| The Ultimate Business Machine Technology, business And, not least, about by: Bernard Teo
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Sat 01 Mar 2008 MailServeProBeta.zipCategory : Technology/MailServeProBeta.txt I have a download link for the demo version of MailServe for Leopard with Dovecot. It's at http://cutedgesystems.com/downloads/MailServeProBeta.zip It's still a work-in-progress. But the basic features for enabling Dovecot to work with Postfix will work. It's a Universal Binary, so it'll run on both Intel and PPC Macs. The Dovecot libraries are also all universals. The only requirement is that it must be on Leopard and you need a MailServe for Leopard serial number to try it. It's a 7 MB download. Have fun. Note : MailServe Pro is just a working name, for the moment. It's less of a mouthful than "MailServe for Leopard with Dovecot". Nick Bell, a MailServe for Leopard user, says "Wow. Dovecot really does fly. Accessing my home mail server from work is now flawless." And Christian Noack, "My first impression is, that it is much faster than UW/IMAP." So, it looks like we're on to a good thing. Sat 23 Feb 2008 MailServe with Dovecot, now also on PPCCategory : Technology/MailServeDovecotPPC.txt I've built a version of MailServe for Leopard with Dovecot that will also run on PowerPC Macs. We're working on a download link, next, for MailServe for Leopard users to try out. I have now Postfix Enabler for Tiger and Panther, MailServe for Tiger, MailServe for Leopard, and now MailServe for Leopard with Dovecot (MailServe Pro?). We're sounding a lot like Sun Microsystems, with its many unfathomable product names (like Upgrade to the Sun Blade 6000 Modular System! Huh?). We'll need to simplify. Tue 19 Feb 2008 MailServe with DovecotCategory : Technology/MailServeWithDovecot.txt I've got a version of MailServe running on Leopard with support for Dovecot. Currently I've only compiled the Dovecot binaries to run on Intel machines, i.e., I hadn't had time to create Universal Binaries. And I don't have a way to convert the UW/IMAP mailboxes to the format used by Dovecot.
But if anyone would like to try it, just write to me. I don't yet have a download link because I need to make it work on PPC machines, too, and I'd like to offer this trial version first to MailServe for Leopard users. I haven't thought about how I'm going to sell it. Probably it'll be a paid upgrade to MailServe for Leopard users. But I've got some way to go yet in terms of putting in the features. For example, I'm going to start on an LDAP Enabler. And when that gets done, the interaction between the mail server and the LDAP server starts to get interesting, by way of Dovecot. So I hope to get LDAP Enabler done soon and then we'll see how it goes. P.S. : this is how the Dovecot sub-folder structure look in Mail.app :
Mon 11 Feb 2008 Does anyone still use Sendmail Enabler?Category : Commentary/SendmailEnablerAnyone.txt I'm planning to revamp my web pages, after I've done a beta verson of MailServe with Dovecot for Leopard. So I've been wondering if it's time to drop thngs like Sendmail Enabler for Jaguar. But I've just seen this referral passing by my web server logs : http://tesol.net/scripts/FAQ/faqmaker.cgi?ST=106809076914407&FA=SF So I guess it's still being used and I'll leave it there for some time more. Wed 06 Feb 2008 Luca and Maven UpdatedCategory : Technology/LucaAndMavenUpdates.txt I've updated Luca and Maven to fix a couple of bugs. In Luca, I had a problem exporting SQLite3 databases to MySQL5 when the decimal numbers were greater than 10,000,000, or some such large number. I made an error defining the size of my decmal numbers in MySQL5. This has been fixed in Luca, and also in Maven. Maven also had a problem deleting a MySQL5 database. It's due to just one line of code where I referred to MySQL5 as MySQL where I had referred to it everywhere else as MySQL5. Such is the lot of a programmer. A miss is as good as a mile, as people used to say, years and years ago. Thanks to Hai Hwee, who did all the work tracing my bugs, and to Rio from Indonesia, who has unearthed quite a lot of them by now. Luca is now at 2.6.2 and Maven 0.5.2. Tue 05 Feb 2008 PainCategory : Commentary/pain.txt Talking about pain, there's a very good book for aspiring high-tech or IT entrepreneurs to read to get a feel for what they're going to be in for - the book is called, "Founders at Work". Here's an excerpt : At an HBS (Harvard Business School) reunion, we had a roundtable for all of us who had been entrepreneurs, and one of our professors asked, "What didn't HBS teach you about this?" And I said, "Pain."
