It's interesting how easily I can use Google to embarrass myself.

Last week, I spent most of an entire day trying to work out how to adda submenu to the default main application menu in the Gnome FedoraCore 4 configuration. (Not building the submenu itself; we had alreadydone that for a previous Red Hat release. Just figuring out how to getit to appear, so that all the students who use the defaultconfiguration would see our local application menu.)

I was all set to write

I feel that people writing programs for system administration shouldbe forced to make a choice: are you writing a tool or a frontend?'Both' is not a good answer, because nine times out of ten that leadsto a program that does neither very well and irritates everyone,leading to things like Friday's entry on why apt-get is notmy favorite program.

A system administration tool is is a reusable building block, part ofthe larger system. It's designed to be easily used by

I have a machine running Debian's 'Woody' release. Debian Woody isseveral years old and uses Exim 3 as its (normal) mailer. Exim 3unfortunately doesn't have many anti-spam features.

Exim 3's lack of antispam features combined with spammers vigorouslyfinding some email addresses on the machine has been giving me lots ofopportunities to a) experience semi-normal Internet spam life (eugh,says I), b) grind my teeth a lot, and c) contemplate what anti