Set up a secure IMAP server under my firewall and not reachable from the outside unless I VPN or use Sqirrelmail to get there.  I chose to use Dovecot which is pretty easy all in all.  On Ubuntu its as easy as an “apt-get install”.  I wanted to write a onger SSL certificate for it so I processed one from an old bookmark I have which I still go back to every so often for these things.  The IMAP server should offer SSL logins.

Set up a secure Postfix Mail server using SASL and TLS.  Now this one got a bit more interesting.  I followed this page (or so I thought).  But there are a number of steps in there which you have to carefully grep and get correct.  If you don’t you stand the chance of running into Thunderbird complaining that the SMTP server does not offer STARTTLS in its EHLO.  Not  a nice thing.  But when I telnet there, it seems to.  So, if you follow this howto, be sure to follow it step by step.  Create all the certs it says.  Copy them just like it says.  Edit the /etc/defaults/saslauthd file and don’t leave anything out.  My big mistake was to not copy things the way it said there and I also got the location wrong for some of the certs.  If you are not offered up a SSL cert when you first try to send email after doing the steps, something is bad.  Stop and recreate the wheel.  I had to do this a few times.  If you follow the howto, you get there.  That’s a good thing to say about a howto, BTW.

But why, you ask, why would I want all of this setup if no one can reach it?  Well, that’s a habilis answer friends.  Its because I can.  Its a challenge and I like making it work.  I will never want to reach the server unless I VPN or use the webmal interface or ssh and use mutt.

Yahoo Mail — The extreme suckage factor

I’m sorry to vent on Yahoo!’s parade.  But their mail program, how they manage spam, how it records new mail.  It all is kind of broken or at least badly bent.  I have been getting more spamoli the last weeks then ever before.  In one day I got over 25 spamoli and for months before, I never got a single one.  Someone borked something.  So being a good netizen, I wrote a helpful email to their Help desk. 

Know what?  Their help desk is borked too.  I get a form letter back telling me about the bulk mail folder.  I asked not about that folder because I could care less about that folder.  I asked why.  What has happened or what has changed to make Yahoo mail be so bad?  It also seems overwhelmed with the sheer number of users sometimes and it can never get the number of email that are new right.

I hate to say this and rain on Art’s parade.  But someone needs to go in there and fix things.  Its borked, man.  So off I went back to Google and Google Apps.  I like the overall feeling of Google Apps and I like the idea its not really done because it gives me some deep down feeling that I too can help fix things I find along the way.

With Yahoo!, things just seem broken and all I get are less than helpful form mail responses perhaps from real live people telling me how bulk mail the trash folder works.  Gimme break. So I broke.  And I’m gone.  They don’t do enough to earn my Mail+ and the changes to the Mail app are not even close.  Its like covering a cow dung with pretty electric lights.  You know underneath it still smells but its pretty on the outside.

SCALE-ness

Yes.  The time has come folks.  I took tomorrow off from work and I’m heading down to Los Angeles in the morning to do SCALE time.  This show has become the one for me to go revel in the Linux-ness.  And friends are going there too like Ed and DK and others.  I may write a blog of the day report on what I do and the fun I have there.  If you are going, look us up.  We’ll be

At a personal level to sum it all up; I’ve reached 185 pounds or so.  That means I have lost 90 pounds.  I’m gonna slip inbetween the tiles on the floor here pretty soon

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