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Weblog • Archive • Cutedge

by: Bernard Teo

Tue 16 Dec 2003

SMTP-AUTH on Panther's Postfix

Category : Technology/panthersmtp-auth.txt

I hadn't realised that Panther's built-in Postfix binaries support SMTP-AUTH out-of-the-box, until I got a message from Jeff Bishop about doing an -

otool - L `which Postfix`

which results in -

/usr/sbin/postfix: /System/Library/Frameworks/DirectoryService.framework/ Versions/A/DirectoryService (compatibility version 1.0.0, current version 1.0.0) /usr/lib/libssl.0.9.7.dylib (compatibility version 0.9.7, current version 0.9.7) /usr/lib/libsasl2.2.0.1.dylib (compatibility version 3.0.0, current version 1.0.0) /System/Library/Frameworks/Kerberos.framework/ Versions/A/Kerberos (compatibility version 5.0.0, current version 5.0.0) /usr/lib/libSystem.B.dylib (compatibility version 1.0.0, current version 71.0.0)

which clearly shows Postfix linked against libsasl2, which is SASL's "glue" layer. I know that Panther's Postfix works with SSL, so this looked encouraging, by association.

So I looked through an old Jaguar installation that had Postfix's SMTP-AUTH mode enabled and copied over things that I needed, like saslpasswd2, sasldblistusers2 and also the old sasldb2.db file. (I couldn't build anything from the Cyrus SASL download on Panther - I keep getting compile errors that I don't think I'll ever know how to solve - will have to wait for these to be fixed.) Fortunately, the stuff from Jaguar looked like they continued to work in Panther.

At first I couldn't get it to work - puzzling over a system.log entry that says that the system can't find the sasldb plugin - until I realised that two files, libsasldb.2.so and libsasldb.la, were missing in Panther's /usr/lib/sasl2. So I copied them over from Jaguar, restarted Postfix ... and ... everything works!

Actually it was a lot more work than that. I must have tried a million combinations over the weekend when I wasn't feeling sick with flu. (I'm a Chinese of Fujian descent; so it must be the same strain that's coursing thru the Western half of the world right now; just kidding; it's a sick joke.)

Anyway, it's a nice discovery. Will this make it to Postfix Enabler? Implementing SMTP-AUTH via sasldb means having to maintain a separate password database, plus all the extra code needed to handle the user-interface. Instead, I'm trying to see if we can make SMTP authenticate against PAM, and thereby use the built-in OS X users and group password system. That'll be neater. SMTP works over SSL (TLS). So it'll probably be OK to use plain text passwords. Anyway, it's good that at least one way works. I would never have been able to do this with sendmail. Thanks to whoever at Apple was responsible for the decision to go with Postfix.

Posted at 6:10AM UTC | permalink

Sat 13 Dec 2003

Panther and PDF

Category : Commentary/leonardrosenthol.txt

I'm making a note of something I found in MacSurfer - something I'm sure I'll find useful in the future - "Rosenthol rebuts Panther PDF jab".

Rosenthol's conclusion - "In conclusion, let me again state quite clearly that Mac OS X can produce "press-worthy" PDFs FROM ANY APPLICATION with almost the exact same features as those found in Adobe's own authoring applications." In the article, he explains why and how.

Now, Leonard Rosenthol. Thst's a name associated with Aladdin and Stuffit when Stuffit was still a great product.

Posted at 5:54AM UTC | permalink

Wed 10 Dec 2003

Megnut

Category : Commentary/megnut.txt

I've got a lot of hits coming in to both the Postfix and Sendmail Enabler pages because they were mentioned in megnut.com. Turns out that megnut is Meg Hourihan, who co-founded Pyra and Blogger. Judging from the hits I'm getting, megnut is read a lot.

Typical of the way the 'Net works is this page from Consolation Champs. This guy discovered Postfix Enabler from reading "Meg's blog" and he's "a big hero in the office now!". Yeh! (Maybe I should start compiling all these "testimonials". There have been quite a few.)

