Sayang…

DirectAdmin sent a warning message stating:

The service 'dovecot' on server insert.server.here is currently down

Using DirectAdmin’s Service Monitor to restart it resulted in this error:

/sbin/service dovecot restart 2>&1

So I SSH in and try to restart it manually from the command line:

/sbin/service dovecot start

I receive this error:

Fatal: listen(0.0.0.0, 993) failed: Address already in use

So we need to find you what is hogging port 993 by using the lsof command:

lsof -i:993

lsof tells me that PID 2083 is bound to port 993 so I kill it:

kill 2083

Dovecot starts successfully. Yay!

Read more lsof information at dmiessler.com

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A new year is coming so I thought I try out a new “help desk / support / trouble ticket” solution. I stumbled across Trellis Desk 1.0 and found myself pleasantly surprised because it was extremely quick and easy to install on a DirectAdmin server. The installation process threw up a few warning flags that I could have ignored but I decided to take care of them. Here are some notes on installing FreeType and increasing the HTTP/PHP upload limit:

Installing FreeType

These instructions from lampdocs.com are fairly complete. The only step that is some what vague is recompiling PHP with your configure string.

Change directories to your PHP installation. The instructions tell you to issue this command:

cd /usr/local/directadmin/customapache/php-4.4.8

I had to replace the ‘php-4.4.8′ with ‘php-5.2.5′ since that was the version I was using.

After you change to the appropriate PHP directory you need to issue the configure command so you can recompile PHP with FreeType support. I used phpinfo() and looked at the Configure Command entry, removed the quotes and added the FreeType flags at the end.

./configure --with-apxs2 --with-curl --with-curl-dir=/usr/local/lib --with-gd --with-gd-dir=/usr/local/lib --with-gettext --with-jpeg-dir=/usr/local/lib --with-kerberos --with-openssl --with-mcrypt --with-mhash --with-mysql=/usr --with-pear --with-png-dir=/usr/local/lib --with-xml --with-zlib --with-zlib-dir=/usr/local/lib --with-zip --enable-bcmath --enable-calendar --enable-ftp --enable-magic-quotes --enable-sockets --enable-track-vars --enable-mbstring --enable-memory-limit --with-freetype-dir=/usr/include/freetype2/ --with-freetype

Increasing the HTTP Upload Max Size

Edit php.ini

vi /usr/local/lib/php.ini

Scroll down and change the post_max_size. Mine was set to 8 and I upped it to 15 and the warning message went away.

post_max_size = 15M

I wanted to run it over SSL so I got a $13 SSL cert from Servertastic.com.

See it in action at https://help.isy-cpa.com.

So if you are looking for a nice looking and simple help desk solution that can be installed and configured in less than an hour and costs $0, Trellis Desk may be what you are looking for.

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My previous Windows Mobile phones had a field in the phone’s settings that let you forward unanswered calls to another number. This let me use my PBX’s voicemail instead of AT&T’s voicemail so I only had to deal with one voicemail system.

The iPhone 3G doesn’t have this field in the phone’s settings (at least I can’t find it). The workaround involves placing a call to a special phone number. If the number of the phone number which you want to forward calls to is 310-555-1212 place a call to this number (include the stars and pounds):

**67*13105551212#

This works for AT&T and more information can be found here and here.

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I tried to send a PSD file from a client’s PC to my Exchange mailbox using my Gmail account and its 20 MB attachment size ability. Shortly after i sent the message and attachment I received a 5.2.3 error message which indicated the attachment was too large. WTF! We can’t have free email services provide larger attachment capability than our Exchange server.

Here’s how I increased the attachment size limit:

Use the Exchange System Manager and right click Message Delivery. Click the default tab and set the size limits.

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I had a user leave me this message:

I have lost my Internet!

When I checked this XP system out, sure enough, Internet Explorer 7 was gone from the Start Menu and the Program Files\Internet Explorer directory.

After poking around it appears that Sunbelt’s Vipre beta had quarantined iexplore.exe.

This occurred after a “Microsoft Patch Tuesday” so I’m guessing Vipre may have detected a change in iexplore.exe and notified the user who decided to quarantine the new file.

Moral of the story: You can lose the Internet and if you do, check your AV/AS quarantine.

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Get the Flash Player to see this player.

I got a Flip Video Ultra 60 Minute to test the video and audio quality and the editing software that is included. I only had one volunteer for the test shots.

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I just visited a client who was “conveniently” Grandfathered into a $130/month 384/384 DSL connection. A few hours on the phone with Verizon got this changed to a $80/month 3.0/768 Static IP business connection.

At first, I thought their DSL was broken since I was getting only 300 down.

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A client brought in a spare 8125 so I could sync it up with her Exchange 2003 server. It’s been dealing so much with Windows Mobile 6 I couldn’t remember how to do this on this old old phone. You can’t do it through Outlook like WM6 allows. You have to configure a Server Source in ActiveSync.

You can fine detailed instructions here.

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