Media convertor problems?

On Oct 11 I had some connectivity problems, thought there was some router problem, but finally suspected local (PC) router and media convertor. Once again, on Oct 23, I had one more episode of connection problem. Tried restarting my router (Millenium) computer. Still problem persisted. Then toggled the WorkStation/Hub switch of the media convertor. Then it started working. So, probably media-convertor / network card issue. Right now it is working and I can live with it....

internal http sharing problem

Our internal http large file share had been unmounted after a reboot due to a power problem, but after remounting it, was not able to access it from the same machine. Forgot that I've not added localhost to the access controls! So, changed the relevant lines in httpd.conf:

    AllowOverride None
    Options +Indexes
    Order deny,allow
    Deny from all
    Allow from 127.0.0.1 x.y.z.w a.b.c.d p.q.0.0/255.255.0.0
    #allow from .your_domain.com

Migrating to Google Apps

Spent the whole morning yesterday creating accounts, adding forwarding rules etc so that the users will not feel anything in the migration. The Dashboard was very slow yesterday, probably because of Murphy's Law! This morning, corrected our SPF records so that the new accounts also can send mail without spf softfail - needed to remove the mx records of gmail, which were anyway not required, since mail sent from gmail is anyway signed properly. So, now the SPF records have ip4: parts and the include: part as given in Google's Helpcenter.

For migrating other domains, will think about the options presented by Scott Hanselman, especially the part about transferring old mails via pop and the gXfer tool to one-click transfer all mails.

small bug in PhpMailer timezone code

As posted to phpmailer general mailing list:

In class.phpmailer.php 's function RFCDate(), there is a bug in the timezone code which returns +0580 for Indian Standard Time instead of +0530.

The line
$tz = ($tz/3600)*100 + ($tz%3600)/60;

should be replaced with

$tz = (($tz - ($tz%3600) )/3600)*100 + ($tz%3600)/60;

Found this bug in our phplist mails....

Edit: More info - http://in.php.net/operators.arithmetic has a comment which describes the integer division required:

nicolas_rainardNOSPAM at yahoo dot fr
10-Jul-2007 09:10
Here is another very simple and extremely fast integer division function, but it works only if the arguments are integers and nothing else. So use it only if you are sure of what you are doing.

function int_int_divide($x, $y) {
return ($x - ($x % $y)) / $y;
}

phplist process bounces

Phplist process bounces stopped working a few days back. Reason probably was an interrupted run of the processbounces script. Tried deleting bounces with the Reset Bounces link in View Bounces section. Didn't work. Then purged the mbox file by rm and touch, fetched some more bounces, now it works.

PhpSpy trojan and more

One of our machines was found to have the PhpSpy trojan, using which a cracker had put a link to mozzila.net.cn on a webpage. The fake mozilla site is now down - note the spelling -

mozzila

... And we're removed the offending php-based pages from view.

dns corrections

Found that the local Cyberoam dns server was repeatedly failing for radiosai.org domain. Checking out the Domain report at dnsstuff.com, found that it had a problem of having a stealth nameserver. Logged into Plesk and changed the ns dns records to w5 and w6, that seems to have fixed the problem. Also added SPF TXT record using the wizard at openspf.org.

phppgadmin issue - blank fields

An issue with phppgadmin cropped up during the db work. If any field which is marked as a key of any type (even unique key) is NULL, clicking Edit next to a record opens the Edit form with all the fields blank - not filled in like in other cases. Does not happen for NULL fields when the fields are not marked as keys. It relates to the way the query is made in phppgadmin....

sql queries for find-replace

Running some sql queries on our pgsql db like

UPDATE "file_id" SET "download_filename" = '-' 
WHERE "filename" ~~ 'SV_MS%' 
AND "filename" not like '%MSANTAN%'

UPDATE "file_id" SET "download_filename" = 
REPLACE(download_filename,'_RAVI_', '_') 
WHERE "filename" ~~ 'MBV%RAVI%' 
and filename not like '%ARAVIND%' 
and filename not like '%KULA%'

and so on. It took two mornings to finish.

extra-curricular activities

Aiming to use Dataone for "Loka Samasta Sukhino Bhavantu", doing a bit of cleanup for some other sites on a purely voluntary basis, avoiding the limelight....

R's iptables config for ssh natting

Struggled a bit with R to configure his machine to nat ssh - here's a working /etc/sysconfig/iptables for Fedora -

