Mail is up!

The traffic at the store seemed less hectic today, so I split around 11 am or so, after having picked up the mail downtown, and went home.

There, I sat down with every intention of resuming my translation but, spurred by a desire to not have to fire up my VAIO just to get my mail (I'd like to minimize the number of machines on which received mail is stored) and egged on by teferi's remark about the postfix application in his comment to my post yesterday, I decided to sit down and slay the mail dragon.

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I first did a Google search for 'postfix' and 'rpm', and downloaded a fresh version of postfix for my RH 7.1. Installing it was as easy as killing sendmail on my system, running rpm to remove sendmail and then again to install postfix.

The next, most time-consuming step was configuring postfix.

I am fortunate to have an account that, to the best of my knowledge, I have never used (the one I get with my local ISP account). Despite the fact I have never used it, there were over 150 messages waiting for me there (most, as it turned out, were spam... not bad for never having used the address in the wild, eh?). This was to be my test bed for trying out my mail configuration; if I lost anything, oh, well... c'est dommage! It's not as if I was going to miss it, right?

My first forays with postfix failed. A review of the mail log indicated that the program was trying to deliver mail to 'alexpgp@localhost.localhost.localdomain' and that no such animal was extant, according to DNS, so postfix was bouncing (or trying to) the mail it was seeing.

That DNS again.

A visit to the postfix.org Web site led me to a FAQ for RH 7.1, where I found I could turn off attempts to look things up using DNS ('disable_dns_lookups=yes'). Notch that one.

I also changed a parameter in the configuration file so that mail would now be delivered to 'alexpgp@localhost.localdomain', except that the next time I tried to fetch mail, the mail log indicated that this was a circular reference ('mail for localhost.localdomain loops back to itself'), and the attempt to deliver mail failed again.

One of the items in the aforementioned FAQ talked about this specific problem, so I read up on it and followed the offered advice (add 'localhost.localdomain' to the 'mydestination' parameter).

I also did a Google search to see if there was a way to delete the bounces that were queued, according to the mail log, for whenever the system would be capable of sending and receiving mail.

It turns out there is a way to do this, but not automatically. (Telling the application to 'flush' the queues really tells it to try to send the stuff that's in the queue, BTW.) Fortunately, a semi-automatic script to eliminate queued files was in the message I found.

The next step was to tweak my old signature files (I'm not in Texas anymore) and adjust my procmail filters accordingly.

A limited test of fetching mail from my local ISP's server was successful. I then modified the .fetchmailrc file to get all of my mail from everywhere, and let it fly.

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Success!

Now... all I really have to do is brush up on my mutt keystrokes.

That, and call the store to see if they need me to help with UPS packages today.

Cheers...

Here and there...

It turns out that two of the invoices I sent to one of my Texas clients never got to where they were supposed to go, so I had to refax them. It'll be interesting to see if payment follows the date of the invoice (i.e., the day they were first sent) or the date they were received.

* * *In a fit of materialism, I finally got around to asking where Feht's birthday present to me had been stashed in the store. The location was revealed to me and the present turns out to be a copy of Coup de Grace and Other Stories by Jack Vance.

The tome is one of the "reader's edition" copies published earlier this year, and is a preview of the 44-volume Vance Integral Edition which will begin publication next year, the fruit of several years of labor by Vance fans (much of which was done over the Internet). The book has a nice heft to it, and is well constructed. I shall enjoy reading it.

Talking about materialism, I sent off my payment for a DVD of Akira Kurosawa's Seven Samurai, which was the template from which The Magnificent Seven was made. It'll probably take a while for the disk to get here, seeing as how the seller is located in Hong Kong, but my previous purchase (Kurosawa's High and Low) got to me without problem, so I don't expect any problems this time, either.

* * *The phone company called to say that DSL would be activated in the store on January 7, and that they'd be sending me my static IP address soon. I suppose I ought to also expect a DSL modem to arrive via UPS (which means I probably ought to order a DSL router for the store, too).

Add a to-do: figure out a way to advertise high-speed Internet access via store-based machines.

* * *Every once in a while, I will go upstairs and sit down by one of the couches in the living room. Both Sasha and Ming will come running eagerly, looking for affection. After a few moments, Ming typically ends up in the crook of one arm, eyes closed and snorting gently as I scratch his back, while Sasha ends up rubbing herself against me while lying on her back and enjoying a belly rub.

Today, I noticed Baby, our cat, catch sight of this spectacle with what appeared to be a disapproving eye. Be that as it may or not, she soundlessly got up and left the vicinity.

It's already after 5 pm and my brain feels like mush. I've not made much progress in the translation end of the world... I'm finding it hard to concentrate.

Cheers...

One last touch...

Two, actually.

First, I downloaded and installed something called NeoMail, which basically gives you web-based e-mail via CGI. It was a relatively painless install. My one problem occurred when the application reported an inability to obtain a write lock on my mail file. A Web search turned up a solution, which appears to work.

What did not work was sending mail, and fixing this was the second touch. A couple of attempts to send to my account on my local ISP's machine bounced right quick. A look at the mail log file revealed that postfix was trying to engage in a dialog with the destination's mail server, and it's unlikely any machine out there in this day and age is going to want to have any truck with something that identifies itself as localhost.localdomain.

Fortunately, thee is a 'relayhost' setting in postfix, and setting it appears to have resolved that problem.

Cheers...