postfix can't connect to MySQL

I got this error in syslog when postfix was trying to connect to MySQL:

Apr 13 17:34:53 webmail postfix/smtpd[6726]: warning: connect to mysql server localhost: Can't connect to local MySQL server through socket '/var/lib/mysql/mysql.sock' (2)
Apr 13 17:34:53 webmail postfix/smtpd[6726]: NOQUEUE: reject: RCPT from rv-out-0506.google.com[209.85.198.233]: 451 4.3.0 : Temporary lookup failure; from= to= proto=ESMTP helo=

I got a reference to MySQL database in my main.cf which triggered the error:

local_recipient_maps = mysql:/etc/postfix/sql-recipients.cf

From the error it was obvious postfix couldn't connect to MySQL. Email from outside wouldn't be received properly by dbmail. I checked MySQL service and it was running and I could log into MySQL manually. I found a solution after googling a bit. The cause was in file /etc/postfix/master.cf. I got smtp service of postfix to run chroot'ed (see y below).

#service type private unpriv chroot wakeup maxproc command + args
smtp inet n - y - - smtpd

So I changed the line to:

#service type private unpriv chroot wakeup maxproc command + args
smtp inet n - n - - smtpd


Voila!. It worked. See log below:

Apr 13 18:03:02 webmail postfix/smtpd[7039]: connect from rv-out-0506.google.com[209.85.198.239]
Apr 13 18:03:03 webmail sqlgrey: grey: domain awl match: updating 209.85.198(209.85.198.239), gmail.com
Apr 13 18:03:03 webmail postfix/smtpd[7039]: B3246A3075: client=rv-out-0506.google.com[209.85.198.239]
Apr 13 18:03:04 webmail postfix/cleanup[7042]: B3246A3075: message-id=<23c8d5620904130314j7f4c619di57c7d8c0d217ed62@mail.gmail.com>
Apr 13 18:03:04 webmail postfix/qmgr[7033]: B3246A3075: from=, size=2277, nrcpt=1 (queue active)
Apr 13 18:03:05 webmail postfix/smtpd[7046]: connect from webmail.myfakedomain.net[127.0.0.1]
Apr 13 18:03:05 webmail postfix/smtpd[7046]: 26BBFA3076: client=rv-out-0506.google.com[209.85.198.239]
Apr 13 18:03:05 webmail postfix/cleanup[7042]: 26BBFA3076: message-id=<23c8d5620904130314j7f4c619di57c7d8c0d217ed62@mail.gmail.com>
Apr 13 18:03:05 webmail postfix/qmgr[7033]: 26BBFA3076: from=, size=2751, nrcpt=1 (queue active)
Apr 13 18:03:05 webmail postfix/smtpd[7046]: disconnect from webmail.myfakedomain.net[127.0.0.1]
Apr 13 18:03:05 webmail dbmail/lmtpd[20480]: Message:[serverchild] serverchild.c,PerformChildTask(+349): incoming connection from [127.0.0.1] by pid [20480]
Apr 13 18:03:05 webmail postfix/lmtp[7043]: B3246A3075: to=, relay=127.0.0.1[127.0.0.1]:10025, delay=2, delays=0.96/0.01/0/1, dsn=2.0.0, status=sent (250 2.0.0 Ok, id=01032-05, from MTA([127.0.0.1]:10026): 250 2.0.0 Ok: queued as 26BBFA3076)
Apr 13 18:03:05 webmail postfix/qmgr[7033]: B3246A3075: removed

CUPS: Unable to open device and permission denied

I use CUPS for my printer system and I got this error:

Unable to open device "hal:///org/freedesktop/Hal/devices/usb_device_3f0_217_00SGKGB09615_if0_printer_noserial": Permission denied

How to solve this problem? The settings of the printer was correct and was just a permission problem. Googling a bit, I found this site.

These steps what I did to solve it:
1. cd /usr/lib/cups/backend
2. chmod 700 hal (previously 755)
3. chmod 700 usb (previously 755)

For step 2 and 3, I found out that you have to change the mod to 700 although the file hal and usb has 'rwx' on them on the 'user' part. The culprit was the 'group' and the 'other' part of the permission. They should be chmod'ed to 0. On my system, the 'group' and 'other' part of both files was 5 (r-x) previously.

I hope this saves some people's time of head scratching.

clamav detects conficker

Taken from http://www.clamav.net/2009/01/29/conficker-aka-downadup/

Some of you may have heard of a current major outbreak of a virus known as Downadup that has been reported at http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/7842013.stm and http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/7832652.stm. It has been estimated that move than 9 million PCs are infected across the world.

