The Boston Diaries

The ongoing saga of a programmer who doesn't live in Boston, nor does he even like Boston, but yet named his weblog/journal “The Boston Diaries.”

Go figure.

Tuesday, June 06, 2000

A Land Line is still superior to that wireless crap

While the phone system doesn't suck, most phones do.

My phone is an older phone, probably made during the mid 80s (around the time of the AT&T breakup—it has “BELL SYSTEM PROPERTY” stamped on the bottom) and the thing is rock solid. I've dropped the phone from desk hight plenty of times and it still looks new (if a bit yellowed).

Yet I'm talking on the phone with someone using a piece of crap and it sounds like it. Must be one of those cordless phones be cause the voice quality of the person I'm talking to is staticy and muddled and half way through the conversation the connection is lost.

And people put up with this.

He still hasn't called back, probably not aware that I've been disconnected. I can imagine him, shouting over the static, “Hello? Hello? Are you still there?”

“If you can't force it, source it!”

It seems that that latest version of sendmail doesn't like executing programs from /etc/aliases except if it's majordomo.

I'm helping my roommate Rob install some mailing list software. I use something other than majordomo which works for me and is rather simple to configure and use.

Only he's running Sendmail 8.9.3 and when we put the appropriate magic in /etc/aliases I keep getting back:


sh: mailserv not available for sendmail programs
554 "|/home/mailserv/bin/mailserv nnnnnnn-l request"... Service unavailable

Which is new to me.

So I'm downloading the source code to Sendmail to see why it's failing.

Obligatory Picture

[The future's so bright, I gotta wear shades]

Obligatory Contact Info

Obligatory Feeds

Obligatory Links

Obligatory Miscellaneous

You have my permission to link freely to any entry here. Go ahead, I won't bite. I promise.

The dates are the permanent links to that day's entries (or entry, if there is only one entry). The titles are the permanent links to that entry only. The format for the links are simple: Start with the base link for this site: https://boston.conman.org/, then add the date you are interested in, say 2000/08/01, so that would make the final URL:

https://boston.conman.org/2000/08/01

You can also specify the entire month by leaving off the day portion. You can even select an arbitrary portion of time.

You may also note subtle shading of the links and that's intentional: the “closer” the link is (relative to the page) the “brighter” it appears. It's an experiment in using color shading to denote the distance a link is from here. If you don't notice it, don't worry; it's not all that important.

It is assumed that every brand name, slogan, corporate name, symbol, design element, et cetera mentioned in these pages is a protected and/or trademarked entity, the sole property of its owner(s), and acknowledgement of this status is implied.

Copyright © 1999-2024 by Sean Conner. All Rights Reserved.