# Generated by iptables-save v1.2.11 on Sat Mar 11 13:08:36 2006
*filter
:INPUT DROP [1339:140723]
:FORWARD ACCEPT [0:0]
:OUTPUT ACCEPT [137:35130]
# allow local loopback connections
-A INPUT -i lo -j ACCEPT
# drop INVALID connections
-A INPUT   -m state --state INVALID -j DROP
-A OUTPUT  -m state --state INVALID -j DROP
-A FORWARD -m state --state INVALID -j DROP
# accept requests from internal machines on port 8080
-A INPUT -s 192.168.0.0/255.255.255.0 -i eth0 -p tcp -m tcp --dport 8080 -j ACCEPT 
-A FORWARD -s 192.168.0.0/255.255.255.0 -i eth0 -p tcp -m tcp --dport 80 -j REJECT
-A FORWARD -s 192.168.0.0/255.255.255.0 -i eth0 -p tcp -m tcp --dport 443 -j REJECT
-A INPUT -m state --state RELATED,ESTABLISHED -j ACCEPT 
-A OUTPUT -m state --state RELATED,ESTABLISHED -j ACCEPT 
-A OUTPUT -d 202.141.1.132 -o eth0 -p udp -m state --state NEW -m udp --dport 53 -j ACCEPT 
-A OUTPUT -d 202.41.99.9 -o eth0 -p udp -m state --state NEW -m udp --dport 53 -j ACCEPT 
-A OUTPUT -o eth0 -p tcp -m state --state NEW -m tcp --dport 80 -j ACCEPT 
-A OUTPUT -o eth0 -p tcp -m state --state NEW -m tcp --dport 443 -j ACCEPT 
-A OUTPUT -o eth0 -p tcp -m state --state NEW -m tcp --dport 110 -j ACCEPT 
COMMIT
# Completed on Sat Mar 11 13:08:36 2006
# Generated by iptables-save v1.2.11 on Sat Mar 11 13:08:36 2006
*nat
:PREROUTING ACCEPT [128:15724]
:POSTROUTING ACCEPT [35:2100]
:OUTPUT ACCEPT [35:2100]
-A POSTROUTING -s 192.168.0.0/255.255.255.0 -o eth1 -j MASQUERADE
COMMIT
# Completed on Sat Mar 11 13:08:36 2006

By changing the ports to REJECT in the format --dport 8081:65535 he can block access to any other service.

We took more than an hour, because default routes were not set to use this machine as a gateway, and also the machine blocks pings. Once the gateway was set correctly on his double-homed Win2k3 box, it worked. But we also struggled a bit because of forgetting the two COMMITs, one after each *table. Also, the

echo "1" > /proc/sys/net/ipv4/ip_forward

was getting overwritten on service network restart, he had to add it to the startup scripts.

Educational sw and toys

A asked about Educational sw for Ap - so I googled for Educational software 8-10 years and came up with http://www.thekidstoystore.com/sciencekits8.html There's also Google Earth and Geekdad.
Searching Ask Slashdot gave pointers to edubuntu and Tuxpaint - that was for pre-schoolers.(Edit: Edubuntu is hardly for kids!)
And wikipedia has a good listing. 'Where in the World is Carmen Sandiego' can be downloaded from here. And there seem to be quite a few more educational game downloads there too!

bat file for print job

Printing files using

copy filename.bin lpt1

written multiple times in a bat file doesn't work - the printer queue needs some time. One option was to use a Reply statement using the Reply.com given by MS
Another option is the SLEEP or WAIT given at http://www.robvanderwoude.com/wait.html Something similar is at http://malektips.com/dos0017.html

Edit:

type filename.bin > lpt1

works fine even if written multiple times.

youtube and others

Checked out the video quality and other issues like copyright etc for uploading on youtube, google videos and archive.org. Archive.org needs a Creative Commons license or something similar. Youtube reduces resolution to 240x180 and restricts to 10 minutes per clip. Google Videos seems to be the best bet - 640x480 res, unlimited length, uploader owns copyright.

samba issues

There were some issues with Samba and Windows using "Allow Everyone" shares. R's problem was that his Fedora box had a samba share which he wanted to "Allow Everyone" - configured with the gui, didn't work, with Windows clients getting a forbidden message. Googling with

samba share fedora all everyone

found http://www.linuxquestions.org/questions/showthread.php?t=469209 and passed it on to R. R just added a samba user with the gui and it started working. Apparently his box just had root and no other users, and samba root login was banned.

quick phplist faq

> 1) Why does a user get blacklisted.
When a user unsubscribes, he is blacklisted. Which means that no mails, not
even system mails, are sent to him.

> 2) What about the users who have not confirmed. Is there a way to
> resend a request for confirmation mail to them.
Yes, there is such a feature.
Manage Users -> Reconcile Users has many useful links - scroll till the bottom
of the page to see all of them.

> 3) I have sent a mail to AOL users and asked them to subscribe from a
> different domain and deleted them from the list. Are there any other
> domains which give a similar problem?
You can check using "view bounces". Read the reason given by the mailer daemon
for the bounce.

> 4)Is there anything else which I need to know or manage?

Very good documentation at http://docs.phplist.com/Documentation

logs on media

Logs on media server were filling up system drive once again. Changed log location to Data drive which has more space. Also using 7zip to archive and download older log files. Commandline is

7z a -tzip archive.zip filename*.* 

using autogk to convert mpeg2 to avi

In order to use my workflow for saicast which uses virtualdub, needed avi or mpeg1 input - so, used autogk to convert mpeg2 files to avi. 3.5 hours to convert a 1.1 hr 3.3GB mpeg2 to 2 GB divx avi.

file transfer, samba and sftp

Taking video from video studio via smb on studio's gateway, found that 3.3 GB file was not getting directly sftp'd from the smb-mounted drive - crashing at 2 GB. But copying to local drive over the same smb mount was working! And then sftp worked too. Strange!

flv encoders

Video to flash encoders, freeware from snapfiles.com which has a nice search feature, "look for freeware only". DVDVideoSoft's Free Video to Flash Converter makes a basic html page with a basic player embedded too. But the more full featured converter is Riva FLV Encoder. And took only 10-15 minutes for a 50 minute vcd file to be converted to 200 kbps flv file.