3660077

3 66 00 77
EezeeNet from SAUDI NET

Eezee Net phone numbers

Today EezeeNet phone numbers will be announced for all ISPs, the phone numbers start with 366 instead of 368 announced earlier.
EezeeNet is dialup service provided by STC to allow customers to connect to the Internet without having ISP account, of course ISP will share the profit with STC for the connection, it costs 3 Riyals per hour, and I guess the ISP share is .65
any way I'll post the given numbers earlier this day insha Allah.

My annoying neighbor

Yesterday, at 12:00 am while me and my wife watch TV, the guy living in the apartment above mine start drilling, I start complaining to my wife saying what insensitive neighbor he is. At first I said it won't take long, few minutes and he will be over, but the noise didn't stop and it became very annoying.
At 1:00 am I decided to go to bed and ignore that noise, the strangest thing happened, I didn't hear any noise, I went back to the living room to find out that all this noise was coming from an electric tooth brush connected their, which I drop (and apparently broke) few days ago, and it start working and stopping by it self.
Sorry neighbor.

FreeBSD new website

FreeBSD new website, check it out, but not today it due in 1/1/2005.
Just a reminder.

Riyadh newspaper new web site

Check it out! Riyadh newspaper has a new domain name www.alriyadh.com, not just this it has new simplified, and cleaner design.
The new design dramatically improved the browsing speed, and daily bandwidth usage for the site dropped 40%
Thanks to the hard work of Abw Nawaf, Waleed, Mohammed, Faisal, Majed, and abdullaziz, good job guys :)

Thunderbird 1 released

The Internet is safe again :)
Thuderbird is an email,news,rss client developed by Mozilla foundation, it is really fast and light weight, the only problem is with compose Arabic Emails, I couldn't figure out away to toggle the input direction.

Finally I sent my camera to maintenance

My digital Canon camera LCD display got very dark, It was very hard to see even in the night, so I decide I should send it before the warranty expires, I went to three stores to find the right store for maintenance, they will sent it to Jeddah, and it will take from 2 to 3 weeks.
I hope they fix it.

My Sister

Check this great song about the sisters ... in Arabic
Akhyaty

Enabling FreeBSD firewall

Now with the new FreeBSD releases you don't have to recompile the kernel to add firewall support (which is easy but take sometime), now firewall module can be loaded as a kernel module, with a simple command like:

# kldload ipfw # (WARNING read on first)

But be careful the default behaviour is to block everything, you need to open the connection you need manually, the first time I tried it I lost my ssh connection.
Fortunately the machine was next to me, so I logged on using the console, and unloaded the module:

# kldunload ipfw

I never worked with kernel modules with FreeBSD, this another useful command, to list the loaded modules you can use:

# kldstat

Note: This feature is little old, since 4.6

my.saudi.net.sa tip

SAUDI NET portal site has a little anoying box called "New @ MY" this box is mandatory and you can't remove it or change its location.
But there is a little trick to remove it completely, instead of accessing the portal using the address:
http://my.saudi.net.sa/
You can use:
http://my.saudi.net.sa/?nofixed=1

Indian food killing me

Couple of weeks ago a new Indian restaurant open in Raka Plaza near my home, it is called "Spice", it looked nice, and the logo was really cool.
Last week me and my wife tried it, the food was good, the problem was the day after that, I had the worst stomach ache, and it didn't stop until today. Everytime I eat anything the same pain comes again.

Very similar to the world spice in Cafe Spice.

Dumping Mozilla for Firefox,Thuderbird combo

I decide to stop using Mozilla in favour of Firefox, Thuderbird combo.
Firefox is a stand alone browser, and Thuderbird is stand alone email client, both made by Mozilla foundation.
I make this decision since Mozilla package isn't as current as neither Firefox, or Thuderbird, and I think I raed that Mozilla foundation will favour Firefox/Thuderbird.
Another advantage of two seperate programs for browsing and email, is the ability to upgrade one component without affecting the other, althought all Mozilla upgrade were very smooth.

Working after Eid misery

Today is the second day of work after Eid vacation, I hardly got up from my bed today, as you know sleeping hours in Ramdan and Eid is dramatically fliped, I usually sleep after 6 am!! and wake up around 2pm.
I went to bed at 12 am but couldn't sleep until 5:30 am.
Today I'll try to stay awake all day, so I can fall sleep early in night.

