Hobson's Choice

qmail-inject: fatal: unable to parse this line:

2011-02-09T12:04:00.006Z

The full message (with email addresses redacted) was:

qmail-inject: fatal: unable to parse this line: To: REDACTED;REDACTED;REDACTED system error calling qmail-inject

The problem was probably due to the ';' used to seperate email addesses (that were NOT enclosed in <>) and that the vpopmail user had set a .qmail file to redirect all their mail.

So, the email log look something like...

qmail: 1297251062.876788 new msg 4515421 qmail: 1297251062.876812 info msg 4515421: bytes 387 from <REDACTED1> qp 7531 uid 64020 qmail: 1297251062.893855 starting delivery 286560: msg 4515421 to local skinny-jet.co.uk-REDACTED2@skinny-jet.co.uk qmail: 1297251062.893873 status: local 1/10 remote 1/20 qmail: 1297251062.896739 delivery 286560: failure: qmail-inject:_fatal:_unable_to_parse_this_line:/To:_REDACTED;REDACTED;REDACTED/system_error_calling_qmail-inject/ qmail: 1297251062.896755 status: local 0/10 remote 1/20 qmail: 1297251062.910979 bounce msg 4515421 qp 7535 qmail: 1297251062.910996 end msg 4515421

Changing the ';' to ',' in the "To" header fixed the problem.

2010-06-11T10:37:00.001Z

As gas boiler is going on the blink I have been forced to use electricity for hot water (at 47.5 to 52.5 degrees). Not as environmentally sound as gas heating but hopefully it will not be for long.

Windows 7 cannot access Linux Samba Network

2010-05-10T10:05:00.002Z

Oh how I hate Windows 7 and Networking. Every now and then I find I cannot access a Linux machine runing Samba on my home network.

This time the symptoms were Windows 7 asking for a username and password from the Windows 7 domain to logon to the Linux-Samba PC. of course Samba does not like the Windows 7 domain credentials!

It took hours to track down the problem and fix it. Somehow, best know to Windows 7, it had created an entry in the Windows Vault for the connection to Linux Samba. To remove it from the vault, go to Control Panel -> Credential Manager and then remove the offending entry from Windows Credentials. As soon as I did that I could connect to my Linux Samba PC and access all the shares.

Norwich Cringleford Travelodge

2009-11-16T13:05:00.000Z

A £9 room - and we got what we paid for - a room in much need of renovation!

Some idiot had set the room thermostat to 30 degrees centigrade so we had to open the windows to cool down the room - what a waste of energy!

It took a few hours to cool down in time for sleep. But what a soggy bed.

Next morning the shower controls were very delicate. A small change on the temperature control made it go from too cold to too hot!

Not our best overnight accomadation. Was it worth £9 a night? Maybe.

Problem with SEAGATE FreeAgent USB disk drive on Linux

2009-08-20T09:53:00.003Z

After the sucess of two days ago, I started to have problems with the SEAGATE FreeAgent USB disk drive on my Linux system. Apparently SEAGATE do not support the FreeAgent USB disk drive on a Linux system!

The problem seems to be due to the SEAGATE FreeAgent USB disk drive going into power save mode. The symptoms on Linux are I/O errors. Often I could list the directories but not access any files. After investiagation it would appear that the symptoms were caused by the directory listing commands returning data from the Linux cache but as soon as I needed to do real I/O, I got the errors. It seems that the SEAGATE FreeAgent USB disk drive does not come out of power saving mode in a maner that was compatible with my Linux system.

There were a few suggestions on the Internet. Most identified that the SEAGATE FreeAgent USB disk drive had problems after spindown/spinup. Most needed the Linux utility sdparm in order to stop the auto spindown.

