sylvest

I'm completely new to Joomla - can you suggest which modules and components, or where I can go for help with this? Thanks - Rowan

Thanks for your reply. I've had a look at these options. aMember does still seem to be available, but it's rather expensive for what I want ($139.95). Joomla offers some facilities, but not everything I want, e.g. it doesn't seem to offer: The ability for people to request registration, which has to be manually authorised by Admin before becoming active. Able to give a user different access levels to each protected page or directory. Ability to specify password rules (minimum length, need to contain different character classes, not contain obvious words, password strength metric etc.) Also it's a huge package to get to grips with for just this "simple" functionality. I guess I'll go on looking for something. Rowan

Hi, I would like to have various pages and sections of my web site viewable only by certain people. I've tried the directory password protection system, and although it's adequate for simple cases it doesn't do many of the things I want. I've therfore been looking for a script which will run on TCH which will do the job, but not found anything yet. What I would like is: Options to allow people to self-register (and optionally send me automatic e-mails telling me who's registered), or to request registration which I have to manually confirm, or only to be able to register by invitation Able to give a user different access levels to each protected page or directory Ability to specify password rules (minimum length, need to contain different character classes, not contain obvious words, password strength metric etc.) Ability to force users optionally to change their password immediately on first use, and/or after so many months Ability to issue password reminders or to automatically generate new passwords for people who have forgotten theirs Ability to require automatic confirmation of new user accounts by e-mail to ensure that every user has a valid e-mail address Logging of when users log on and off and when they access each protected page or directory Access to the currently logged on username in scripts Passwords should be encrypted in the database and over the internet, and no-one (including me) should have access to them Automatically direct people who try to access a protected page to the logon page Good user/account admin facilities Protection against automatic registration or login by robots Users should be able to maintain their own account details, including changing their password, updating their e-mail address and other personal details etc. Work with web pages using any server side scripting language (including PHP, Perl, Python) since I have various different types of page on my site Do you know of such a system? Thanks for your help and ideas - Rowan

I have now produced a new version of 'garbmail' (which I've renamed 'trashmail') which works on TCH and does what I (and I think jacobh) want. It seems to be working well for me. I have not published it anywhere yet since it's not 100% tested and I would only consider it a beta release, but if anyone would like to try it, please let me know. Rowan

Presumably I have to check for the existence of the file before creating it, and if it's already there wait a while? And how do I create the lock file in an atomic way? I have read that the straightforward way of doing this can result in race conditions, especially if NFS is being used. Does TCH use NFS? The recommended solution to this is said to be to create the lock file as a link to a previously created uniquely named file. Would you recommend this approach? Is this what the mail software used on TCH actually does? Or is there a better way? Thanks for your help - Rowan

I'm writing a script which modifes mailbox files (the purpose of this is to delete messages which are older than a certain date). My intention is to run this script as a Cron job. In order to avoid trouble if I try to modify a mailbox file at the same time that TCH's mail software is also modifying it, I need to be able to lock the file before I modify it, and unlock it again afterwards. This lock/unlock needs to be done in the same way that the TCH mail software does it. Does anyone know how to do this? Failing that, what is the software that TCH uses to process mail, i.e. to receive it via SMTP, to allow it to be fetched via POP3 or IMAP, and to do the webmail stuff? Presumably all of this software needs to be able to lock and unlock mailbox files. If I know what this software is I'll try to find out how it does lock/unlock. Many thanks - Rowan

Andy - many thanks. I copied your exact code and still got Internal Server Error, but eventually pinned it down to file format - by default my editor uses MS-DOS (CR LF) line termination. When I changed it to LF only, it started working. Now I can try to write some real code! Thanks again - Rowan

I'm tryng to write my first Python script - so far all I can get it to do is produce an Internal Server Error (though my script runs OK at the command line on my local PC). Can someone just tell my how to do a Hello World Python script on TCH, just to get me started? Thanks - Rowan

Hi, I'm looking for exactly the same thing for exactly the same reason as jacobh. Did anyone make any further progress with adapting either of these scripts for use at TCH? Thanks - Rowan

Thanks for your reply. Aging only seems to be triggered by a POP3 session on the account. I don't want to pick up this spam via POP3 - I want to leave it on the server, so I can access it via WebMail if I need to. Is there some way of triggering the aging function without doing a POP3 session? Thanks - Rowan

I desperately need a script or other way of deleting e-mails from a mailbox on the server depending on their date. This is because I want to filter my incoming mail for spam on the server. I don't want to download all spam to my local PC because I don't want to use the bandwidth or the local storage space, but I do want the ability to check the recent spam using Webmail if someone tells me that they sent me mail which never arrives. So I'd like to automatically delete all messages from the spam folder that's older than say 30 days. There seems to be no built in facility allowing me to do this. Is there a way of using a script to do it, maybe run automatically every day? How do I access messages in my mail folder from a script? Can I manipulate messages (e.g. copy them, move them, delete them)? How? Many thanks for your help. Rowan

Thanks for your reply. If I understand the description correctly ageing will only delete mail X days after it's been collected via POP3. I don't want ever to collect the spam by POP3. I just want the ability to go into the spam area within say 30 days via webmail and see if some specific message has got caught by the spam filter. Ageing doesn't seem to do what I want - or have I misunderstood something? Thanks - Rowan

I have a similar requirement but for a slightly different reason. I don't want to turn SpamBox off and download all spam for filtering on my client because it will increase my traffic and my local storage by a large amount. But what I would like is for mail to stay in the spambox for a certain number of days (e.g. 7, 14 or 28), and then be automatically deleted. Alternatively the oldest 10% of SpamBox could be deleted every time it fills up. As others have said, I will not routinely inspect all the spam for false messages (life's too short), but there are occasions when someone claims to have sent me mail which never arrived, and I need the ability on these occasions to go into the spambox and check to see whether the messages are there. Is there a way of achieving this, or something like it? Thanks - Rowan

