The answer is, of course, “no, but…”. But, first, let’s understand the question itself.

In “everyone used”, what does “used” mean? If you followed my previous posts on this subject, you’ll know that there are two distinct parts: having an SPF record for your domain, and configuring your SMTP server to reject email purporting to be from an address with a valid SPF record, when it doesn’t come from an authorized server.

Let’s assume that the question implies both.

So, if every legit organization had an SPF record and enforced SPF in their incoming email servers, what would it mean?

It still depends on what was meant by “enforced”. For instance, as it is now, it makes sense to use an SPF record (and reject mail coming from an unauthorized server, as I mentioned before), but not to require an SPF record, as most of the world is still not using it.

If that changed, though… it would certainly make things a lot easier for the “good guys”. Think about it: what does SPF prevent? The faking of sender addresses. Who ever does that? Spammers. Therefore, who has ever a reason not to use an SPF record? Spammers. In a world where every legitimate organization used SPF, having such a record wouldn’t mean that the sender wasn’t a spammer, but not having one would certainly mean that he was. Ergo, reject any mail from a domain without an SPF record, even before verifying whether the origin server is authorized for that domain.

Of course, spammers would adapt, and have SPF records for their own domains. But never again would they be able to fake a sender address. They would never again be able to efficiently pretend to be your internet provider, or your bank, or Facebook, or anything like that. They would have to use their own domains in the sender address… and they don’t exactly tend to look “nice”; besides, they’re not what your ISP or your bank would use.

A world with SPF would mean a world where you could actually trust the “From:” field. Can you imagine such a thing?

Related posts:

1. SPF, part 3: configuring Postfix to check SPF records when receiving mail
2. SPF, part 1: what is SPF, and how to fight spam with it
3. SPF, part 2: how to configure SPF for a domain

I had been using FreeBSD 6.x and later 7.0 until I bought my current home server, about a year and a half ago, which had a SATA controller that FreeBSD didn’t detect out of the box. I used that as an excuse to try out Linux as a server again, and switched to Ubuntu, which I’m still using right now. But FreeBSD is a very nice OS, and I miss some parts of it (such as pf, ported from OpenBSD, which I also used before, and which is infinitely better and more sane than the almost Lovecraftian horror of iptables.)

If I ever get a second home server, maybe I’ll try one of the BSDs again, just for fun.

Related posts:

1. OpenBSD 3.9 can now be pre-ordered
2. Server upgrade – hardware, OS
3. The BSDs

restart Postfix. Check your logs to see if everything is working properly.

But what to look for? Here are a few real life examples, from my own Postfix log file:

Nov 26 07:07:27 sh postfix/policy-spf[10685]: : SPF none (No applicable sender policy available): Envelope-from: bounce-1492514-406278644@lyris.diskeepermail.com
Nov 26 07:07:27 sh postfix/policy-spf[10685]: handler sender_policy_framework: is decisive.
Nov 26 07:07:27 sh postfix/policy-spf[10685]: : Policy action=PREPEND Received-SPF: none (lyris.diskeepermail.com: No applicable sender policy available) receiver=sh.dehumanizer.com; identity=mailfrom; envelope-from="bounce-1492514-406278644@lyris.diskeepermail.com"; helo=lyris.diskeepermail.com; client-ip=68.177.217.241

This (note the “SPF none”) is what will happen for most emails: no SPF record exists. Unfortunately, most of the world is still not using it. The mail passes this check, since it’s not a good idea to enforce SPF yet (but may fail one of the remaining ones, such as an RBL list or SpamAssassin.)

