Switching…

Still haven’t found the time to play with all the new features introduced in Postfix 2.3.0 and it’s already updated to 2.3.3. Is time really moving this fast or is development on Postfix that good. I will leave this one up to you to decide.

The important issues that got fixed in this release:

• File corruption while executing a Milter “header insert” action
  with headers-only mail (found with dk-filter). Delivery agents
  would go into an infinite loop because some queue file update
  had been done in the wrong order. As a precaution, delivery
  agents now detect such loops, and the queue manager now saves
  such mail to the “corrupt” directory.
• Segmentation fault in the SMTP client while saving a cached
  connection with unsent data. Postfix indexed some table with -1,
  because some I/O cleanup had been done in the wrong order. The
  same problem should exist in Postfix 2.2.
• Postfix no longer announces its name in delivery status notifications.
  All other details of the default bounce text remain unchanged.
  The reason for this change is that too many people believe that
  Wietse provides a free helpdesk service that solves all their
  email problems.

While I was looking for some info on PHP I noticed that it got upgraded again very soon after the upgrade to 5.1.5 earlier this month. You can read all about the issues, bugs, etc. in the changelog. There was nothing really bothering me and I don’t see any problems for current 5.1.4 users that would warrant an update because of security reasons. But I wanted to let you know about this anyway and decide for yourself.

Updating is as easy as following the installation instructions already on the site. Just get the newer sourcecode from www.php.net and compile it.

Wow, did I forget to do something. I was just cleaning up my mac mini server. Well that’s what you do when you’ve been playing around with lots of configurations and compiled different versions of software to see if it will work. When I found out that I completely forgot about the logfiles for my Apache installation. Some of the logfiles of the more popular sites where already a whopping 100+ Mb.

Normally, for the Apple installed Apache, the logfiles would reside in /var/log/httpd, but I didn’t think and just followed the standard layout that was provided by the installation which directed the logfiles into /Library/Apache2/logs as you can see in the installation document. This means that the default weekly script (located in /etc/periodic/weekly) that takes care of the regular maintenance of your Mac, and rotates your Apache logfiles, didn’t take care of my new Apache2 logfiles. (more…)

I encountered a strange error when I’d installed Postfix on someone else’s system. Everything installed without a hitch and looked to be running fine. But some time later strange errors were showing up in the logfile:

postfix/master[1120]: fatal: open lock file pid/master.pid
unable to set exclusive lock: Resource temporarily unavailable

So I went looking for the file and found it in /var/spool/postfix/pid/ and it looked fine. I stopped Postfix and the file disappeared and reappeared when I started it. Why ? (more…)

Well, finally it’s all done for now. As I told you Sunday in the previous post, it’s taken much longer than I initially planned. Mostly because of MySQL and the Intel migration. But I’m very happy that all the testing and compiling is finally over.

The V2 version of the documentation is finished and ready for use. It has instructions for Intel and PowerPC based Mac’s and is tested on both platforms.

• Building the mail server components
• Configuring the mail server components
• Starting the mailserver programs after a reboot

There already servers on the internet live running this version as documented in V2. They are the result of people requesting my assistance in setting up their new server, done together or just by me, depending on the needs and experience of the owner. I’m considering offering the service to setup your server for a small fee to cover time spend and expenses. The people I helped until now where very pleased with the service I provided. The only drawback is that it is a service I can only provide in my spare time as I’ve got a normal day job and a family that wants to spend some time with me as well. But if you are not in a hurry, it can be done within a few days.

Next on the agenda is a How-To document to help people that don’t know how to manage the upgrade from V1 to V2. Where the difficult part is the upgrade of the MySQL database. Because the internal formats have changed this isn’t just a plain copy and paste exercise but a true backup restore action. Even my own server is still running V1 as upgrading is a tedious and precise task what shouldn’t be taken lightly is you don’t want to be off-line for long. One thing I noticed is that you can upgrade other components very easily, it’s just MySQL that’s making it difficult.