ClamAV detects Downadup, also known as Conficker, as Worm.Downadup. Once on a system it downloads components that ClamAV detects as members of the Trojan.Downloader- family of signatures.

The virus primarily exploits MS08-067; it can also spread through USB sticks. Since the virus is not spread by email we don’t expect to see much activity in our core user-base, which tends to use ClamAV to scan emails. We are, nevertheless, keeping an eye out for it through freshclam’s statistics gathering system – we are yet to see any obvious spike of activity from it. If we hear anything we’ll let you know.

Saving date and time to hardware clock manually

If you change date and time in console, the hardware clock may not be updated instantly. There's a script usually find in many distros that save the date and time to hardware clock before the computer off or restart. Some GUI apps changed the hardware clock if you change the software clock. If you want to change the hardware clock manually, here's the command:

hwclock --systohc

and obviously, you have to run it as root.

dbmail and database default character set

I migrated my mailserver to another server recently. I installed dbmail from scratch and restored my database into new mysql server. When I started dbmail to connect to the database server, I found out in syslog (see below) that the dbmail-imapd couldn't connect to the server because of the different character set. It's a FATAL error!. I found out that my old database used latin1 as the default character set and dbmail used utf8 as I defaulted in /etc/dbmail.conf. So I just change the default character set of my dbmail database in MySQL to utf8 (see below). This solved the problem.

In syslog before changing the character set:
Mar 14 13:01:54 webmail.fakedomain.com.my dbmail-imapd[13986]: Error:[sql] dbmysql.c,db_mysql_check_collations(+138): collation mismatch, your MySQL configuration specifies a different charset than the data currently in your DBMail database.
Mar 14 13:01:54 webmail.fakedomain.com.my dbmail-imapd[13986]: FATAL:[server] server.c,StartServer(+129): Unable to connect to database.

To change default character set of a dbmail database:
ALTER DATABASE dbmail DEFAULT CHARACTER SET utf8;

In syslog after changing database default character set:
Mar 15 13:20:29 webmail dbmail/imap4d[14107]: Message:[server] pool.c,child_register(+299): register child [14107]
Mar 15 13:20:29 webmail dbmail/imap4d[14109]: Message:[server] pool.c,child_register(+299): register child [14109]
Mar 15 13:20:29 webmail dbmail/imap4d[14111]: Message:[server] pool.c,child_register(+299): register child [14111]
Mar 15 13:20:29 webmail dbmail/imap4d[14113]: Message:[server] pool.c,child_register(+299): register child [14113]
Mar 15 13:20:29 webmail dbmail/imap4d[14101]: Message:[server] pool.c,scoreboard_state(+590): Scoreboard state:children [4/10], spares [4 (2 - 4)]

packagekit and Mandriva Cooker

I use Mandriva Cooker. A bleeding edge distro. packagekit is the latest offering from Mandriva for package management. Coupled with KDE's kpackagekit, it integrates nicely with KDE 4. It's still not recommended for general though. The interface is confusing for first time user. Every button can be clicked while the other process running and it crashes often. Please use Mandriva Control Center for it.

Let's see some screenshots of it.

Login with admin privilege can make matters worse

Many windows users don't know that they login with administrator privileges. When viruses or worms attack, they use the user's privileges and they can make a catastrophe.

A new analysis claims that over 90% of the Windows security vulnerabilities reported last year were made worse by users logged in with administrative privileges -- an issue Microsoft has been hotly debating recently.

BeyondTrust Corp. (BTC), a software development company specializing in enterprise rights management, has indicated that the act of giving users administrative rights may leave systems more open to risk.

The report issued by BTC was prepared by assessing security vulnerability bulletins released by Microsoft in 2008, and identifying specific "mitigating factors" (those that could reduce or negate the risk of an attack) within the bulletin. If Microsoft reported that having fewer security privileges would negate or eliminate risk, BTC concluded that the vulnerability was admin-privilege related.

The result of the analysis of the 154 critical Microsoft vulnerabilities indicated that a full 92% could have been prevented if users were not logged into their systems with administrator status. BTC believes that restricting the number of users who can log in with these privileges will "close the window of opportunity" for attackers. This is particularly true for users of Internet Explorer and Microsoft Office. (Source: computerworld.com)

Microsoft has been relatively transparent in their revelation of security vulnerabilities, and has worked with organizations such as Cert.org to identify and address security concerns to the online community. (Source: cert.org)

While Microsoft is not denying the vulnerabilities present in its various Windows operating systems, they have not been exactly forthright about how internal programming "holes" (such as increased vulnerability for users with admin privileges) may make users susceptible to threats or attacks.