Social bookmarks

Bookmarks ... store them, catogrise them, share them, plus much more...
Register and find out how great is it.
http://del.icio.us/

عيدكم مبارك

وكل عام وانت بخير

Firefox 1.0 released

Dump Internet Expolrer, and use.

Eid vacation starting today

What are my plans? Going to my uncles farm near O'sheger.

FreeBSD 5.3 Released

and it is now considered STABLE branch of FreeBSD, i.e. it is now ready for prodution.

FreeBSD port for PHP supports dynamic extensions (update)

Few months ago I wrote about php4-extensions as the way to install other PHP modules, php4-extensions is a meta port which mean it isn't a real port, it is a port used to install other ports.
So when you try to install php4-extensions, and selected MySQL, and XML extensions, it will install the following ports:
/usr/ports/databases/php4-mysql
/usr/ports/textproc/php4-xml
and you can uninstall them separately.
This solve alot of issue for me, previously when I want to upgrade MySQL I have to uninstall PHP completly, and reinstall it again of course this mean upgrading all port used by PHP, which create a miss.
Now, I can reinstall only PHP MySQL extension only.

Came back from Gitex in Dubai

More details to come, I have tons of work to catch on.

Mozilla Arabic support improvments

Today I filled a Mozilla bug report about an old bug on handling Arabic paragraph, in the same day I received a feedback about this bug saying they couldn't regenerate it on current versions. So I downloaded Firefox Preview Release and it really solved, I love Mozilla :)
Update: The bug still exists in Mozilla 1.7.3 :(
Update: But it works with Mozilla 1.8 a :)

Back from vacation

... so tired, I found out that I don't relax on my vacations, from now on I need to include a relaxation period in all of my vacations.
One more thing, when I go back to work I really hate it, but we will see if the relaxation period will solve this.
About my vacation, I spent two days in Ras Tanura in Aramco compound, in my wife's uncle home, Fahad, it was great the place is very nice with a sea view, they have very small but fun city.
Then I spent two days in Bahrain, nothing new their same place, same activities, we saw 5 movies and came back again ... and that's it.

Going to Bahrain for the weekend

A short vacation :)

SAUDI NET pool cup

The place:

Our guest of honor Misfer Almaymouni who left SAUDI NET recently:

And the winner is: (this is my photo in case you don't know me)



Panoramic view of the place
Some of the guys
All Photos

FreeRADIUS version 1 released

RADIUS is the protocol used for authenticating users, it is used mainly by routers and NASes.
FreeRADIUS is the best open source RADIUS server available, it support many external databases, LDAP, MySQL, PostgreSQL, Oracle.

Cost of living in Riyadh

According to this link from CNN the cost of living in Riyadh is ranked #77 out of 144 cities.
I wonder with the current oil price where are we heading and the worst part that we aren't getting a dime from it!

More spam prevention using Spamhaus

Today I started using Spamhaus to help prevent spam, I use it now in addition to Spamcop.
It was triggered by many spam emails coming from the same range of IPs, so I tested it with Spamhaus and it blocked it.

Here is the code to add in Postfix main.cf file:
smtpd_client_restrictions =
permit_mynetworks
check_client_access hash:/usr/local/etc/postfix/client_access
reject_rbl_client sbl.spamhaus.org
reject_rbl_client bl.spamcop.net
permit


Serious Security Hole In PuTTY

Putty is my favorite SSH client for windows.
Upgrade to 0.55, for more info check Slashdot

SMPP client rewritten in PHP

Today I ported my Python SMPP client library to PHP, I had to redesign the whole library because the old design was very bad, and with the new design it became very small, and trivial library.
Most of my work was on a library to convert bettwen window-1256 charset used by most Arabic computers, to UTF-16 (big endian) used by GSM phones.
The new SMPP library supports long and flash messages, you can try it from SAUDI NET Portal.

Supporting long, and flash SMS

Today Abdullah Aldosari my coworker insisted on working on long SMSs, he kept dreaming of them the last couple of days, so we sat together today, and we figured out how to do it.
It was fairly simple, in fact I found an old code that I wrote for sending operator logos which use this feature! Abdullah also searched for the way to send flash SMS, it was even simpler, all you need is to set a flag when sending the SMS and that's it.
These new features will be introduced to SAUDI NET portal after proper testing (i.e. tomorrow :)
We are using a protocol called SMPP it is used to communicate with the SMS Center, the SMPP client library we are using is currently written in Python language, I am thinking of rewriting it in PHP as soon as I find a good way to convert between character sets.

