hello this
is category 5 um community coffee break
i'm bp 9. hello above me is uh is doug
give us a wave doug thank you sir and
then to his left on my screen well he's
left on my screen over there
oh i can't get it right that's peter
give us away
peter thank you sir and then solberg to
my
oh i did it right this time look at that
thank you selby good to see you
uh welcome to community coffee break we
were having an interesting
pre-discussion
um and uh i have some i have some
questions for you so
boo um we talked about mail server way
back when
yeah about running your own mail server
and i never did pick up with you about
that so i wanted to talk to you about
that a little bit
i don't have a lot going on here i've
got some stuff going on at work but
that's
nothing to do with this um it's
consuming some of my time so
uh not much going on this past week um
otherwise i wanted to talk to you and if
anyone else wants to jump in please do
but um
i wanted to talk to you sobu about about
running your
own mail server what are the pros and
cons what did you have to do to get that
working
uh i did it once for a company that i
worked for
two or three jobs ago four or five jobs
ago
a long time ago anyway one of the things
that surprised me was how
the most the logging is how much is
exposed in the logging that's
that was very disconcerting for me so it
shows this
i'm sure that my internet provider can
see all kinds of stuff in my about my
emails
so anyway yes
it for me it started 20 years ago this
year
when i registered my uh
domain name uh subgood.net um
and um i used name xero that they were
called back then
for um as they did as they selling
registered and they had email service as
part of the package
um but um after about a year
i was fed up by the uh
amount of spam i remember this was
already 20 years ago and the spam
amount was nowhere near oh yeah
but but already back then i had a
hundred spam emails a day
um so um i found i
decided that i was going to try to that
i was going to move uh
to self-hosting so i uh configured the
postfix that i still use
it's easy to set up you have to uh
in order to keep the spam amount down uh
you need to configure us
a few real-time black lists that
it's the term yeah assassin or something
or
yeah no uh spammers
that's a local uh spam fighting but um
you are checking a spam house and spam
cop
and a few others on yeah
um and that was basically it um yeah you
needed to have a
uh an account on the system running the
mail server
which i have and then that's all there
is to it
so the the server must be contactable
from outside your network right
so yeah so the incoming port 25
need to be open and these days also um
two other ports let me check that
i don't remember it in my head
so i'm portraying my gateway to find the
uh
oh okay so presumably you set your
uh internet modem to bridging mode to to
allow you to
uh to do the nat um
the network address translation or to
port forward
that that port in from outside is that
true
yeah and there's two ways to do that one
is to have the
modem in a bridge which i do because i
need the
actual uh local system to have uh
the public uh public ip
and that system is doing all the writing
and then
that translation and so on okay um
what um 995 yeah
no um oh is that the ssl
port for mail
i'm not sure i have that open
yeah but there are three ports
um 425 and there's two other parts
um that is uh one is the smtps port and
one is the um
uh authentication port uh which is those
uh
to put our ssl
encrypted so um um
if under the
is used if you have an outside clients
like if you have a mobile phone or a
laptop to put a laptop and you're
in at a friend's house and you need to
check your email then you can use your
uh you can use your
laptop to or your mobile phone to send
an
email via your router which is at home
when you're not that you would need for
that you would use an imac connection
right you would
you wouldn't no you can use a pop you
can use the um
the same type of authentication as if
you're using uh gml or outlook but
you're not using imap oh okay okay
so um um okay
so but did the only thing then in that
case you'd want to leave the mail on the
server so that your main machine can
retrieve that email for you
for you yeah that is a setting
i'm a client yeah okay and if you're
using a pop fee to check your email then
yeah you need to
actively enable leaving the mail on the
server because the deal
is fetch the mail and delete it yes yes
yes
so yeah let's do that
one or two of the steps that one need to
take
in order to get in the mail into the
server
uh your mx records mail exchange records
um dns records need to be pointed to
your local um
host name yeah that makes sense
and if you have most people uh like
most people have a dynamic ip meaning
you know if you restart the modem or the
power is out for
a few minutes and yeah then you have a
new ipa
and then you need to have a dynamic dns
uh record um there is a very way to do
that most of my
most of those pieces are in place for me
um
i own two or three domains
but i'm using the uh the
internet providers mail server for that
so any mail that comes in any email that
comes into those domains
um will be handled there
for me to for me to retrieve um