I think Microsoft users should be told that using admin privilege accounts is a potential security risk. I found out that many of them don't want to use normal/limited account for their daily account.

Linux users always use ordinary account (non-root acount) to do tasks that do not require admin/root privileges. Ubuntu users for example used to sudo command to do admin tasks like installing packages, upgrade packages etc. Other Linux users are very familiar with su command to do the same tasks. Certain apps will warn you if you run them as admin (ie root). This way Linux users reduce the risks of being infected or attacked by viruses, worms and other types of malwares.

Source

How to setup a https server with apache

Setting up an https server in Apache is easier by watching video. Don't you agree? :)

Linux 2.6.28's five best features

By Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols

Created Jan 9 2009 - 3:29pm

While you were likely to be opening up Christmas presents, Linus Torvalds was giving Linux users around the world a special present: the release of the next major Linux kernel: Linux 2.6.28 [1].

We had some time to tinker with this latest and greatest Linux, and it's my kind of Christmas present: solid improvements to my favorite operating system. Here are the five features that I think most of us will appreciate the most as we move into the New Year.

1) Ext4

The next step up in Linux file systems, has finally arrived. Ext4 [2] improves, well, everything about hard drive storage. It gives you larger file-system and file sizes, faster I/O, better journaling, and it can defragment your drive on the fly.

In particular, its delayed allocation functionality greatly improves hard disk write performance. This won't help your PC hard drive that much, but if you're running a database server, you'll see significant improvements. How fast is 'significant?' In my informal tests with MySQL 5.0, I saw write-speed boosts of approximately 30% on a 400GB database. Try it yourself on your servers, you'll be impressed. In addition, since Ext4 can handle up to 1024 petabytes per volume. I expect Ext4 and Sun's ZFS are going to be fighting it out for top server file-system for the next ten-years.

2) GEM Memory Manager for Graphics

Linux is finally getting decent support from the major graphic vendors, like ATI [3] and NVIDIA [4]. That's great, if you have a high-end graphics card with its own memory and processor. But, say you're like the rest of us without much money and you're using the graphics that are built into your motherboard? Linux will run fine on your PC, but your graphics won't be that fast. Until now.

With Linux 2.6.28, GEM (Graphics Execution Manager [5]) Linux finally includes a graphics memory manager. This will matter your graphics memory whether it's on a dedicated card or part of your main memory. By providing a central, common memory manager, GEM enables even ordinary graphics, like the popular and cheap Intel 915 chipset, to run 50% faster [6]. That's a performance boost that anyone can see.

GEM is still very much a work in progress. At this time, only the 915 is fully supported. Other graphic chip developers though are already hard at work getting their drivers to work with GEM. This graphics memory manager will not only make their lives easier, it will also deliver much faster performance for both low-end and top-of-the-line desktop users. In short, GEM may not be much now, but it's going to be a win-win for everyone by this summer.

3) Disk Shock Protection

Ever drop a laptop? I have. So far, I've been lucky and I have smacked a hard drive silly. Laptop vendors know they can't count on everyone being lucky so they've been incorporating drop protection into their notebooks and netbooks.

This works by moving the hard drive read/write heads away from the disk if the laptop detects that it's moving quickly and is likely to be slamming on the floor in a few milliseconds. Until now, though, Linux didn't know a thing about this kind of protection. So, you could end up with Linux trying to get the drive heads to write while the drive firmware was trying to move the out of the way before laptop and concrete had a sudden, violent meeting. Now, Linux will work with most of these fumble-finger proof hard drives. Speaking for klutzes everywhere, I'd like to say thank-you.

4) Staging Drivers

Did you ever want to use a device for Linux where there was 'some' support for it, but it wasn't good enough to be in the main kernel? If you use a lot of new hardware, you've probably been there. As Jake Edge reports [7], "There has been an ongoing struggle between those who want to see drivers get included as quickly as possible versus those who want to see them approach or attain normal kernel quality levels first." He's got that right.