FreeBSD port for PHP supports dynamic extensions

In the past when you forget to add a PHP extension in FreeBSD you have to recompile the whole thing, but now PHP port support dynamic extensions, in fact PHP port doesn't allow you to add any extensions, you have to add these extensions using a separate port.
There is one wrapper port called /usr/ports/lang/php4-extensions/ which will allow you to select modules to install.
Very nice indeed, even when I spent long time to figure out how to add extensions.

Change PHPMyAdmin to view Arabic on English interface

I love phpmyadmin, it is a web interface for MySQL DB server, I usually use the English interface, but the problem with English interface that it doesn't show Arabic string, of course you can change the whole interface to Arabic, but I don't understand anything from that interface.
So I played with PHPMyAdmin code so I can use English interface but using Arabic character set, here is how to do it:

# vi lang/english-iso-8859-1.inc.php
... change: $charset = 'iso-8859-1';
... to: $charset = 'windows-1256';


MySQL replication is so simple

I just configured my first MySQL replication, it is very simple to configure, few configuration steps and it is done.
The hardest thing is to figure the location of MySQL configuration file my.cnf under my FreeBSD, it doesn't exists by default so you have to create it your self, it can be many place, I choosed /var/db/mysql/my.cnf to make reside with the datafiles.
You can find a sample chapter from Jeremy Zawodny book, High Performance MySQL.

MySQL Replication Sample Chapter (PDF)

My wife had a lasik surgery

It took around 15 minutes, it was little painfull in the first day, her vision is somehow blurry, the doctor says the blur will go away in the next 10 days.
Lasik if you don't know it is a surgery to correct the vision.
http://lasik.bab.com/

More about my car accident

Today the traffic department called me to telling that they found the car with the description I gave, but the color wasn't silver it was gray! So they called me to change the paper I signed earlier.
Silver and gray is there really any difference between the two!?
The name of the guy who hit me and ran away was Abdullah Mohammed Alsalem.

PHP5 relaeased

With many amazing new features, is it going to be the defacto scripting language!

OnLamp article about PHP5 new features

Amavisd + Spamassassin + ClamAV

Installing amavisd+Spamassassin+clamav

# cd /usr/ports/security/amavisd-new/
# make install
# cd /usr/ports/security/clamav/
# make install


Updating ClamAV virus defintation, every hour!:

# vi /usr/local/etc/freshclam.conf
... HTTPProxyServer proxy.saudi.net.sa
... HTTPProxyPort 8080
# freshclam
# crontab -e
... 43 * * * * /usr/local/bin/freshclam --quiet


Changing clamav setting to work as vscan user, same as amavisd:

# vi /usr/local/etc/clamav.conf
... # Change User to match amavid user
... User vscan
# chown -R vscan:vscan /var/run/clamav


Configuraing amavisd:

# cp /usr/local/etc/amavisd.conf-dist /usr/local/etc/amavisd.conf
# vi /usr/local/etc/amavisd.conf
... $mydomain = 'rayed.com';
... $virus_admin = "rayed\@$mydomain";
... $spam_admin = "rayed\@$mydomain";
... $final_spam_destiny = D_PASS;
... $banned_filename_re ... # change this to what ever you like
... @av_scanners ... # uncomment clamav section
... #$QUARANTINEDIR = '/var/virusmails'; # comment QUARANTINEDIR


Enabling clamavd and amavisd to start automatically:

# vi /etc/rc.conf
... # Add the following lines
... amavisd_enable="YES"
... clamav_clamd_enable="YES"
# /usr/local/etc/rc.d/clamav-clamd.sh start
# /usr/local/etc/rc.d/amavisd.sh start


After testing ClamAV, and amavisd, configure postfix to use amavisd:

# vi /usr/local/etc/postfix/master.conf
-------------------------------------
smtp-amavis unix - - n - 2 smtp
-o smtp_data_done_timeout=1200
-o smtp_send_xforward_command=yes

127.0.0.1:10025 inet n - n - - smtpd
-o content_filter=
-o local_recipient_maps=
-o relay_recipient_maps=
-o smtpd_restriction_classes=
-o smtpd_client_restrictions=
-o smtpd_helo_restrictions=
-o smtpd_sender_restrictions=
-o smtpd_recipient_restrictions=permit_mynetworks,reject
-o mynetworks=127.0.0.0/8
-o strict_rfc821_envelopes=yes
-o smtpd_error_sleep_time=0
-o smtpd_soft_error_limit=1001
-o smtpd_hard_error_limit=1000
-------------------------------------
# vi /usr/local/etc/postfix/main.cf
... content_filter=smtp-amavis:[127.0.0.1]:10024
# postfix reload


Just came from Beirut

Going to sleep now :)

Blogger Bookmarklet

A nice feature from Blogger called bookmaklet, it is a simple link that you drag-and-drop it on your browser link bar, to allow you write a new blog entry related to the current web site you are browsing. Cool!
Blogger Bookmarklet

Free RHCE practice test

This is a practice exam for RedHat RHCE (Red Hat Certified Engineer Program)
My results so far: 50%, 70%, 80%, 70%, ...