Nov 24 16:19:56 sh postfix/policy-spf[32619]: : SPF pass (Mechanism 'ip4:209.128.72.240/28' matched): Envelope-from: promotions@iambic.com
Nov 24 16:19:56 sh postfix/policy-spf[32619]: handler sender_policy_framework: is decisive.
Nov 24 16:19:56 sh postfix/policy-spf[32619]: : Policy action=PREPEND Received-SPF: pass (iambic.com: 209.128.72.242 is authorized to use 'promotions@iambic.com' in 'mfrom' identity (mechanism 'ip4:209.128.72.240/28' matched)) receiver=sh.dehumanizer.com; identity=mailfrom; envelope-from="promotions@iambic.com"; helo=ns1.iambic.com; client-ip=209.128.72.242

Above is an example of a legitimate mail from a sender with a properly configured SPF record. The record says “here are the server(s) that send email from this domain”, and the origin server is indeed one of those. The email passes (note the “SPF pass”), and, if you’re using SpamAssassin, it takes that into account, meaning that the mail is less likely to be considered spam. (See? That’s a great reason to have an SPF record for your domain!)

Finally, the following:

Nov 24 19:57:13 sh postfix/policy-spf[1210]: : SPF fail (Mechanism '-all' matched): Envelope-from: pedro@dehumanizer.com
Nov 24 19:57:13 sh postfix/policy-spf[1210]: handler sender_policy_framework: is decisive.
Nov 24 19:57:13 sh postfix/policy-spf[1210]: : Policy action=550 Please see http://www.openspf.org/Why?s=mfrom;id=pedro%40dehumanizer.com;ip=204.212.122.254;r=sh.dehumanizer.com

is a good demonstration of the usefulness of SPF. You’ll notice that the mail pretends to come from my own domain, but since I have configured the SPF record for it, Postfix is able to see that the origin server is not authorized to send mail from that domain. And, since my record ends with “-all“, it means that the record is to be “taken seriously”, so the mail is refused then and there (note the “SPF fail”), even before checking RBL lists and the like.

Related posts:

1. SPF, part 3: configuring Postfix to check SPF records when receiving mail
2. SPF, part 2: how to configure SPF for a domain
3. SPF, part 1: what is SPF, and how to fight spam with it

Now that you know how to configure an SPF record for your domain(s), the natural next step, if you administer an email server, is to start checking SPF records for mails you receive.

Now, spammers are infamous for not respecting rules, not “playing nice”, so, you might ask, what makes me think they’ll set up SPF records for their domains, which would be kind of self-defeating? The obvious answer is that SPF doesn’t depend on the spammers’ collaboration. Since legitimate email senders use SPF to tell the world which servers they use to send email, it prevents others — such as the aforementioned spammers — from faking sender addresses to pretend they’re from those senders / domains.

To put it simply: if there’s an SPF record for the “gmail.com” domain, then you can — and should — reject mail purporting to be from something@gmail.com that doesn’t come from the servers listed in that record. In other words, anyone who fakes a @gmail.com address can’t fool your server, assuming you have it configured to use SPF.

Now, how to do that? There are many ways, of course, depending on the email server you use. The simple recipe below uses postfix-policyd-spf-perl to make Postfix reject mail from domains with properly configured SPF records, when the mail comes from an unauthorized server (that is, one not listed on the record.) This assumes you already have Postfix up and running.

• install postfix-policyd-spf-perl. In Ubuntu, just do an apt-get install postfix-policyd-spf-perl .
• add this line to /etc/postfix/main.cf:
  spf-policyd_time_limit = 3600s
• add the following to /etc/postfix/master.cf:

  policy-spf  unix  -       n       n       -       -       spawn
       user=nobody argv=/usr/bin/policyd-spf

  (change the path of policyd-spf if it’s installed somewhere else; that’s where the Ubuntu package puts it.)

• in /etc/postfix/main.cf, find the smtpd_recipient_restrictions section, and, immediately after permit_mynetworks (and permit_sasl_authenticated, if you’re using that), add:
  check_policy_service unix:private/policy-spf
• restart Postfix. Check your logs to see if everything is working properly.