But I took a very much simpler approach. I created a CRON job with a very simple command. The CRON entry is

*/10 * * * * date > /backups/p3/stop-spin-down/last.txt

This runs the command every 10 minutes and writes to the FreeAgent USB disk. The disk had a mount point of /backups/p3 and I just made a directory (mkdir /backups/p3/stop-spin-down) - writable by all (chmod go+rwx /backups/p3/stop-spin-down) - for the file to be written to.

I hope that helps other people and I will let you know if I have any other problems.

Installing a SEAGATE FreeAgent USB disk drive on Linux is easy

2009-08-18T11:24:00.004Z

After my sucess in July 2008 of installing a USB disk drive on Linux I did it again today. This time I needed to partition the USB disk drive.

The steps were:

Plug the USB disk drive onto a Windows XP (home) PC. The USB disk drive was a Seagate FreeAgent Desk external 500GB drive USB 2.0. The PC only had USB 1 ports but it worked fine.

I then copied the files from the disk (about 90MBytes) to my PC.

Then I used the Windows Disk Manager (Settings->Control Panel->Administrative Tools->Computer Management->Storage->Disk Management) to partition the disk into 4 partitions. The first was around 90MBytes for the NTFS. The next three were deined in a logical partition. They were set as FAT32 or NTFS - at this point it does not really matter what the file system is as they will be changed in Linux.

I then unpluged the USB cable from the PC and plugged it into a USB port on my Linux machine. Then on the Linux machine:

As root (su command)
1. /sbin/fdisk /dev/sda
  1. p (to show and verify the partions)
  2. Changed the three logical partitions (partitions 5, 6 and 7) to have an id of 83 - Linux partition
  3. w (to write table to disk and exit)
2. /sbin/blockdev --rereadpt /dev/sda
3. /sbin/mkfs.ext2 /dev/sda5 (being a 24 GByte partition, this took several minutes)
4. /sbin/mkfs.ext2 /dev/sda6 (being a 3 GByte partition, this took a few minutes)
5. /sbin/mkfs.ext2 /dev/sda7 (being a 355 GBytes disk, this took around 2 1/2 hours)
6. mkdir /backups
7. mkdir /backups/p1
8. mkdir /backups/p2
9. mkdir /backups/p3
10. mount /dev/sda5 /backups/p1
11. mount /dev/sda6 /backups/p2
12. mount /dev/sda7 /backups/p3

It really was as easy as that. Considering that the version of Linux (Red Hat Linux release 7.2 Enigma ) was over 7 years old and it was running on a Pentium processor (not even a Pentium 2), that is very impressive

Fidge is not as cold as you think

2009-01-06T18:58:00.005Z

As a purely scientific exercise, I monitored the temperatures in my under-cabinet fridge. The results were a bit surprising - if not alarming.

Location		Temperature (C)
Location		Minimum	Maximum
Door	Top Shelf	11.5	11.7
	Middle Shelf	8.8	9.6
	Bottom Shelf	5.8	7.1
Body of fridge	Top Shelf	6.5	8.1
	Middle Shelf	5.0	6.1
	Bottom Shelf	4.5	6.6
Crisper		5.0	8.9

NAV2009 in not recognised by Windows/XP SP3

2008-12-17T12:55:00.002Z

I have just installed Windows/XP Service Pack 3 and guess what? Norton Anti-Virus 2009 is not recognised by it!

I got onto Symantec and their fix was to

Settings
Control Panel
Security Center
Click "Virus Protection"
Click the "Recommendation" button
Check the box for "I have an antivirus program that I'll monitor myself"

This stops the "Your computer might be at risk" balloon from appearing but it does mean that I have to verify that NAV2009 is up and running every time I start my PC and at regular intervals thereafter!

I guess my days of using Norton for anti-virus software are numbered as it does not appear that they are very good about making sure that their product works with ease!

Cannot Print with PDFCreator

2008-10-13T23:49:00.004Z

After many hours of trying to diagnose a problem with PDFCreator I think I have found the culprit as Norton Antivirus 2009 (NAV2009).

