Sendmail 8.14.4 Documentation Update

Last week Sendmail 8.14.4 was released. I just updated the documents on the the home page of technoids.org.

Punycode and Internationalized Domain Names

I just read that Egypt has created the first Arabic domain name. That means that procrastinating programmers need to learn how to deal with such domain names. We can try (for starters) RFC 3492 - Punycode: A Bootstring encoding of Unicode for Internationalized Domain Names in Applications.

I added a link at the top of the Technoids.org's I18n page. Enjoy ...

Git

During the past week I added two links about Git (the version control system developed by Linus Torvalds to store the Linux source code):

• Kernel Hackers' Guide to git
• Git Server Setup Using Gitosis for Centos 5.2

I hope they get you started ...

Valgrind

Last night I used Valgrind for the first time to look for memory leaks. (I didn't find any, fortunately.) The tool was easy to install ("sudo yum install valgrind.x86_64" on my CentOS box) and even easier to start ("valgrind --leak-check=yes ./mysqld"). I had been modifying mysqld and wanted to convince myself that there are no memory leaks.

I was impressed that it was able to "survive" the daemonization and thread spawning that occurs at startup.

This is from their website:

The Valgrind distribution currently includes six production-quality tools: a memory error detector, two thread error detectors, a cache and branch-prediction profiler, a call-graph generating cache profiler, and a heap profiler. It also includes two experimental tools: a heap/stack/global array overrun detector, and a SimPoint basic block vector generator. It runs on the following platforms: X86/Linux, AMD64/Linux, PPC32/Linux, PPC64/Linux, and X86/Darwin (Mac OS X).

I see on LinkedIn that there is interest in porting Valgrind to FreeBSD as well.

Valgrind is available under the GNU General Public License, version 2.

Thanks, Valgrind!!

Google Maps API

I've started pursuing the Google Maps API lately, so I added a few links to the etc. page.

Enjoy!

More DNSBL Corrections: Removal of *.dsbl.org

I just received a note from loyal follower TC regarding DNSBL: Configuring Sendmail for DNS-Based Blacklisting, reminding me of the following:

DSBL is a dead RBL as of May 2008. Its administrators continued to run their authoritative nameservers for several months after their decommissioning announcement; as of March 9, 2009, even those servers are offline. At this point, using any *.dsbl.org lookups in an RBL check results in DNS failures and can even prevent an SMTP server from starting a conversation. Therefore it is highly recommended that mailserver administrators remove *.dsbl.org from their configurations.

Thank you very much! I am trying to be more diligent in maintaining the documents on Technoids.org. (I also try to be responsive in correcting errors, typos, etc.)

While I was editing the page, I also updated references to the spamhaus.org blacklists, changing them all to zen.spamhaus.org, which is the one I currently use (and probably a good all-around DNS blacklist).

Two other items (as long as I'm typing):

1. I removed the Wiki tab from Technoids.org. (Yes, wiki's are fun, but I didn't have enough time to maintain it.)
2. I have just created a Technoids Twitter account at http://twitter.com/Technoids. I'll probably start tweeting about changes I make to Technoids.org.
   

Correction to DNS Blacklisting Document

I just received an email from a helpful web surfer (GJA) who informed me of a typo in the document DNSBL: Configuring Sendmail for DNS-Based Blacklisting on this site. Thank you very much!!

I just fixed the document. It's good to know that someone actually reads the documents from time to time! Feel free to send comments/corrections/suggestions to other documents at Technoids.org.