Now, remember when in part 2 I mentioned a lesser-known reason for configuring the SPF record for your domain? It’s this: it’ll stop a lot of incoming spam. These days, a lot of spam email pretends to be from you (that is, it uses your email address as both the “From:” and “To:”), or at least from your domain (e.g. administrator@yourdomain, manager@yourdomain, and so on.) I don’t know why spammers do that, but apparently it works, or else they wouldn’t do it (maybe victims get confused and think the email comes from someone in their company, or maybe webmail services tend — or at least did so once — to trust the user’s own address, I don’t know.) Well, if you have SPF for your domain and your email server checks SPF records for incoming mail, then spam messages such as these will be always rejected, even when other methods of stopping spam (RBL lists, SpamAssassin, etc.) fail. Never again will you receive emails pretending to be from your own address.

Related posts:

1. What if everyone used SPF?
2. Postfix’s log file when using SPF: what it looks like
3. SPF, part 1: what is SPF, and how to fight spam with it

• The OS is now Ubuntu Karmic Koala (9.10), and all the server’s running software comes from the standard Ubuntu packages, which means that whatever version is in Karmic¹, that’s what I’m running here.
• I’ve switched, definitely, from Apache to nginx. It’s faster, more efficient, and ridiculously easier to configure (to put it in perspective, in terms of ease of configuration, it’s like OpenBSD’s amazing pf to the unholy abomination that is Linux’s iptables.) nginx works perfectly with the two pieces of software I use the most on my server, WordPress and MyBB, even while using a SEO plugin with the latter, which requires some non-trivial redirect rules.
• As I don’t trust any ISP’s email server to distribute the mail my server sends (mostly confirmation emails from my forums), and since most ISPs and companies these days block mail sent from dynamic IP addresses, I keep a 256 MB Slicehost slice, with a static IP address and, most importantly, reverse DNS, which I use as a smart host for my home server. The slice doesn’t have a lot of power in terms of CPU (and it’s not meant to), but, as bandwidth is much cheaper in the US than in my poor country, the “small” limit the cheapest slice includes is a lot; I use it for serving static files, mostly for my forums (all images and Javascript files are served from there), and I still have bandwidth to spare.
• I’ve stopped using a Squid proxy in my home network, and nowadays access the web directly… except for when I indulge in one of my newest weird habits: reading webcomics like this one or this one while having lunch or dinner. At such a time, moving instantly from comic to comic is a must… so I simply re-enable Squid (with more aggressive caching than I’d use for normal browsing; after all, existing comics typically aren’t going to change, are they?), do a nice little wget in my server to download and cache the entire comic, and then enjoy reading the whole of it (in as many meals as it takes) as if it was stored locally…
• A few changes to my email server’s configuration, mostly related to spam filtering… but I’ve been writing about that, haven’t I? And there’s still more to come.

1. with updates, of course — people who are afraid of installing updates (”but… it might break something!”) are nothing more than mewling weaklings who are utterly incompetent as sysadmins; they should never be allowed within a mile of any server. Even one running Windows.

Related posts:

1. Caching Google Earth with Squid
2. Slicehost: An experiment
3. Does belonging to a ‘Planet’ site increase or decrease traffic?

Suppose you have a domain and send email from it (in fact, even if you don’t, this is still a good idea; more about that later). How to configure SPF for it?

Easy: you simply add a specially formatted TXT record to the domain. (Where? If you have your own public DNS servers, you’ll have to edit the zone file¹; else, if your domain (note: the domain, not the web server) is maintained by a registrar or ISP, it should provide for you an administration interface where you are able to add and edit records.)

