk

From carla at bratgrrl.com  Sun Oct 29 21:22:12 2006
From: carla at bratgrrl.com (Carla Schroder)
Date: Sun Oct 29 21:22:31 2006
Subject: [Techtalk] Using Evolution and Pine
In-Reply-To: <20061029201439.GF2600@sourdust.home.puzzling.org>
References: <m33b962aat.fsf@ceres.staly.plus.com>
	<20061029201439.GF2600@sourdust.home.puzzling.org>
Message-ID: <200610291322.12306.carla@bratgrrl.com>

On Sunday 29 October 2006 12:14, Mary Gardiner wrote:
> On Sun, Oct 29, 2006, David Sumbler wrote:
> > Does anyone know if any of the text-based e-mail clients, such as the
> > ones I have mentioned, are suitable to use in conjunction with
> > Evolution (but not at the same time, of course)?  Obviously their mail
> > file format needs to be the same as Evolution's, and I don't want one
> > program to screw things up for the other.
> 
> I believe mutt and Evolution can both read the Maildir format. Honestly
> though, the most common way to get two different mail clients to share a
> mail account is to get them both to talk to it via IMAP which handles
> locking and such on the server.
> 

Another option, if you're using POP mail, is set your accounts to 'leave mail 
on server.' Then you'll have duplication between the two mail clients, and 
they probably won't stay synchronized with each other, but at least you won't 
lose any mail. You'll have to remember to delete messages from the server 
occasionally. It won't matter if you use maildirs or mbox, since the two 
clients are independent of each other. 

I do this on the occasions when I'm traveling and need access to email. I 
don't care for Webmail, so I set up a mail client on my laptop and do 
the 'leave mail on server' hack. I also is copy sent-mail to myself so I have 
copies on both mail clients. It's rather kludgy, but it does the job.

-- 
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
?Carla Schroder
?check out my "Linux Cookbook", the ultimate Linux user's
?and sysadmin's guide! http://www.oreilly.com/catalog/linuxckbk/
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
From mary-linuxchix at puzzling.org  Sun Oct 29 22:00:11 2006
From: mary-linuxchix at puzzling.org (Mary Gardiner)
Date: Sun Oct 29 22:00:21 2006
Subject: [Techtalk] Using Evolution and Pine
In-Reply-To: <m3r6wqx3bm.fsf@ceres.staly.plus.com>
References: <m33b962aat.fsf@ceres.staly.plus.com>
	<20061029201439.GF2600@sourdust.home.puzzling.org>
	<m3r6wqx3bm.fsf@ceres.staly.plus.com>
Message-ID: <20061029220011.GG2600@sourdust.home.puzzling.org>

On Sun, Oct 29, 2006, David Sumbler wrote:
> Ha - now that sounds like a good idea which I hadn't thought of, never
> having used IMAP.
> 
> I need to look into this.

The most common model is to have IMAP on whatever remote machine the
mail normally sits on. For some people this is their ISP's mail server,
for others it's their home server, whatever. You can, for example, use
fetchmail to get mail from the ISP server, and then share the folders on
whatever machine you downloaded to via IMAP. People who switch clients
on the one machine, or who don't trust mail clients with direct access
to their mail folders (their locking is seldom as good as an IMAP
server's) sometimes run an IMAP server on their desktop or laptop.

If you are going to be, say, taking a laptop on the road and wish to
read your mail when you can't access the IMAP server, many mail clients
have an "offline" or "synchonise" mode where it will keep full copies of
all mails locally so that you can read them without being connected to
IMAP at that very moment.

-Mary
From david at aeolia.co.uk  Sun Oct 29 22:15:27 2006
From: david at aeolia.co.uk (David Sumbler)
Date: Sun Oct 29 22:15:40 2006
Subject: [Techtalk] Using Evolution and Pine
In-Reply-To: <200610291322.12306.carla@bratgrrl.com> (Carla Schroder's
	message of "Sun, 29 Oct 2006 13:22:12 -0800")
References: <m33b962aat.fsf@ceres.staly.plus.com>
	<20061029201439.GF2600@sourdust.home.puzzling.org>
	<200610291322.12306.carla@bratgrrl.com>
Message-ID: <m3d58awyyo.fsf@ceres.staly.plus.com>

Carla Schroder <carla@bratgrrl.com> writes:

> On Sunday 29 October 2006 12:14, Mary Gardiner wrote:
>> On Sun, Oct 29, 2006, David Sumbler wrote:
>> > Does anyone know if any of the text-based e-mail clients, such as the
>> > ones I have mentioned, are suitable to use in conjunction with
>> > Evolution (but not at the same time, of course)?  Obviously their mail
>> > file format needs to be the same as Evolution's, and I don't want one
>> > program to screw things up for the other.
>> 
>> I believe mutt and Evolution can both read the Maildir format. Honestly
>> though, the most common way to get two different mail clients to share a
>> mail account is to get them both to talk to it via IMAP which handles
>> locking and such on the server.
>> 
>
> Another option, if you're using POP mail, is set your accounts to 'leave mail 
> on server.' Then you'll have duplication between the two mail clients, and 
> they probably won't stay synchronized with each other, but at least you won't 
> lose any mail. You'll have to remember to delete messages from the server 
> occasionally. It won't matter if you use maildirs or mbox, since the two 
> clients are independent of each other. 
>
> I do this on the occasions when I'm traveling and need access to email. I 
> don't care for Webmail, so I set up a mail client on my laptop and do 
> the 'leave mail on server' hack. I also is copy sent-mail to myself so I have 
> copies on both mail clients. It's rather kludgy, but it does the job.

