Admin

Enable the postfix Mail Transfer Agent

I want to use git’s mailing capabilities on OS X Lion to send out patches. How do I configure the MTA?

This Enable the postfix Mail Transfer Agent looks interesting, but old:

  loghyr:postfix root# head /etc/hostconfig 
  # This file is going away

But I think we can control all of this from the postfix(1).

  loghyr:postfix root# postconf -d | grep etc
  alias_database = hash:/etc/aliases
  alias_maps = hash:/etc/aliases
  config_directory = /etc/postfix
  sample_directory = /etc/postfix

I’m going to need a version for my home network and my vpn network:

loghyr:postfix root# cp main.cf home.cf
loghyr:postfix root# cp main.cf work.cf
loghyr:postfix root# cp main.cf default.cf

Edit the config files and start it:

loghyr:postfix root# cp work.cf main.cf
loghyr:postfix root# postfix start 
postfix/postfix-script: warning: group or other writable: /Library/Server/Mail/Data/mta
postfix/postfix-script: starting the Postfix mail system

How do I get it to stay launched? What’s the correctly way to make Postfix run permanently on Lion (not server)

I can switch my config files as needed.

Hmm, it works. I can’t show you, but it works.

The main thing I changed from the article I linked in was the relayhost:

relayhost = [mail.internal.excfb.com]

My setup assumes that I am connecting to an already working mail server in the domain. I.e., my iMac isn’t going to be receiving mail, just sending it.

Ha, mutting again

I get tired of Outlook messing with my space alignment when I cut and paste code. I don’t care if I turn off HTML or not, it still does it. And even if I turn off HTML, the Linux-NFS mailing list rejects my posts.

So, back to mutt. The big thing people complain about when I switch back and forth between mutt and something else, is that my “From” flips from “Tom Haynes” and “Haynes, Tom”.

I tried setting gecos_mask in my .muttrc, but no joy.

This worked for me instead:
set realname=”Haynes, Tom”

I don’t care what format it is in, as long as people don’t gripe. :->

Netgear WN3000RP and iPhone

Just had a weird experience with my Netgear “Universal WiFi Range Extender WN3000RP”.

It seemed pretty evident I wouldn’t be able to automatically add it to my Airport network, so I whipped out my iPhone and quickly connected to the NETGEAR_EXT network. And I quickly got it connected to my home network. I even told it to use the same password as my home network.

And just as quickly, it was not useable. I could not connect the iPhone to the new network and when I got out an old laptop, it wasn’t working either.

So, I got out my trusty paper clip and reset the Netgear box. And this time, as I was installing, I paid more attention. The issue turned out to be a nasty interaction between the iPhone browser automatically making the first character in the data entry be upper case and the Nethgear being case sensitive for the password. I don’t know that I’ve ever encountered the case sensitivity, but maybe I’m just super cautious with that normally.

I also can’t figure out why with an unobstructed view of my Airport Extreme Base Station I’m loosing 31% connectivity and through one wall, I’m seeing 48% loss.

VMware upgrade might blow away your networking

If you have customized your Fusion networking, be sure to make a copy of /Library/Application\ Support/VMware\ Fusion/networking to your home directory before upgrading.

And then copy it back and before you start up a VM, do sudo ./boot.sh –start in that directory.