Month: August 2010

Getting mails via IMAP with mbsync

mbsync is a command line application which synchronizes mailboxes; currently Maildir and IMAP4 mailboxes are supported …

We can use it to make a copy/backup/mirror from own mail accounts following the new
steps:

  1. First, enable IMAP in your mail account.
  2. Install the dependencies for mbsync:

    sudo apt-get install libc6 libdb4.2 libssl0.9.8 isync

    (maybe, you must consider the chrisstreeter.com original post)

    Now you should have an executable mbsync in your path. So it is time to start preparing to do the initial sync.

  3. Choose a place to store your backups. For example: /mnt/sdh1/backups
  4. To access securely, we’ll need the latest SSL certificates. To get those, we can
    use the openssl client. For GMail case:

    openssl s_client -connect imap.gmail.com:993 -showcerts

    which should show two blocks of

    —–BEGIN CERTIFICATE—–
    …
    —–END CERTIFICATE—–

    in the output. You’ll want to take each block (including the BEGIN/END CERTIFICATE lines), and put each of them into their own file. I put the first one in a file gmail.crt and the second one in the file google.crt (since the first signs imap.gmail.com which is signed by Google Internet Authority, the second certificate).

  5. The second certificate, the one for the Google Internet Authority, is signed by Equifax. So we’ll need Equifax’s certificate also. An as it turns out, Ubuntu has a copy of Equifax’s certificate already sitting in the repositories. Just run

    sudo apt-get install ca-certificates

    to get the latest CA certificates. After installing the CAs, Equifax’s CA sits at /usr/share/ca-certificates/mozilla/Equifax_Secure_CA.crt, which we’ll need in the configuration file in the next step.

  6. Now we can write the configuration file we are going to use. Here is a copy of mine:

    IMAPAccount gmail
    Host imap.gmail.com
    User http503@gmail.com
    UseIMAPS yes
    CertificateFile /mnt/sdh1/certs/mail/gmail.crt
    CertificateFile /mnt/sdh1/certs/mail/google.crt
    CertificateFile /usr/share/ca-certificates/mozilla/Equifax_Secure_CA.crt

    IMAPStore gmail-remote
    Account gmail

    MaildirStore gmail-local
    Path /mnt/sdh1/backups/mail/gmail/
    Inbox /mnt/sdh1/backups/mail/gmail/Inbox

    Channel gmail
    Master :gmail-remote:
    Slave :gmail-local:
    # Exclude everything under the internal [Gmail] folder, except the interesting folders
    # Patterns * ![Gmail]* “[Gmail]/Sent Mail” “[Gmail]/Starred” “[Gmail]/All Mail”
    Patterns *
    Create Slave
    Sync Pull
    SyncState *

    Check out the Patterns line. That is where you would include or exclude various labels. All lables are stored at the root of the hierarchy, with the special directory [Gmail] having things like ‘Sent Mail’, ‘Spam’, ‘Starred’, etc in it. I wanted to exclude all the items in the [Gmail] directory except for the ones listed. The ‘*’ at the beginning includes all other labels. You will also want to change the Path and Inbox lines to point to your mail location, as well as the first two CertificateFile lines. Also, be sure to enter your actual GMail login on the User line. Now save this file somewhere. Note: saving it as ~/.mbsyncrc will cause it to be automatically loaded when mbsync is run, meaning you don’t need to specify which config file with the -c option.

  7. Now go ahead and test it out by listing the labels in your account with the command mbsync -l -c /path/to/the/configfile.rc gmail. Running it will look like this and ask you for your password:

    [streeter@scout]:~$ mbsync -l -c ~/.mbsyncrc gmail
    Reading configuration file /home/streeter/.mbsyncrc
    Resolving imap.gmail.com… ok
    Connecting to 209.85.199.109:993… ok
    Connection is now encrypted
    Logging in…
    Password (yourusername@gmail.com@imap.gmail.com):
    Channel gmail
    lists/code
    bills
    archive/cron
    archive/classes
    archive/work
    [Gmail]/Starred
    [Gmail]/Sent Mail
    [Gmail]/All Mail
    INBOX
    @followup
    [streeter@scout]:~$

    If you see something like this, then it worked! Now just go ahead and start your

  8. Finally, try to download all the scanned labels:

    mbsync -c ~/.mbsyncrc gmail

That’s is all!.

