Quick steps to configure stunnel4 for client mode

Joli OS, stunnel, Ubuntu

It is really simple to add POP3 SSL support to your existing e-mail client which does not support it, or whatever SSL support you want using stunnel. I just cannot remember all the steps to set up clean system. So I have created this small guide which will help me in future and may be will help somebody else too.

  1. Install stunnel if you don’t have it installed already: sudo apt-get install stunnel
  2. Allow stunnel to autostart by editing stunnel defaults file: sudo gedit /etc/default/stunnel4
  3. Finally perform the following task on the /etc/stunnel/stunnel.conf file:
    1. Comment the following line, so that we want have to generate certificate, because we don’t need it in client mode: ;cert = /etc/ssl/certs/stunnel.pem
    2. Change sslVersion to all if you need support for all SSL types
    3. Uncomment the following line: client = yes
    4. Add definition for client vs. server ports. In my case I was redirecting to FastMail:
      [pop3]
      accept = 1109
      connect = mail.messagingengine.com:995

Make suspend to RAM working on Joli OS

Joli OS, Lenovo S10-3

I am trying to find operating system which best suits to my Lenovo S10-3 netbook. It comes preinstalled with Windows Starter which is a lil bit unusable for the purpose netbooks has been created for. The lack of ability to logoff currently logged user when two or more people are using it is very frustrating. I don’t won’t to spend money by upgrading Windows to “better” edition, so I am looking for some Linux distribution which will just work and look nice.
So far I have tried Ubuntu and OpenSUSE with KDE or Gnome. But on both there were some missing functionality like non working fn keys or problem to restore netbook from suspend when netbook is closed and then opened again.
These days I have installed Joli OS version 1.2 which has been created especially for netbooks. It is based on Ubuntu Netbook Remix edition, but looks much more pretty. But still it has problems with suspend. Fortunately on the kernel version which is used by Joli OS it can be easily fixed by using additional boot option.
Press Alt+F1 and write down the following into the terminal

sudo gedit /etc/default/grub

Locate line with the following or similar text:

GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT=”quiet splash”

and change it to this:

GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT=”quiet splash intel_idle.max_cstate=0″

Finally run the following command and restart the computer:

sudo update-grub

Enabling WMA support under Wine in Linux

Linux, Wine, WMA

I am using foobar2000 as my audio player in Linux, because I am very familiar with it and I was unable to find sufficient alternative. In my music library I also have albums with songs in WMA (Windows Media Audio) format. This format is not supported under Wine by default. But you can fix this very easily by installing Windows Media Player 10.
Windows Media Player itself does not start under Wine, but the codec is installed successfully.

Making FastMail default mail reader in GNOME

FastMail, GNOME, Linux, Ubuntu

In Ubuntu, I am using mail-notification to get notified about new e-mail in my FastMail account. From time to time I also click on some mailto link. In both of these cases I would like a FastMail page to be opened in Opera. But to make it a lil bit smart, I would like to open inbox when double-clicking on new e-mail notification, but in case I click mailto link I would like to be redirected to compose new FastMail e-mail url.
I have created a bash script, which does this job quite well. All you need to do is to copy the following text into clipboard, past it into some text editor and save it into /usr/bin/fastmail-mailto.sh.

#!/bin/sh
BROWSER="opera"

# Mailto URI may look like this
#mailto:foo@bar.com?subject=hi&body=message

# Most of the parameters are called the same, we just need to parse e-mail
uri=`echo "$1" | sed -e 's/^mailto:/*([^&?]+)[?&]?(.*)$/1&2/'`

if [ "$uri" ];
 then exec $BROWSER "http://www.fastmail.fm/action/compose/?to=$uri"
fi

exec $BROWSER "http://www.fastmail.fm/"

After you are finished, you need to make the file executable by calling the following command: sudo chmod a+x /usr/bin/fastmail-mailto.sh.
Finally just go to Preferences > Preferred Applications and change Mail Reader to Custom with the following text: /usr/bin/fastmail-mailto.sh.

Fix SmartSVN to be correctly maximalized on netbooks

Linux, SmartSVN, Ubuntu

On my netbook with 1024×600 resolution, SmartSVN did not allow me to maximize it’s main window. It was just to big to fit the screen. I thought it was caused by width of toolbar buttons, so I removed some of them from toolbar. Unfortunately it did not help.
After some diging on the Internet, I found documentation page on SmartSVN site with description of VM options.
Among other cool options, there is a possibility to remove text from the toolbar buttons using smartsvn.toolbar.textBelowIcon configuration option. By setting this option to false in the ~/.smartsvn/6.6/smartsvn.properties file, I was able to maximize the window correctly.

Replace NotifyOSD with standard Gnome notifications in Ubuntu

Linux, Ubuntu

If you are using other then one of the black themes in Ubuntu you may find black notifications ugly. I didn’t find a way how to change theme of notifications in Ubuntu 10.04.
Fortunately you can replace default notification system in Ubuntu called NotifyOSD with standard Gnome notification system called notification-daemon.
To use notification-daemon follow these steps:

  1. Open terminal
  2. Execute sudo apt-get install notification-daemon
  3. Execute sudo apt-get purge notify-osd
  4. Restart your computer

After you restart notifications will probably look like this:

This is Ubuntu theme for notification-daemon. You can change it to normal them by running gconf-editor and going to apps > notification-daemon and changing value of theme to normal. After this change notifications will look similar to this:

Run commands without having to provide sudo password

Linux, Ubuntu

On my Lenovo S10-3 running Ubuntu 10.04 I was forced to create scripts to control brightness of the display. These scripts are run when brightness keys are pressed. They use /usr/bin/setpci command.
The problem is that calling this command requires administrative privileges. This makes me a lil bit disturbing, because my girlfriend is also working on this machine from time to time, but I don’t want to make her admin.
In Ubuntu sudo is controled by /etc/sudoers file. On the ubuntu documentation you can find a way how to make some commands for some users to be called without having to type password.
The scripts to control brightness can be downloaded here: