Category Archives: Technology

Jabber server

Technology,

Yesterday I had another one of those thougth’s of “if you build it they will come”. I will more than likely be disapointed but that doesn’t lessen the fun of trying. I’ve been wanting to setup a Jabber server for some time now but never really had the right motivation. The last few weeks have been busy consulting with Developers in the office on a new product and email as the colaboration tool is comical, to put it mildly.

I have RedHat running on an old NCR S26 in the office which is where I setup a Plone site some time ago. It’s had WordPress, Bugzilla, Forrest, and PHPNuke running on it at various times so it was a pefect canidate.

Yesterday I had another one of those thought’s of “if you build it they will come”. I will more than likely be disappointed but that doesn’t lessen the fun of trying. I’ve been wanting to setup a Jabber server for some time now but never really had the right motivation. The last few weeks have been busy consulting with Developers in the office on a new product and email as the collaboration tool is comical, to put it mildly.

I have RedHat running on an old NCR S26 in the office which is where I setup a Plone site some time ago. It’s had WordPress, Bugzilla, Forrest, and PHPNuke running on it at various times so it was a perfect candidate.

When searching for a Jabber server I had no idea what to look for but a few moments on Jabber’s server page and I found WildFire. If you take out the download time 15 minutes later I was up and running, logged in and on the admin section doing setup. After that I grabbed Gaim for Windows and was ready to go.

Now for the reality check, can I get anyone in the office to use it. Some already use MSN Messenger and IT is hands off when it comes to many of these kinds of suggestions, so we will see. I put a few feelers out today, but I won’t hold my breath. If all else fails I can put it on my test server and see if the family wants to use it. In general for a small or medium sized company that has a need for this type of communication I don’t see how you could go wrong with a setup like this.

vcf2ldif … time saver

Technology,

I’ve been using Thunderbird for years now on Windows, managing email for work. For me it’s more efficient and I can find things faster. However for personal mail I’ve always used Evolution even back when it was Ximian. It is an excellent PIM and has served me well over the years. But I decided to switch to Thunderbird the other day. The main reason is for simplicity and managing upgrades a little easier.

So moving mail wasn’t a big deal both use mbox format, copy the files that’s it, but contacts was another story. So my delima was add contacts manually or find a way to convert. Evolution can export contacts in CSV or VCF format but Thunderbird can only import CSV or LDIF. One might say no problem use CSV as it’s common with both. Well for me that wasn’t the case as the Evo export had some interesting labeling and when walking through the Thunderbird import more fields were wrong than right.

I wasn’t really ready to do that so I went looking for a way to convert VCF to LDIF. That’s when I found vcf2ldif. Cudos to Ryan Mills for creating this Java app as it did the trick and saved hours of manual work. I ran into a couple of errors on some address books relating to the number of fields per record, or so it seemed. But removing unnecessary lines in the VCF files fixed it.

SWEET !!!

Evolution on Windows … interesting

Technology,

I ran across Evolution on Windows this week, it’s interesting. Installed, imported contacts, and about 1.5 gig of email and so far so good. The email import was not easy as I had to take the mbox files, bring them into Evo on Linux then copy the files to the Windows box. Importing on Windows consistently crashed if more than 1500 emails were in the folder.

Nice thing is if it doesn’t work I can just take the mbox files back to Thunderbird.

Update: Sept. 7 It was a fun week with Evo on Windows. The UI and functionality is pretty much identical to Linux however it is slower which is to be expected. Only a couple crashes but it’s time to go back to Thunderbird.

From Breezy to Dapper

Technology

A new version of Ubuntu was out on June 1st, Dapper Drake. Eager to load and check out the new bells and whisles I downloaded he iso, burned it to a CD and loaded last night. I had a little trouble getting the install to complete but that was due to X hanging. A quick check of help on the CD, prior to install, pointed me to pass vga=771 as an intall option. After that it was smooth sailing. It’s hasn’t been 24 hours yet but so far so good. I don’t have everything loaded and still have Breezy on my 60GB drive just in case.

So far only two issues and I seem to remember them from loading Breezy, no WEP on my on board wireless NIC and only a default contact list in Evolution. I can deal with those as they are not critical and I know the Evolution contacts are there as I copied the entire folder over before running. More than likely it’s the same problem I noted in a previous post just have to apply it. If all goes well the plan would be after getting everything up on the alternate drive take the 60GB and load XP then Dapper and dual boot. I have yet to do one of those as I’ve not really come across a need for it but now might be as good a time as any. Certainly would benefit my preperation for the LCP1 exam.