It certainly sounds a bit kludgy!  I have tried copying sent-mail to
myself when using webmail, but I find it all a bit frustrating and
unsatisfactory.

In any case, I think I'd like a system which works a bit more
seamlessly than this appears to.

The IMAP option, though, sounds as if it might be the answer.  I know
hardly anything about IMAP, so I have been trying to find out a bit.

One page I found on the web was suggesting downloading mail from the
ISP's mail server, and then runnng an IMAP server on my own computer.
That way I could use my existing Procmail filters etc.  But, from the
little I know, I could probably do some filtering and sorting even on
the remote server, couldn't I?  So running my own server is perhaps an
unnecessary complication.  What does anyone else think?

David

-- 

david@aeolia.co.uk

From mary-linuxchix at puzzling.org  Sun Oct 29 22:38:06 2006
From: mary-linuxchix at puzzling.org (Mary Gardiner)
Date: Sun Oct 29 22:38:16 2006
Subject: [Techtalk] Using Evolution and Pine
In-Reply-To: <m3d58awyyo.fsf@ceres.staly.plus.com>
References: <m33b962aat.fsf@ceres.staly.plus.com>
	<20061029201439.GF2600@sourdust.home.puzzling.org>
	<200610291322.12306.carla@bratgrrl.com>
	<m3d58awyyo.fsf@ceres.staly.plus.com>
Message-ID: <20061029223806.GH2600@sourdust.home.puzzling.org>

On Sun, Oct 29, 2006, David Sumbler wrote:
> One page I found on the web was suggesting downloading mail from the
> ISP's mail server, and then runnng an IMAP server on my own computer.
> That way I could use my existing Procmail filters etc.  But, from the
> little I know, I could probably do some filtering and sorting even on
> the remote server, couldn't I?  So running my own server is perhaps an
> unnecessary complication.  What does anyone else think?

It really really depends on the kind of capabilities your ISP has. Some
will let you install filters on their servers, some won't. Some will
only provide POP access, others IMAP. (FWIW POP is a protocol
essentially designed to allow the following conversation between client
and server: "I have 10 messages", "OK, I want to download them", whereas
IMAP has folder capabilities and the possibility of keeping all your
messages on the server is designed in better). Another factor is disk
space: you are going to be leaving messages on the server. Does your ISP
have room for all the messages you want to keep at any given time?

So you need to not only look at the theoretical capabilities of IMAP,
which are quite large, but also the actual functionality that your
proposed hosts (your ISP, you, a dedicated mail provider) can offer.

-Mary
From david at aeolia.co.uk  Mon Oct 30 16:20:11 2006
From: david at aeolia.co.uk (David Sumbler)
Date: Mon Oct 30 16:20:23 2006
Subject: [Techtalk] Using Evolution and Pine
In-Reply-To: <20061029201439.GF2600@sourdust.home.puzzling.org> (Mary
	Gardiner's message of "Mon, 30 Oct 2006 07:14:39 +1100")
References: <m33b962aat.fsf@ceres.staly.plus.com>
	<20061029201439.GF2600@sourdust.home.puzzling.org>
Message-ID: <m3odrtg4hw.fsf@ceres.staly.plus.com>

Mary Gardiner <mary-linuxchix@puzzling.org> writes:

> On Sun, Oct 29, 2006, David Sumbler wrote:
>> Does anyone know if any of the text-based e-mail clients, such as the
>> ones I have mentioned, are suitable to use in conjunction with
>> Evolution (but not at the same time, of course)?  Obviously their mail
>> file format needs to be the same as Evolution's, and I don't want one
>> program to screw things up for the other.
>
> I believe mutt and Evolution can both read the Maildir format. Honestly
> though, the most common way to get two different mail clients to share a
> mail account is to get them both to talk to it via IMAP which handles
> locking and such on the server.

Having made enquiries, I find that my ISP's IMAP server is not useful.

In the long term I might try to set up an IMAP server on my own
machine.

In the short term, I have installed Ubuntu 6.10, got my own network
settings sorted out (Ubuntu screwed it up!), and now have web access.

I then tried to set up Evolution to use the tree of files that
Procmail writes: e.g. Mail_folders/inbox, Mail_folders/spam.  These
are the files that Pine used to use (when I used Pine), and that Gnus
extracts messages from to put into its own folders.  I am hoping to
follow your suggestion and use Mutt or some such program in
conjunction with Evolution.

However, when I try to tell Evolution where to look for files, under
"Configuration" I see a pathetic little button which says "Path" and
displays about 4 other characters (usually "(..." or similar.  It is
impossible to see what it thinks the path is.  If I click on the
button, I get a file dialogue, which only has "Cancel" and "Open"
buttons, so I don't seem to be able to specify a directory, rather
than a file.  Perhaps I am being stupid, or perhaps it is because I am
not used to Gnome programs, but how do I persuade Evolution to use my
Procmail files as its own mail "folders"?

When it tries to check incoming mail, Evolution throws up an error
message, saying "Could not scan folder `//var/run/sudo': permission
denied", which I assume means that it is looking in / or /var for mail
- although I don't understand why there are two slashes in front of
'var'.

Any help will be very gratefully received!

David

-- 

david@aeolia.co.uk