i understand about the mx changing the
the actual uh mail server addresses
uh i have a i have static ip address
here um a static upgrade a p address
block here so
and my internet is so much more reliable
now i don't know if i ever mentioned
that but
um finally the telecom tech came in
after i complained about the internet
dropping all the time
um especially on an incoming phone call
the problem was that my dsl is coming in
on the same line
as the parts the plain old telephone
connection
and so every time an incoming phone call
my internet would drop
they didn't give you a filter no
actually
this is uh this is a newer dsl that does
not require the filters peter
i had the old dsl i had the old dsl
which is much slower and
the the local telecom here
basically forced the issue and said it's
time to upgrade you don't have any
choice anymore
because the old dsl was working fine
with all the filters in place
the this new dsl it's it's 18 t
u-verse this new dsl has a big old
router
um which which they'd love it if you use
their wi-fi and all that but i don't do
any of that
because i don't want to expose all of my
uh internal network machines to
to att's network because that's what
happened so what i've done
is i've put a wi-fi router in front you
know
in between the the uh
telecom router and my network and all
they see is just the router that's it
yeah
so um i have not yet bridged
the modem that's going to be my next
step i'm too scared to do that
i'm afraid if i do that everything just
goes uh you know we'll just go belly up
and i don't want to i don't want to risk
that
but uh i guess i'll have to try it
sometime just to see if i want it if i
want to do that
um as you are using a dslr connection
yeah you might have to uh
configure the uh your uh router that is
going to be
the the public uh facing uh system
it might have to uh have some sort of uh
authentication mechanism towards the
server that is there um
most dsl connections have some sort of
um
username and password you don't know
about it to get up the line
so the way this you go ahead peter i
don't understand
why don't you ever feel to be uh
basically
audio is between norton 3k and the
uh internet is up about one mag and the
filter to basically removes one from the
other basically
and the reason why peter is because um
what the what the telecom tech did is
actually
install the splitter at the very head of
the line at the very
at the very top of the line that
separates out the
pots line and the dsl line
okay i'm down there yeah okay but even
even
so um even even with that
hardware in place uh the
as long as my dsl was on the same line
as my
uh as my plain old telephone line it
would uh it would keep dropping
the connection so what the telecom tech
did is separated them out because i have
i have four pair of uh of um
of lines running to my house and only
one was in use that had the dsl and the
pots on it right
so what he did is he separated out the
dsl
into a separate pair left the pots on
one line
i got my dsl on a different pair and now
now it's been soldered as a rock touch
wood you watch you've come apart now you
watch
[Laughter]
as far as bridging the modems concerned
um
i don't know how it is with with your um
internet modem but with mine it doesn't
look like
uh bridging is completely uh um
100 it doesn't look like it does it
how do i want to put this there's still
some pieces
active in the modem even after i bridge
it
and i think those pieces provide the
authentication
mechanism that you're talking about i
think they have to be there or otherwise
the whole thing just comes apart
so um so bridging the modem
is not a com is not complete like i've
seen uh
you know robbie talks about uh um
bridging the modem at the at the studio
and it sounds like it's a complete
bridge everything it's a fire hose
everything that comes in
hits your router right now whether he
had to set up any kind of authentication
i don't know
but that is not true of this modem
this modem is not a complete bridge some
of the
some of the traffic like the as you said
the authentication some of that
i think is retained by the modem and
keeps going like that that's
that's one of the things i've got to try
i want to do that sometime when i
when i can tolerate i don't want to do
it just before starting coffee break
because i want the thing to work so
tell me that the address
yeah in my case um in my case i had the
fiber company to bridge some of them
before i moved in um and
in other cases there is a
i think i can i could have done that
after i moved in but
um in most modems uh you also can log
into the other
configuration configuration interface
and there is a checkbox
but if the checkbox is not there that
only means that
the user account level that you have on
your modem
does not authorize you to uh makes uh
certain changes and they're bridging it
might be one of those i have logged into
the modem
and that checkbox is there um so it is
possible for me to bridge it so i have
no problem with that
so doug what sort of trouble have you
been up to you've been awfully quiet up
there
well i replaced that fan in my laptop
and
laptop that that laptop is what i'm on
zoom with right now did you have any
problem with the operation