Clam AntiVirus and amavisd

After installing amavisd you need to edit the confiuration file to change some of the settings:
# vi /usr/local/etc/amavisd.conf
:
$mydomain = 'yourdomain.com';
:
$final_spam_destiny = D_PASS;
You also need to enable clamav section, then restart:
# /usr/local/etc/rc.d/amavisd.sh restart

To allow amavisd-new to work with clamav you need to run clamav using the same user:
# vi /usr/local/etc/clamav.conf
... change user to:
User vscan
# /usr/local/etc/rc.d/clamav-clamd.sh restart

Spamassassin is easy

I was planning to install spamassassin+amavisd+clamav on our mail server for a long time, but every time I try to do it, I quit after few tries.
But finally I got it, and it isn't that hard at all, although I don't understand everything yet, but it seems easy. Hopefully I'll add some configuration hints for FreeBSD of course.

• Spamassassin is SPAM mail detection software, it became the de facto standard in SPAM fighting.
  
• ClamAV is an opensource antivirus program.
  
• amavisd-new is a high-performance interface between mailer (MTA) and content checkers: virus scanners, and/or SpamAssassin.
  

BBCArabic RSS newsfeed

Finnaly I can remove my old BBC parsing script and replace it with RSS feed.
Arabic BBC RSS

I also found (from BBC links) a nice software for reading RSS called SharpReader, I didn't try it but it looks cool!

Al Arabiya news channel web site

Nice! Very clean and works well with Mozilla browser.

Remove Spyware from your Window machine

If you use MS Internet Explorer and you have one of the following:

Many toolbars that you didn't install, and you couldn't remove.

Pop-up windows from nowhere, coming from all Internet web sites, even the ones you know they didn't have any.

Slow machine.

Slow connection.

Then you diffently need to install Lavasoft AD-Aware, and remove all the ad, and spywares.
Just try it.

Car accident update

I went to the traffic department to follow-up on my car accident report, I was told that the guy who hit me came and gave them his insurance -which won't help since he escaped-, and they told me to go Car dealer (Al Hamza, Sheikh Almared) to get an estimate for the car repair.
After search for 20 minutes for the car dealer shop -the shop didn't have a banner!!- I found it and they ask for 30 Riyals for the car estimate, they send me back to the Traffic department with a sealed envelope with the repair estimate, which was 1700 riyals.
The traffic department now will contact the guy to get the money from him, it could take months as they said!
Any way I'll wait and see how our judicial system work.

These related information needed to follow later, just for my reference :)
FILE: 28
DATE: Friday 16/4/1425
OFFICE: 8
CASE: Escaping (Faisal Alsoaeleh)

My car crashed by drunk driver

On my way to my parents home to help my sister with her math exam a drunk driver (I think) hit my car and escaped! I stopped him, and called the cups, they told me to get his car plate and leave him.
My friends told me that I am not going to get any money to repair my car from him, but I'll try my best with the traffic department to catch him.



If you want to see more interesting pictures for car crashes, here you are

SAUDI NET increase customers emails to 100MB

SAUDI NET got jealous from gmail for providing 1GB of free email service, so SAUDI NET will increase email quota to 100MB, to get SAUDI NET email you need to subscribe to one of SAUDI NET service, either Dialup, or DSL.

Installing Fedora Linux on my machine

What is Fedora?
Fedora is basically a hat, see image in Google

In the computer world Fedora is a new Linux distrbution sponsored by RedHat, and supported by open source community, it existed to replace RedHat free version Linux.

Dual booting howto

• Using PartitionMagic I resized Windows XP partition, and added two new partitions, 9 GB for Linux, and 1 GB as FAT32 partition, to be shared between Windows XP and Linux.
  
• I installed Linux, with GRUB (boot loader) installed in the partition (and not on MBR).
  