I only remember one class that came close: the professor walked out of the class with tears in his eyes, having recounted the story of his friend who had started a cable company, and it destroyed his life, destroyed his family, and moved him to a place where his life was a waste of time. That was the only indication I had at HBS about how painful this is. "Go out and be entrepreneurs" - that seems to be the government's message of the day. Mostly, it is people in safe jobs telling others to go out and do their thing. As if you can just turn on the tap. It could be a great life. But it could also go oh so wrong. Imagine spending ten to twenty years pursuing a dream and ending up in a street corner muttering to yourself. There but for the grace of God, go I. Okay, so the country, any country, would need entrepreneurs. But let's not hear it from those who couldn't or wouldn't do it themselves. Listen to those who have. And survived. And it may be that you come to realise that the words of The Desiderata have more meaning, and value, than any number of government handouts, when you're struggling to survive. Mon 04 Feb 2008 MailServe for Leopard 3.0.4Category : Technology/MailServe3dot0dot4.txt As promised, I've released MailServe for Leopard 3.0.4, with the Mail Queue feature from Tiger re-instated.
It should have been easy, right, just getting the features from MailServe for Tiger over to Leopard? It's not so easy. The one thing that MailServe for Leopard has, that the one on Tiger doesn't, is the ability to allow the mail server to be administered from a non-admin account, so long as you can provide an administrator's credentials. I used Apple's security framework to do that. Among its benefits is that, next time, I could plug in an alternative method to do the authentication, e.g., via a smart card or any of the emerging biometric methods, and all other things in the code should still work. And I'm one step closer to being able to support remote administration of the server. Plus, I don't need to store the password. I don't want to have anything to do with people's password. I just pass it on to the authentication mechanism. But one thing that Apple's recommended method of implementing the security framework also does is that it interferes with the workings of Postfix's postsuper command, which is needed to delete messages in a queue. I just can't run the postsuper command now. But I'm loathed to lose all the benefits that I've gained so far. So, what to do? That was why I couldn't do this feature the last time round. I didn't have the time, in all the mad rush to get MailServe for Leopard out to all the guys who needed the mail server running again within a day of Leopard being released. Even now, it took me three, four days to figure out a way. So how did I do it? I answer with a laugh that comes from deep in the belly. A laughter born of pain. To all the people who're "not so jazzed up" about having to pay for MailServe for Leopard again, since there are "no new features", I can now afford a wry smile. If only it were that easy... I can move on to the new features now. Mon 28 Jan 2008 DNS Enabler for Leopard, version 3.0.3Category : Technology/DNSEnablerForLeopard3dot0dot3.txt Leopard uses BIND version 9.4.1-P1, whch is set up by default to disallow recursive queries from outside the subnet that the server is on. So, I've built a new version of DNS Enabler for Leopard, version 3.0.3, that allows the user to change this behaviour (by clicking on the "Allow recursive queries from outside subnet" checkbox, below).
I've also updated all the screen shots on the DNS Enabler for Leopard web page today. For a future version of DNS Enabler, I'd like to work on allowing a variety of BIND options to be set from the interface, like Log Level, etc, and also to see if I can implement views, so that you show the local IP address of a host name to queries coming from the local sub-net, and the public IP address to queries coming from the public network. This is going to be more intricate, so I'll need a bit more time to think about it. For MailServe, I'll need to put back one feature from Tiger that is missing from the Leopard version due to the lack of time - i.e., the ability to flush or delete a message from the mail queue. I hope to do that by the end of the week, and then, after that, to really get going on the Dovecot version. For WebMon for Leopard, I'd like to add the ability to set up Virtual Hosts, while still being able to set up SSL for the main domain. Wonder if that's possible to be done? So, broadly, these are what I would be working on. There's more to come, of course, from my ever-lengthening to-do list (which I would try to publish, one day) but, for now, one step at a time. Tue 22 Jan 2008 10,000 Customers From Around the WorldCategory : Commentary/10000customers.txt We have 10,000 unique customers from all around the world. Somehow I thought that when this day comes I'd be ecstatic, that it'll really mean something to have crossed this mark. Strangely, it's just another day. Maybe it's because I've reviewed the To-Do Lists and I'm feeling grim because there's so much more to do. Ever wondered why artists are such depressed people? It could be the awareness that there is something missing, that the world is still not quite right that propels the search for a solution. It's the agony and the ecstasy - one or the other - there's nothing in-between. Thu 10 Jan 2008 Things to DoCategory : Commentary/ThingsToDo_Leopard.txt I've just gone through my lists of things to do for each of my application - MailServe, DNS Enabler, and all - and updated them with the feature requests I've received since Leopard shipped. I started compiling these lists since before Leopard shipped but it was a hard task already just recovering every feature that used to work in Tiger and making sure they continue to work in Leopard that I needed to leave out work on the new features for the moment. Even then I left one thing out in MailServe for Leopard - the managing of the mail queue - and the users weren't slow to let me know. And I knew I was going to have to allocate energy for this big move to our new place in December. So that's all done and out of the way and so I hope to be able to move on quickly to those unfinished business. Now that I've got my books surrounding me, or at least the books I don't want to sell or give away, I feel I could stay in this room the whole day just working on things. I don't believe in Feng Shui, I find the so-called Feng Shui masters accompanying property buyers and prospective tenants to be rather unsavoury characters, but I believe there is a feel or aura attached to each place, and it's important to test that feel against the conventional logic of a property acquisition - weighing location, costs, convenience, etc. Some places you feel immediately at home with, some places never. I'll try to put up the To-Do Lists soon so people can make suggestions to add to them. Tue 08 Jan 2008 "A house is a machine for living in.”Category : Commentary/HouseMachineLiving.txt I've finally settled in at my new place (though I've still ten boxes of books downstairs in the shop space that I don't yet know what to do with - perhaps I should just start a second-hand book store). It's been hard - I was wondering why this move was so hard, harder than I've ever experienced before, when I realised, of course, I was moving both my home and my office, together for the first time, and it's what I'll probably be doing for the rest of my life, having an integrated work-life, and that I'll be moving both my home and my work life together, wherever I would be going next. And so I've been paring down on all the junk, jettisoning all that's not essential. And it's been exhausting and time-consuming, but I think I'm ready to get back to work now. It's Le Corbusier who said that "a house is a machine for living in”. And so it is. I'm surprised to find ourselves liking this place quite so much. As you come up the stairs from the shop space below, you're hit by so much light you think you've left the lights on. But it's all streaming in from the window.