OpenSPF.org provides a “wizard” to build an SPF TXT record for your domain, and I suggest you try it out. However, I think I can give you an example that is mostly self-explanatory, which is the SPF TXT record for my own dehumanizer.com domain:

v=spf1 a a:mail.dehumanizer.com a:sh.dehumanizer.com a:sh2.dehumanizer.com mx include:netcabo.pt -all

(In fact, that record is kind of overkill; I could remove about half of it and everything would still work. But it’s useful as an example.)

v=spf1 means it’s an SPF record.

a means that “dehumanizer.com” (the host that that name resolves to) is authorized for that domain. I could remove that one, as the following one takes care of it (it’s the same host).

a:mail.dehumanizer.com means that mail.dehumanizer.com is authorized. The same for the following two (sh.dehumanizer.com and sh2.dehumanizer.com; the latter doesn’t exist anymore, so I could remove it.)

mx means that the mx records for the domain are also authorized. They’re currently mail.dehumanizer.com and sh.dehumanizer.com, which were previously taken care of, so I could remove this one as well.

include:netcabo.pt means that whatever is authorized for the netcabo.pt domain is also authorized here. This is from when I used my ISP as a smart host, some time ago; as I no longer do that, I could remove this one too.

Finally, -all means, in effect, that, yes, I’m serious about this, all of the authorized servers for this domain are listed, which means that any other hosts are unauthorized, and emails coming from them with a “From:” of this domain should be refused. You should configure this part only after successfully testing your configuration. Until then, there’s a “soft fail” option, ~all, which means the same, but adds “but don’t take it seriously.”

If you’ve been paying attention, you’ve probably already noticed that I could replace that record with the much simpler:

v=spf1 a:mail.dehumanizer.com a:sh.dehumanizer.com -all

for the exact same results (and I’ll probably do that a bit later today.)

What’s the benefit of this? Well, as you are telling the world “mails from my domain come only from my servers”, the rest of the world will more easily be able to kill mails pretending to be from your domain… while also “respecting” legit mail more. In effect, you tell other servers “here’s how you can tell which mails from my domain are genuine”. Many ISPs and filtering systems (such as SpamAssassin) take advantage of a properly configured SPF record to raise the “trustworthiness” of emails coming from the correct servers (while lowering it, or even simply refusing to accept the mail, for messages coming from a server not listed in the SPF record.)

There’s also another (lesser-known) advantage of using SPF for your domain, when you also receive email to it. But that’s for part 3, where I’ll explain how to configure Postfix to look at SPF records when receiving mail…

1. note: put the entire record contents between quotes; e.g. for Bind, use dehumanizer.com. IN TXT "v=spf1 a a:mail.dehumanizer.com a:sh.dehumanizer.com a:sh2.dehumanizer.com mx include:netcabo.pt -all" (that’s a single line)

Related posts:

1. What if everyone used SPF?
2. SPF, part 3: configuring Postfix to check SPF records when receiving mail
3. SPF, part 1: what is SPF, and how to fight spam with it

(Later note: here are parts 2 and 3.)

You may have heard of SPF (Sender Policy Framework), but what is it? To put it simply, it’s a way for domain owners to say to the world: “these servers are the only ones that send email from this domain.”

What is the point? Well, if you have been using email for any amount of time, you’ve probably noticed that a lot of spam fakes its sender address (the “From:” field). In fact, you may have found yourself that it’s incredibly easy to do; most SMTP servers simply accept any sender, as long as either 1) the destination address is theirs, or 2) your IP address is on their client list. In other words, a company’s email server accepts mail to the company’s employees, and also allows those employees to use it to send mail to the rest of the world.

SPF, when correctly configured by everyone involved, prevents that.

“Everyone involved” is, of course, an utopic scenario. Still, there is no reason for you not to do your part, whether you are a domain owner who sends email from that domain, the administrator of an email server that receives mail to its users, or both.

More to come…

Related posts:

1. What if everyone used SPF?
2. SPF, part 3: configuring Postfix to check SPF records when receiving mail
3. SPF, part 2: how to configure SPF for a domain

So, a few dozen spam comments deleted, a new theme, several software upgrades, and The Tlog (yeah, I know, not the best name ever) is back.

Related posts:

1. Spam Karma 2 plugin
2. How "I’m a blogger" confuses people
3. Why I’m not a Sysadmin anymore

do-release-upgrade

and even remember to press Enter afterwards! This Linux stuff is really too tough for us mere users…

Also, WordPress 2.5.1 on this blog and a couple others. Incidentally, if you’ve just upgraded to 2.5.1 and suddenly your RSS feed is empty, you were probably hit by this bug. That link includes info for fixing it, too (basically, you have to replace two files with newer development versions).