Posted at 5:33AM UTC | permalink

Oracle

Category : Technology/oracle.txt

We've got Oracle 9 running on Panther on a Titanium. It's a milestone of sorts. I can't stop looking at it, doing simple things like "desc act_accounts" or "select * from act_accounts where acctcode = 'so-and-so';". It sounds inane but you've got to appreciate how far we've come since we've got OS X.

I remember about five years ago when Apple moved from OS 8 to 9 and Oracle moved from Oracle 7 to 8. Everything to do with Oracle on the Mac stopped working. I remember pleading with friends at Oracle Singapore for drivers that will work, but they've already lost interest in the Mac. If not for the Internet, and someone on the other side of the world who discovered one particular combination that worked, we would have had to give up working on the Mac.

Even that would have been lost, had our customer moved on to Oracle 9. But, fortunately, these were people who had no interest in giving any cent more to Oracle than they need.

Until today, I've actually kept one PowerBook 3400, running OS 9, just to be able to do Oracle-related work. Now, this can be retired. (Our kid's going to have his own PowerBook, just like Daddy and Mommy.)

There's an advantage to running Oracle on a Unix server. You can simply ssh to it and do database administration. On Windows, we had to install those fat SQLNet drivers on every client machine. You can't just drag and drop the drivers and associated programs like SQLPlus. It's a non-trivial installation, so you'll be able to justify the IT headcount. On the Mac now, we just ssh to the server and "borrow" the SQLPLus running on it. Client applications access the server via a very "thin" JDBC driver. We don't need to mess up all our other Macs with SQLNet stuff.

Oracle's still got the edge in terms of the "expressiveness" of their SQL dialect. But, if we want to keep our code portable, we'll have the restrict ourselves to the 80% of the SQL expressions that will work across all the other platforms we want to run on. From this point of view, MySQL has almost caught up with Oracle. If I were Oracle, I would be seriously worried. It's hard to compete with "free".

So, now, I can show Java on OS X accessing Oracle on OS X in the forthcoming Xcode seminar. Of course, you still have all the other permutations, including Java and Oracle on PCs and Unix and Linux. Haven't you heard? Customers want choice. And it's choice they will get.

Posted at 5:28AM UTC | permalink

Sun 07 Dec 2003

Just One More Thing

Category : Technology/jobsblog.txt

This is the guy who set up the Steve Job's Blog site. It's April the First in December. Great Job.

Posted at 4:21AM UTC | permalink

Fri 05 Dec 2003

Apple Xcode Seminar

Category : Technology/xcodeseminar.txt

I'll be speaking at Apple Singapore's "Development with Mac OS X" Seminar on 19th December (at the Revenue House, from 1.00 to 5.00 pm).

I'm doing two sessions - "Building Reusable Cocoa and Web Applications using Java on OS X" and "Development with AppleScript Studio".

I'm going to be showing stuff we've been building over the last year and a half. These are things we could never have done, back in the days of OS 9. I would like to show just why we're energised by the possibilities and I hope people will enjoy the talk. But the key is in the demos. No one does demos better than Steve Jobs. That's got to be the yardstick, a big one though it is. Maybe I should content myself with finishing the talk without being an embarrassment. No, we've got to strive for greater things. Right? Let's see where this takes us.

Posted at 12:12PM UTC | permalink

Thu 04 Dec 2003

If you have eyes, you will see

Category : Commentary/eyes.txt

Rev. Dr. Corey Bantik writes, "I'm a regular reader of your UBM blog ... The pictures of the Final Cut Pro course that are up on your site bothered me - the guy's eyes are closed in two of them. Since I have nothing better to do right now, I did a little editing in Photoshop. Hope you don't mind."

Thanks, Corey. Ian's a sight better to look at, now.

Posted at 5:30AM UTC | permalink

Fri 28 Nov 2003

If we build it, will they come?

Category : Commentary/FCPCourse.txt

We completed our very first Final Cut Pro course at Roadstead. Thanks to Adeline Soh and Edward Saw, and to Ian Beattie, the trainer.

