HowtoForge still comes in handy. This is one of those times:
mailq | awk 'BEGIN { RS = "" } / falko@example\.com$/ { print $1 }' | tr -d '*!' | postsuper -d -
File under “what to do when postfix goes berserk”.
Category: Email
A good, free Outlook duplicate email remover..
Following up to my recent post about emails getting sent twice in Outlook, I discovered a nice little free utility to remove (most) of the thousands of duplicate emails I had managed to generate.
ODIR, the Outlook Duplicates Remover from Vaita, adds a convenient de-duper menu item to Outlook. And it seems to work across all my various IMAP account, Google or otherwise. I just wish it supported UTF-8.
Recommended for those, who like me, viciously copied themselves twice on all outgoing emails.
PS. To Tee: I did, in fact, find this via bing. Though, really, you guys should have named it “bong”.
Bong.. Huh huh. Huh.
Emails sent within Outlook, via Gmail, get saved twice…
This has been driving me crazy forever. As soon as IMAP became available for Gmail some time back, I immediately went about hooking it up to Outlook so that I could access Gmail along with my other five plus other email accounts from one central interface.
And there was much rejoicing.
Except for the fact that all of my outgoing messages seemed to get saved twice into my Sent folder. This is pretty annoying, but not a show stopper. Like any good geek, I ignored the problem. For well over a year.
Finally today it dawned on me that both Outlook and Gmail could be saving copies into my Sent folder. Turning this off in Outlook (Tools -> Options -> E-mail Options… -> un-check “Save copies of messages in Sent Items folder”) reveals that, indeed, my lightning quick powers of deduction are sharper than ever. Problem solved.
Now perhaps in six months I will deduce a way to remove ten gigabytes of duplicate messages.
A quick way to get to Inbox Zero
This is cheating.. but it feels so good.
- Switch to Google Apps for free awesome email and calandaring while keeping your domain name.
- “Archive” all of your non-recent email. (Hey, you’ll get around to it, right? It’s not like your deleting anything…)
- Connect your IMAP client to Gmail. You will see only a few of your recent messages that you didn’t archive. Act on them and delete.
Congratulations! You’re at Inbox Zero!
How to automatically carbon copy all of your email to George W. Bush
Now that the Senate has decided to grant retroactive immunity to the telecoms (video), it probably won’t be long before the Bush Administration starts routinely tracking your search habits, mining your email, and monitoring your phone calls. This kind of automated profiling will allow the NSA to determine, among other things, your propensity for terror. Yes, soon the Bush Administration will be protecting us all from ourselves.
But I say, why wait?! I want the Bush Administration to protect me from myself right now! Am I a subversive? Could I be a terrorist? I need to know! And I’m sure you do as well.
That’s why I have started automatically carbon copying all of my email to George W. Bush. Okay, well, technically I’m carbon copying them all to Dick Cheney because it would appear that Cheney reads Bush’s email for him. But I have every confidence that Mr. Cheney will keep the president abreast of my goings on.
If you’re a Microsoft Outlook user, here’s how you too can automatically carbon copy all of your email to the White House.
- In Mail, on the Tools menu, click Rules and Alerts.
- On the E-mail Rules tab, click New Rule.
- In the Rules Wizard dialog box, under Start from a blank rule, click Check messages after sending, and then click Next.
- Click Next.
- A confirmation will appear, notifying you that this rule will apply to every message that you send. Click Yes.
- Under Step 1: Select action(s), select the Cc the message to people or distribution list check box.
- Under Step 2: Edit the rule description (click an underlined value), click people or distribution list.
- In the Rule Address dialog box, click a name or distribution list, and then click To. Repeat this step until all names or distribution lists you want to add are included in the To box.
- Click OK.
- In the Rules Wizard dialog box, click Next.
- Click Next.
- Under Step 1: Specify a name for this rule, enter a name that you will recognize for this rule.
- Click Finish.
That’s it! Now all of your email will be automatically carbon copied to Dick Cheney at the White House, who will update President George W. Bush, who will work with the NSA to figure out if you are a terrorist or not. Because, let’s face it, who knows what you’re capable of? Act now before it’s too late!
clamav crashing on Debian
I’d seen this happen occasionally over the last couple of months, but it seemed to get really bad on Friday.
Fri Mar 21 21:31:45 2008 -> SelfCheck: Database modification detected. Forcing reload.
Reading databases from /var/lib/clamav
ERROR: reload db failed: Unable to lock database directory (try 1)
ERROR: reload db failed: Unable to lock database directory (try 2)
ERROR: reload db failed: Unable to lock database directory (try 3)
ERROR: reload db failed: Unable to lock database directory
Terminating because of a fatal error.
Socket file removed.
Pid file removed.
--- Stopped at Fri Mar 21 21:38:16 2008
Not entirely sure what the problem is, but it seems like clamav is choking on recent updates from freshclam.
And apparently I’m not the only one. Took advice from this thread and updated clamav to the version in debian-volatile. The official ClamAV documentation also recommends using the volatile repositories.
I’m new to Debian and almost took this to mean that I should use etch. Good to know that Debian maintains a volatile repository. To pull packages from volatile, just add:
deb http://volatile.debian.net/debian-volatile etch/volatile main contrib non-free
(though preferably use a mirror)
to /etc/apt/sources.list. Running a simple apt-get update clamav or aptitude update clamav will find and install the appropriate volatile updates. Nice.
Top ten spam subject tag lines that have actually caused me to pause and consider penis enlargement
Who says spam can’t be fun?
10. think over your agregate size
9. Enormous device is your treasure
8. Improbable effect on your phallus!
7. Your measurement of success is by the INCH.
6. I carry a bazooka in my pants, walking around.
5. Your little soldier will grow up to a big love general!
4. inches in your pants will make you the world’s 8th wonder to women.
3. Why be a tiny cocktail sausage, when you can be a mighty wiener.
2. Behind every great man lies a huge secret in his pants.
And the number one spam subject tag line that has actually caused me to pause and seriously consider penis enlargement…
1. Be the master of the universe, with a huge broadsword in your pants?
You know, I’ve thought over my agregate size and.. sure, why not? By the Power of Greyskull!
Desperate Spam Countermeasure
The spam hitting one of our mail servers is getting completely out of control. Since this particular server is more of a mailing list broker, exclusively for Japan, rather than try to fight the influx of global spam — which lately even traditional filters and blocklists seem to be ineffective against — we’ve decided to simply not accept email from anywhere except Japan itself.
Andreas Plesner Jacobse maintains an excellent set of geo blocklists, the DNSBL. Turned this on against some of the more naughty spam countries last week. In Postfix for example:
reject_rbl_client cn.countries.nerd.dk
Bye bye China.
Anyway, so far so good. Spam has gone from hundreds (maybe thousands) of messages slipping through our traditional filters each day to a small trickle of Japan-originated spam.
I can’t imagine what it would be like to maintain a large enterprise email farm. Maybe like trying to grow corn on a plantation overrun by an ever surging plague of locusts!
Postfix says “Recipient address rejected: User unknown in local recipient table;” even though you’ve set luser_relay
Unless you set local_recipient_maps to nothing, just so:
local_recipient_maps =
luser_relay = some@address.com
Postfix will ignore the luser_relay setting and winge at you.
Documentation is tucked away at the bottom of the page here.
Redhat pfqueue Revisited
Finally got around to figuring out how to make pfqueue to run on Redhat. Though I never did get it to install and run from source, today I stumbled upon a copy in Dag Wieers repository. Simply install Dag’s build and, if you are using Postfix, make sure that the Posftix commands are in your path (I had to add /usr/sbin/to mine.)
Thank you Dag.