UPDATE: Wine 1.0+ works great with this issue. All the menu’s seem to work.

I had a requirement to convert a desktop to GNU/Linux but still provide access to the MLXchange web site. I found this link which helped but I have some improvements on it.

Using Ubuntu it’s as easy as:

sudo apt-get install wine

Then download and install ies4linux or ie4osx and install it as per the instructions on the respective sites.

Then grab the latest version of mfc42.dll (6.2.4131.0) and place that in ~/.ies4linux/ie6/drive_c/windows/system and ~/.ies4linux/ie6/drive_c/windows/system32 overwriting the existing versions. I found this helps with speed.

Then launch ie6 and you will have access to the MLX. The only thing I have noticed is that the soft dropdowns do not work (the ones controlled by ActiveX). So you will need to enter some info manually. However this is a minor inconvenience and not a show stopper. Everything else seems to work. I will update if I find more problems.

I have created my first .deb package for Geany 0.13 for Gutsy. I place no guarantee it will work but it worked on a couple of my Gutsy systems.

I may have made some mistakes in packaging. If you find any I would appreciate some feedback as I would like to learn.

geany_0.13-1~gutsy1_i386.deb

Fake DFS is a small script that mimics DFS folder grouping without the hassle or overhead of running any kind of server. While the downside of this is that changes to the FS aren’t replicated in real time, you can adjust things (cron) or use it in conjunction with other programs to make things synchronize quickly.

What does that mean?

Let’s say you have 3 machines on your home network. Each has a 200 Gig drive. Say you created a folder structure on Machine A as follows:

/mp3s
/tv
/movies

Now inside /tv you create a folder called "The Office" and in there you create another folder called "Season 3". So you put episodes 1,2 and 3 of Season 3 into the folder but by the 4th episode have filled the capacity of the drive in Machine A (with Mp3s and movies let's say). However you still have 2 other machines with plenty of room on the drives. So now on Machine B you create an identical folder structure:

/mp3s
/tv
    /The Office
        /Season 3
/movies

And you place episode 4 in the directory.

Now how are you going to see ALL of Season 4 as if they are in the same directory on the same drive?

FakeDFS.

So to use this script logon to the machine you are going to make the "master" server (IE where the FS’s will be merged). Mount the remote drives as CIFS/SAMBA or NFS. Create a "Master" directory, this is where you will see on single file structure for all of you drives. Then run the script with something like:

$ fdfs parent destination

Where parent is a the top part of the filesystem you want to be centralized and destination is the folder you created as the "Master" folder or a folder within.

Then run the command again for as many sub-structures as you wish to centralize. I create a small shell script that has all of my mappings in it so that re-syncing the FS is simple:

#!/bin/sh fdfs /media/Archive/TV/ /media/mythtv/TV/ fdfs /media/zxc/TV/ /media/mythtv/TV/ fdfs /media/Archive/Documentary/ /media/mythtv/Documentary/ fdfs /media/zxc/Documentary/ /media/mythtv/Documentary/ fdfs /media/Archive/Movies/ /media/mythtv/Movies/ fdfs /media/zxc/Movies/ /media/mythtv/Movies/ fdfs /media/zxc/Music/ /media/mythtv/Music/

Now you just run the shell script and it will "re-sync" the file system (IE if you change a file on one of the "child" filesystems).

fdfs - download

After installing Postfix in Ubuntu 7.10 with the help of this excellent howto (yes it looks very similar to mine, because mine is based on that one as well) I found that the maildirsize file wasn’t being created properly by Postfix. Unable to find the solution within Postfix I wrote this script. It basically builds a fake maildirsize file for all your users. If you have a really large server with many virtual accounts this may not be for you. However it works great for my needs.

First you will need to install the Mysql module for Perl. This can be done by running the following in a shell:

perl -MCPAN -e shell

If you’ve never used the cpan shell before you will need to go through the setup. I can’t really help with that (mostly defaults but you are on your own).

Once you get to a prompt type the following:

cpan> force install Bundle::Mysql

That should force it in (it will die if it can’t connect as root to your DB).

Then you need to put the script somewhere, so download it and get it on your server:

mv maildirfix /usr/local/sbin/<br />chown +x /usr/local/sbin/maildirfix

Change the DB info:

vi /usr/local/sbin/maildirfix

and edit the lines as approprate:

my $DBN = "mail";<br />my $DBU = "DBUSER";<br />my $DBP = "DBPASSWORD";<br />my $DBH = "localhost";

Now add it to your crontab:

crontab -e

0 23 * * * /usr/local/sbin/maildirfix

This will run it one hour before the quota_notify script is triggered if you followed the howto.

Maildirfix