Related posts:

1. WordPress 2.0.6 FeedBurner fix
2. WordPress 2.2 upgrade
3. Blogging tips #8: Configuring the RSS feed

Meanwhile, I don’t want to give details here, but I’m officially on my last week on yet another job. I may stay here for some days afterwards, as the boss has asked me that, since they don’t have a replacement yet, nor I have a place to go right now (though I’m contacting a couple of my contacts). Another attempt at working at home is also an option.

In this job, I had no problems with anyone, and the company isn’t actually “going downhill” like some others I’ve worked at (no, I didn’t cause that! ), but I really didn’t enjoy the work itself, which isn’t anyone’s fault. After 10 years as a sysadmin, I’ve gotten used to a couple of things, such as:

1. almost every repeating task can be automated
2. needs intelligence and creativity, not patience
3. free time, if you’re a fast, efficient worker.

None of these exist in a job like the one I have now. I realize that I may sound “spoiled” (though that’s not my intention), but the idea of having repeating, non-automatable hard work is alien to me (at least since my helpdesk days, last century), and I don’t cope with it very well. I may have been lucky in my past jobs, in fact. A sysadmin can automate almost everything, and any new work is an interesting challenge (no matter how hard), one where you stay at it until late night because, well, it’s a challenge, because “the mountain is there”. A programmer, for instance, has to create and invent. Even an artist (which I’ve never been, but I’ve worked with some) or a writer has to use his or her creativity most of the time, instead of just doing the same old (but tough) things over and over. But many jobs aren’t like this… most of them, in fact, if you don’t restrict yourself to IT. I sometimes wonder how my life would be if I had been born a century ago or so. Well, there would always be science…

Meanwhile, I’m thinking of buying my first laptop. I’ve “had” a couple (including the one I’m typing this in right now), but they were always company-owned ones, and indeed I’ll have to return this one soon. A €600 would be more than enough for “serious” stuff (web browsing, email, blogging, writing, listening to music, watching movies, etc.), but there’s always that little thing called games… so the one I have in mind will cost twice as much. Crazy, I know…

Related posts:

1. Why I’m not a Sysadmin anymore
2. It’s official: I’m on the job market again. :)
3. On job searching: stating in advance what you don’t want?

While many of Firefox 3’s new features are mostly of interest to web developers, “the rest of us” can also find much to like in it. It’s faster, takes up less memory, looks better, seems incredibly to be more stable than the stable version (!), and I love the new URL bar, where you can start typing something and it usually suggests what you want after just a few characters. In Firefox 2 you had to start typing from the beggining of an URL (which is always the hostname), but now you can type any part of URLs (including paths after the hostname), site names, and it also looks through your bookmarks, so it can work even if you’ve just cleared your browsing history.

Related posts:

1. Firefox 3.0 beta 4
2. Firefox 1.5 beta 2
3. Thunderbird 1.5b1

Try it — by using the portable version, it won’t affect your Firefox 2 installation in any way. You may find that soon you’ll be using it all the time, just like me.

Related posts:

1. Firefox 1.5 beta 2
2. Firefox 3.0b5!
3. Opera Mini 4.0 beta 2

Some people who know me believe I hate driving. I don’t. What I hate is being lost while driving, and have to deal with the terribly incoherent (and often non-existent) traffic signs in Portugal (which seem to champion the attitude that, if you don’t know your way around here, you’re a stinkin’ stranger and aren’t welcome anyway — or at least that’s what it feels like), the incompetent, rude, aggressive and impatient Portuguese drivers (some of the worst in Europe, from what I hear) who start honking if you slow down a couple of seconds to consider which way to turn or to read a street name, and the fact that the Portuguese just love to make streets one way for no apparent reason (again, I guess it’s so that the locals can feel superior to those dirty strangers from another part of town — never mind another town).