Actually I've discovered that Eudora has a config variable SMPTPort that you can set in the INI file that seems to work. It doesn't seem to be possible to set this via the Options menu - you have to manually edit the INI file. I've added SMTPPort=26 and everything now seems to be working. Of course your suggestions may work too... Thanks for your support - brilliant as usual! Rowan

Can I submit SMTP mail to TCH's servers on port 587? My reason for wanting to do this is that my ISP is blocking port 25. I know I can submit on port 26, but unfortunately I'm using Eudora as my mail client, and that doesn't seem to have the capability of submitting SMTP mail on port 26. The only option seems to be "Use submission port (587)". Thanks - Rowan

Jim, Thanks for your reply, I was hoping for something better than this, since I'm hoping that lots of the people who took photos at the wedding and who live all over the country (and some overseas) will upload their photos to the site. Then when people want to print a selection of photos, they could just add the ones they want to their cart, click "Print with KodakGallery" or similar, fill in their details on PhotoGallery's site (or use their existing account if they've got one) and click Go, with all the transmission of full sized images from my site on TCH to Kodakgallery handled invisibly and automatically. This would be so much less hassle than downloading lots of 2Mbyte files and blowing them onto a CDROM. I'm still searching for a way of doing this! Rowan

Thanks for your reply. Yes, there is a module for pixaco.de. I will investigate this. And some of the US ones may be prepared to mail to UK. I thought I would investigate UK print services first since that ought to be cheape and quicker - and possibly investigate producing a module to interface to a UK service if it looks within my capabilities... Rowan

Thanks for your reply. Actually I don't understand how Fantastico works (this is the first Fantastico script that I've installed). I assumed that the code was installed once in some central location that I had no access to, but your message suggests that it is installed somewhere in my user area, just for me, and I can therefore modify it or update it (or not) as I see fit. Which is right? If it's in my user area, where is it (I've had a quick look around and can't find it)? Many thanks - Rowan

I've just installed Gallery2 to host all the photos from my daughter's wedding. It works great, but I'm disappointed that there doesn't seem to be a UK-based photo printing service integrated into it. Does anyone know of a UK photo printing service that works with Gallery? Has anyone tried any of the services which are integrated (PhotoAccess, Shutterfly and FotoKasten) from the UK? If so, how would you rate the price, quality, speed of delivery? When I tried PhotoAccess and Shutterfly, both of them gave me error messages. Has anyone had the same issue, or know how to fix it? Is any other TCH user interested in a UK based photo printing service (such as KodakGallery) from Gallery2? Many thanks - Rowan

What exact version of Gallery2 is TCH running? I would have thought it would be somewhere on the Admin pages, but I can't see it... Thanks - Rowan

Any estimate of when it will be installed? With great excitement I just spotted Bill Kish's announcement on April 7 that it would be offered with all accounts as of May 1 so I'm a bit disappointed now to find that on July 10 it's still not available! Thanks - Rowan

I'm not new to the internet. At work (where I have no server-side anti-spam system) I receive 150 spams a day. Mercifully at home your filtering gets rid of the vast majority of it. But something has changed in the last couple of weeks. I'm not used to receiving large numbers of this particular type of spam. So either someone has come up with a new system for sending spam (in which case I would expect others to have noticed the same thing) or it's always been there but has only just found me. I would prefer not to lose all the mail addressed to non-existent usernames on my domain, but I suppose if I add mailboxes for "postmaster", "webmaster" and anything else that I think people might genuinely use, I'm not likely to lose anything too valuable. Anyway - thanks for your advice. Rowan

In the last couple of weeks I've been receiving loads of spam which purports to be a failure report of some kind from some mail server which says that I have tried to send an e-mail to an unknown user or similar. The address given is one that I've never seen before and have certainly never tried to send mail to. The mail is always addressed to some non-existent username (I guess a random sequence of letters) at my domain. These messages sometimes contain a block of base64 code (I guess some kind of malware), sometimes a scanned page of text, and sometimes they seem to contain no obvious payload. where is this sapm coming from? are other users experiencing the same? why isn't TCH's spam filtering (which is normally extremely good) filtering this out? what can I do to get rid of this spam? I've received 32 of these messages so far today, and it's increasing rapidly. Need a fix urgently! Thanks - Rowan

Several questions: 1. If I password protect a directory, does this force users who try to access any subdirectory or file under this directory to log in? E.g. if I password protect www.mysite.com/protected/, will someone who enters the http:://www.mysite.com/protected/subdir/subsubdir/page.html be asked for their password, or not? 2. If there are two or more password protected directories in the path, what happens? E.g. if in the above path 'subsubdir' is also protected, what will the user be asked to do? 3. If I create a user fred.smith who can access the directory 'protected', and I also create a user fred.smith who can access 'subsubdir', are these two users the same, or are they completely separate? 4. If I change the password of the first fred.smith, does the password for the second fred.smith change too, or do I have to change that separately? 5. Can I programmatically (e.g. in a php page) create users who can access directories, and change their passwords? 6. Or is there any other way of allowing users who want to access a password protected directory to request an account, and of allowing users to change their own passwords? 7. How do I control what happens when a user fails to log in correctly (e.g. so I can allow them to request an account, or send them an e-mail reminding them of their password etc.)? Thanks for your help - Rowan

Now I realise that I wan't reading the response right. There was only one function in the backtrace because I was only one function deep, and it did show me the file and line number the function was called from. So I can now make some progress Thanks - Rowan