biggj's Journal: Heh ... more linux fun.

The good:

I set up fetchmail with dropmail and IMAP to do all my email. It's pretty cool. Fetchmail grabs my mail, dropmail filters it in to the correct folders and then I connect to the IMAP server running on my local box to check mail. It's great. This way, it's really easy to backup my mail filters and emails. The worst part about having to start over with a new install or mail client is having to redo the filters.

The bad:

My main box is a pretty rock'en laptop (P4 2.4GHz w/ 1G RAM). So I have been trying to get APM working so that I can suspend it and have it drop into power saving mode while transporting it. By default, it kills the display when shutting, which isn't bad, but it would be nice if it acted like a laptop is suppose to. I'd like to be able to close it, drop it in the case, take it home, and bang, all works as it should. Without having to go through the 5 minute shutdown and boot up.

So in the process of trying to get APM working, I found that I was going to need to recompile my kernel, which is a new thing to me. I downloaded 2.4.22 (was running 2.4.20-something which comes with RH9). With a lot of help of a co-worker of mine, I recompile it, APM support on and Unsynced TSC support on. Which is apparently what is needed for APM to work correctly. I then modified my grub boot line with "notsc" and rebooted.

On start-up it hung. I found out that I needed to install an i386 version of glibc to boot with notsc because the i686 version requires it.

The Ugly:

So I went and downloaded a i386 glibc rpm, and installed it (had to use the --force flag because it barfed saying that version was already installed). Right after installing it, I started getting seg fault errors. Reboot, hang, reboot single user mode, hang ... ummmm ... reinstall. :(

The Next Day:

I am pretty much back up now, not having to format my home partition was a huge help. But after all that, I am still in the same position, APM don't work.

The Quandary:

Now I am starting to think about maybe switching to a Mac ti-Book. You can pretty much do everything with OS X that you can do in Linux, including the fetchmail->maildrop->IMAP thing I am doing. You can run X and more open source apps. But I know that I would miss being able to hack my GUI, and as much as it can drive me nuts, I love the learning that goes into using Linux. Either way, it isn't like I can snap my fingers and a $2500 ti-Book will drop in my lap. So for now, it's Linux, but come time for a new laptop, it will be a hard choice. As for desktops, my Linux box at home works great, although I am thinking about switching from Redhat to Gentoo, but I am not sure if I am quite ready for that.

More to come...

yooowww.

[valmont]

heh. Mail.app comes with built-in spam filtering, it learns overtime, however you can't really add your own rules, at least in Jaguar, i don't know about Panther. I do hear Panther comes with more bad-ass spam filtering. Here check this out: Panther Mail.app [apple.com]. Scroll-down to the very bottom of the page and read the "Cans more spam" section. Looks pretty damn cool. I can't wait to play with it. I think my panther arrived at the office Friday.

Of course you should also consider EarthLink's very-own spam blo [earthlink.net]

Re:yooowww.

[biggj]

I use earthlink's spam blocker for my personal mail, but I was talking about my corp mail.