And you feel the wind, not just the breeze, as you walk towards the window, and you know somehow, somewhere there is water, and so there is. This could be probably be the coldest place in all of Singapore. For the first time ever, for a very long time, I could sleep without air-conditioning, and if I do my work in the kitchen at night, with the wind in my face, I would need a sweater.
The wind is good here. Good enough, and space enough, for wind surfing and sailing. So they're building a jetty where it's currently boarded up by the green hoardings. And they're building new tracks for the cyclists, skaters, joggers, etc, to bring the people closer to the water.
This is a most peculiar place. At the front, from the hall, and from my kid's room (and it's such a big room we could all sleep in it and we do) we look out into the park and it's mostly quiet and it's like a resort.
But at the back, the kitchen looks out over the back-entrance to a 24-hour foodcourt, so there's life round the clock. There's grime, sweat and noise. Contractors loading pipes, traders loading rice sacks and jars of sauce. Lorry-loads of them. It's not where one would like to park a BMW. And we live right next to a rag-and-bone lady. Although we worry about rats, etc, if we have to live next door to rag-and-bone person, then we're glad it's her because at least she's neat, and there's a story in there somewhere. She works till 3 a.m. every night. Right now, it's pouring and the stuff she's collected are all drenched and our heart goes out to her.
So, that might answer the question why not more people do what we do, i.e., choose to live in such a place. People take one look at the scene at the back and it's like living in a hovel. Yucks. No thanks. But if you trace back the ideas that went into mass-produced public housing, you'll reach back eventually to Le Corbusier, and the idealism that underly it all. Like Corbu's Unité d'Habitation, if we think different for a moment, we can find beauty if we look past the surface ugliness and the brutality of the concrete. (Like the way a Bernini can see a St Theresa in a block a marble.) Sat 08 Dec 2007 Way StationsCategory : Commentary/WayStation.txt I've got a change to make in MailServe and one to DNS Enabler. And I've got at least tacit permission to use Dovecot in MailServe for Leopard and so I'm looking forward to working on it. But all these have to wait till after Christmas because I'm moving house. In another week, we should be done with the renovation at the new place and be ready to move. I hadn't planned on moving this year. We bought an apartment to move to at the end of next year (it's still being built). Both my wife and me had felt that we would rather spend more time on our respective work than tending to the garden and killing the weeds and removing the awful droppings from the stray cats (somehow they all seem to love coming over to our garden). But Singapore is experiencing, right now, one of its periodic irrational exuberance over real estate and we got an offer for our house that we'd be rather dumb to refuse. So we took it and found this shop house that overlooks the Bedok Reservoir. There's plenty of green, nice trees, birds, a serene lake-view, and the perfect place to run - 5 km around the reservoir. And we're on the Singapore Park Connector, which connects the major coastal parks on the eastern side of Singapore over 42 km. Great for cycling, too. There's a 680 sq-ft working space on the ground floor for our office - with a lovely 15-foot ceiling. And we live in the two-bedroom residence upstairs. So, we may stay here for the one year, or even longer if it turns out to be fun. It looks perfect. Which leaves me wondering - with the residential real estate prices overtaking the all-time high, and with office rentals having more than doubled - why did no one else try to combine the two - buy something like we did? We'll know very soon - if people know something that we don't. Anyway it is, at worst, only for a year. I'm game to try anything. So, yet another way station on the road less traveled. Read more ... |
Mac@Work
Services running on this server, a Mac Mini running Mac OS X 10.9.2 Mavericks:
all set up using MailServe, WebMon, DNS Enabler, DNS Agent, VPN Enabler, Liya and our SQL installers, all on Mavericks. |
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