Configuring QT to show flash on CentOs 6

1. Install Flash plugin

wget http://get.adobe.com/flashplayer/download/?installer=Flash_Player_11.2_for_other_Linux_%28.rpm%29_64-bit&standalone=1

sudo rpm -ivh flash-plugin-11.2.202.394-release.x86_64.rpm

2. Make sure your QT source code have this line:

QWebSettings::globalSettings()->setAttribute( QWebSettings::PluginsEnabled, true);


Your QWebView should now properly show embedded flash players.

Mass-mailing with SMTP (ssmtp) from Linux/CentOS via GMail or outlook365.com

I needed to send 500 emails to the customers followed by another few thousands customers notifying them about the changes in their account. Unfortunately, our other departments are not skilled enough to use MailChimp, iContact or any other mass-mailer, so... no choice.

I wanted to go over our SMTP server to reduce any risk of emails going to spam. I also needed full control of "From:" field, so while sending from account "aaa" I could force emails to appear like they were sent from account "bbb" in our company. After about two hours of playing with

mail -s "some subject" address@domain.com -- -f "bbb@ccc.com"

I came into conclusion I can not do it with "mail" utility. Below I describe further steps I took to start sending emails.

1. Install ssmtp

yum install ssmtp

2. Edit the configuration file

sudo vi /etc/ssmtp/ssmtp.conf

so it looks this way:

2.a for sending via GMail -

#
# /etc/ssmtp.conf -- a config file for sSMTP sendmail.
#
# See the ssmtp.conf(5) man page for a more verbose explanation of the
# available options.
#

# The person who gets all mail for userids < 500
# Make this empty to disable rewriting.
root=

# The place where the mail goes. The actual machine name is required
# no MX records are consulted. Commonly mailhosts are named mail.domain.com
# The example will fit if you are in domain.com and your mailhub is so named.

# Where will the mail seem to come from?
RewriteDomain=my-company.com
mailhub=smtp.gmail.com:465
AuthUser=my-username-at-gmail
AuthPass=my-password-at-gmail
TLS_CA_File=/etc/pki/tls/certs/ca-bundle.crt
FromLineOverride=YES
UseTLS=YES

2.b for sending via outlook365.com

#
# /etc/ssmtp.conf -- a config file for sSMTP sendmail.
#
# See the ssmtp.conf(5) man page for a more verbose explanation of the
# available options.
#

# The person who gets all mail for userids < 500
# Make this empty to disable rewriting.
root=

# The place where the mail goes. The actual machine name is required
# no MX records are consulted. Commonly mailhosts are named mail.domain.com
# The example will fit if you are in domain.com and your mailhub is so named.

# Where will the mail seem to come from?
RewriteDomain=biscience.com
mailhub=smtp.office365.com:587
AuthUser=my-user@my-company.com
AuthPass=my-pwd
TLS_CA_File=/etc/pki/tls/certs/ca-bundle.crt
FromLineOverride=YES
UseTLS=YES
UseSTARTTLS=YES

3.  Create a text file with your email, e.g. vi /tmp/email.txt

To: __EMAIL__
From: "Support "
Reply-To: "Support "
Subject: Link to reset your password

Hi __USER__,

Following our previous e-mail, your login credentials have been reset. Please click the below link and follow the instructions to reset your password.

Reset your password now: __LINK__

Best Regards,
__ACCOUNT_MANAGER__

4. Test you can send your email to some address:

ssmtp -v your-user@your-company.com < /tmp/email.txt

For GMail, you have to approve the IP you are sending from via GMail web interface. Do it after your first sending attempt (obviously it will fail since you did not approve your IP yet). GMail policy is to block all suspicious sending requests, so you have to explicitly approve your IP. 

For Outlook365 you have to create a SMTP-Relay connector like it is described here
http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/dn554323.aspx
and allow your IP address sending to any domains.

5. Create a script to send all emails out

Once you are sure you are getting test emails via eitehr GMail or Outlook365, write a script which takes CSV with users data (the variable fields in the above email template), replaces them with the users data and then sends email by email.

Here is a sample script which replaces template' values and then sends an email out:

#!/bin/bash
TMP_FILE=/tmp/e.tmp

while IFS=, read email user link mgr;
do
        cat $2 | sed "s/__EMAIL__/$email/g" > $TMP_FILE
        sed -i "s/__USER__/$user/g" $TMP_FILE
        sed -i "s/__LINK__/$link/g" $TMP_FILE
        sed -i "s/__ACCOUNT_MANAGER__/$mgr/g" $TMP_FILE
#cat /tmp/e.tmp
        echo "Sending message..."
        ssmtp -v $email < $TMP_FILE
        echo "Message has been sent, now sleeping for 5 seconds..."
        sleep 5s
done < $1

6. Run the script

/tmp/send_emails.sh /tmp/users.csv /tmp/email.txt > /tmp/emails.log 2>&1; echo "Emails sending has been completed!"

It is supposed that users.csv is in the following format:

email, user name, link, account manager
email, user name, link, account manager
email, user name, link, account manager
...

Your emails are on their way out, good luck!

Notepad++ opens out of a monitor

Switching between mutliple sets of multiple monitors I caused Notepad++ to get confused.
Now when I open it the application opens out of both monitors I use.

Changing registry values like suggested here was a quick fix which worked:


The default position for Windows Notepad is stored in this Registry key:

HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Notepad

Close all open Notepad windows and change the following values as shown:
iWindowPosX : 0
iWindowPosY : 0
iWindowPosDX : 200
iWindowPosDY: 200

This would set default position to top-left. You can resize and position Notepad window later as you wish.

Set up another timezone in Linux

#make sure NTPDd runs on reboot so the clock is synchronized
chkconfig ntpd on


#modify clock file:
vi /etc/sysconfig/clock


#and put your zone there, e.g.:
#ZONE="America/New_York"
ZONE="Asia/Jerusalem"
#UTC=True
UTC=False



#backup previous 'localtime ' file

mv /etc/localtime /etc/localtime.original

# and create a link to the zone file you've selected:
ln -s /usr/share/zoneinfo/Asia/Jerusalem /etc/localtime

# now verify that 'date' shows teh desired timezone [Israeli time (IST)]
date

CMake Error when compiling on AWS AMI CentOs / Fedora / RedHat family

If you are getting this error

CMake Error at /usr/local/share/cmake-2.8/Modules/FindPackageHandleStandardArgs.
  Could NOT find OpenSSL, try to set the path to OpenSSL root folder in the
  system variable OPENSSL_ROOT_DIR (missing: OPENSSL_LIBRARIES
  OPENSSL_INCLUDE_DIR) (Required is at least version "0.9.8")

it is because RedHat decided to pre-install [a stripped down version of] OpenSSL and you do not have the developers package there.

Try this:

rpm -qa | grep openssl

If you got only

openssl-1.0.1e-16.el6_5.4.x86_64

Install the development package which got the headers and the extras

sudo yum -y install openssl-devel

and then run cmake command again

SSH/SCP to a remote machine / AWS from a terminal with a security key

Both 'ssh' and 'scp' Linux/Unix commands got '-i' option which accepts a path to the key file, so the commands look this way:

ssh -i /path/to/my/key/file.pem user@111.222.333.444

scp -i /path/to/my/key/file.pem ./src_file.gz user@111.222.333.444:/tmp/destintation_file.gz