The problem I had was that (prior to upgading to NAV 2009) PDFCreator created PDFs files without any problems. Immediately after upgrading to NAV 2009, the print process seems to start but I never got the PDFCreator save dialog box.

Looking into this more carefully, I opened the PDFCreator printer which showed no jobs. When I started a print job from any application (e.g. MSIE, EXCELL, notepad) I noticed that the job was spooled to the printer and the status of the print job (in the PDFCreator printer window) started as Spooling-printing and then changed to Printing and then changed to "Deleting - Printing - Printed". These different statuses all occured in less than one second.

I was using PDFCreator 8.1 and so I upgraded to PDFCreator 9.6 but still got exactly the same results. Eventually I looked at the Norton Antivirus 2009 logs and lo and behold there were many entries for:

Risk Level = Medium
Activity = Unauthorized access blocked (Open Process Token)
Status = Blocked

In every case the "Actor" was "C:\program files\pdfcreator\pdfspooler.exe" and the "Target" was "C:\Program Files\Norton AntiVirus\Norton AntiVirus\Engine\16.0.0.125\ccSvcHst.exe".

I will report this problem to Norton and see if they have a solution to their problem.

UPDATE: 2008-10-14 00:46 GMT - Norton have given me a problem number.......

Installing a USB disk drive on Linux is easy

2008-07-31T11:15:00.002Z

I did not appreciate how easy it was to add a new USB disk drive to a Linux system.

I only needed temproary access to the disk drive on a Linux system so that I could format the disk as a Linux partition.

The steps were:

Plug the USB disk drive (a Western Digital My Book Office Edition External Hard Drives 500 GB, USB 2.0, Remote Access WDH1B5000N)
As root (su command)
1. cd /mnt
2. mkdir usb_disk
3. mount /dev/sda1 usb_disk
4. /sbin/fdisk /dev/sda
  1. p (to show and verify the partions)
  2. Changed the required partition to have an id of 83 - Linux partition
  3. w (to write table to disk and exit)
5. umount /dev/sda1
6. /sbin/mkfs.ext2 /dev/sda1 (being a 500 GBytes disk, this took around 3 hours)
7. mount /dev/sda1 usb_disk
Copy the files to the USB disk

Microsoft Internet Explorer (MSIE) opens two browser windows when using favorites

2007-01-10T09:46:00.000Z

I have just installed MSIE 7.0 and have already found a bug!

Sometimes, where selecting a web site from favorites I get two windows appearing!

I found a hit at www.eggheadcafe.com which gives a solution of

Uninstall IE7
Uninstall Norton 2006
Install IE7
Install Norton 2006

So, Microsoft have caused me more work again. If only they had tested their install process for IE7 better!

Now, selecting a website from favorites does not always bring up two new windows. It only seems to bring up two new IE7 browser windows when favorites are selected from a window displaying the file structure. For example, if in "My computer", then selecting a website from favorites opens two new windows. But, selecting a folder that is in favorites does NOT open any new windows!

mysql error message

2006-12-27T11:32:00.000Z

When checking my MySQL databases, most were OK but I saw a message

myisamchk: File '(built-in)' not found (Errcode: 2)

This looked wierd. But I eventually tracked this down to the fact that two tables has an Index field specified as FULLTEXT. Once this index was removed, everything wasw OK.

The really wierd aspect was that checking a single table, the error did not appear, but checking multiple tables the error showed up on the second table that had an index of FULLTEXT. The first table that had an index of FULLTEXT did not have a problem! Wierd!

Who Vouched for me?

2006-09-15T15:50:00.000Z

This month has been a bit of a problem with lots of unwanted telemarketting telephone calls on my private, TPS registered, ex-directory number!

