Monthly Archives: April 2006

SMTP Good; MAPI Bad

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For years, I’ve endorsed the idea that using a simple low-level protocol was far easier to troubleshoot and maintain than the high-level, proprietary and hidden-from-view COM interfaces that were all the rage in the Windows world, hence, “SMTP Good, MAPI Bad.”

Laura and I support a vertical-niche application in use around the country. Each of the installations runs Visual FoxPro 7 as a LAN-based application and sends faxes via email using MaxEmail, rather than supporting their own in-house faxing system. On a regular basis, one of our clients will change email providers, so the settings for email are stored in a separate file for easy update.

“Easy,” though, is a relative term. More email providers are requiring authentication before allowing outgoing emails, a reasonable precaution against spam. However, each installation of SMTP AUTH we have run up against has a slightly different variation on how authentication is done, and invariably, email stops until we analyze, debug and modify our code to support the new variation.

I’ve used the free BLAT command-line tool with it’s -debug switch to allow me to witness the actual conversation that takes place between email client and server to determine the details of where the conversation is breaking down and how to fix it. Open Source rocks! BLAT rocks!

In this last case, the new email provider’s SMTP AUTH required a user name (“bob”) and not an email address (“bob@example.com”) as the user name. The previous SMTP AUTH interfaces were comfortable with the same name for email address and user name. Laura tweaked the code and we got the client back up and running.

UPDATE: Thanks to Alex Feldstein for the pointer. In fact, we too are using Rick Strahl’s wwIPStuff, now renamed West Wind Client Tools as the machanism within the application to send SMTP mails. We’ve just used the standalone BLAT for its great low-level debugging facilities and ease of use from the commandline to figure out what to tell wwIPStuff to do.

New Hampshire Python SIG tomorrow night

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On the Python announcement list, Bill Sconce posts: “The next meeting of the Greater New Hampshire Python & Milk/ Cookies SIG will be tomorrow night — Thursday, April 27th, at the Amoskeag Business Incubator, 7:00 P.M. (the usual place, the usual time).”

“Also, we have a special program. Paul Koning, who had never used Python until recently, will tell us about his first, “getting to know Python” programming experience. Something just a little bit challenging: rewriting PDP-11 TECO.”

“It should be an interesting evening, especially to hear about what went well (or not) in learning a new language in such an environment. Can you imagine writing TECO as your exercise to learn C++? (And of course, now we have TECO for Linux. And for the Mac. And for everything else wherever Python runs.)”

“We’ll also have our usual Q&A, and Python trivia. Because several people asked us about Python at LinuxWorld last week we’ll include some material for newbies. (Please be thinking about that – should we have a newbies segment EVERY meeting?)”

WHO: New Hampshire Python Special Interest Group

WHERE: Amoskeag Business Incubator, 33 South Commercial Street, Manchester, NH
Travel directions

WHEN: The fourth Thursday of each month at 7 PM, holidays allowing

WHAT: Paul Koning, TECO in Python, General Python Q&A

Hope to see you there!

Microsoft ships v. 2.0 of MS06-015 patch

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In a fairly unusual move, Microsoft has re-released MS06-015, Vulnerability in Windows Explorer Could Allow Remote Code Execution (908531). Microsoft sent out an email to let folks know about that. Amazingly, while explaining why they were re-issuing the patch, they never mention what the patch is, nor specifically what went wrong, nor who should apply the new patch:

This bulletin has been re-released to
advise customers that revised versions of the security update
are available for all products listed in the “Affected Software”
section. Customers who have already applied the MS06-015 update
who are not experiencing the problem need take no action.

Here’s the quick scoop: Windows Explorer (the desktop, not the browser) has fundamentally changed the way it launches programs, and some programs that hooked into that behavior, including Hewlett-Packard’s “Share-to-Web”, older NVIDIA graphics drivers, Kerio firewall, and others, would fail to operate properly, lock up, or freeze after files are saved, especially to “My Documents” or other special folders. This patch allegedly fixes the problem.

Get Patching! Good Luck!

End to End

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I spent Thursday evening in Nashua, New Hampshire listening to a presentation at the Merrimack Valley Linux User Group (MerriLUG) by Eric Eldred, a Director at Creative Commons and plaintif in the Eldred vs. Ashcroft decision rendered by the Supreme Court. Eric has a very low-key, well thought-out and persuasive presentation on the use of the Creative Commons license (the license used for this blog as well as millions of others). Great presentation! Based on discussions at that meeting, I’ll likely be dropping the “-nc” portion of the license. Paraphrasing what Eric said, “if you can figure out a way to make a million dollars off what I wrote, go to it!”

Friday morning involved a long scenic drive north through Franconia Notch to meet with hostmaster Jason Kern of KernBuilt and confer with a potential new client on an interesting social software application. Jason and I lunched at Miller’s Cafe and Bakery in Littleton, NH.

Accompanying me north via the wonders of podcasts was Doc Searls interviewing Jonathan Schwartz, President and COO of Sun MicroSystems, at the Syndicate 2005 conference. Jonathan had a slew of interesting insights and statistics. Sun has apparently woken from their slumbers of the late nineties, completely revised their product line, “Open Sourced” their OS (devil’s in the details, I’ll need to dig into this one a bit – what license, what terms, etc.) and are offering some pretty interesting machines – very low power, very high performance. Two great tidbits: who’s the number one camera manufacturer? What’s Google’s number two expense (People’s number one)? Very entertaining; made the trip go swiftly.