Serving

Everyone has their favorite free softwares and web based services that they have accumulated so I just thought I would mention a few of mine here.

Web browsing
Well for me its Firefox and a matter of fact I am using the the beta version now. To get it to work like I wanted I got to use one of Firefox's most unique features the about:config screen.


Firefox excels in my opinion because of the amount of customization the user gets with extensions. Everything doesn't always work as intended though which brings me to another utility I've found useful every now and then.

File Compression
For me the program of choice in a Windows environment is 7-Zip and really not so much for its archiving abilities but its Windows Shell integration which allows me a quick way to view the contents of almost any compressed file I may have downloaded.


In addition to opening and viewing the archive files inside can be edited and then saved back to the archive which depending on what one is doing can be a handy feature sometimes.

Text Editing for scripts, webpages etc...
This is in my opinion one thing that a default install of Windows (any version I've ever used don't know about Vista yet though) sucks at. When I say open a script file of some sort I want it viewable in a human readable format but when I close it I want it saved back to whatever format it was in unaltered with no questions asked including funky unix style carriage returns or whatever. My text editor of choice has become PSPad it does all those things and more. It has that same Windows shell integration feature that 7-Zip offers so it is always easily available and ready to use.


I've really only scratched the surface here as this program is really very feature full and I don't need a text/hex editor all the time. My exposure with it is rather limited in relation to its entire feature set, but for my needs it works easily and reliably.

Misc Graphics Tools....
As with text editing a default install of Windows (any version I've ever used don't know about Vista yet though) sucks at this. I mean Linux has The Gimp which is also available for Windows but I don't particularly care for either version Windows or Linux. However the program is at least capable of providing a base off which to work with images though. Windows has Paint which on a good day almost just doesn't cut it. There is Paint.NET which is a vast improvement over Paint and as with all graphics editors has its own learning curve but can be used for most basic tasks. Now the program I generally use or the one I am most familiar with is PhotoFiltre which actually comes in two flavors a free one or a more capable studio version which is a a 30 day free trail shareware product. I can't speak about the paid version as I have only ever used the free version but I might give it a try eventually. Now recently I discovered another freeware offering called PhotosScape. and like Paint.NET and PhotoFiltre has the learning curve but yields some pretty high quality results.


Of the three if I could only pick one it would be PhotoFiltre but as I stated earlier it has more to do with familiarity than anything else. I am going to close for now but I plan on speaking to this subject (favorite free programs) in the future again. One more thing I included this post to the serving category as these and several other programs are very important to that end.

Well I have now got everything migrated from my old server to my new server and as far as I can tell everything works. Since I wasn't changing my ISP, DNS, it was was a relatively easy task after I completed some preliminary stuff. One thing before I installed the OS on the new machine I set the new hard drive partition structure up identical to the old one. For that I used a partition tool on a bootable CD. That way once I got the OS and all updates installed I basically had to just drop files onto their respective drives and install services again. I copied all my directories from the server onto a USB drive and began the task of migration. In a text file I saved some path varibles information for Apache, MySQL, Perl, PHP, and ImageMagick. Apache, Perl, and ImageMagick I actually reinstalled form the latest versions available from each products website but was careful to make the new installs mirror the previous ones from the other server. Both ImageMagick and Perl (ActivePerl) actually offer to make file associations and set the path variable during their install routines but out of a habit that comes from usually dealing with zipped archives I always decline the option and do it myself. With Apache I got it from their binary offerings and instaledl it but declined to let it install itself as a service. I use this page as a reference but during the install I chose a different directory and partition that matched the old servers directory structure and declined the offer to install it as service and did that after I added it to the path variables on the new server. I then pasted in my web directories and configuration files from the old servers Apache installation. As far as PHP and MySQL went since each offers a zipped version and my versions are nearly always current. I just used the files from the old server and pasted them to their proper places in relation to my other folders on the new server. I forgot about the my.ini file for MySQL from the old server and ended up having to create on of those again for the new server, but it wasn't that big of a deal really since the web is full of information on that task. I have always kept my php.ini file in the same directory with the PHP program so it made the trip alright. Of course all this came after installing WindowsXP again so it had begun to be a very long task and even with all the tasks I have talked about being done I still had programs that I use for other server related tasks to install as well as migrate a mailserver program and antivirus subscription type program to the new machine. Each of which had it own steps related to configuration. Finally however I finished and was doing post install clean up things like defragging the disks and setting them up to scan before the next startup. I hadn't tested any services if everything had been done right they would start automatically with the next reboot. Well everything just seemed to work after the next boot so I assume I basically did everything right. All said and done it took about half a day to complete (at least half a day) but really when it all worked there was a feeling of satisfaction which is really the motivation for this site to begin with. Computers tech really really as a hobby trying to make devices do things, to control them actually, in ways that seem amazing, to me anyway.