But full marks to UNICEF. There are the first organisation that told me where they got my details from. It would appear that some kind (sic) soul entered my details on the vouch4me website. They knew my private phone number, address and old e-mail address. It took ages to find a contact telephone number of vouch4me as their website does not give it. For the record, vouch4me is part of

Data Locator Group Plc

Tel: 00 44(0) 1923 281700

Fax: 00 44(0) 1923 281723

64 Clarendon Road
Watford
Hertfordshire
United Kingdom
WD17 1DA

Having contacted Data Locator Group Plc they confirmed that my details had been entered onto a website in April 2004 - more than 17 months ago - and they were still giving my details to third parties.

At least now they have removed me from their database so hopefully the phone will not ring so often in the middle of an interesting TV program!

MySql error

2006-07-10T08:44:00.000Z

I guess I must have shutdown a LINUX system before MySQL has stopped as I have a corrupt table. The message I got was:

DBD::mysql::db do failed: Got error 127 from table handler at .......

Issued perror 127
Error code 127: Unknown error 127
127 = Record-file is crashed

It was easy to fix by

cd path to database tables
myisamchk -r dns_ip_2_host.MYI

Next time I will try
mysql dbname
REPAIR TABLE `dns_ip_2_host`

ImageMagick

2006-07-07T19:47:00.000Z

Well, I needed a program to convert jpg images to a standard size for a client.

I tried using the perl GD libraries but they were not modern enough to do the job, so I tried ImageMagick.

Used FTP to get the source from ftp://ftp.imagemagick.org/pub/ImageMagick without a problem.

It even extracted without a problem!

Next steps were:

cd ImageMagick-6.2.7

./configure --with-perl=no --prefix=~/usr/local

make (takes around 10 minutes)

make install (takes around 6 minutes)

PATH=/usr/local/bin:/usr/bin:/bin:/usr/bin/X11:/usr/games:~/usr/local/bin

identify -list format

convert philip_test_image.jpg -thumbnail 200x200 -raise 4x4 philip_test_image2.gif

Bromley and Chislehurst by-election

2006-06-01T16:06:00.000Z

Things are getting better. The LibDems have selected Ben Abbotts - a local man - to fight this by election. It's the first time I have known of an acquaintance standing for parliament. Good luck to him.

Formating a disk for LINUX

2006-04-05T18:01:00.000Z

Well I found a 8.4GB disk on ebay and it arrived 36 hours after bidding for it.

Now I need to prepare it for LINUX. So what do I do.....

The disk was plugged into the 2nd disk cable as primary
/sbin/fdisk /dev/hdc Command (m for help): n Command (m for help): p Partition number (1-4): 1 First cylinder (1-19376, default 1): Using default value 1 Last cylinder or +size or +sizeM or +sizeK (1-19376, default 19376): +1000000K Command (m for help): n Command action e extended p primary partition (1-4) e Partition number (1-4): 2 First cylinder (1986-19376, default 1986): Using default value 1986 Last cylinder or +size or +sizeM or +sizeK (1986-19376, default 19376): 16383 NOTE that 16383 is used. That is because this 10GB disk is being used as a 8.4GB disk Command (m for help): n Command action l logical (5 or over) p primary partition (1-4) l First cylinder (1986-16383, default 1986): Using default value 1986 Last cylinder or +size or +sizeM or +sizeK (1986-16383, default 16383): Using default value 16383 Command (m for help): p Disk /dev/hdc: 16 heads, 63 sectors, 19376 cylinders Units = cylinders of 1008 * 512 bytes Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System /dev/hdc1 1 1985 1000408+ 83 Linux /dev/hdc2 1986 16383 7256592 5 Extended /dev/hdc5 1986 16383 7256560+ 83 Linux Command (m for help): w The partition table has been altered! Calling ioctl() to re-read partition table. WARNING: If you have created or modified any DOS 6.xpartitions, please see the fdisk manual page for additionalinformation. Syncing disks. [root@andromeda cygnus]#/sbin/mkfs.ext2 -c /dev/hdc1 [root@andromeda cygnus]#/sbin/tune2fs -j /dev/hdc1 [root@andromeda cygnus]#/sbin/mkfs.ext2 -c /dev/hdc5 [root@andromeda cygnus]#/sbin/tune2fs -j /dev/hdc1 Added the following line to /etc/fstab /dev/hdc5 /dolphin ext3 defaults 1 2

phoenixbios 4.0 release 5.12

2006-04-02T22:18:00.000Z

What a day trying to find out the largest capacity disk that the Phoenix BIOS 4.0 release 5.12 can support!