not really i wound up having to tear the
laptop apart
almost entirely i think the only
component i didn't remove was the ram
sticks
um yeah it was it was quite a job took
about an hour
like that character partnership yeah
yeah but but
uh how similar was it to robbie's
experience on his um
on his show i think his whole process
took about half as long as mine did
well yeah he's probably done it a few
times too
so yeah yeah and it was obvious that the
i did a youtube video to um
to know how to do this because i could
find one that was specific to my laptop
that's nice if you if i tried using
robbie's video it's not specific to my
laptop
there may be things i wouldn't know
about
yes now were you able to just replace
the fan or did you have to replace the
entire cooling mechanism that leads up
to the cpu
just the fan the cooling mechanism and
the heatsink on the bridge were separate
from the fan
oh nice that should have made it easier
for you i would think
yeah yeah it was a whole lot easier yeah
the heatsink on the cpu was
um actually a little piece of copper
that wound around back to the fan okay
okay i remember 20 years ago i was
visiting some friends in
my home
city and which is uh next to here
uh they um had an old radio
um that didn't work and i
asked if i could uh uh open it and see
and
to see if i could fix it yeah sure so
they gave me some screwdrivers and i
open it
and then open the back and then there
was the uh circuit board
and i screwed up a screw off all the
screws i found and that i could
could see it but it's one screw that i
didn't find
apparently because it still was attached
to something
and as i couldn't find it then i gave up
and i screwed everything back
and already worked i'm not surprised
i've had i've done that before
i have done that with with electronic
components
where i've literally just taken it apart
put it all back together
and the thing just starts working yeah
and i didn't and i didn't disconnect a
single plug
right all i did was unscrew the back and
then four screws and there was a
fifth screw inside that i didn't see it
that could be no but you but you
unscrewed also
the screws around the main board right
around the pcb right
now yeah yeah well that's probably what
fixed it because
it would have been tarnish or something
on the grounding posts
by by unscrewing them screwing them back
on again you cleaned off that tarnish
made a good grounding connection and
probably started working at that
now it'll probably crack out again at
some point because it
oh good good job well done
so if we're doing nothing out of us on
an excellent job
this is this is the uh famous pine phone
it's running
now um the same distro arch linux that
i've had before
seems to be working great um would i use
it as a daily driver i'm not sure yet
because i've i've been doing some
research on this
and the usb c connector i don't know if
that's going to come up at all on but
i'm not going to yeah there it is you
can see the edge of it yeah you could
just see the edge of it
the usbc connector when i tried to
connect
a usbc to ethernet
dongle to it it would not start it would
not open up
so i'm not sure if i'm going to have any
good success
with this and the dongle that i've still
got coming
and still on its way so i started
researching on pine64 and it turns out
that this unit has a main board
on it that has components that do not
exactly
implement the usbc
protocol even at the hardware level
there are some sync transistors on there
or something that are causing
uh causing some pins to not have the
correct status
so i may be replacing the main board on
this
if i can find one at pine64 they're all
out of uh they're all out of stock
um one of the one of the guys there one
of them actually the person who
um who introduced us to the pine book uh
to the pine book and the prime time and
all that
and the pine phone uh versus or
something is his name or eric or
something is like something like that
he put up a video showing you how to
remove
those two capacitors without soldering
or anything or those two
transistors without soldering and it got
his usb
dongle working so i may try that i'm a
little nervous about doing that but i
may try that
so we'll see what happens i'm going to
try the usb dongle first and see what
happens
peter what have you been up to sir i'm
not much uh
i'm i'm waiting for still waiting up
from uh
ebay and amazon well particularly about
the great problem with it ebay
particularly
i keep all the key ordering stuff
because of the problem i've read because
of the border problem
um you can't get up into this country
so i've discovered a way of doing it by
my younger brother
spain thank you too much now because you
know
there might be some free letter agencies
who are listening in
so well anyway
so um when we do that we can get
together here to get things sorted out
again the boxes already out the other
one i built so so we're waiting for
pcb and all sorts of other stuff i
didn't buy
i did buy a a gps uh
messenger uh i'm trying to tell uh
the other day but basically it is a
pre-running oscillator
that uh runs at 10 megs and if i got
looped
onto uh ugps due to
the uh atomic clocking gps thing to lock
on the frequency