Now this post isn't really intended as guide but more as an account of how one Joe Sixpack type approached the task. Some understanding Apache, MySQL, Perl, and PHP is assumed but not to much though just a little bit. A stubborn attitude about completing things one doesn't understand all that well is a requirement. There are probably better ways to go about it but this worked for me.

The computer that I have been using to serve the pages of my websites was beginning to sound a little sick. The fan for the CPU was making a noise akin to bearings grinding and the hard disk was sounding very similar as well on boot ups. The unit in question was housed in a rather huge desktop style case sitting on stand under my work desk that sometimes when I would back my chair up I would inadvertently run it into the power button and shut it down. Of course though everything was working and might of lasted for quite a while longer. Looking around my office I realize that some of my ideas about upgrading computers run more along the lines of whims than anything else. My abandoned computers now number four and are all of the Socket A variety.

The ones I currently maintain number three which include one Dell Dimension 9300 laptop that I use as home and at work because of software licensing and software issues and the need to have many work related tools available to me at home and many home related tools available to me at work. This unit has been exceptionally reliable and when people see it they often ask questions about it even though it is over two years old.

The computer I using right now is a 2.20 gigahertz AMD Athlon 64 X2 Dual Core flavor and really serves as my primary workstation for everything music, games, videos, taxes, bills, pictures, shopping and generally just about everything else anyone can think of. It is also the computer I use to test a lot of things that may or may not find their way onto my server. So additionally I have set it up as sort of a localized development environment running interpreters for 3 different scripting languages, a database server, and web server software. It is a dual boot system running Windows XP and Ubuntu and is constantly in a state of change from the hardware and software perspectives. This machine sees a lot of web exposure between web browsing and the applications installed on it keeping it up to date is sometimes a bit of a pain as there is really a very large amount of web aware applications running on it. It just works would be the best way I could describe it to anyone.

As I said way back up at the top of the post my computer that I use as a my server was getting a little dated and because of the whim factor I wanted to update (well actually replace) it. As I have said in the past I am by now means a tech expert but rather a hobbyist so criteria for a replacement machine might not follow any real logical path. My goals were as follows. It has to be small as the space available to me is limited. Quiet for absolute sure quiet. I want it to just sit there and do its serving thing without bothering me. Powerful? Yes powerful but in a relative sort of way. Lots of fast memory, decently fast hard drive, and reasonably fast CPU; however, I really didn't care about graphics horsepower but did want it have reasonable display prowess for when I actually do work on it directly this machine will not be running any true server OS and from time to time will accessed directly to perform certain tasks. So the AOpen 965D became my unit of choice. I configured it wiith a 200GB hard drive and 3GB DDR2 PC2-5300 RAM and a fairly fast processor. Now of course this is for the most part a 99% laptop configuration to keep the thing small and power consumption down but so far it seems up to the task of providing web, email, and database services for my domains and it is very quiet!


Above it sits nicely on a cluttered desk quietly handling tasks. So in my opinion if someone wanted a fairly powerful computer (not for games though) this unit could fit the needs of many casual users if space and noise were major concerns. It is pitched as a digital engine and one model is available with a remote control but I can't really can't speak as to how well it would perform in that arena since as it has limited graphics capabilities and I have never tried to build a computer for the whole home media management role. If there is one drawback about the unit it is that it comes at a fairly high price point for the actual amount of hardware one gets. It is however an elegant solution in the small form factor/mini PC offerings area.

Whew it has been awhile since I last posted anything on the site. It's not like I don't want to so much as when I do have free time these days there are a lot of other non PC related things I either need or want to do as well. I started a new job about one year and four months ago and that has kept me extremely busy. I have from time to time tweaked and upgraded various parts of this site and the accompanying software that runs it but that is more of the under the hood variety of things and anyone who has possibly visited probably wouldn't notice such changes. Doing such tasks is a safety and value added practice since getting things to work has always been one of the main motivations for having a site.

In regard to the site this being a new year and all I do resolve to update at least a little more frequently than I did last year. Also in that vein the nature of this site will be even more amateur than it is already. Since CompHobby is really only one contributer (me) any and possibly everything that is posted here is a biased opinion. Things I like I will speak positively about things I don't I'll speak negatively about. Sometimes I will have it right other times I will be way off base. There will be as usual deep linking and block quotes galore perhaps taken in context, perhaps taken out of context. I do however always say what I honestly think about things and it is never my intention to mislead anyone or misreport anything. Visitors are urged to leave comments but I have no idea whether that will work or not since there are so many anti spam hacks in the site's script to prevent comment abuse I just can't be sure.

I am not one to recommend scripts all that much but I have been playing around with something called SimplePie and it's pretty sweet.

