Category: Technical

About software, hardware, and everything in between.

Farewell qmail, you’ve served well!

In the fall of 2001 I set up a “general purpose” server (mail, web, database…) that is still in use today. At that time qmail was still a fairly attractive option even though there had already then not been updates from it’s author for about four years. There were no other major players at that time if one didn’t want to venture to the Sendmail realm (which I didn’t). Postfix and exim had major issues at that time while qmail had all the features available though an increasing number were patches written by various skilled programmers other than Dan Bernstein, author of qmail.

Some years passed by with no further updates to qmail, and already around 2004 exodus started from qmail to alternative clients, namely Postfix. And now, in 2008, it has been a decade since the last release (the original release, in fact) of qmail. In the coming months I have the operating system upgrade (to the newly released FreeBSD 7) coming up, and at the same time I’ll move away from qmail. The most likely replacement MTA is Postfix with dovecot. The details are still somewhat fuzzy; instructions to set up exactly what I’m thinking about don’t seem to be available anywhere, so lots of Googling and trial-and-error are to be expected. A how-to document that perhaps comes to closest is “HOWTO: Postfix, Dovecot, Jamm, OpenLDAP, and SASL” by Peter Lacey. But I don’t want to use Jamm. I get hives from using Java-based management tools, so there has to be something better, right? No? Well, I would also like to use MySQL for at least user data storage if not for message storage as well.

If you’re setting up something similar, or have something similar already up and running, I would like to hear about it. I will be posting details and how-to info here as the configuration of the new mail system is progressing.

Network Solutions follow-up

The last of the two domains I registered on February 14 was finally live on Feb 24th.. after several calls to NSI technical support (and probably total of 2 hours on hold). Even though both of the domains were included in the initial trobule ticket on Feb 17th, only one of them was fixed and operational on the 19th. The second domain took additional five days to get online. Good going, NSI!

One thing I did learn, though: apparently it is possible to have the reservation deleted. In other words, if you or someone else looks up a domain name using NSI’s home page and they “do you a favor” by reserving the name for the next seven days “so that the scalpers can’t register it” (I can’t really see how that improves the situation — they have no way of knowing who checked the availability of the domain name initially), you can call NSI’s tech support and request the name to be removed from the reservation list immediately, thus opening it up for reservation at other registrars.

Stay away from NSI!

Network Solutions — Pay More, Get Less

The two domains I was forced to register via Network Solutions (see the previous post) are still not live, two days later. I set the name servers correctly immediately after the domains were registered, created the corresponding name server records, and tested them. Then I waited. 24 hours.. no live domains. 48 hours.. no live domains! I called NSI’s technical support and, after about 30 minutes on hold, was told to preferably use their internal managed name servers, or if I really had to use my own name servers, reassign the name servers to the internal, then back to my own. In other words, “flip the switch” few times. Click. Click. Click. And then call them back some hours later if nothing happens. For this I had to pay $20 more per domain per year! Generally at GoDaddy the domains are live instantly, and at latest within an hour or two after registration. No fuss. I’m sure the same is true with many other good registrars out there, Network Solutions is just not one of them.

Network Solutions Uses Creepy Marketing Tactics!

Network Solutions is now apparently resorting to rather questionable marketing tactics to be able to continue to charge the excessive $35/year for .com registrations while stellar competition (such as GoDaddy) offers the same for $9.99/year and you get better customer service and easier to use management interface.

There are many snazzy AJAX-based whois tools on the web, such as ajaxwhois.com. Some of them abuse the collected lookup information so that when a user finds a cool sounding domain name that is available but doesn’t register it right away, the owner of the whois-tool goes and registers the domain name and slaps a $5,000 sticker on it. Few people go for that, but what if the increased sticker was $35? This is what Network Solutions now does! If you look up a domain name at networksolutions.com, and it is currently free, the cost is $9.00/year. That’s ¢95 less for the first year than the same registration through, for example, GoDaddy. But if you don’t register the domain right away, let’s say you wait couple of hours, Network Solutions snaps it up, and the price suddenly increases to the NSI’s old $35/year (since now you don’t have the option to use a competing registrar). Lookup at, for example, GoDaddy tells that the domain name you looked up “is already taken”. Command line Whois, on the other hand, says:

Registrant:
This Domain is available at NetworkSolutions.com
13681 Sunrise Valley Drive, Suite 300
HERNDON, VA 20171
US

Domain Name: THE-DOMAIN-I-LOOKED-UP-COUPLE-OF-HOURS-AGO.COM

————————————————————————
This Domain is Available – Register it Now!
600,000 domain names are registered daily! Don’t delay; there’s no guarantee
that a domain name you see today will still be here tomorrow!
Register it Now at www.NetworkSolutions.com.
————————————————————————

Administrative Contact, Technical Contact:
Network Solutions, LLC domainsupport@networksolutions.com
13681 Sunrise Valley Drive, Suite 300
HERNDON, VA 20171
US
1-888-642-9675 fax: 571-434-4620

Record expires on 14-Feb-2009.
Record created on 14-Feb-2008.
Database last updated on 14-Feb-2008 17:20:18 EST.

Domain servers in listed order:

ns1.reserveddomainname.com 205.178.190.55
ns2.reserveddomainname.com 205.178.189.55

Swell, eh? When you don’t have what it takes to offer better service than the competition, then you use shady tactics to extract money from the unwilling clientele. NSI is a bit akin to SBC/AT&T in that both originate from the time when they had the monopoly in their respective business areas. Times change, but procedures and even more importantly the old corporate mind-set stick hard.

Today I registered two domain names through NSI at the elevated $35/year cost because the names were needed, and because my boss looked up their availability earlier today using Network Solutions homepage. I will be transferring the domains to GoDaddy shortly, and will from now on advice everyone stay away from NSI (well, I already have been doing so but this is yet another reason to continue do so).