Working with github.com

One of my pending aims is try to work with git (SCM). Normally, when I am developing , I work with SVN or BZR. From some time ago, I use git only as a way to get source tarballs and nothing else, but now, I think that can try to use git in some minor project to obtain a real experience opinion.
In next lines, I am going to write some little notes about use of git into github.com.
I think that this notes are useful for me, primarly, but can be useful for other git-beginners, too.

Global setup:

Download and install Git
git config –global user.name “Pablo Saavedra”
git config –global user.email saavedra.pablo@gmail.com
Add your public key at github.com

Next steps, creating a new repository:

mkdir awstats-update
cd awstats-update
git init
touch README
git add README
git commit -m ‘first commit’
git remote add origin git@github.com:psaavedra/awstats-update.git
git push origin master

Other way, existing Git Repo:

cd existing_git_repo
git remote add origin git@github.com:psaavedra/awstats-update.git
git push origin master

The last way, importing from Subversion:

git-svn can be used to import as well. Note that there may be issues if you have branches or tags (they won’t be imported over). If you only have a trunk, like many svn repositories, this method should work for you without issue.
First, be sure to create your repository on GitHub
$ git svn clone -s SVN_REPO_URL LOCAL_DIR
$ cd LOCAL_DIR
$ git remote add origin git@github.com:GITHUB_USERNAME/REPO_NAME.git
$ git push origin master
Note that the -s switch implies that your svn repo is set up with the standard branches/tags/trunk structure.
git-svn adds a note to every commit message it copies over from svn. To get rid of that note, add –no-metadata to the command.
You can pull in later commits by running git-svn rebase from within your repo. If you ever lose your local copy, just run the import again with the same settings and you’ll get another working directory with all the necessary git-svn settings saved.

Refers

awstats-update

Finally, I have achieved to push my first git repository at github.com. This repo is a set  formed by silly (but usefull) tools: awstats-update.

Basically, this tools are a couple de scripts which can be executed as cronjobs. These, periodically, are checking  if exist new sites enabled in the apache/nginx configuration and building the corresponding awstats configuration file for them.

The repository can be accessed from:

git://github.com/psaavedra/awstats-update.git

Red5: The OpenSource RTMP server

Recently, I started to work with Red5 RTMP server. Red5 is a OpenSourceRTMP server based on Spring/Tomcat/Java technologies and this is the alternative to the privative Adobe FMS (Flash Media Server) .

Currently, Red5 project has reachend the 0.9 milestone of the Red5 roadmap. You can the latest feautures added to Red5 in: http://red5.org/wiki/Changelog.  Here’s a brief description of the features in Red5:

  • Streaming Audio/Video (FLV and MP3)
  • Recording Client Streams (FLV only)
  • Shared Objects
  • Live Stream Publishing (live h264 supported now)
  • Remoting ( AMF0/ AMF3)

You also need to know 2 concepts:

  • Red5 is a Java aplication server framework that provide all the logic for FLV reflection.
  • You will deploy aplications over Tomcat or stanalone Red5 launcher. This aplication will use the red5 jar library for implement the application logic.

Red5 community work primarly with Java progaming language. In anyway, you can work with another supported language to deploy the application and hadlers. For example: jython, jruby or action script. You can obtain more info in http://osflash.org/red5 and http://red5.org/

VLAN in Debian

First, we need install vlan package to get available the 8021q kernel module:

host01# apt-cache show vlan
host01# apt-get install vlan
host01# echo 8021q >> /etc/modules
host01# modprobe 8021q

Finally, we can edit your network configuration as following:

host01# cat /etc/network/interfaces 
# This file describes the network interfaces available on your system
# and how to activate them. For more information, see interfaces(5).
# The loopback network interface

auto lo
iface lo inet loopback

# The primary network interface
allow-hotplug eth0
iface eth0 inet dhcp

auto eth0.206
iface eth0.206 inet static
address 10.6.60.165
netmask 255.255.255.0

Upgrading a Debian system

We will assume that we want upgrade from etch (older stable)  to lenny (current stable):
  1. Edit file /etc/apt/sources.list and replace  substituimos todas las ocurrencias de  ecth por lenny: 

    sudo vi /etc/apt/sources.list

  2. Repositories updating: 

    sudo aptitude update

  3. Upgrading the management tools Debian packages: sudo aptitude install apt dpkg aptitude
  4. Upgrading all the system: 

    sudo aptitude full-upgrade