Shuffle without iTunes

I bought an iPod Shuffle some time in July 2005 and was immediately annoyed because it worked only with iTunes. In my opinion, the sanest way to download content to a USB attached audio player is to make the device available as a USB Mass Storage Device and just copy files to it as you would on a USB memory stick. Salvation was not far away...

Googlemancy revealed that Martin Fiedler's shuffle-db Python script would allow me to dispense with iTunes entirely. The only shortfall with shuffle-db was that it required your computer to have Python installed. While most Linuxen come with Python, Windows boxes typically don't. I used the excellent py2exe extension and compiled shuffle-db script into standalone executables, shuffle-db-0.7-pre1.zip and shuffle-db-1.0-rc1-winxp.zip are both available. The 0.7-pre1 release should work on Win2k/XPwhile the 1.0-rc1 release has been tested on WinXP SP2 only.

If you have iTunes, this is good time to uninstall it. Plug in your Shuffle and it should appear as a regular USB Removable Storage Device. If your Shuffle is unused, you need to initialize it correctly before proceeding. The "Usage" section of the shuffle-db website has details.

Unzip the files into the root directory of your Shuffle. My Shuffle is mounted as the F: and this may be different on your box, so ensure that the runme shortcut points to rebuild_db.exe.

If you are on a non-Windows platform and have Python installed, you can still use shuffle-db, by running python rebuild_db.py.

Copy/delete mp3 files to/from any folder on the Shuffle. Before disconnecting the Shuffle from your computer, double click the runme shortcut. This runs rebuild_db.exe and recreates the necessary index. That's all there is to it!

Note that shuffle-db silently ignores non audio files, and the iPod can be used as a USB memory stick as well.

GMail as smarthost for FreeBSD-6.1 Sendmail

Update: This does not work!! FreeBSD 6.1 sendmail does not include TLS (GNU TLS or SSL), so you need to recompile sendmail with TLS support. Easier still is to install Exim 4 from ports that supports all we need.


I run a FreeBSD 6.1 box at home and want to send emails from it by using GMail as my mail relay (smarthost). GMail provides secure mail relaying by using SMTP AUTH and TLS. Hence this setup will work for DSL users on a dynamic IP addresses as well as mobile users.

Here is how you go about setting up all this:

Step 0: DNS settings

If you don't have a fully qualified DNS entry for your box, sendmail will have trouble starting up. I have a Dynamic DNS domain mithila.ath.cx and it's wild carded, ie. *.mithila.ath.cx will all point to mithila.ath.cx. My /etc/resolv.conf looks like this:

search mithila.ath.cx

nameserver 208.67.222.222

nameserver 208.67.220.220

I use OpenDNS as my servers because my ISP DNS servers are unreliable.

Step 1: Editing freebsd.mc

Edit /etc/mail/freebsd.mc and add the following lines to the bottom of the file:

define(`SMART_HOST',`smtp.gmail.com')dnl

define(`confAUTH_MECHANISMS', `EXTERNAL GSSAPI DIGEST-MD5 CRAM-MD5 LOGIN PLAIN')dnl

FEATURE(`authinfo',`hash /etc/mail/auth/client-info')dnl

define(`CERT_DIR', `MAIL_SETTINGS_DIR`'certs')

define(`confCACERT_PATH', `CERT_DIR')

define(`confCACERT', `CERT_DIR/CAcert.pem')

define(`confSERVER_CERT', `CERT_DIR/mycert.pem')

define(`confSERVER_KEY', `CERT_DIR/mykey.pem')

define(`confCLIENT_CERT', `CERT_DIR/mycert.pem')

define(`confCLIENT_KEY', `CERT_DIR/mykey.pem')

Step 2: Create client-info with your gmail username/password

[root@mithila /etc/mail] mkdir /etc/mail/auth

[root@mithila /etc/mail] touch /etc/mail/auth/client-info

The contents of /etc/mail/auth/client-info is a single line:

[root@mithila /etc/mail/auth]# cat client-info

AuthInfo:smtp.gmail.com "U:root" "I:GMAILUSER@gmail.com" "P:PASSWORD"

Replace GMAILUSER with your gmail username and PASSWORD with your gmail password. Note that you are storing your gmail password in clear text, so please take the necessary precautions.

To create the client-info hash, run the following:

[root@mithila /etc/mail/auth] makemap hash client-info < client-info

Finish this step by fixing the ownership and permission on your files (sendmail is picky about this):

[root@mithila /etc/mail/auth] chown -R root:wheel /etc/mail/auth

[root@mithila /etc/mail/auth] chmod 700 /etc/mail/auth

[root@mithila /etc/mail/auth] chmod 600 /etc/mail/auth/*

Step 3: Creating SSL certs

The OpenBSD starttls(8) manpage has an excellent walkthrough for creating an SSL certs. Following is just a repeat of the relevant bits of the manpage.

[root@mithila /etc/mail] mkdir /etc/mail/certs

[root@mithila /etc/mail] cd certs

[root@mithila /etc/mail/certs] openssl dsaparam 1024 -out dsa1024.pem

[root@mithila /etc/mail/certs] openssl req -x509 -nodes -days 3650 -newkey dsa:dsa1024.pem -out /etc/mail/certs/mycert.pem -keyout /etc/mail/certs/mykey.pem

[root@mithila /etc/mail/certs] ln -s /etc/mail/certs/mycert.pem /etc/mail/certs/CAcert.pem

[root@mithila /etc/mail/certs] openssl req -x509 -new -days 3650 -key /etc/mail/certs/mykey.pem -out /etc/mail/certs/mycert.pem

Remove temporary files and fix ownership and permissions:

[root@mithila /etc/mail/certs] rm dsa1024.pem

[root@mithila /etc/mail/certs] chown -R root:wheel .

[root@mithila /etc/mail/certs] chmod 700 .

[root@mithila /etc/mail/certs] chmod 600 *

Step 4: Create new sendmail.cf

[root@mithila /etc/mail] make; make install

[root@mithila /etc/mail] /etc/rc.d/sendmail stop

[root@mithila /etc/mail] /etc/rc.d/sendmail start 

Watch /var/log/maillog for errors when sendmail is restarted.

Step 5: send test email

[rsubr@mithila ~] mail -s 'MAILTEST' GMAILUSER@gmail.com < /etc/motd

[rsubr@mithila ~] mail -s 'MAILTEST' username@domain.com < /etc/motd

Watch /var/log/maillog for errors. That's all folks!

Issues

Ensure that your box is capable of resolving MX records for domains.

[rsubr@mithila ~] dig -t mx gmail.com

For some strange reason, my DSL router did not want to resolve mx records, and sendmail barfed. Using the right DNS servers in /etc/resolv.conf should do the trick, or you could just run named and point DNS to localhost. I chose the former, and since my ISP (Airtel) has unreliable DNS servers, I use the OpenDNS servers 208.67.222.222, 208.67.220.220.

Electric Sheep

Do androids dream of electric sheep? What does your computer dream about? Spot Draves started the Electric Sheep project in 1999 that enabled tens of thousands of computers to collectively dream. The Dreams in High Fidelity website has high resolution computer dreams. There are dozens beautiful images from the archive.

Race to the clouds

A video of Monster Tajima's latest attempt at conquering Pikes Peak showed up on YouTube recently. Monster was announced the overall winner and Suzuki Sport website has more.

YouTube also has the Climb Dance video of Ari Vatanen's 1998 attempt at taming the Mountain in a purpose built Peugeot 405-T16. Simply watching the video gives me the shivers! Ari is God.

Ari Vatanen: Our lives can't be judged by a stopwatch.