Due to the above, I get annoyed and irritated easily, and avoid driving unless really necessary. That’s why people easily believe I hate to drive, and I can’t fault them for getting that impression.

Well, if you’re anything like me, you won’t believe the feeling of relief that comes from having a toy like this in your car.

It’s not only the fact that I don’t get stressed out anymore when driving in an unknown place. It goes beyond that. While I used to be extremely conservative and stick to routes I already knew, even if they were not the most efficient ones, nowadays it’s the opposite: I keep surprising myself by being adventurous and impulsive. "Let’s see where this way leads." Or: "Let’s see if I can go this way instead" — even though the GPS is telling me to go another way; I know that it’ll adapt its route and lead me to where I want to go — or, if I’m just exploring, I can use it to get out of there.

Since it was my first GPS, I picked the cheapest TomTom (the brand I already knew about at the time; I’ve since learned about others such as Garmin and Mio), which is so cheap that it’s not even listed on their website. It’s a "One 3rd Edition Light"; the "light" part meaning that it comes with the map for Portugal only. On their site, the lowest model includes all of the Iberian Peninsula (Portugal and Spain), and it’s at least 50 euros more expensive. Mine can be upgraded, though — it’s just a matter of buying the larger map.

As an introductory model, this is great. It only does the basics (navigation): no widescreen, no 3D terrain, no MP3 or video playing, no SD card slot, no real-time traffic (although that feature isn’t available in Portugal yet, even for the more expensive models), and no other bells and whistles. Its 512 MB of RAM may not look like much, but when you consider that the Portugal map is only about 1/10th of that, and that extra voices are only about 1 MB each… I don’t think I’ll ever fill that memory space, even if I upgrade to the Iberian map.

Unless you don’t drive, or only drive between a couple of places, or are a masochist who likes to drive aimlessly when you do want to get somewhere, or, even worse, have to (argh) ask for directions , I don’t think there’s a reason not to have one of these toys in your car. And they’re user friendly enough to give to parents or other non-geeky relatives.

Related posts:

1. It’s official: I’m on the job market again. :)
2. New Portuguese Nintendo DS forum
3. What I don’t want in a job

You can’t make stuff like this up (any emphasis is mine):

A black conservative Christian pastor of an evangelical megachurch has vowed to take over Microsoft by packing it with new shareholders who will vote against the company’s policy of championing gay rights.

He told Microsoft executives at a shareholders’ meeting last week that he would be their “worst nightmare” if they continued to defy him.

Antioch Bible Church attracts around 3,500 worshippers for its services and Mr Hutcherson is a powerful figure in the Christian conservative movement.

And…

An advocate of a “biblical stance” against divorce and homosexuality, Mr Hutcherson, 55, is asking millions of evangelical activists, as well as Orthodox Jewish and other allies, to buy up Microsoft shares and demand a return to traditional values.

Microsoft, he declares, will be just the first company targeted in an escalation of the culture wars between evangelicals and corporate America.

“There are 256 Fortune 500 companies alone pouring millions upon millions of dollars into pushing the homosexual agenda,” he told The Daily Telegraph.

“I consider myself a warrior for Christ. Microsoft don’t scare me. I got God with me.

Not to mention, of course…

“I told them that you need to work with me or we will put a firestorm on you like you have never seen in you life because I am your worst nightmare. I am a black man with a righteous cause with a whole host of powerful white people behind me.”

Mr Hutcherson’s office is decorated with the heads of deer, elk and a buffalo – “when I run into animals, I kill them and bring them home and eat them” – as well as invitations to the White House and signed pictures of himself with President George W. Bush.

It boggles the mind. Any sane mind, that is. I’m sure there are those out there to whom this is perfectly normal…

Related posts:

1. Working at Microsoft
2. Blogging tips #12: Making money from your blog – About AdSense
3. Open source, companies and stupidity

I also used the excuse to update Ubuntu to Gutsy (from Feisty) on this server. One command, one reboot, and all done.