Greg Kroah-Hartman, who has been leading Linux hackers' efforts to create drivers [8], created the -staging tree for these, not quite ready for prime-time drivers. You don't have to use them, but they're available there if you need them. For example, I wanted access to USB/IP. This driver enables you to USB devices over a TCP/IP network. I'm using it to access printers that are attached to a Belkin Network USB Hub [9]. Is it perfect? No. But it does let me get to those printers so that's a win in my book.

5) Network improvements

The 2.6.28 kernel includes new support for UWB (Ultra Wide Band), Wireless USB, UWB-IP, and Nokia's mobile phone Phonet Network Protocol. That's all well and good, but unless you're one of the few who work with UWB or Phonet, I'm not sure how important that will be. I do think Wireless USB will end up being a big deal. That said, what I think is easily the neatest improvement in 2.6.28's improved networking is that it now supports the minstrel Wi-Fi rate control [10].

Chances are you haven't heard about minstrel. Once you have it on your Wi-Fi equipped computer though you'll wonder how you ever lived without it. Minstrel keeps a constant watch on which Wi-Fi AP (access points) in your area are delivering the fastest possible performance and automatically hook you up with it. With minstrel, you're pretty much guaranteed to always get the best Wi-Fi connection that's available. I like this. I like this a lot. Frankly, based on what I've been seeing while using it with my Linux-powered ThinkPad R61, I'd upgrade to 2.6.28 for this feature alone.

So, my advice to you, is that it any of this sounds good, you can either upgrade your PC to Linux 2.6.28 manually, which is what I did, or you can start encouraging your favorite Linux distribution group to move to 2.6.28 sooner rather than later. You'll be pleased you did.

---

Source URL:
http://blogs.computerworld.com/linux_2_6_28s_five_best_features

Links:
[1] http://lkml.org/lkml/2008/12/24/105
[2] http://ext4.wiki.kernel.org/index.php/Main_Page
[3] http://practical-tech.com/infrastructure/amd-partners-with-novell-to-open-source-ati-graphic-drivers
[4] http://www.nvidia.com/object/unix.html
[5] http://lwn.net/Articles/283793
[6] http://lwn.net/Articles/283798
[7] http://lwn.net/Articles/301192
[8] http://practical-tech.com/infrastructure/linux-hackers-offer-to-create-device-drivers-for-free
[9] http://www.belkin.com/networkusbhub
[10] http://wireless.kernel.org/en/developers/Documentation/mac80211/RateControl/minstrel

How to connect to the internet using Celcom Broadband Modem

Luckily, I got my hand on my friend's Celcom Broadband USB HSDPA Modem. The model is E220. Fortunately on Mandriva, you don't need to type a command. It's all in the comfort of GUI.

below is the step-by-step process:

1. Open MCC (Mandriva Control Center) and then select Network & Internet (left frame) and then open Setup a new network interface.


2. Select GPRS/Edge/3G and click Next button.

3. The device should be shown and selected here. If not, you have to check whether Linux detected it using lsusb command. In many cases, this shouldn't be a problem for Linux detecting a USB device. Then click the Next button.

4. It will ask you for PIN number. One problem here. You have to enable PIN Protection for your card by going into MS Windows and use the software provided by TM to enable the PIN Protection. It is disabled by default. If it is disabled, you will get error after this even the PIN number is correct. After enable the PIN Protection, you can boot back into Linux and enter the PIN number as in the pic below. Then click Next.

5. This dialog opens and you can just click Next.


6. Select the option as below and then click Next.


7. For dialog as below, just leave all fields blank. Click Next.


8. Finish. A window will appear telling you that the settings has been configured successfully. Click Finish button to close it.

9. You can see the /var/log/messages on what's been going on and important info like IP address, APN, netmask, gateway and handshakes during the connection process.

Example log:
Dec 21 23:50:42 localhost ifup-ppp: pppd started for ppp0 on /dev/ttyUSB0 at 115200
Dec 21 23:50:42 localhost pppd[2605]: pppd 2.4.4 started by root, uid 0
Dec 21 23:50:49 localhost pppd[2605]: Serial connection established.
Dec 21 23:50:49 localhost pppd[2605]: Using interface ppp0
Dec 21 23:50:49 localhost pppd[2605]: Connect: ppp0 <--> /dev/ttyUSB0
Dec 21 23:50:53 localhost pppd[2605]: Could not determine remote IP address: defaulting to 10.64.64.64
Dec 21 23:50:53 localhost pppd[2605]: local IP address 10.58.182.246
Dec 21 23:50:53 localhost pppd[2605]: remote IP address 10.64.64.64
Dec 21 23:50:53 localhost pppd[2605]: primary DNS address 202. 188.0.133
Dec 21 23:50:53 localhost pppd[2605]: secondary DNS address 202.188.1.5

That's all there is to it. Good luck guys!