Did the trainees enjoy the course? Look at the pictures below. Looks like Ian did a great job and we have two very satisfied customers.

Posted at 11:00AM UTC | permalink

The Joy of Discovery

Category : Commentary/patternsofs.txt

Yet another discovery brought about by a PayPal notification. The Enablers, Postfix and Sendmail, may not have brought in much in terms of remuneration but I think I've been rewarded in other ways.

I received a payment from Richard Gabriel and I followed the link back to his website, Dreamsongs.com.

I discovered an essay that he has written, called "Patterns of Software", and I've been making my way through the ideas he expressed there ever since, in between snatches at my "real" work.

It's very interesting reading, if you've ever spent any time thinking about why software development is hard, how to make it easier, and how to build things of beauty that also really work (and will continue to work).

I've come to accept that requests for changes to software never ends. Business strategy changes, the competition changes, the rules change - so the software has to change. Constantly.

Putting aside the hard problem of how to arrange to be paid for making all these changes, the conscientious developer is always grappling with the problem of design. How do you arrange things so that you can make changes, without bringing the whole edifice down.

I like the analogy he makes with architecture because building software is like building a house that will be used by normal human beings (though there are notable differences).

I don't have a summary to make, because reading it has stirred up a few thoughts and they will take some time to land. I just want to recommend "Patterns of Software" to others. Read it, please. It may be the best book ever written about the nature of software development, in ages.

Posted at 9:33AM UTC | permalink

Sun 23 Nov 2003

The Woz uses Postfix Enabler

Category : Commentary/woz.txt

One particular PayPal notification came in last week that made me do a double-take.

"Dear Cutedge,

This email confirms that you have received a Payment from Steve Wozniak (steve@woz.org)".

How about that for a collector's item?

I took a look at woz.org and in it he writes :

Dear Woz,

When you call Apple to order stuff and you give them your name, do people recognize you and say "Hey, your that dude that created Apple!"

Woz: I order Apple stuff online. I doubt that any human ever sees the names. But once I ordered a gigabit ethernet option. Apple noticed two months later that only two of these had been ordered, both by me! I do get noticed every time I buy shareware, and that brings me a lot of T-shirts that I get good use out of.

We would love to send over a tee-shirt one day.

But that just proves how you'll never know who's going to be using your software, one day. And I was just talking about how there's a lot of responsibility putting out a piece of software that a lot of people will use. I really, really hope it worked for him.

Posted at 8:39AM UTC | permalink

Sun 16 Nov 2003

Released Postfix Enabler 1.0.4

Category : Technology/postfixenabler104released.txt

Released version 1.0.4, the one with UW-IMAP and POP3 capability. Hope there are no bugs. The code's getting messier. May need a re-write before I add in more features.

I'm trying to make as little change to a stock OS X installation as I can to get each feature working. It's the ecological approach. I hate to have my system messed up by an application. And I try not to do it to others'.

There's a lot of responsibility putting out a piece of software for other people to use. It's five times harder to build a system that will be used by many people, than one that will be used only by ourselves, internally. And it's really hard to find good developers. There's so much to do and so little time to do it. It really helps to be working on a Mac.

Posted at 9:11AM UTC | permalink

Fri 14 Nov 2003

PacNet blocks ports 995 and 993

Category : Technology/PacNetSSL.txt

Following on the previous posting, I think I was wrong about the Airport Extreme Base Station. It was my ISP that was blocking ports 995 and 993, for whatever reason they had, and that was why POP and IMAP over SSL didn't work.

I took the Airport Extreme Base Station out of the equation by connecting the server directly to the broadband line and SSL still didn't work for POP and IMAP. So I can't blame the base station, though I guess I've still got to do a test that will prove conclusively that the Airport Extreme Base Station will channel the SSL ports in correctly. So, the situation is, if I don't have a bug in the latest version of Postfix Enabler (1.0.4), POP and IMAP over SSL will work most of its users.

Posted at 1:07PM UTC | permalink