crazylazy.info

In short

I used

1. a 2.6.32.12 Linux Kernel (newly introduced: Kernel Samepage Merging can lower a virtualization solution's memory consumption)
2. patched it with the Linux-VServer grsec patch
3. applied the standard Ubuntu 10.4 Lucid Server configuration
4. applied grsec "High" preference and customized it (details are in the Kernel config section)
5. optimized it for KVM, VMware (software binary translation gets switched on by internal heuristics - chpax is still necessary if you want that feature and that is intended that way), and of course Vserver (just works). KVM Qemu works due KVM works.

Why to hate typical Unix mailserver setups

I hate that stuff - and it's not that Postfix in particular sucks. But integrating with Postfix is absurd. Surely it works, and as long as it works nobody changes that stuff on how it's designed.

Even deploying an SSL/TLS setup is challenging. But no, you also need to install proper authentication. Locally, Postfix (for unknown reasons) is chrooted. People think that this is a security feature.

Who needs this?

Yay, free mails in a sustaining setup!

This is a tutorial on how to practically setup a relatively secure mail-server.

It's supposed to be as minimal as reasonable nowadays, and for a small amount of users (standard root server, max. ~20 mail-users at once). Without a real DB backend. It doesn't scale business-needs, however it's supposed to be extendable.

The reference system this setup works with is a Debian GNU Linux with:

• Maildrop - instead of Procmail for more flexible filter rulesets
• Postfix and Postfix-pcre ~ 2.7

IDEA is OpenSource now

IntelliJ's IDEA 9 has an OpenSource community edition that is freely available for Windows, MacOS and Linux. It has got tons of features, even in the free edition. Most stuff that's not in the free Community Version isn't stuff I'd use for private programs. IDEA - in any version - has got Git support, best Java support out there, nice GUI builders, JUnit support, and a neat debugger. Things it lacks are some Emacs features I'm accustomed with. But the unique project structure lets us use any editor we want in order to perform the following workflow:

Active editing in short

It's not a bug...

No... surely not. But if you're using Wing IDE for example and you edit files with an X11 based editor, you might want to sync your clipboards. Thing is: it seems MacOS 10.5's X11.app doesn't allow this by default and there's no option for that based on the frontend.

Edit the plist

Let X11.app's Preference menu activate the native key-set emulation to make use of the Apple keys. Do not use this preference panel again because it'll undo the following:

Why Vim vs. emacs sucks

Most people out there prefer either vim or emacs. Most people see a kind of steep learning curve when it comes to the latter. LISP, short-cuts, and an extremely versatile set of configuration options aren't necessarily creating a beginner friendly editing experience. - I pretty much guess that's the reason why some people find vim, stick with it, and extend it minimally.

mutt meets the cloud

mutt is a pretty decent terminal based mail-client. It reliably runs on almost every platform, is RFC conform by default, lightweight, fast, extremely versatile and sweet as leet. In order to take advantage of all the kewl features of Gmail many people use heavyweight mail-clients like Mail.app (>300 MB), Outlook (infinite waste of space and time), or Thunderbird (the compromise).
In the past mutt was just a MUA, but since ~ 1.5 there's a useable smtp, imap and pop3 backend. In the following I hacked mutt to sync with multiple Gmail imap accounts to use the great filters and infinite space - from a terminal. Just mutt and Gmail.