Queuegraph - a RRDtool frontend for Postfix queue-statistics

queuegraph is a very simple mail statistics RRDtool frontend for Postfix that produces daily, weekly, monthly and yearly graphs of Postfix's active, deferred, incoming and bounce queues.The postfix's queue is usually in /var/spool/postfix. queuegraph is created by Ralf Hildebrandt and based on mailgraph by David Schweikert. Below is the dirs in my system:

# ls /var/spool/postfix/
active/ corrupt/ deferred/ etc/ flush/ incoming/ maildrop/ postgrey/ public/ tmp/ var/
bounce/ defer/ dev/ extern/ hold/ lib64/ pid/ private/ saved/ trace/
#

In connection with qshape it can be used to find out if your server is having performance issues:

• a large deferred queue indicates delivery problems
• a large active queue points to slow destinations (e.g. a content_filter)

You can download queuegraph here.

Before you download it, pls check the requirements:

• rrdtools (Mandriva users: urpmi rrdtool)
  
• librrds-perl (Mandriva users: urpmi perl-rrdtool)

After finish downloading it, extract it: tar xzvf queuegraph.tar.gz
List down the extracted files: ls -l (see below)

# ls
queuegraph.cgi* queuegraph-rrd.sh* README
#

Create a cronjob that runs queuegraph-rrd.sh every minute -- this populates the *.rrd database:

* * * * * /usr/local/bin/queuegraph-rrd.sh

Note: On Mandriva, i created a dir under /etc named cron.minutes and copied file queuegraph-rrd.sh into it: cp queuegraph-rrd.sh /etc/cron/minutes

And then I edited crontab by adding this line:
* * * * * root nice -19 run-parts --report /etc/cron.minutes

Then I copied queuegraph.cgi into the cgi-bin directory of my webserver: cp queuegraph.cgi /var/www/cgi-bin/ or where your webserver's cgi directory is (consult your distro manual.) Then chmoded it to 755 so that my webserver can run it: chmod 755 queuegraph.cgi

To see the statistics created by queuegraph, point your web browser to http://yourwebseraddress/cgi-bin/queuegraph.cgi

This is the graph for my postfix queue (without the Month and Year graph):


That's all there is to it.

sdparm: a utility for SCSI device

You may have heard of hdparm - a utility for getting info and changing certain parameters for IDE-type hard disk. It can't be used for SCSI hard disk though. So is there any similar utility for scsi hard disk? Yes there's one utility called with almost the same name: sdparm.

You may think that it has the same or at least similar to hdparm. No it is not. Well let's see what we can do with it below.

How to install it?
Ubuntu/Debian: apt-get install sdparm
Mandriva: urpmi sdparm
Redhat: yum install sdparm

A few examples:
list common mode parameters of a disk
sdparm /dev/sda

Sample output:
/dev/sda: COMPAQ BF03697B5A HPB2
Read write error recovery mode page:
AWRE 1 [cha: y, def: 1, sav: 1]
ARRE 1 [cha: y, def: 1, sav: 1]
PER 1 [cha: y, def: 1, sav: 1]
Caching (SBC) mode page:
WCE 0 [cha: y, def: 1, sav: 0]
RCD 0 [cha: y, def: 0, sav: 0]
Control mode page:
SWP 0 [cha: y, def: 0, sav: 0]
Informational exceptions control mode page:
EWASC 1 [cha: y, def: 1, sav: 1]
DEXCPT 0 [cha: y, def: 0, sav: 0]
MRIE 4 [cha: y, def: 4, sav: 4]


To list the designators within the device identification VPD page of a disk
sdparm --inquiry /dev/sda

Sample output:
/dev/sda: COMPAQ BF03697B5A HPB2
Device identification VPD page:
Addressed logical unit:
id_type: EUI-64 based, code_set: Binary
[0x0010b9fd080c1129]
id_type: T10 vendor identification, code_set: ASCII
vendor id: COMPAQ
vendor specific: E20C9MKK