SimplePie is a very fast and easy-to-use class, written in PHP, for reading RSS and Atom syndication feeds. By keeping it simple, and focusing on what’s important, we’ve built a pretty sweet little API. SimplePie’s focus has been two-fold: speed and ease of use, and has been very successful on both fronts. And no, we didn’t steal it from Apple.

My description is just edit a few variables put it on the server and it works. Most refreshing! So far I've done a couple mashups. One tech feed page and one web comics page using the guidance from this page and this post from the SimplePie support forums. The way the script is supposed to work is the newer items will appear toward the top of the pages. Don't know if that is how it will happen we will just have to wait and see.

As far as the word "mashup" is concerned I don't know if that is err... correct. The definition I am basing that on is....

A mashup is a website or web application that seamlessly combines content from more than one source into an integrated experience. Content used in mashups is typically sourced from a third party via a public interface or API. Other methods of sourcing content for mashups include Web feeds (e.g. RSS or Atom) and JavaScript. Many people are experimenting with mashups using eBay, Amazon, Google, Windows Live, and Yahoos APIs.

Yeah right whatever sounds more like aggregation or indexation or yet just another buzz word but SimplePie seems pretty cool anyway.

I turned down my auto reject settings for the site as I noticed looking at my spamblock log that a few well several actually apparently legitimate comments had gotten rejected. I am sorry for any inconvenience this may have caused anyone. It is really hard to strike a balance here though as comment spammers are relentless in their efforts to put crap on the web through other peoples sites. Again sorry for any inconvenience that may have resulted from this.

I run my own mail server for which I actually bought the software and it runs on Windows. I am using Argosoft Pro Mail Server on the same machine that I run my websites on with Apache HTTP Server. Lately I wanted to run a webmail server as well and though the Argosoft program has this capability built in I didn't like the idea of opening and using a non standard port to serve the pages. First thing I needed was a pop3/smtp capable webmail client. I tried a bunch but some were either bordering on groupware apps, others simply didn't work, and others were woefully slow and featureless. I was on the verge of giving up when by accident almost I stumbled onto the Telaen 1.1.0 RC1 webmail client software. The program supports pop3,imap, and smtp protocols lets users recieve html email, attachments, and includes a JavaScript html editor TinyMCE for composing email. If that wasn't enough the program has multiple languages support and is spam aware....

Telaen provides support for auto-SPAM detection and the automatic movement of detected SPAM messages to the user's SPAM folder. It does this via 2 methods:

1. System-wide: The Telaen Administrator sets a regular expression (the default is "***SPAM***" and "***VIRUS***") that is scanned for in each Email message's Subject line.If the regex matches, that message is moved to the SPAM folder automatically.

2. Per-User: Telaen is also aware of the SpamAssassin (and other) X-Spam-Level header, which provides a measurement on how "SPAM-worthy" this message is. A lower number means it does not have a lot of the characteristics
of SPAM; a higher number means it does. The user can set their own personal preference on how sensitive they want to be in Telaen auto-populating the SPAM folder. If they set a high sensitivity (which corresponds to a lower number) than all messages at the level or higher will be automatically moved to the SPAM folder. A setting of '0' disables this.

It should be noted that Telaen itself does not scan or parse the messages themselves to determine if they are SPAM. Instead, it relies on that parsing/filtering already being down at the MTA/MDA layer. Telaen simply uses the results of that previously performed scanning to know what to do with the message.

So next the issue became how to get this "X-Spam-Level header" measurement inserted in the headers of the emails I receive. There are some products out there that will do this for Argosoft but I was really curious about SpamAssassin since it is after all free and from all the comments I had read about it very effective as well. After doing a web search I found this page It explains in simple details how to make a customized SpamAsassin package for Argosoft which builds the dll for the server extension to incorperate it with Argosoft. The package also provides a GUI interface for configuring it. The install was flawless I had to change some paths in the configuration screens after I got it built since I have perl installed differently than the instructions specified but after doing that the program started flagging, rejecting, and logging email according to the settings I specified in the configuration screens. The whole thing just worked as advertised, Telaen reads the headers and automatically puts the emails in its spam folder. I set it sort of loose to start off with so any that don't get moved have ***spam*** appended to the subject line as well. SpamAsassin uses rules and/or Bayesian filtering. With the rules one can get it started immediately whereas with Bayesian filtering it is recommended that a minimum of 1000 emails be collected first, 500 good ones (ham) and 500 bad ones (spam) to train the filter. I am in the process of doing that now. It will be interesting to see how this affects the programs accuracy once it is complete. Without it and this is purely speculation (based on random analysis of the logs and flagging of emails) it looks to be about 90%+ on the mark using some rule-sets I downloaded at the site offering the package to build the custom SpamAsassin package. This is an excellent Webmail/Spam control package for anyone who uses the Argosoft Pro Mailserver in my opinion. The cost of a setup like this is $88 (price of the Argosoft license) and a little time on the administrators part. When compared to many other commercial offerings this is very reasonable.