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Use POSTFOX with GMAIL and Mageia Linux

  In an earlier blog post, I described how to use mail with Mageia Linux to send system messages to your Google Mail account . At the time, sendmail was the default MTA (mail transfer agent) of choice and was overkill for what was needed for a simple messaging of security status ( from msec ). It still works. By Mageia 8, postfix became the default  MTA, so it seems it would be easier to configure postfix to use the Google Mail smtp relay server. Postfix and all necessary dependencies are installed by Mageia by default. Mageia builds their RPM of postfix with specific options, which are: Smtpd multiline greeting: --%{with_TXT multiline}  Virtual Delivery Agent: --%{with_TXT VDA}  Munge bare CR: --%{with_TXT barecr}  TLS support: --%{with_TXT tls}  IPV6 support: --%{with_TXT ipv6}  CDB support: --%{with_TXT cdb}  Chroot by default: --%{with_TXT chroot} If you need other options for some other purpose, you can rebuild the source RPM (which is beyond the scope of this post). It is necess
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Win4Lin appwrapper for Windows 9x/2000/XP on the Linux OS

  Win4Lin is a discontinued non-free application for Linux which allowed users to run a copy of Windows 9x, Windows 2000 or Windows XP applications on their Linux desktop. It is based on MERGE, developed circa 1985 by  Locus Computing Corporation to run DOS applications on UNIX operating systems. Locus eventually gained licensing access to the MS Windows source code. A significant benefit for MERGE is that is runs on the native UNIX filesystem, considered more stable and faster than the Microsoft FAT and VFAT filesystems. The Merge technology was owned by several companies (including IBM and SCO), but was finally discontinued in 2010, likely due to improvements in VMWare and VirtualBox as well as incompatibilities with subsequent version of MS Windows. While MERGE/Win4lin ran the complete MS Windows 9x/2000/XP OS, many users in actuality only used it for one application, so  giving users access to the full Windows OS could be problematic. To this end, appwrapper.exe  was developed, a
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VritualBox to the Rescue for Dual-Booting Linux and MS Windows

 VirtualBox came in handy in the past when a larger hard drive was added to a Series2 TiVo . Once again, it came in handy when installing Windows 10 on a drive already installed in a computer tower alongside Mageia9 and a few additional drives. There used to be a Win7 installation on /dev/sdb , but it crashed. MS Windows is notoriously known for assuming it is the only OS belonging on a machine and not playing well with  others. When Win7 was originally installed on this machine, it was installed on the only drive in the machine, then moved to /dev/sdb and Linux installed on /dev/sda . Of course, all the other drives could have been disconnected and Windows10 installed, but what's the fun in that? The above referenced TiVo procedure provided the inspiration. In modern versions of VirtualBox, it is possible to install the guest OS to a physical drive. The physical drive in this case is /dev/sdb , so the process is as follows: $ cd ~/VirtualBox\ VMs Create the .vmdk file that refer
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Adding Older Versions of Magia to Your Repos

 The Mageia Wiki for URPMI contains useful information in the section titled  Copying CD or a DVD to a home directory and using the copy in urpmi . Before starting, download the appropriate Magia DVD. Since we are not using the kernel or any system files from these earlier distros, it's not necessary to also obtain all the updates. Here are the download links for Mageia7 x86_64 / i586 and Mageia8 x86_x64 / i586 . Method #1 - Mageia Wiki Method First, make directories for each release and each architecture you will be using directory somewhere convenient. Mageia suggests placing them under /home/uid/repo/ . Then, copy the   x86_64/media and/or i586/media directories from the DVD there. For each directory, you will need to create the hdlist that urpmi requires, change to that directory and run: $ sudo genhdlist2 Then add the media you just installed with: $ sudo urpmi.addmedia --distrib NameOfMedia file://home/uid/repo Now, it's as simple as using urpmi to install the desired
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Add Extra Repos for Mageia

  It is possible to add non-Mageia repos to the URPMI system for Mageia. I add the BDK repos as well as the Google-Chrome repo as follows: $ sudo urpmi-addmedia BDK-Free-x86_64 http://ftp.blogdrake.net/mageia/mageia9/free/x86_64 $ sudo urpmi-addmedia BDK-Free-noarch http://ftp.blogdrake.net/mageia/mageia9/free/noarch $ sudo urpmi-addmedia BDK-NonFree-x86_64 http://ftp.blogdrake.net/mageia/mageia9/non-free/x86_64 $ sudo  urpmi.addmedia --update google-chrome http://dl.google.com/linux/chrome/rpm/stable/$(uname -m | sed -e "s/i.86/i386/") Add Google Signing Key $ sudo rpm --import https://dl-ssl.google.com/linux/linux_signing_key.pub RESOURCES Mageia Forum - Add Google Apps Mageia Linux Onlive Repos $ sudo urpmi.addmedia --distrib https://repository.mageialinux-online.org/8/x86_64 Mageia Greek Community https://mageia-gr.org/rpm/
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DOSBox-X for Mageia Linux

DOSBox-X is a DOS emulator that provides the most flexibility possible for  DOS emulator as it can not only run the DOS games that DOSBox can run, but the Win3.1, Win9X and WinME operating systems.  DOSBox-X is available for Mageia8 in a flatpak repository , something new to Mageia, so we'll cover the installation of DOSBox-X via this method, then move on to configuring a working DOSBox-X installation. 1. Install flatpak using urpmi. $ sudo urpmi flatpak On the test system, this installed about 26MB of additional applications. Install the flatpak repositories. $ sudo flatpak remote-add --if-not-exists flathub https://flathub.org/repo/flathub.flatpakrepo Locate the DOSBox-X file in the repo using the search function. $ flatpak search dosbox-x Which returns, in part, Name             Application ID                         Version DOSBox-X       com.dosbox_x.DOSBox-X         0.83.19 To install this package for all users (it can also be installed for a single user), $ sudo flatpak ins
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Web Proxy for Mageia Linux - Privoxy

From the homepage , "Privoxy is a non-caching web proxy with advanced filtering capabilities for enhancing privacy, modifying web page data and HTTP headers, controlling access, and removing ads and other obnoxious Internet junk. Privoxy has a flexible configuration and can be customized to suit individual needs and tastes."  The typical use is to  block ads. While ad blocking extensions are available for modern browsers, ad blocking can be useful for devices that don't have ad-blocking software available. Privoxy can also manage cookies. I have a standalone Mageia8 installation that I use for various things and thought that I would install Privoxy on it to see what I could do with that. Using ssh to access the machine and urpmi to install privoxy, $ ssh 192.168 .1.2XX Once logged in, $ sudo urpmi privoxy Privoxy needs no special configuration out of the box, so to enable the service, $ sudo systemctl enable privoxy.service and to start privoxy, $ sudo systemctl start pri
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