LangaList eNewsletter

"The LangaList," is a free email newsletter from the computer author and columnist Fred Langa. Fred is the former Editor of Windows Magazine, Byte Magazine, and a number of other publications.

The LangaList has been published since 1997 and is rated among the best of the eZines. It has a dense format of lots of very practical tips and information about the desktop computing environment.

I've found this newsletter very useful and recommend it. It's totally free and, like the BNUG mailing list, has an anti-spam policy of not selling or disclosing it's subscribers' email addresses.

(The LangaList free edition is advertiser supported: each issue contains some click through computer-related ads. In addition to the free version of LangaList, there is also an enhanced "paid subscription" version which provides some additional content and no ads. LangaList is published about six times per month.)

Here's a link to the current issue: http://www.langa.com/current.htm

You'll also find complete archives (all past issues) via the same link.

If you like what you see, you can sign up for free by going to: http://www.langa.com/join_langalist.htm

Spam Fighting with Mac OS X

Back in May, I made a decision to dogfood my home and office, so I switched my servers from Linux-appliance sytems (ClarkConnect at home and SME Server at work) to Mac OS X Server running on a matched pair of Mac minis. They're nice, slick, simple, and much easier to administer than even the appliance distros were (OK, they're not much easier, but they are pretty easy when you're an Apple-Certified person like I happen to be). The minis make good, solid webservers for mainly static content, and Mac OS X Server provides good file, print, and web services along with integrated Squirrelmail for webmail and amavis for an interface to both ClamAV and SpamAssassin.

Unfortunately, the amavis config is slightly broken by default, and it's not yet been fixed by Apple. Out of the box, Bayesian training doesn't work correctly. A workaround is at the excellent site AFP548, but that's not the only glitch - spammers have learned lately to start routing mail through backup MX systems so as to hopefully bypass detection. And different SA configurations are set to handle forwarded mail differently - Tiger Server's trusts it and it's a pain to change that (though possible).

My solution for home use was to simply stop my backup MX service that I was getting from ZoneEdit (who handles my DNS) - presto, instant 10-fold spam reduction! The other fix was to add blacklisting at both home and work. I am using the sbl-xbl.spamhaus.org blacklist, which is doing a pretty good job of reduction. Then, at the office I usually leave my desktop iMac on all the time so I can remotely drive it when needed. Now I leave Mail.app open as well, and since it has a very nice spam catcher I let it snag spam and train it as well. All in all, I see only a spam or two per day on my Treo, typically.

After the next scheduled Mac OS X update (10.4.3, due in the next week or two), I am going to re-address the issue and work on tweaking SpamAssassin's settings. Overall, the mail subsystem in Tiger is solid and functional, but Apple still needs to make fine-tuning a little easier.

The Information Technology Professional's Resource Center

Although it has not been updated in quite some time, the Information Technology Professional's Resource Center ("ITPRC") web site remains a useful repository of some classic essential network information. You can find it at http://www.itprc.com

The ITPRC was created in 1999 to provide a one-stop-shop for IT professionals to find technical information relating to data networking. The predecessor of the ITPRC was "Networking References" which had been established in 1997. I believe ITPRC was created by Irwin Lazar, who is a technology consultant who has written extensively on various datacom and telecom topics.

The ITPRC web site includes an archive of a few ITPRC newsletters on topics like "A Very Brief Intro to QoS", "IPSec vs. MPLS-based VPNs" and "Secure Sockets Layer". But more importantly, there are various compendia of links to networking references organized by topic.

For example, the ITPRC guide to the "physical layer" provides links to over three dozen resouce sites covering the topics of Analog Modems, Cable Modems, Cabling, Channelized T1/T3/E1, DSL, SONET/SDH/DPT/RPR, and Industry Standards. See: http://www.itprc.com/physical.htm

Not all of the links work and some may require a little search work because the referenced external web pages have been moved or renamed. However, most of the links provide good starting places.

Linux Newbie Administrator Guide

Good resource for the Linux "newbie" and "free" as in beer!

Linux Newbie Administrator Guide

http://Linux-newbie.sunsite.dk/index.html