Related posts:

1. More updates: Ubuntu, WordPress
2. Firefox 1.5 Release Candidate 1!
3. Ubuntu vs SUSE

Ahoy there, and all that.

Related posts:

1. Twitter

That, I hope, is about to change.

For my next project (which is about 75% complete) is a site that may well have scalability problems. Which is good, because I’ll learn about them, and how to cope with them.

What’s that project about? It’s a surprise. Suffice to say that, as far as I know, there’s only another one out there, and, weeks ago, it had to shut down its “free” version because it couldn’t deal with its success. On its first days it was quick, then soon it changed into “don’t wait; we’ll email you when the report is ready” mode, and finally the free version went under.

Now, I’m not a full-blown company, I’m “just zis guy, you know”, and I don’t believe I’ll have as much success as that one has / had. But… there is a demand; what happened to it is proof of that. And it’s quite possible that my code won’t scale.

I kind of hope it doesn’t.

Related posts:

1. Open source, companies and stupidity
2. Adventures with my Technorati ranks "toy"
3. My Technorati ranks "toy"

(With thanks to Non Credo Deus)

No related posts.

Thanks in advance.

P.S. – this is related to my new Nintendo forum, in case you’re curious. See, full disclosure.

Related posts:

1. My "new" Portuguese Nintendo forum
2. New Portuguese Nintendo DS forum
3. Portuguese Blogging tips: writing well

A couple of days ago, NintendoPT, the biggest Nintendo-related forum in Portugal, closed down. I was already thinking (see here if you don’t believe me) about expanding my Nintendo DS forum, NDS-PT, either to add the Wii as an “equal partner console”, or to expand it to a full Nintendo forum, but was inclined toward the former because I didn’t want to compete directly with NintendoPT. But since the latter is no more, there is a big gap to fill, and…

… I am pleased to announce the transformation of NDS-PT into NintenForum-PT, possibly the biggest Nintendo forum in Portugal nowadays. More than 500 members, more than 16000 posts, and no longer invaded by Pokémon fans (who scared many of the NDS-PT old timers away in February, but who then moved en masse to a separate Pokémon forum).

Related posts:

1. New Portuguese Nintendo DS forum
2. Portuguese equivalent of PRWeb?
3. “Nintendo’s ugly duckling grows up”

Then again, Opera Mobile hasn’t been updated in a year, and it’s 8.x, while Mini (the version 4 betas) are based on 9.x. I have great hopes for Opera Mobile 9, with its Ajax support, among other new stuff.

Anyway, I installed Mini 4.0 beta 2 yesterday evening, and it “feels” even better than the first beta: quicker, a new small font (should be great for screens larger than mine), custom search engines, and it saves whether you want full screen or not; no need to enable it every time I open the browser.

Plus, it’s free. Go ahead, try it out.

Related posts:

1. Opera Mini? Eh…
2. Free Opera
3. Firefox 3.0 beta 4

I began by changing the most problematic site to Lighty (listening on port 81), and using Apache’s proxy module to redirect it there. After the results were promising, I went and changed each site at a time, dealing with the particular problems of each (I use lots of redirects, and the syntax is a bit different, and, furthermore, Lighty doesn’t support .htaccess files.

WordPress was relatively easy (just one line). MyBB would have been even easier (nothing to do), if not for the fact that I use an SEO mod which uses an .htaccess file for nicer URLs. But everything was easier than I expected.

After each site had been “moved”, it was just a matter of stopping Apache and moving Lighty to port 80.

Memory usage is way down, and so is swap file usage (basically, it’s not being used, and it was, before — a lot). Barring any future problems, I’m quite happy with this set-up, and would advise this change to anyone who’s never tried anything other than Apache on an Unix system. I’ll probably try doing the same thing on my home server, too.

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Ah, the eighties.

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You’ll never look at a blog that hasn’t had any new posts for a while the same way again.

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1. The Portuguese and the Web
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