To see all parameters for the caching mode page
sdparm --page=ca /dev/sdc

Sample output:
/dev/sda: COMPAQ BF03697B5A HPB2
Caching (SBC) mode page:
IC 0 [cha: y, def: 0, sav: 0]
ABPF 0 [cha: n, def: 0, sav: 0]
CAP 0 [cha: n, def: 0, sav: 0]
DISC 0 [cha: n, def: 0, sav: 0]
SIZE 0 [cha: y, def: 0, sav: 0]
WCE 0 [cha: y, def: 1, sav: 0]
MF 0 [cha: y, def: 0, sav: 0]
RCD 0 [cha: y, def: 0, sav: 0]
DRRP 0 [cha: y, def: 0, sav: 0]
WRP 0 [cha: y, def: 0, sav: 0]
DPTL 512 [cha: y, def:512, sav:512]
MIPF 256 [cha: y, def:256, sav:256]
MAPF 512 [cha: y, def:512, sav:512]
MAPFC 512 [cha: y, def:512, sav:512]
FSW 0 [cha: n, def: 0, sav: 0]
LBCSS 0 [cha: y, def: 0, sav: 0]
DRA 1 [cha: y, def: 1, sav: 1]
NV_DIS 0 [cha: n, def: 0, sav: 0]
NCS 226 [cha: y, def:226, sav:226]
CSS 0 [cha: y, def: 0, sav: 0]

To set the "Writeback Cache Enable" bit in the current values page
# sdparm --set=WCE /dev/sda

Sample output:
/dev/sda: COMPAQ BF03697B5A HPB2

References:
Cyberciti.biz
sdparm manpage

NAT and ip forwarding

NAT (be it SNAT or DNAT) relies on ip forwarding. You enable it, they are effective. I forgot to think about it last time ( I think 3 months ago) I setup Linux as a router. This is because server distros, enable it by default. Some distros however do not and most of them distros targeted for desktop/home users (pls check all popular distros to confirm). To enable it, you have to run this 2 commands:

sysctl -w net.ipv4.ip_forward=1
sysctl -p /etc/sysctl.conf

Of course you have to root to run those.

The first command is to write 1 in /proc/sys/net/ipv4/ip_forward. It is equivalent to this command:

echo 1 > /proc/net/ipv4/ip_forward

The second command is to apply all changes in file /etc/sysctl.conf.

Whatever you set in sysctl.conf will be applied every system restart. So that's important if you want to enable it permanently as in the case of a router. First command doesn't do that. You have to edit sysctl.conf to make it permanent because it will be read every system restart. Edit the file with your favorite text editor (i personally use joe) and make sure it contains this line:

net.ipv4.ip_forward = 1

This is just a quick solution for this topic. It doesn't cover everything you should know about sysctl.conf and ip forwarding. You can just google to find more info about them.

FOSS.my 2008

What is FOSS.my?

(excerpt from the website)
FOSS.my 2008 is Malaysia’s premier Free and Open Source Software (FOSS) event. Whilst this is our first go at it, we aim for this to be an annual event bringing together professionals and enthusiasts from Malaysia, Singapore, Asia and the rest of the world for a two day grassroots driven FOSS conference.

FOSS.my is different from other events in that we focus only on FOSS and that this conference is purely non-commercial. There will be no marketing/sales talks by vendors (we are very strict on this!) so all that is presented is FOSS goodness! Instead, vendors will be encouraged to speak on the FOSS technical aspects of their projects/tools. This approach works better as it benefits all through knowledge sharing within the community.

When?
It will be held on 8 and 9 Nov 2008

Where? ( Map )
APIIT TPM Campus
Lot 6, Technology Park Malaysia (TPM)
Bukit Jalil, 57000 Kuala Lumpur
Malaysia.

What are the agenda?
Go here: http://foss.my/schedule/ for more info.

What should I do?
Register here: http://foss.my/register/

Mandriva Linux 2009 released

Mandriva has released its latest desktop edition which comes in 4 edition: One, Free, PowerPack and Mandriva Flash.

Mandriva One comes in CD and suitable for those who want to start using Mandriva Linux in no time. You can boot in to live CD and start working. It has the option to install to hard disk. This edition comes with proprietary softwares.

Mandriva Free is the free edition. It doesn't contain proprietary softwares. You can add those later though if you add the relevant repositories.

Mandriva Powerpack is a commercial pack containing proprietary packages such as flash plugin, nvidia, nvidia, ati, mp3 codec etc.

Mandriva Flash is a USB disk version of Mandriva. It now uses 8GB USB drive instead of 4GB in previous version. You have to order it from Mandriva Store.

More info on this release

I have been using Mandriva Linux for almost 7 years now and in my opinion it is one of the best distributions out there.