Archive for the IT stuff Category

Simple authentication in Zend Framework

This is quick example of how to do a very simple authentication in Zend Framework. It doesn’t user external database for getting the credentials, although you can make it very easily to read data in the Auth adapter from an external file or MySQL database.

Synchronizing Mailman lists with LDAP

Quite common usage scenario is a Postfix mail server with a Mailman instance for groups. Even more often the accounts for the mail are stored in an LDAP tree. And in this case a problem appears, because Mailman doesn’t have a native connection to LDAP. That’s why I needed to have an LDAP 2 Mailman [...]

Postfix Hints

Hints for Postfix 2.6 or higher that are commonly mentioned problems or scenarios.

Pairing Apple bluetooth devices with Windows XP

It seems that Microsoft Windows XP has a problem with pin-less Apple devices.
I hate cables and wires all around me, so I’ve decided to switch to a bluetooth mouse and keyboard.
The problem arose when I was trying to pair the devices with WinXP, because the pin-box was empty:

Getting inside via open door – hacking ldd

Peteris Krumins has recently written in his blog a very nice article on basic security of sysadmins. He exploits, or… maybe a better word here is… evaluates a door that is there in ldd for ages, but neverthelesss not many sysadmins are aware of it, while checking user programs with ldd from root account.
This bug-o-feature [...]

PHP LDAP change password page

I have recently implemented an SSO (Single Sign On) mechanism in one of my places and then I started to look for a simple quick-and-dirty way to allow the users to change their passwords via PHP.
I have found many complicated examples but I thought, come on, this is really one page I am looking for. [...]

How to change the default Picasa cache directory?

I love Picasa! So what… I am having now around 30,000 photos (at least if Picasa doesn’t lie) and… a problem. Picasa for ages have a problem with big database caching file.  I have a system partition that is only 20GB in size. The problem is that Picasa is holding the thumbnails cached in my [...]

Jak słuchać “Trójki” przez foobar’a?

Uwielbiam Polską Trójkę.
No i oczywiście jak to w Polsce bywa, musieli utrudnić życie słuchaczom i zamiast używać jakiegoś normalnego formatu streamingu on-line, używają Microsoftowego WMA. Używam FooBar’a więc pojawił się problem, bo on standardowo nie ma odpowiednich wtyczek do odtwarzania takich bajerów. No to co zrobić żeby można się było rozkoszować trójką z foobar’a zamiast [...]

Creating Debian Lenny Bootable USB key in Windows

Today I had to recover a machine from a disastrous power failure (yes, I had a UPS but it didn’t manage ).
The results was as usual:

?View Code TEXTKernel panic: Not syncing!!
/sbin/init not found

Doesn’t sound nice, does it? It wasn’t. My whole /lib was gone…
I had to boot with root mounted to my disk (which [...]

datePicker and jqModal z-index problem

It appears that jqModal and datePicker have z-index problems. My datepicker appeared below the form inside jqModal. The fix for this is very simple. We have to modify CSS for UI and jqmodal.
This is because they don’t set z-index property properly. But we can change it on our own…