Mdaemon – “The date is grossly in the future” bug

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If you run an older version of Mdaemon 10.x (email server) then you may find this “error message” in the SMTP logs; “The date is grossly in the future”, this is caused by a bug in Spamassassin one of the antispam solutions used by Mdaemon, the problem is that this caused the spam score to get rather high and may cause Mdaemon to discard legitimate mails as spam.

You can ofcause upgrade your Mdaemon installation, but if for some reason you prefer not to do so this is the workaround;

The workaround(besides paying for updates), is to edit the rule-set.

C:\MDaemon\SpamAssassin\rules\local.cf

Add the following line score

FH_DATE_PAST_20XX 0.0

Restart Spam Engine

Curtesy of; http://www.ninjahdev.com/node/8

Just found another tip, change the end of this line to the latter (both solutions should work);

MDaemon\SpamAssasin\default_rules\72_active.cf:

{ FH_DATE_PAST_20XX header FH_DATE_PAST_20XX Date =
~ /20[1-9][0-9]/ [if-unset: 2006]

Change to;

 /20[2-9][0-9]
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Capture online video streams

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Here is yet another capture program for capturing online video streams “Web Video Cap” (eg. for youtube etc etc).


Pros; Easy operations, it will capture everything in the background, its from our friends at www.nirsoft.net whom usually makes excellent tools.

Cons; Unless you stop it/configure it, it will capture EVERYTHING/ANYTIME.

As with most other capture products you need to install WinPcap (a resident background driver) so nothing new there.

Download Web Video Capture here; http://www.nirsoft.net/utils/web_video_capture.html

Read much more here; http://www.ghacks.net/2010/04/02/download-online-videos-with-web-video-cap/

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Proxy bypass

So you are visiting this company that is filtering their Internet traffic, and you for some reason can’t reach this site you just have to visit RIGHT NOW, no problem here’s a list of proxy tools/sites to bypass such security measures;

http://geniushackers.com/blog/2008/01/09/another-list-of-proxy-sites-to-open-blocked-sites/
http://www.ghacks.net/2006/08/04/free-web-proxy-list/ (older list but many still work)

or try these previous posts;
https://readmydamnblog.com/?p=1202 (Utility to browse via US proxy)
https://readmydamnblog.com/?p=1069 (create your own proxy)

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Nagios (windows) alternatives

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As primary a Windows admin I get a bit discouraged by products like Nagios – although it’s definitely a cool product installing it seem complex and with little knowledge on Linux maintaining it even more so.

So are there any Windows (free) alternatives out there?

Yes, and propably more than one, however is there any open source/free versions among these?

I found two;

OpenNMS

http://opennms.org/wiki/Installation:Windows


It claim to run on windows and have basic capabilities, I have not looked into details so I can’t say just how deep it goes (Nagius supports SNMP and very detailed monitoring, OpenNMS at a glance seem more like superficial monitoring).  Anyway, it’s free and may just be enough for you, so take a look at it.

Demo available at;
http://demo.opennms.org/opennms/index.jsp
user and password is both “demo”

SpiceWorks

http://www.spiceworks.com

I actually tested this once (a previous version), it is quite fine for smaller sites (and seem more extensive than OpenNMS), but when it come to wan connected sites it seem a bit heavy (works without agents installed).  Then again, it’s free and this one is quite easy to setup and manage.

Yet other alternatives (Non windows though) is;
http://www.zenoss.com/
http://www.zabbix.com/

And this one that seem commercial;
http://www.groundworkopensource.com/

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Buddy backup – “free” online backup

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Now this is somewhat clever, I have not yet tried it so I can’t say for sure how good it works but the concept is clever.

You agree with some of your friends that you will use each other as backup-hubs, install Buddy Backupand then define each other as trusted friends, then your data is backed up to your friends computers via P2P (of cause in encrypted format so your friends can’t look at your data)..

It is free and rather clever.

Read their getting started guide here

Download it here  (sadly it is not available right now, a new version should be very close to release – even so close that they removed the old version – I have written to them requesting a release date but not received any yet).

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OpenDNS newsletter – granular control of blocked sites

I just read a news letter from OpenDNS in which they state that they are now offering a paid solution where you get granular control of blocked sites.  Basically this mean that you can allow yourself (or equally important persons 😉 to bypass all the site blocking your site otherwize uses..  That seem quite clever..

Sitation from the newsletter;
A lightweight and innovative approach to per-user access controls, OpenDNS Web content filtering empowers you to grant individuals on your network permission to bypass blocked pages. No appliance. No software. It works efficiently through the cloud.

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Online Backup – followup

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carboniteI just heard one of my favorite podcasts this morning, in this they talked about Carbonite and how they have actually changed their crypto policy lately. Before you had to rely on their crypto keys, which meant that although all your data was encrypted both during transport and storage it could basically be decrypted by Carbonite employees (yes yes, court order and all I know, but still I like my data to be 10000% private), however now you can set your own AES key (256bit as I recall) and thus data is 100% private..

This does make Carbonite an interesting player once again…  I may just have to give them a spin to see how it works.

Yet another player came to my attention, I have not heard about this before nor do I know much more than stated on their website; www.backblaze.com

So to summarize;

Idrive (I use this myself, but am considering Carbonite to get more space)
Pros;Cheap (around 55$ a year), versioning of files, good gui with tons of tweaking, scheduled backup
Cons;“only” 150gb storage, gui could do with an update lots of options but not pretty
Review; http://online-data-backup-review.toptenreviews.com/idrive-review.html
Review; http://www.dansdata.com/idrive.htm

Carbonite (I have not tested this myself and thus know only little about it)
Pros; Cheap (around 55$ a year), UNLIMITED storage
Cons;no versioning of files (only the latest version is backed up)
Review; http://www.maclife.com/article/reviews/carbonite

Backblaze (I have not tested this myself and thus know only little about it)
Pros; Cheap
Cons;No versioning of files
Review; http://www.maclife.com/article/reviews/backblaze

http://mozy.com/
Just learned about it, don’t know much about it.

http://www.sosonlinebackup.com/
Just learned about it, don’t know much about it. (I was warned it should be very costly).

https://spideroak.com/
Just learned about it, don’t know much about it.

KeepIT.com
Don’t even think about it 🙂
https://readmydamnblog.com/?p=80

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Adobe Flash Player v.10.1 beta download

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flashlogoSo if you want to be totally up-beat or perhaps are testing out Boxee then you will want to install the latest Adobe Flash Player (Boxee actually seem to require this), but no worries you can get it right here;

http://labs.adobe.com/downloads/flashplayer10.html

Among other things this version will add HW acceleration, neat for Netbooks as compatible GFX cards now can assist in playing video and thus perhaps adding HD playback to your otherwise slow Atom processor (however this DO require a compatible GFX card to work like the Nvidia ION and others).

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Online DNS tool

I just stumbled across this DNS lookup utility on my way around the net, it seem quite interesting and could provide some valuable info on domain names and ip addresses.

The interface is a bit minimalistic in my view, but the info provided seem good.

Goto this website and enter a domain name in the top left corner then hit ‘I’m lucky’ and watch the magic show 🙂

http://www.robtex.com/

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