Category Archives: Free software

Linux: What to do when the oom-killer is being triggered when you have plenty of memory

Does this sound familiar to you? Your Linux box has plenty of memory, but the kernel “oom-killer” keeps getting triggered and killing processes. The stack trace logged by the kernel shows that out_of_memory was triggered inside _do_fork (for me, it was mysqld forks that were triggering the problem; though I’d been running mysqld on my… Read More: Linux: What to do when the oom-killer is being triggered… »

CGI script for RSS feed of comments on Hacker News posting

Perhaps I just don’t grok the zen of Hacker News, but I just don’t get why the site doesn’t provide RSS feeds of comments on postings. I also don’t get why nobody has written something to provide this. Or, at least, if it has been written, I couldn’t find it (perhaps my Google mojo just isn’t… Read More: CGI script for RSS feed of comments on Hacker News… »

I guess I’m now a Mozilla core developer, too

About a month ago, I dived into the world of Mozilla add-on development by adopting the abandoned Thunderbird “Send Later” add-on and porting it to Thunderbird 3.1. The learning curve was pretty steep, and it took a lot more work than I expected to stabilize the add-on, but I think it was worth it, considering… Read More: I guess I’m now a Mozilla core developer, too »

I guess I’m a Mozilla add-on developer now

I just released a port of the “Send Later” Mozilla Thunderbird add-on for Thunderbird 3.1+. The old version is not compatible with Thunderbird 3, and its author and maintainer appears to have abandoned it. I’d love for him to integrate my changes into his version and resume maintaining it, but in the meantime, for the… Read More: I guess I’m a Mozilla add-on developer now »

Solving the GNU Mailman MIME message footer problem

If you administer a GNU Mailman installation, you are probably aware that message footers don’t always work quite right: if a message submitted to a list is entirely plain text with no attachments, then the footer is fine, but if it’s formatted in HTML or has attachments, then the footer is added to the message… Read More: Solving the GNU Mailman MIME message footer problem »

My new favorite open-source software: mairix by Richard Curnow

I am an email pack-rat.  I have saved just about every email message I’ve sent or received at work or at home in the past twenty years (excluding messages sent to public mailing lists).  That’s a lot of email, over 400,000 messages. I don’t just do this for the heck of it.  I look for… Read More: My new favorite open-source software: mairix by Richard Curnow »

Hack of the day: auto-filing IMAP “Sent Items” folder

I file my email in different IMAP folders, grouped by topic rather than the “received messages in one folder, sent in another” model imposed nowadays by most mail clients.  It’s easy to keep the messages I receive organized by topic — when I’m done handling a message, I simply move it into the appropriate folder.… Read More: Hack of the day: auto-filing IMAP “Sent Items” folder »