eitch’s blog

If you have ever run into the problem that your computer will not send e-mails directly, then this might help.

Install Postfix and configure it as a satellite server. This was done on a Ubuntu desktop installation, so I don’t know what Fedora and co. will say.

In the /etc/postfix/main.cf file add or modify the following lines:

relayhost = smtp.gateway.ch
smtp_sasl_auth_enable = yes
smtpd_tls_auth_only = yes
smtp_sasl_password_maps = hash:/etc/postfix/sasl_passwd
smtp_sasl_security_options = noanonymous

This configures postfix to relay all e-mails over the defined host. Now the sasl_passwd file must be created with the credentials for the SMTP gateway:

smtp.gateway.ch user@gateway.ch:password

Now create the map of the password file and reload postfix:

sudo postmap /etc/postfix/sasl_passwd
sudo /etc/init.d/postfix reload

Test the configuration by sending a test e-mail:

echo -e "From: someone@somewhere.ch\nTo: some@otherplace.com\nSubject: Hello World\n\Body: \nHello beautiful world" | sendmail -t

And see what postfix said:

tail /var/log/mail.info

Have fun!

Notes on getting Ubuntu netboot to work so that I don’t have to burn any CD’s

This document expects a DHCP server to be available in the network

Install tftp

sudo aptitude install tftpd-hpa tftp-hpa


Get netboot files:

cd /var/lib/tftpboot
sudo wget -r -nH -np --cut-dirs=8 http://archive.ubuntu.com/\
ubuntu/dists/maverick/main/installer-amd64/\
current/images/netboot
find ./ -name "index.*" | sudo xargs rm


Add the following to the DHCP subnet configuration:

next-server 10.0.0.68;
filename "pxelinux.0";


Now normal netboot should work.

If one wants to have liveCD, then carry on by installing NFS-Server:

sudo aptitude install nfs-kernel-server


Add export for the livecd in /etc/exports:

/var/lib/tftpboot/maverick 10.0.0.0/255.255.255.0(async,no_root_squash,no_subtree_check,ro)


Mount and copy liveCD contents to exported NFS share:

sudo mount -o loop /tmp/maverick-desktop-amd64.iso /mnt
sudo cp -ar /mnt/* /var/lib/tftpboot/maverick/


Add a new menu entry in ubuntu-installer/amd64/boot-screens/rqtxt.cfg

label maverickLiveCD
menu label ^Live CD
kernel maverick/casper/vmlinuz
append vga=788 boot=casper netboot=nfs \
nfsroot=10.0.0.68/var/lib/tftpboot/maverick initrd=maverick/casper/initrd.lz --


Restart NFS:

sudo /etc/init.d/nfs-kernel-server reload


If problems arise, try using the following boot append line:

append file=/var/lib/tftpboot/maverick/preseed/ubuntu.seed vga=788 \
boot=casper root=/dev/nfs netboot=nfs \
nfsroot=10.0.0.68:/var/lib/tftpboot/maverick initrd=maverick/casper/initrd.lz --


In certain cases running a VirtualBox VM in a headless linux environment can lead to a Windows XP having an undesired resolution.

I fixed this using the following two commands:

Global command:
VBoxManage setextradata global GUI/MaxGuestResolution 1920,1200

For a running VM:
VBoxManage controlvm "remote" setvideomodehint 1920 1200 24

I found the resolution in this forum:
VirtualBox Forums

Over the years I have grown used to the fact that when I search for a package on a debian based distro, then I use:
apt-cache search foo bar
The result was a list of all the packages which had the text ‘foo’ and ‘bar’ in the description.

Lately it has been discouraged to use apt-get and apt-cache, but one should rather use aptitude as this tool is more powerful.

It is more powerful, but it does not behave the same. So the following command:
aptitude search foo bar
would return any result where either ‘foo’ or ‘bar’ was in the package name, not the description.

Since I have gotten used to apt-cache way this is how I do it with aptitude:
aptitude search "~dfoo bar"

But! This command does not check package names. Package names are with ~n. Maybe someone out there can explain how I can combine the two correctly?

While writing bash scripts, I find it a good idea to put reusable functions into their own scripts and then source them into other scripts.

This means that one must use the source /file/to/source call to load these files. To be able to do this, the bash script must know where the scripts to source are. To not have to hardwire this into the script, I just have the requirement, that the script must be in the same directory as the script itself.

The following code shows how one can find the base directory, with out using any external commands and it should work with out regards to how the script is called:

SCRIPT_NAME="${0##*/}"
SCRIPT_DIR="${0%/*}"

# if the script was started from the base directory, then the
# expansion returns a period
if test "$SCRIPT_DIR" == "." ; then
  SCRIPT_DIR="$PWD"
# if the script was not called with an absolute path, then we need to add the
# current working directory to the relative path of the script
elif test "${SCRIPT_DIR:0:1}" != "/" ; then
  SCRIPT_DIR="$PWD/$SCRIPT_DIR"
fi

# now we can source our other scripts
source $SCRIPT_DIR/logger.sh

For the Ubuntu 10.04 Lucid Lynx, the developers decided to remove the Interface tab in System -> Preferences -> Appearance.

What made them do that I can not fathom. Yet there is (still) an option to put the icons back.

You can put it back for all new users by adding the following two lines to /usr/share/gconf/defaults/10_libgnome2-common:

/desktop/gnome/interface/menus_have_icons       true
/desktop/gnome/interface/buttons_have_icons      true

And you can activate it again for your current user by using these two commands:

gconftool-2 --type bool --set /desktop/gnome/interface/menus_have_icons        true
gconftool-2 --type bool --set /desktop/gnome/interface/buttons_have_icons       true

I just really hope support for this isn’t removed altogether in new Gnome versions

Courtesy of the following two ubuntu forum threads:
No icons in context menu for 9.10
GTK menus missing icons