Occasionally I have issues with my internal email configuration and need to do a quick test to see if my internal email server is receiving emails from my website development servers. This can easily be achieved using the command line and telnet.

First off we need to esablish a connection to the email server, so telnet into your SMTP server from the command line like so:

telnet [ip-address] 25

Where ip address is your email server e.g “telnet 10.10.10.1 25″. The 25 signifies your SMTP port, 25 is the default.

We now need to check if the SMTP server is alive. So we can use:

EHLO

What you get back depends on your SMTP server, OS etc. but you should get an OK message at least.

Now we want to send a test message to see if our SMTP server is receving email okay from our local network. To do this we need to tell it the email sender, email recipient and of course the message. The message  is in two parts – subject and body (although you dont have to fill in the subject as it is not mandatory). We do this using:-

mail from:email@emailsender.com

rcpt to:email@yourdomain.com

To send the actual message we need to type the command:

Data

Followed by a carriage return (enter).

To enter the subject we use:

Subject: Subject goes here

Then press enter TWO times.

You can now start typing the body of your email message. To finish the email body text input, enter a carriage return (enter) and then tpye a period (.) followed by carriage reutrn (enter) again.

Finally enter:

quit

To exit the telnet program.

You should get an OK or message queued for delivery message back saying that the SMTP server has accepted the message. If not you have entered something wrong, or the email server doesnt like the message (for example an email relay config issue blocking you sending from your IP address).

Hope that is of help.

Google 2-step Verification Overview and Video

If you are security conscious or paranoid (or maybe even both) this is a good option to beef up your PC/device security for your Google apps, especially if you have a Android phone to act as the authenticator (the Google android apps is called Google Authenticator and can be downloaded from Google Marketplace on your android phone (its also available for iPhone too).

With this installed and configured you have to enter your password and the authentication code from displayed on your Android Phone to succesfully log-into a Google resource. So not only will a hacker have to know your password, but also your authentication code (which changes every few seconds).

Finally figured out it only happened when I had VMware vSphere console open, obviosuly they conflict in some way.

Solution is to download the keepass plugin RDCAutoType from here - http://rdc-keepass-plugin.appspot.com/

This also has the bonus of working with Remote Desktop Connections (RDP).

I’m based in the UK and the standard keyboard mapping is set for US. To reset for a different country/keyboard type use:-

sudo dpkg-reconfigure console-setup

If you clone a Ubuntu VM and import it into ESXi you may get the following error:-

SIOCSIFADDR: no such device

The problem is that a new MAC address is created, and the old one still exists. What you need to do is get the MAC address of your card from the Virtual Infrastructure Client (right click the VM – select network adapter and you will see the MAC address).

Then and edit this file:-

/etc/udev/rules.d/70-persistent-net.rules

What you need to do is delete the old NIC references (i.e. the ones that arent your MAC address).

Now save the file, and reboot the system (a cold reboot) and your NIC should now be recognised.

After looking at the options and reading an interesting thread here, my preferred fix is to use SVG to create a gradient and use background-image with a base64 encoded file. There is a nice little tool available that will do the hard work for you here:-

http://ie.microsoft.com/testdrive/Graphics/SVGGradientBackgroundMaker/Default.html

For those of you that don’t want to go to the bother rilling your own gradients, you can also use CSS3 PIE, which essentially does the same thing via a JS library.

Hope this helps!

I changed the CSS for the parent DIVs to overflow: visible and inserted the following CSS to overridew the standard facebook CSS selectors:

.fb_edge_widget_with_comment span.fb_edge_comment_widget {
    top: 120px !important;
    left: -215px !important;
}

Hope this helps some of you out that have been having a similar problem.

After a bit of digging I found out this was to do with running the 16 bit framebuffer driver, so all you need to do is blacklist it. The file you need to edit is here:-

/etc/modprobe.d/blacklist-framebuffer.conf

just add the followin onto the end of the file:

blacklist vga16fb

Reboot and you should be fine.

I have a new flying job and I now work for Jet2 on the 737, based back in my home city of Newcastle. I have been busy  training for the past few months, so web design and all things tech related had to take a bit of a back seat. I am now busy working on a couple of new projects, one is an online appointment booking system for a physiotherapist, and the other is a website for a riding stable.

Note – Dont try to edit the en-GB.com_user.ini language file, as this is not used by jSeblod.