This as taken me much, much longer than I ever planned it to take. First there was the introduction of the Intel based Mac’s that I needed to comprehend. Secondly the many problems I’d encountered with the shared library support in the MySQL as many of you have read in previous posts. Third there was the happy occasion of the birth of my daughter which prevented me from spending much time behind the screen.

But it’s done, I’ve finally finished the instruction for installing (and compiling) MySQL 5, Apache 2 and PHP 5. Hope you are able to use them well.

• Installing MySQL
• Compiling and installing Apache 2
• Compiling and installing PHP 5

I’m currently working on the instructions for the mailserver as there are some tweaks needed to get that working with the current setup. There where some issues with Intel based Macs and SSL support but I’ve got that solved. Hope to get that finished in a very short time… (not naming dates here, getting careful… )

I had read some time ago on the Apple Developers site that the Xcode developer tools that Xcode 2.4 has been released. However downloading it was a problem for some time as the link didn’t show when you had login to the ADC site. But it’s there now, the whole whopping 938,2 MB. I’m currently downloading to find out if there are many improvements. Unfortunately I we won’t be able to test the new 64 bit compatibility…

Changes in this release are:

• Xcode 2.4 adds support for 64-bit Intel development, with support for creating four-architecture
  Universal applications (32 and 64 bit for both Intel and PowerPC).
• Selected fixes were made in the Xcode IDE, cctools, debugger, and compiler.
• Xcode 2.4 also fixes bugs and enhances performance in several areas over Xcode 2.3. Most notably,
  stepping behaviour when debugging DWARF binaries has been made more precise, and Dedicated
  Network Builds (DNB) has received several usability fixes.
• The 10.4u SDK has been updated for development with Mac OS 10.4.7.
• CHUD has been updated to version 4.4.0.

We had to wait a long time for this release but its finally there. The Roundcube developers finally released their second beta, there where some intermediate CVS releases if which I’ve tried some. The new version has some new functionality about which you can read the announcement:

After a long period of development and some major changes in the
project organisation, we finally released version 0.1-beta2. New
features like message search, spellchecking, saving messages as
draft and folder renaming are introduced with this release.

It is looking like a solid release which is perfectly usable in a production environment. I did a fresh install of the source and created a fresh database to make sure that I didn’t inherit any problems from previous versions. If you want to do the same you can use my instructions on installing it on Mac OS X.

Update: After playing with it for a day there are some notable improvements. Forwarding emails with attachements work properly and the From field is correctly filled. The biggest plus for me however, as english isn’t my native tongue, the spell checking capabilities.

Just a quick post, after I just found out how to do this in a very simple way, about some new documentation I created on how-to simply secure multiple virtual domains on your webserver. It’s not perfect (there will be warnings in the browser), but it will work. Continue and read the page to see how simple it can be.

It’s the most simple way to do this without spending any money on official certificates or multiple ip-addresses. Especially that last point was the most difficult to solve. It seems, but I don’t know for sure as I’m not an expert on the subject, that it isn’t possible to configure more than one certificate per ip-address. Forgot the correct explanation and won’t go into wild guessing…

It works for me and I hope it will for you as well.

Note: People will get a warning that your certificate isn’t signed by a certified authority and if you use different domain names the browser will complain that the certificate and the domain don’t match. But if the user will accept the warning and continues the access to the website will be secured by SSL. This is very usefull if you don’t want your password to be send in the clear.

Just got an email in my inbox from the MySQL announce mailinglist that MySQL 5.0.24 just has been released. Version 5.0.23 was skipped for release, don’t know why but it means that more has been solved. One thing I do know is that they still haven’t solved our issue with the shared libraries.

All the issues that have been solved can be found in the announcement email that was sent out.

I’m finishing up a short term solution so we can use MySQL with shared libraries without too much of a hassle, for Intel and PowerPC Mac’s (it will involve a little compiling). Keep watching this channel for more info later on…