• I rebooted the machine, then from Windows I used bootpart to add Linux to Windows boot option.
  

ISU block blogspot.com

ISU (Internet Service Unit) is blocking all domains under blogspot.com, blogspot is used by Blogger.com to host its customers blogs.
ISU always block the whole domain when they find bad subdomains!!
I already filled unblocking request.

Anyone interested on afkary.net

afkary.net domain will expire soon any one interested I can transfer the domain starting now.

ssh tunneling = fast browsing

A while ago I tried tunneling proxy conection though ssh, you asked why ... because ssh have a neat compression feature, it will compress all ssh communication between your client and the ssh server, and by tunneling HTTP proxy trafic through ssh you can speed up HTML page loading time, you can really see the difference.
Any way I had a problem of having to run ssh client every time I want to use the Internet, even when you want to check one small thing, it was kind of anoying to change the proxy from the localhost (thought tunneling) and connecting directly to the SAUDI NET proxy server.
Today I invested sometime to build small proxy auto configuration script, that will try to use the local proxy (compressed & tunneled) and if it fails it will try to connect directly to the proxy, here is the script, give it a try it really makes thing FAST.

// proxy.js save this file in localy and 

// point your browser auto config to it

function FindProxyForURL(url, host) {



  if (isPlainHostName(host) || 

      dnsDomainIs(host, ".saudi.net.sa")) return "DIRECT";



  return "PROXY localhost:8080; PROXY proxy.saudi.net.sa:8080;";



}

myweb under construction page

Misfer our talented designer designed new Under Construction page, this page will be the default page when the customer create new myweb account.

rayed.com points to rayed@myweb

I forwarded request to www.rayed.com to http://myweb.saudi.net.sa/rayed, for the following reasons:

• To promote using myweb service provided by SAUDI NET.


• To replace my own blogging software with Blogger, I know I can make Blogger publish to rayed.com directly, but I didn't want to publish in two locations.
  I also migrated all entries from the my own software to Blogger, so nothing lost. (as if there anything owrth saving!)


• The most important one, is because myweb.saudi.net.sa is much faster than my own server, which is a very old machine, with very limited bandwidth.

Fouad playing with Blogger

Two days ago I talked with my brother Fouad about Blogger and it features, he couldn't grasp the concept at first, but he subscribed to it, and played with it, and he created his first weblog.
Fouad isn't computer savy, and he found Blogger useful may be you should try it your self if you didn't yet.
I didn't get the URL of Fouad Blogger yet, I'll publish as soon as I get it.

Another Blog from email

and this time from GMail.com

Blogger.com new interface

Although I liked the old one, but the new is really cool, the colors are great, the interface seems more logical, and they got rid of the HTML frames.

I got my GMail.com email account

I forgot to mention this earlier, but one week ago when I logged in to Blogger.com I got an invetation to try Gmail.com service, if you never heared of Gmail before, it is a webmail service provided by google.com and they give 1GB of space.

Blogging from Email

Blogger is really very nice service :)
I entred this entry by sending an email message to special email e.g xxxx@blogger.com, and it just posted it to my web site, I start to love these guys.

SAUDI NET website really sucks

SAUDI NET web site is really bad, we are trying to replace it since ... well forever actually but we couldn't, the marketing people signed a contract (!!!) with external company to deveploe the website.
and we are still waiting, it is really bad, and every time I see it I get very angry :(

Dinner at STC executive club

The weather was nice and we witnesed a lonar eclipse too ... unfortunately I forgot to take a picture for the eclipse :(

Check out other pictures

Developing news paper site

It would be very interesting project to do, many ideas in my head but we will see what will comes from it.
I'll definitely use CSS to support many printer friendly, light, handheld version of the web site, and will have RSS syndication.
and of course it will be compressed for faster download, what else ... I'll keep thinking

The worst part that it should be very simple to use, this would be hard to do, but I'll try my best.

I bought new Canon digital camera

I like it a lot, although my pictures (most of them) look blury.

This is not my home, but I liked it

SAUDI NET myweb rocks

I really like it free web space, no ads, my own name, and fast, yummy!!

My first log

Hello every one, I will write here about my interests, I'll mainly write about college life, homes, resturants, coffee shops, malls, etc...

I got gmail email account

I got an invetation to join beta testing of Google Mail (GMail), when you think that email can't get better Google surprise you with many inovations.

I can't sleep

Nothing to say ... I am very borde so I thought I would update my website.
Sorry!