Using a Plantronics USB headset under X.Org/Linux
Classified in : Homepage, Debian, Miscellaneous, To remember
I just received an USB headset from Plantronics. Since it has a keypad on it, with buttons to mute the microphone and to adjust the volume, it appears as both a sound card and a keyboard. Problem: that keyboard sends a mouse ButtonPress 1 (yes, a mouse button event, do not ask me how that is materially and logically possible) when the microphone is muted, and only sends the corresponding ButtonRelease 1 when it is unmuted. As a result, the pointer behaves as if the mouse button was pressed continuously, rendering the desktop quite unusable.
Working with XML using standard Unix tools
Classified in : Homepage, Debian, Command line, To remember
Like it or not, XML has been used everywhere, even in cases where text-based formats would have been sufficient. Unfortunately, standard tools such as grep, sed or awk are not really adapted to work with XML. Let us take the following example:
<chapter
xmlns="http://docbook.org/ns/docbook" version="5.0">
<title>The Debian distribution</title>
<para>Debian is a free operating system, describing itself as “the
universal operating system”. It is mostly known as a GNU/Linux
distribution, but it also exist in other variants such as GNU/Hurd
and GNU/kFreeBSD…</para>
</chapter>
Google, your IPv6-related email restrictions suck
After years of waiting, Google has finally enabled IPv6 for their email service Gmail. And a few weeks ago, they updated their policy, adding one specific rule: reject email from IP addresses with no reverse name:
% nc -Cv gmail-smtp-in.l.google.com. smtp Connection to gmail-smtp-in.l.google.com. 25 port [tcp/smtp] succeeded! 220 mx.google.com ESMTP bz2si13656083wjc.108 - gsmtp HELO boo.example.com 250 mx.google.com at your service MAIL FROM: <me@example.com> 250 2.1.0 OK bz2si13656083wjc.108 - gsmtp RCPT TO: <you@gmail.com> 250 2.1.5 OK bz2si13656083wjc.108 - gsmtp DATA 354 Go ahead bz2si13656083wjc.108 - gsmtp Subject: Test From: Me <me@example.com> To: You <you@gmail.com> Test. . 550-5.7.1 [2001:db8:8e3f:43c7::12 16] Our system has detected that this 550-5.7.1 message does not meet IPv6 sending guidelines regarding PTR records 550-5.7.1 and authentication. Please review 550-5.7.1 https://support.google.com/mail/?p=ipv6_authentication_error for more 550 5.7.1 information. bz2si13656083wjc.108 - gsmtp
WebPG, a PGP addon for web browsers
Classified in : Homepage, Debian, To remember
One problem with PGP, at least with GnuPG, is that it does not interact with the web. There used to be a Firefox addon for that, called FirePGP, but its development was stopped.
So, good news, a new addon has come to fill the gap it left: WebPG, an addons for Firefox and Chrome. I am using it since a while, and it seems to work fine, being able to encrypt, sign, decrypt and check text blocks. Of course, it cannot handle PGP/MIME unless explicitly adapted to the webmail you use, but there seem to be some experimental support for GMail.
PluXml, a file-based, database-free blog
The blog engine PluXml is now available as a Debian package:
Package: pluxml Version: 5.2-2 Description-en: Light blog engine using XML files PluXml is a light and simple blog and CMS engine that uses simple XML files to store its data and requires no database. It has all the usual features (static pages, comments, categories, tags, medias, RSS feed...) and supports multiple users, customizable themes and plugins. Homepage: http://www.pluxml.org/ Section: web Priority: extra