It looks as if 8.4GB is the largest size.

This is one of my Linux systems. Now all I have to do is find a 8.4Gb disk!

PC World customer service II

2006-03-30T09:47:00.000Z

Well, PC World did not call me back!

I phoned again - this time as a non-business customer - but I could not find any automated option for "returns" or "guarantees". I eventually got to a person (in Nottingham) who assured my that all I needed to do was go to the store with the memory module and its sales receipt and they would replace it.

Watch this space!

I did not take to memory back to PC world because, when I removed it, it was covered in dust. So I have cleaned it up to see it the problem goes away!

PC World customer service

2006-03-30T08:08:00.000Z

I have discovered that there is a problem with the memory on one of my PCs. This causes Windows to hang and occasionally to corrupt sub-directories of the C:\WINDOWS directory. Luckily, for the latter, I take regular backups and am able to restore the directories.

The memory is PNY 256MB PC2700 DIMM 184 pins DDR 333 MHz and it carries a 10 year guarantee.

Yesterday, around 9am, I telephone PC World in Orpington (0870 2420444) - as that is where I bought it about 18 months ago. I selected their "Business Customer" option from their automated system. But it seems that, as I bought it in the store and went through the tills and did not use a business account, that is not a "Business" transaction. The said they would pass my details to their service department so that they could call me back. It is not 24 hours later an still no phone call!

Opening a Word Document tries to connect to the Internet

2006-03-24T17:48:00.000Z

Sheila had a problem with her laptop in that every tfime she opened a Word document the PC tried to connect to the Internet at least 6 times before she could start editing the document!

See Symantec

I just cleared the check mark on "Check for Publisher's certificate revocation" and the problem went away!

Apache SSL and gnupg and PERL

2006-03-10T23:52:00.000Z

What a day. I was having a lot of problem with invoking gnupg from a PERL script running under Apache SSL.

I was getting the error message
gpg: fatal: ~/.gnupg: can't create directory: No such file or directory

Everything looks fine. The PERL script was running under the correct ID and the .gnupg directory and the files in it had the correct permissions (700) so what was wrong.

I found a few hits on the web but the solution looked a bit unsafe (give gnupg world access!). So I started to experiment with gpg --homedir /home/yyy/xxx and even when the xxx directory was only accessible by the owner, gpg created the files in it OK. So, I set gpg --homedir /home/yyy/.gnupg and, surprise surprise, it worked.

I did not like hard coding the homedir in the PERL script as it could fail in the future should the files get moved. So I used the following code to make it general purpose:


# for some reason gpg does not work unless you specify the home directory explicitly!
my @pwArray = getpwuid($>); # get info from password file for this effective ID
# password entry [7] is the home directory
my $gpgOptions = "--homedir $pwArray[7]/.gnupg --batch --yes -a etc
my $encrypted = `echo "$toEncrypt" gpg $gpgOptions 2>&1`;

I hope this helps others.

I hate spammers!

2006-03-07T21:36:00.000Z

I run many web sites and today a spammer has attacked the forum on

www.derbyshireguide.co.uk

They have posted lots of messages to advertise a poker site with the words:
- online
- poker
- kiszka
- blada

in it!

I do not have a robot to clean it up so it took me over an hour to remove around 50 posts!

I have now had to close down my forum. If I find the b****ds that did this I will send them a bill for my time!

I did a google search on "online poker kiszka blada" and got 202,000 English hits. Obviously the spammers have an active robot adding filth to law abiding site!

