November 29, 2008 at 11:29:10 pm
· Filed under Internet, Portable Computing, Wireless
I recently migrated from the trusted Courier IMAP application to Dovecot on my cPanel server. There were several reasons for this migration, but the promise of better and more efficient resource usage was the most compelling reason to leave the familiar for the the newest thing. WHM, made the migration both transparent to my customers as well as a breeze by not only handling the transition, but also mail format transformation for any cPanel e-mail account that required it.
Within days, the promised resource savings were realized and everything was humming along. My customers did not even notice the middle-of-the-night migration which took approximately 5 minutes. Outlook 2007 and 2003 as well as Thunderbird, Horde, RoundCube and Windows Mail were all happily sending and receiving without a complaint. All was going well… or so I thought.
At first, I did not even make the connection between the Dovecot migration and erratic delivery of mail to my BlackBerry via BIS. After all, Dovecot supported IMAP IDLE. So, I spent several weeks suffering not getting all my messages delivered to my BlackBerry with the security that they were all still waiting for me on the server accessible through my client of choice. My first object of blame was BIS. So, I logged into my carrier’s BIS portal and triple checked the settings- server, check; port, check; secure connection, check. Then, the obligatory “send Service Books.” Next, I turned to my carrier, Verizon. I searched the CrackBerry.com forums but could find an answer to my strange problem. Those intermediate issues are always the most difficult to solve you know!
Then it just hit me… Dovecot must be to blame. A quick Google search revealed that others were experiencing issues with what they referred to as Dovecot “falling asleep” and not reacting to IDLE updates with various email clients. However, none seemed to mention the strange BlackBerry push mail issue that I was seeing. Not being one to give in, I knew that the answer had to be out there somewhere… and it was. I pulled up the Dovecot configuration file etc/dovecot.conf and discovered the following entry:
# When IDLE command is running, mailbox is checked once in a while to see if
# there are any new mails or other changes. This setting defines the minimum
# time in seconds to wait between those checks. Dovecot can also use dnotify,
# inotify and kqueue to find out immediately when changes occur.
#mailbox_idle_check_interval = 30
As you can see, mailbox_idle_check_interval was commented out by default. I uncommented that line, restarted Dovecot IMAP services and Bam! I am now getting mail within seconds of landing on the server.
Hopefully my few weeks of hair pulling puzzelment will help someone else avoid a similar expereince.
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December 1, 2007 at 4:10:59 pm
· Filed under Portable Computing
Ever wish you could have access to your favorite Open Source applications and personal documents, spreadsheets and music on any available computer? With a flash drive with ample room and portable versions of your favorite Open Source applications from PortableApps.com you can do just that.
From OpenOffice to Mozilla Firefox , PortableApps.com has a portable version of the tools that you need to remain productive and entertained. All that you need is a Windows PC with a free usb port.
With its own application manager, installer and backup application, pen computing could not be any easier. Don’t know what you want? The suite is a good place to start. For those who know that life is not all work, don’t fret there are plenty of applications to keep you entertained as well.
Now that you have decided what applications you want to install, why not be sure that your information stays private and safe by reading through my encryption post? With the information and tools that I explore there, you can balance personal data security and portability.
So, what applications can you not live a portable life without? Here is my short list. These applications are installed on my 2GB flash drive dangling from my keyring:
Happy portable computing!
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November 24, 2007 at 5:17:15 pm
· Filed under Portable Computing, Security, Storage
With all the reports of data loss these days, many clients are asking how they can best secure their own data while traveling with their laptops. For those road worriers that want the ability to transparently access and secure their personal data while traveling, I usually recommend that they consider encrypting their data with the open source solution TrueCrypt.Here we will explore the methods that I use to help protect my own data as well as maintain the easy of use that I had grown used to. While TrueCrypt is a multi platform solution, my current usage as described below is on a Dell laptop with Windows XP Pro.
- Download and install TrueCrypt.
- As I did with creating a backup partition, I created a partition for just my data. But this time, I created it as a file on my data partition.
- Once the new TrueCrypt partition has been created, mount the new partition move all personal data including My Documents, My Pictures, IE Favorites, FireFox Bookmarks, Outlook .pst files, Thunderbird data, Temp Folders and any other data that you want to secure.
- Remap the default Windows folders to the newly secured locations
- Set the encrypted partition as a favorite and tell TrueCrypt to mount it on startup.
- Set TrueCrypt to start at Windows start.
Now, every time Windows starts, TrueCrypt will prompt for your password and then mount your secure partition. While this method is not foolproof, none really are, you can now rest reasonably sure that if your laptop is ever stolen, your personal data will remain safe.
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