Software

Dovecot 2.4.2 upgrade

Dovecot recently released version 2.4.2 which required some changes to the configuration file (from version 2.3.x).

I use Dovecot as a personal, local IMAP server which pulls from the corporate Outlook server so I can maintain a local archive not subject to any quota constraints.

As I use Arch Linux and mindlessly update weekly, I was puzzled when Thunderbird suddenly stopped working.

My Dovecot server is local for me only, insecure and hence my configuration file is relatively simple.

fun with static site generators

• Introduction
• Test Environment
  • Hardware
  • Test Data
• Hugo
• Eleventy
• BSSG
• Zola
• Nikola
• Pelican
• Jekyll
• Useful SSG performance resources

Introduction

Static site generators (SSG’s) are often used for blogs. SSG’s typically process Markdown files into static HTML files. The use of static HTML files (rather than dynamically generating the site using a database) offers benefits for performance and security.

Oracle SQLcl configuration

I use SQLcl a lot and install it on every environment I work on. It’s fully compatible with SQL*Plus and has useful extensions to interact with OCI, Autonomous Databases and Data Pump.

My SQLcl configuration file is named ’login.sql’ and located in the ‘~/work’ directory. I also keep my ’tnsnames.ora’ file here.

The location of these two Oracle configuration files is configured in ‘~/.bashrc’.

# Oracle TNS location
export TNS_ADMIN=$HOME/work

# SQLCL login file
export SQLPATH=$HOME/work

This is my SQLcl configuration file.

self-hosting a GoToSocial instance

I like experimenting with software and technology.

Many years ago, I built a Laconica instance. Not because I needed a Laconica instance but because I was curious and any knowledge gleaned would be useful. Standard LAMP stack. Same as the WordPress blogging software which I had already built.

Plus Laconica releases were named after R.E.M songs by Evan.

Similarly, I got an account on mastodon.sdf.org in preference to Twitter because I favour OpenSource software and the underdog.

in praise of MiniDLNA

Five years ago, I purchased a Roberts Digital radio for the kitchen. Mainly to listen to the radio but also this device could play music from Spotify, a USB stick or act as a UPNP client.

As I already had the Plex Media Server set up which had a DLNA option, this looked attractive. The setup worked pretty well apart from one minor glitch.

And, like a dripping water tap, or the endless, harrowing screams of a baby played on a tight loop in an American interrogation facility, any minor technical glitch can’t simply be ignored.

small changes, big improvement

Sometimes, I spend a lot of time on technical tasks that are of seemingly questionable benefit or limited practical use.

For example, I remember converting the format of my 977 blog posts between markup languages and migrating the content to esoteric blogging platforms (more then once). I also wasted an unbelievable amount of time meticulously editing the meta data (YAML front-matter) and writing scripts simply to preserve Disqus comments after a change to the permalink structure.

Watch Your User

Connor McDonald posts an excellent series of articles about tuning a database application.

This analysis from a end user perspective reminded me of my own experiences when I was a technical consultant helping customers running a large CRM application, typically in call centres scattered across Europe.

I was often summoned onsite and told to solve the problem that ‘The application is slow’. Usually, different people were eager to give me their view on the issue:-

fixing Dovecot stats writer permissions

I tend to switch Linux distributions quite often. Consequently, I tend to have this process down to a fine art and it doesn’t take me that long. The most time consuming element is ensuring the necessary backups are in place.

However, you normally find some package or configuration option you forgot about and my recent switch from Arch Linux to Fedora 29 and back again unearthed a strange problem with the Dovecot IMAP server I hadn’t encountered before.

in praise of Silver Searcher

Occasionally, I have to search lots of files for a pattern. It was only recently I discovered the wonderful silver searcher utility which saves me a lot of time.

To install ‘ag’ on Fedora, use the following (which isn’t entirely obvious or intuitive if you’re used to typing ‘ag’).

# sudo dnf install the_silver_searcher

I believe there is an Emacs interface which would save me even more time.

$ time ag 'sql statement execute time' ~

real    0m0.125s
user    0m0.128s
sys     0m0.257s

$ time find ~ -type f -print0 | xargs -0 grep -i 'sql statement execute time'

real    0m23.725s
user    0m7.965s
sys     0m1.618s

Gnus now unbelievably speedy

When I initially revisited Emacs, I used mu4e (instead of Thunderbird) for my email.

I used the wonderful Gmane service to read mailing lists in Gnus and Elfeed to read blogs and RSS feeds within Emacs.

This worked fine but after a while it became a little tiresome having to remember different key bindings to essentially perform the same repetitive tasks; reading messages, navigating (next/previous) messages, moving messages, saving messages, marking messages, deleting messages, searching messages, forwarding messages, replying to messages and occasionally composing brand new messages.