Shropshire Weekend

2006-03-06T10:10:00.000Z

Met up with friends from Derbyshire at Bishops Castle in Shropshire.

Bishops Castle boasts two micro breweries, so on Friday night it was off to the The Three Tuns Inn to sample their brew. There were three of their real ales on draught so I choose the one in the middle of alcoholic strength. A very enjoyable drink. After our drinks we went to The Poppy House for a meal. The menu was varied with some interesting choices - I had the Russian Chicken. This was reasonable value and the staff were friendly. Some more friends joined us at The Poppy House for desert. The staff had not problems with this! We had started with a booking for five people but by the end of the meal there were about 15 of us!

Next day we went for a 7 mile circular walk with 300 metres of climbing. We started at Bishops Castle and ended up at the Powis Arms at Lydbury North for lunch. There were no hot meals available, but their cheese sandwiches were very good. It has new owners and they do set a very high standard for food - even sandwiches! They had Big Nev's beer which is brewed at the Six Bells in Bishops Castle - and very good it was!

Despite to low temperature of the day (5 degrees Celsius) the lack of wind made it a very pleasurable walk and we ended back at Bishops Castle around 4pm.

Our walking group (23 of us) were booked in for a meal at the Six Bells for 7:30pm so a few of us went a little early to sample some of the other beers brewed by the Six Bells. But this is a place that could not cope with a party of 23. We were prepared for the meals to arrive over a period of time but two people - my wife and her friend - had to wait over two hours. It was clear that the cook had not looked closely at the orders and missed these two! The problem was compounded as my wife's friends choice was no longer available! In fact her second choice was not available. So she had to have something that she really did not want to eat but as it was after 9:30 she was very hungry!

That evening was marred by the pub not begin able to cope with a party of 23. We will not go there again!

Next day we went to Stokesay Castle for a look around. Although it was warmer than Saturday, the wind was a good deal stronger and the wind chill was severe. So we spent a long time in there tea shop to warm up after going around the castle.

Then we started to make our way home. We went to Much Wenlock for a quickly lunch and ended up at Carole Anne's Coffee Shop. What a very pleasant way to spend an hour with treacle pudding, chocolate sponge, other cakes and hot drinks. After the debarkle of Saturday night, it was refreshing to find helpful and attentive staff - all of whom smiled!

Having been refreshed and warmed at Carole Anne's Coffee Shop we visited Wenlock Priory. It was freezing again. So we saw it all as quickly as possible before returning to the cars to warm up and make our way home.

Ming Campbell elected Liberal Democrat leader

2006-03-03T00:48:00.000Z

It was good to see that the new leader has a comfortable majority.

He said the party would champion freedom, fairness and environment protection, would be a party of democratic revolution, would tackle the secrecy which still pervades far too much of Britain, would be a party which looks beyond our shores, seeking the prosperity, security and sustainable development which is dependent on international action, would be a party which pledges to take power from Westminster and Whitehall to give it to people in their own communities.

I agree with most of those ambitions although I would put prosperity first as without prosperity, we cannot afford to protect the environment or provide the public services.

Parish Council meeting

2006-03-02T10:41:00.000Z

Last night was a Parish Council meeting.

We have a PSCO that we pay 50% of the cost - the other 50% met by the Home Office. Kent police are trying to get an agreement with us but they keep insisting that they have total control of the PSCO. The Parish Council does not have a problem with Kent Police having control over the day-to-day operations of the PSCO but the Parish Council does feel that it - as paymaster - should set the PSCO's priorities. Otherwise, we are just being taxed again for a Kent Police resource.

If Kent Police want total control, they should pay for the PSCO!

Birth of a blog

2006-03-01T16:39:00.000Z

As if I did not have any spare time to start a blog!

Well, today has been sunny so I have been splitting a few logs in preparation for the very cold night - BBC says -5 degrees centigrade but their new weather map seems to be far more inaccurate than before. I suppose it could be the climate change making the weather models out of date.