Vasile Cristescu`s Unix Blog

My favorite browser is Konqueror but I always had problems with flash. Durring the last couple of years I used this tutorial in order to make flash work together with Konqueror.

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Frank Pohlmann explains (very nice if you ask me) the reasons for choosing FreeBSD over other operating systems here. This doesn’t mean you should use FreeBSD if another operating systems soots your needs better.

Until recently I’ve been using Kmail as mail client together with SpamAssassin as a spam fight solution, but the problem was that spamassassin freeze KMail while it scans the messages. After a little bit of research I’ve decided to switch to bogofilter (which plays very nice with KMail and it doesn’t freeze it). Installing bogofilter was as easy as :

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At work I have a Desktop PC : 4GB Ram , quad core , etc (which is much more powerful than my laptop) , with FreeBSD. On my laptop I also have FreeBSD but sometimes I need to access remotely my desktop PC. Until now ssh -X was a solution but not an elegant one, so I’ve decided to use a VNC solution. After a little research on google I found TightVNC and decided to give it a try…

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After google-ing a little bit for a system monitor solution I have decided to go with conky. The installation, on my FreeBSD 6.3 desktop, was as simple as :

cd /usr/ports/sysutils/conky/ && make install clean

After the port was installed all I needed to to was to edit .conkyrc as following :

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I have read today on a mailing list a very interesting thread. It seems like there is a project Xen hosting that has the goal to provide cheap, reliable, and community managed Xen hosting.  It really seems like a nice project especially because some communities stared using it ( http://www.chris-lamb.co.uk/2007/10/03/yet-another-community-xen-server ) but personally I still prefer good old BSD jails.

In my opinion Xen is a relatively young platform, it isn’t tested enough by a lot o people comparing to the jails that over the years have proven their advantages.Anyway I hope one day this will become a reliable solution because it could be the beginning of something…

Not to long ago I came across a problem that started to annoy me : I had to exchange file with my colleagues ( for them to exchange between the they ware using Y!Messenger file transfer utility , but when they needed to send me a file thy couldn’t because gaim/centericq file transfer in not compatible with Y!Mess’es file transfer ) and I needed to find fast a solution. So i decided to setup a file sharing server. The steps were very simple :

1. Installed samba

# cd /usr/ports/net/samba3

# make install clean

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Working as a remote admin I’ve often met situations
where the datacenter wasn’t able to provide me with
the OS I wanted. Having to chose between working with an OS
that didn’t fits my needs, changing the datacenter and installing
the OS I wanted I often chose the later.

The following steps require strong knowledge of your OS of choice
it is not intended to be a step by step tutorial.

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