Recent blog entries for karlberry

Setting up sendmail on a new CentOS7 system -- decided to use the system packages instead of compiling from original source, as I always have before, mostly so I'll get secure and auth SMTP; the myriad dependencies always defeated me before.

yum install sendmail sendmail-cf
# build my config files [long story], install in /etc/mail.
systemctl enable sendmail # enable for reboot
# enable port in firewall:
firewall-cmd --permanent --zone=public --add-service=mail
firewall-cmd --reload
firewall-cmd --list-all

The main additional thing is to set up fail2ban.
I found these rules helpful (thanks), as well as the manual and all. I ended up defining my failregex list since others did not match, or did not match enough. Here they are:


failregex = ^%(__prefix_line)s\w{14}: ruleset=check_rcpt, arg1=.*, relay=.*, reject=550 .* Rejected: listed .*$
^%(__prefix_line)s\w{14}: ruleset=check_rcpt, arg1=.*, relay=(.* )?\[\].*, reject=.*(Domain of sender|Relaying (temporarily )?denied).*$
^%(__prefix_line)sruleset=check_relay, arg1=.*, arg2=.*, relay=(.* )?\[\].*, reject=421 .*Connection rate limit.*$
^%(__prefix_line)s\w{14}: ruleset=check_mail, arg1=.*, relay=(.* )?\[\].*, reject=55.*$
^%(__prefix_line)s\w{14}: rejecting commands from \[\].* due to pre-greeting traffic.*$
^%(__prefix_line)s\w{14}: (.* )?\[\].* did not issue MAIL.*$
^%(__prefix_line)s\w{14}: .* relay=(.* )?\[\].* \(may be forged\)$
^%(__prefix_line)s\w{14}: lost input channel from (.* )?\[\].* to MTA.*$


I put this into /etc/fail2ban/filter.d/sendmail-reject-karl.conf, and then this block in jail.local:


[sendmail-reject-karl]
enabled = true
port = smtp,465,submission
logpath = %(syslog_mail)s
backend = %(syslog_backend)s


Fingers crossed. Took about seven minutes for the first spammers to show up after I opened the port.

(I don't know why advogato is inserting blank lines in all the pre blocks ... whatever ...)

A not-so-technical friend asked me, "What is a browser?"
My reply was, how about: software providing an interface for navigating information.

Here is my reasoning:

1) "interface" - there are the usual graphical browsers like firefox.
There are also textual-only browsers (such as lynx).
Also, non-interactive programs that simply download a file from the web
can be construed as browsers of a sort. "Interface" can encompass all
of that.

2) "navigating" - because an important component of the whole thing is
going from one piece of information to related, or maybe not related,
information. That is, "hyperlinks", although nowadays people rarely
bother with the "hyper". (I'm ignoring the fact that one can also edit
web pages in browsers, debug javascript programs, and do all kinds of
other unrelated things.)

3) "information" - instead of "web page", because browsers can work with
all kinds of things besides web pages, although of course they are the
most prevalent.


My definition says nothing about the www or even the Internet. This is
because browsers are quite useful for looking at stuff on one's own
computer. In fact, as you may remember or have come across, there was a
huge brouhaha and accompanying lawsuit about this in the late 90s, wrt
people replacing Internet Explorer with Netscape. MS's response was to
make Explorer be "part of" the operating system, specifically not
restricted to poking around the web. (I'll spare you the details, but
if you want them, here is the basic story:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_Explorer#Early_versions)

I wrote the above before checking to see what kind of answers came up on
the net. Let's see ...

At least my friend didn't think a browser *is* Google.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o4MwTvtyrUQ
(The first 30 seconds are enough to get the flavor.)

Here's wikipedia's take on it (first paragraph is enough):
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Web_browser
They're specifically addressing "web browser", not "browser". Few
people would make that kind of pedantic distinction, as I do above.

So it goes ...

The latest TUGboat (v.34 n.1, http://tug.org/TUGboat/Contents/contents34-1.html) contains an item I'm especially proud of: the first fiction we've ever published, a one-page short story by Daniel Quinn, titled Colophon. It's just a fun story (in the members area of the web site, at least for now), but I hope it will encourage people to read Daniel's other (much better known) work, such as Ishmael, Story of B, and Beyond Civilization. His main web site is http://ishmael.org. (TeXxies: it was also the first time it seemed appropriate to use cmfib in running text. :) Thanks to Daniel for giving us permission to reprint it from his collection, At Woomeroo.

Disable Google's super-cookie at http://www.google.com/privacy/ads/ (or with a browser add-on if you don't feel like trusting google :).

Learned about the existence of this from Steven Levy's new book, In the Plex, about Google.

TUGboat 32:2 has been mailed and is now available online.

I believe the backlog of package updates from the time of the TeX Live freeze has
been cleared, as of tonight's update. (With the exception of a couple
packages with problems, about which I've written the authors.)

And another TeX/TUG newsletter to go with the releases.

Sent off the next TUGboat to the printer in the morning (112 pages), got the next TeX Collection master DVD (8gb) on the way to the replication house in the afternoon, installed the recent LaTeX2e small update in the middle. Despite the never-ending todo pile, some days there is at least a small sense of completion.

Just felt like reposting rms's brief note on the dangers of ebooks.

Barring some new critical problem coming to the light, the last TeX Live pretest is posted now. I hope all the TeX Collection DVD components will be put together in the next couple days and it will go to manufacturing this month.

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