The answer is, it’s not Thunderbird’s fault but rather it’s Outlook who generated winmail.dat.

Winmail.dat contains formatting information that only Outlook can decipher. And if the sender uses this mail client then his recipient is using something else, there’s a chance that winmail.dat will be the only attachment that the recipient will see.

Fear not!

For Thunderbird, there is an add-on for allowing it to decode metadata. This add-on is called, LookOut.

Yay! After installing LookOut on Thunderbird, you should be able to open/save the used to be missing attachments.

I needed a quick network diagram for a report and since I prefer FOSS for simple solutions, I used Dia.

Dia, as mentioned above, is a program to draw structured diagrams. It is gtk+ based and is inspired by MS Visio.

Diagrams like flowcharts, network and UML are included in its pre-defined menu thus making it suitable for the job.

Dia can be installed in Linux and Windows and its current version is 0.97.

For more info, go to http://live.gnome.org/Dia

I’ve been wanting to use Nagios for monitoring services that run in the network.

What services are these?

These are http, https httpd among others.

That’s why I installed Nagios first on a linux box running on Centos 5.3. Unfortunately, I had to reformat that box for something else.

So when I finally had a machine that can handle my needs for multiple virtual machines, I started playing around with more distributions.

One of them is OpenSuse 11.1.

And now, how to install Nagios eh?

Run terminal
type in:
zypper install nagios nagios-www

That’s all!

All you need to do is to check if apache is already installed. If not:
zypper install apache2

Then start nagios:
rcnagios start && insserv nagios

and start apache:
rcapache2 start

lastly, to access nagios via browser, we have to add user and password by:
htpasswd2 -c /etc/nagios/htpasswd.users nagiosadmin

You should be able to navigate nagios via http://yourhost/nagios

This is caused by hidden messages from “deleted mails” and “emptied trash”. These hidden messages have to be removed and in order to remove them totally, compact folders regularly (e.g once a week) or automatically.

Here are the steps for compacting folders manually:
1. Open “File” Menu
2. Click “Compact Folders”

Automatically:
1. Open “Tools”
2. Select “Options”
3. In “Advanced” tab, click “Network & Disk Space”
4. Under “Disk Space”, check “Compact folders when it will save over 100KB”

VBox specs:
RAM 750MB
Disk Space 15GB

OpenSolaris still goes for LiveCD before installation. That, I still like about it. You get to experience it without doing anything yet. And, OS installer is already cluded in the LiveCD.

Installation
It’s not as breezy as I thought it would be. It took a lot of time and what seems to be missing (just like before) is the liberty to choose which package I want or if I ever want Games to be installed.

Bootup
Is the same with the installation, it’s slow. I doubt it’s because of my vbox.

Package Manager
The built-in package manager is cool. It loaded a little sluggishly but afterwards, I really liked it. Searching for a package is easy, same with installing a package. All I needed to do for a successful install was to have an internet connection via NAT (which is easier than bridge).

Bundled Applications
1. Firefox 3.1 Beta 3
2. Thunderbird 2
3. Pidgin 2.5.5
4. Evolution 2.24.2
5. RhythmBox
6. Totem
7. Evince Document Viewer
What I like

• Desktop environment is very light. I like the theme, not too noob, not too pro.
• Package Manager loads faster than any other package manager I’ve seen. It’s actually easy to use. Simple keyword search is good enough.
• Lightweight due to its bundled applications.

What I don’t like

• CD/DVD Rom won’t mount automagically.
• Bootup is sluggish.
• Package selection during install is minimalist.
• Saving Network configuration is not fast enough for me. Same with other configurations like Network proxy.
• Can’t add optical media as repository.