In a previous post I covered how to use DNS tools to find what host receives email, and in this one I’ll cover the recipient part of an email address which is to the left of the @. Exact details on how to control what happens for a particular address depends on the ISP, so I’ll only be covering the topic in general terms.
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A few weeks ago I wrote about each SSL certificate used on a web server needing to have its own IP address. I ran across a reference to RFC 2817, Upgrading to TLS Within HTTP/1.1. It describes a method to upgrade a connection to TLS (Transport Layer Security, the successor to SSL; I’ll use the terms interchangeably). It’s somewhat complex, and does indeed expand the request/response model along the same lines as basic authentication while taking advantage of HTTP/1.1 persistent connections.
Of course, just because something is described in an RFC doesn’t mean it’s being used. Apache has TLS Upgrade support as of 2.2, but at this time none of the browsers (at least the major ones) support the protocol. Even though it’s not really in use, it’s an interesting exercise to look at how it’s defined and think about implications of its use.
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DNS and email addresses often just work and we don’t have to think much about them. However, if you’re trying to set them up or debug a problem, it helps to understand how to do figure out how the mail is initially routed.
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It’s been a couple months since we switched to Exchange and I wanted to give an update on how things were going, most particularly oddities I’ve seen. In a nutshell, I’m just running across a cosmetic thing or two with email, but am still stumbling over scheduling calendar events and have some syncing issues.
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I’m often asked questions about using certificates with SSL-enabled web servers, mostly centered around hosting multiple sites on the same server. Many times my reply starts out as a series of questions to find out what the person is trying to do, who will be using the various servers, and how much the person is willing to spend.
The simplest answer is that each IP address can be associated with only one SSL certificate. There are, however, subtleties depending on the kind of certificate and the intended audience. Before I give an overview of how browsers, web servers, and SSL certificates interact, let me first define how I use various terms, and give a few examples of how we have various servers set up and what the ramifications are.
Update 25-Nov-2008: I’ve written a follow-up post about using TLS Upgrading which would allow multiple SSL certificates on one IP address, but browsers do not support it.
Update 3-Mar-2009: Another follow-up post about using multiple port numbers.
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My wife and a developer co-worker were working on a client Plone site the other day when they ran into an anomaly. Melody was checking whether search results showed an icon to indicate pages which should only be available to registered users (using custom code for the site which is different than what normally happens in Plone, private content not showing up at all in the search results). She wasn’t seeing the lock icon, but the developer saw it on his own local copy of the same site. They then proceeded to look for find differences between the two sites.
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My wife was working on a project where in some cases it was taking several minutes for a web page to appear. The project is pretty complicated and involves many pieces. I remembered that I had a book which talked about performance tuning so I pulled down my copy of Programming Pearls from the bookshelf. While it’s more geared towards writing code than integrating pieces together (which is closer to her project), the methodology still applies. Most of what I was able to cite from the book ends up sounding like common sense but is a good reminder: if you need a small speedup, consider all the levels and work at the one which will give the most gain for the least effort; if you need a large speedup, work at many levels since in some cases those speedups can multiply.I did a little research so I could write this post about the book and to my surprise, a second edition has been released. While I haven’t had a chance to take a look at the new edition, I’m definitely going to seek it out. Although it doesn’t appear in the actual book, Jon posted a section from a draft preface which explains why he wrote the second edition; from that you can get a feel for his style.
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Using different computers is nice since I still like a desktop system, yet a laptop is definitely handy. Add a home desktop system into the mix and that means I have three systems I try to keep in sync. My wife also has her own laptop, so she has two systems to sync. There is unfortunately no silver bullet which will take care of all the syncing needs, so I try to deal with the pain points as they come.
I’ve already discussed calendar syncing, and since all my email is accessed via IMAP there aren’t syncing issues (at least not for the messages themselves). I’m a MobileMe (nee .Mac) subscriber so many other things are taken care of for me, even though I only really sync Safari bookmarks and contacts. I use NetNewsWire which already syncs over iDisk, so I’m good there as long as I somehow force a sync before going somewhere else, but I can always use screen sharing to do that if I forget.
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After a bit of playing around, I think I’m near enough to my goal state with calendaring to call it good enough. I was trying to get as close as I could to how I had things configured with Oracle Calendar, so it’s very possible there would be an easier way to set things up if I were to change my workflow (at least more than it already has by switching to Exchange). It doesn’t stray too far what I had before, but there is another piece or two to make things fit together.
Read more…
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FLOSS Weekly isn’t about limiting one’s dental hygiene, since for this podcast FLOSS stands for Free Libre Open Source Software. It’s only one of the shows on Leo Laporte’s TWiT Network, but as interesting as roundtable discussions can be, the guest list makes this podcast (or netcast) compelling. Many times I hadn’t heard of the interviewee (let alone the product) but there’s always something interesting. The co-host started out being Chris DiBona (open source program manager at Google), but since he ended up not having enough time to do a weekly show, Randal Schwartz (author of many Perl books) took his place and the quality of the guests hasn’t changed at all.
