I guess I should be drafting posts and sending them once I have attached any photos and the like.

Maybe I might try this method.

Meanwhile, both boys doing really well. Nate is going through a cycle of teeth coming through at the moment and Darwyn is at that age where he is independent. Darwyn turns 3 very soon, which is surprising how fast it has gone. He also talks a great deal now and says so many variations of words.

My wife and I managed to find time to head to the movies today minus the kids. We saw The Hunger Games, and I thought it was okay. Don’t think my wife liked it much, guess we will need to make time to see something else in the coming weeks.

Got a few busy weekends ahead, so will be sure to post more things as they happen.

I’ve been meaning to get more involved with some linux related stuff, as I still love using Linux and promoting it’s use with others. I’d really love to contribute in some way to the Debian community, so might one day look into doing that. Love getting inspired by some of the folks on Plant Debian to be honest.

In the last week I took it upon myself to go over this fine art and was quite surprised to see how things have changed. I remember when the kernel had changes to allow the .config file to be available in proc file system, however it seems atleast on my Debian 6.0 install this doesn’t exist and has been left out of the kernel options. Although the config file used one the kernels shipped/installed is available in /boot file system. Don’t understand why they don’t make use of this, as it was a big thing when finally available in the kernel, guess they have reasons.

I also found out that ‘make dep’ is no longer required during the compiling process, in addition, mkinitrd is no more. Been replaced by mkinitramfs which requires the kernel config file in /boot to make the initrd anyways. And last but not least, grub2 no longer requires you to modify a menu.lst to boot the new kernel.

In any case, with a bit of research I managed to compile and install kernel 3.0.4 on a Debian 6.0 host without much fuss.

michaelf@bravo:~$ uname -a
Linux bravo 3.0.4 #1 SMP Wed Aug 31 20:59:49 EST 2011 i686 GNU/Linux

Operating system managed to pickup my native resolution correctly, of course currently only using an unaccelerated video driver, which will be an ongoing issue. My system has an onboard ATI 3200 HD video adapter I think. I think the only accelerated video driver is the non open source one, which from last use sucked. I’ll install the version that ships with Lenny to see how I go. Hope it doesn’t generate core files like the one on 4.0 produced. I’d really hope an open source accelerated video drivers is available eventually.

The other issue I have currently is no audio working. Which is a problem, as any virtual machines will then have no audio working either. Will work on getting the audio working tonight, think I will need to do a reboot or two with changes made. I know audio works on ubuntu, so it should work on Debian too. Just a matter of getting things right.

Doesn’t look like the default apt sources has any mythtv packages, I guess I am missing something. Will have to explore this too, as I wouldn’t mind having a backend/frontend on the host too (so I can then use the HDHomeRun network tuner, that I am interested in purchasing).

Once the recording goes into nuv format, the PS3 won’t have a chance in hell to play it. I did some tinkering and managed to setup a custom job to honour the cutlist and maintain the mpg file format. However once the 2nd install of the configuration this failed to work. 1st time I did it on a setup it worked fine. I never did get around to working it out, maybe I might again in due time.

I just noticed that the HDHomeRun units are now available in Australia. HDHomeRun is a dual DVBT tuner that connects onto your ethernet and of course MythTv can then be configured to use the unit, or multiple units. Other software on other operating systems also support it. ie. EyeTV on MacOS X etc.

Having just seen these units now available, I am pretty keen to pick up one in the near future. I have a bit of funds to use on computer items, so I think I will get one once the funds in question are available for my use again.

Of course this means setting up a virtual machine to run mythtv is very possible, as the tuner is accessed via ethernet, so no fancy pci or usb hardware to consider under the guest itself.

Grab it from the Debian repository and then configure it as required. Requires editing the config.xml file. Below is a link to my sample config.xml and an import.js which I modified that shows the audio/video files in a way in which I prefer.

Mediatomb Sample Configs

I have my media content laid out like so;

/srv/media/tv/showname - series 1/episodes
/srv/media/music/artist

Being a Debian fan, I thought this was good news. Will certainly be keeping an eye on proceedings.

I am using Debian 4.0. Had thought about using Ubuntu, but decided to stick with Debian as I have used it previously in the same capacity, without it failing me.

On a previous setup where I had smtp virtual accounts in the usual directory structure of;

/home/vmail/${domain}/${user}/Maildir

I was always looking for a way to have a .procmailrc for the smtp virtual accounts, and finally after a bit of research I have managed to put something together that works. I cannot give much technical details apart from the fact I can now have procmail rules for smtp virtual mail users, and also have those users even have a custom .procmailrc file that will be honoured.

I have a procmail entry in /etc/postfix/masters.cf like so below;

procmail    unix    -    n    n    -    -    pipe    flags=DRhu user=vmail argv=/usr/bin/procmail -t -m /etc/vmail-procmailrc ${recipient}

We then have the /etc/vmail-procmailrc file as below;

SHELL=/bin/sh
VERBOSE=yes
UMASK=007
ADRES=$1
ADRES=`echo $ADRES | /usr/bin/tr A-Z a-z` # force lowercase username
DOMAIN=`echo "${ADRES}" | cut -d @ -f 2 | cut -d "<" -f 2| cut -d">" -f 1| cut -d @ -f 1`
USER=`echo "${ADRES}" | cut -d @ -f 1 | cut -d "<" -f 2| cut -d">" -f1| cut -d @ -f 1` # get username for local delivery
LOGFILE=/home/procmailnew.log  # for testing & troubleshooting
INCLUDERC=/home/vmail/${DOMAIN}/${USER}/.procmailrc  # allow users to create their own recipes
#LOGNAME: ${LOGNAME}"
MAILDIR=/home/vmail/${DOMAIN}/${USER}/Maildir/

Then we have the following two lines in /etc/postfix/main.cf

procmail_destination_recipient_limit = 1
virtual_transport = procmail

And then you just drop an .procmailrc into each of the smtp virtual users home directory, one level above where the Maildir/ folder is. Since I don’t put mail into the directory based on the users name directly, I created a Maildir/ folder below it for mail.

/home/vmail/subdomain.heimic.net/username/.procmailrc

This was one problem that I never fixed when I was tinkering with this type of setup sometime back, finally I got a solution that works.

If anyone would like assistance, feel free to contact me. Always happy to help another fellow Debian/GNU Linux user.

I too always find myself installing a Debian Guest into VMware, in my case it’s usually VMware Fusion. Although the VMware Tools package between all products is the same anyways. Of course each time I install a new Guest I always forget the packages I need to installed to make VMware Tools work without a hitch.

Eventually I wrote it down. Process below is what I typically use on my Debian Linux Guests.

Determine the linux kernel version, using uname -a. Make note of the release.

Then install the following packages; (assuming the kernel version from the uname -a is 2.6.18-4-686)

apt-get install linux-headers-2.6.18-4-686 linux-source-2.6.18 gcc make psmisc

Once installed you need to uncompress the kernel source in /usr/src and then symlink a directory /usr/src/linux to kernel source directory, which you uncompressed into /usr/src after the apt-get install above.

Now grab the VMware Tools tar.gz package, uncompress it and then run the install script. It should detect the kernel headers/kernel source and build everything without error.

Postfix is accepting the messages, then we pass it off to a content filter, in this case its amavisd-new. This processes it via spamassassin and then passing it back to an alternate postfix for final processing. ie. delivery via procmail or bounce etc.

Anyone got some guides on procmail rules so that I can send messages with certain headers to certain Maildir/ folders. ie. spam to Junk

And if anyone has any suitable amavisd-new config files for latest debian, then this would be appreciated too (or even a new guide/howto).

All in all, the service is great.