swaks – mail server testing tool

July 8th, 2009

If you dont like using telnet to test a remote or local smtp server , swaks is a neat little tool to do the job for you.
its also available ( suprise suprise … ) in the freebsd ports : /usr/ports/mail/swaks.

found it first here


control ip access to apache via .htaccess

July 6th, 2009

1. Allow only specific ip address :

order allow,deny
deny from all
allow from 192.168.1.1
allow from 192.168.1.2

2. Block specific ip address :

order deny,allow
allow from all
deny from 192.168.1.1
deny from 192.168.1.2

you can substitute ip for :

subnet -> deny from 192.168.1.0/24
subnet wild cards -> deny from 192.168.*.*
domain -> deny from domain\.com

you can also combine ip’s on one line:

deny from 192.168.1.1 192.168.2.1


Use tortoise svn over not standard ssh port

May 5th, 2009

Go to : TortoiseSVN – Settings – Network
Set the SSH client to

%PRGRAMFILES%\TortoiseSVN\bin\TortoisePlink.exe -P 2222


Leopard keeps warning : is an application which was downloaded from the internet. Are you sure you want to open it?

April 27th, 2009

Full thread I found is here , below is the short version on how to remove the extended attributes and possible ACL’s. Leopard adds an ACL called com.apple.quarantine to your download apps :

1. Open the Terminal
2. List the attributes of the app you are having issue with ( in this example , skype )

mac: moti$ xattr -l /Applications/Skype.app
com.apple.quarantine: 0000;49d521d9;Firefox;|org.mozilla.firefox

Remove the “com.apple.quatantine” attribute if it is defined

sudo xattr -d com.apple.quarantine /Applications/Skype.app

3. Check the attributes again

mac: moti$ xattr -l /Applications/Skype.app
mac: moti$

com.apple.quarantine should not be listed.


FreeBSD – reload nginx configuration

April 23rd, 2009

test the config !!!

sudo nginx -t

output :

2009/04/23 09:11:46 [info] 46329#0: the configuration file /usr/local/etc/nginx/nginx.conf syntax is ok
2009/04/23 09:11:46 [info] 46329#0: the configuration file /usr/local/etc/nginx/nginx.conf was tested successfully

then reload :

sudo kill -HUP `cat /var/run/nginx.pid`