what does that do for you peter it could
be a frequency standard with one bar
in 10 to the seven ten by no
right but are you using that as a time
base for your uh for the other machines
in your network
so you're picking up the time the actual
time of day from the gps satellites then
right
yeah and you use it on the clock though
there's a free running oscillator inside
the box
and that runs at uh roughly 10 megs and
then the gps
in satellite there's a atomic clock in
there a
rubidium probably and uh
and then that um locks on to the
base lock loops the oscillator back onto
their max all the time
well i get i get how you're looking for
a stable 10 megahertz signal
but i'm still not sure about the time um
the time from the gps how are you
picking that up
like that
oh i get i get that but what are you
reading off the gps
once you've once you're hearing a gps
signal what are you doing on that with
that signal
well when the extend gps signal they
send
uh they they send their the
locations and the test calls in it and
they also then a clock frequency which
is
built inside the jeep themselves like
which is right
which is very accurate and you'll turn
that to lock onto the oscillator
used to be bidding for what purpose
though for what purpose though
what are you using that time signal for
at
the very standard for a for measuring
frequency and all sorts of other things
okay okay good better than the quest
will be a lot better
a lot of computer rabidian is a
a um element where if if you
give it a a one off with two gigahertz
the electrons come off
or the other way around if you if you
put it in the tube and you eat it
electrons come off and every time
electron comes off you create
um you create a two gigahertz signal
from right because because of the energy
reserved all the time you know you can't
make or break then you've got to go
somewhere that goes up as rf
and then they use that to frequency to
divide down
to lock on to 10x okay so it sounds like
you're more interested in a stable 10
megahertz frequency than you are
any data that you might be able to pull
off the satellites right
i i i get radio i got very poor thing to
wear that's what i was laughing
the other day okay i get i'll sometimes
it works all right
then if i pull the power off i lose the
signal and
i have to wait a long time so it comes
back again interesting
okay this thing this thing is supposed
to have a gps chip inside it but
um but it doesn't seem to at least the
software doesn't seem to be picking it
up
when you dig down into the command line
what will happen is
yeah show us what's on the display what
what does the display show it's very
yellow to me right now
can you put it a bit closer to your um
to your screen or to your camera
let's see here
gps no fix it says okay
wow okay i couldn't read that
yeah so it says it says gps no fix but
if you get a fix on the gps you will be
able to at least get utc
right you'll be able to get the time
yeah yeah but sometimes it uh
it it it's there for a while and i need
to die so
go uh but i mean funny because
once you know i've got several gps
receivers and once they get a lock
they tend to stay on as long as as long
as the radio is running
is that a kit that you put together or
what did you
okay yeah which is quite interesting
um that's a bit of physics there but
yeah yeah
yeah yeah they're quite quite
interesting they're very nice
so does that thing that you showed us
does that also act as a time source as
well as
a yeah yeah you put it on the network
then or no
i put it on your network it's got an
r232
but there's a little problem it's
written
it's written in bloody chinese
oh i bet that was fun i was going to
suggest that but i thought
oh boy you never know what might come
out of that i remember
everything yeah so i thought i meant to
do that for me they didn't do that
like that bad man and i ganged but i i
worked out the balls right and i worked
out the
number of bits and i couldn't work out
actually
well let's let's uh we've got to get
ready to close it down so i want to give
the other folks a chance to uh
to make closing comments if they want so
sobu go ahead sir
yeah i remember speaking of chinese
equipment uh
leo laporte on the twitter network uh
five
or six years ago commented that um
he had a phone and uh john c dwarf
was on the show uh that sunday and he uh
played with the phone and when leo got
the phone back
yeah the language was uh chinese and
then
yeah john cena always
[Laughter]
how about you doug what uh let's have
some closing comments before i close the
meeting down
well i'm gonna go see my son and uh
daughter-in-law and my granddaughters my
youngest granddaughter is
uh just starting to crawl so that should
be fun
nice that's excellent that's excellent
i'm so so happy to hear that i've been
keeping up with my sister in australia
too they've been having some fun
and stunning games over there as well so
and soon the child will learn its
first word mine yes
yes that long
all right boys and girls i think it's
time to finish up thank you again for a
great uh
for a great coffee break thoroughly
enjoyed it and
i'll i'll see you later have a good uh
have a good week and we'll see you next
week
goodbye everybody see you next week
[Music]
oh