With that said, installation of mu is not that simple. Earlier in mu 0.4 it was a nightmare as I had to go through lots of and different installation errors, but now with thanks to developer Dirk-jan Binnema who fixed a bug for me and made a few changes to leisure its installation, it’s not that hard if you know the calculated amount of steps involved:

• Compiling glib 2.24
• Compiling and installing xapian and xapin-config
• Adding /usr/local/bin/pkg-config to current PKG_CONFIG_PATH
• Fixing that notorious bug of “undefined reference to sqlite3_prepare_v2″ in sqlite-dev package that exists in all RHEL related packages (not needed as version 0.7 eliminates sqlite dependency by using xapian instead)

Presuming that you’ve all compiling and development tools (gcc, gcc++, libtool), installation involves these underlined steps. Try not to use package versions other than the ones mentioned. Trust me, when I say that.

1. Installing glib2, updating system library and exporting pkg-config path.

# wget http://ftp.gnome.org/pub/gnome/sources/glib/2.24/glib-2.24.1.tar.gz
# tar zxvf glib-2.24.1.tar.gz
# cd glib-2.24.1/
# ./configure
# make
# make install
# echo "/usr/local/lib/" >> /etc/ld.so.conf.d/glib2-i386.conf
# ldconfig
# export PKG_CONFIG_PATH=/usr/local/lib/pkgconfig:/usr/lib/pkgconfig

2. Installing gmime

# wget http://dl.atrpms.net/el5-i386/atrpms/stable/atrpms-package-config-120-3.el5.i386.rpm
# rpm -ivh atrpms-package-config-120-3.el5.i386.rpm
# yum --enablerepo=atrpms install gmime-2.4.7-1.99 gmime-devel-2.4.7-1.99

3. Installing xapian

# wget http://centos.karan.org/kbsingh-CentOS-Extras.repo -0 /etc/yum.repos.d/kbsingh-CentOS-Extras.repo
# yum install --enable=kbs-CentOS-Testing xapian-core xapian-core-devel -y

4. Compiling and installing mu

# wget http://mu0.googlecode.com/files/mu-0.7.tar.gz
# git clone git://gitorious.org/mu/mu-ng.git
# tar zxvf mu-0.7.tar.gz
# rm -f mu-0.7/src/mu-cmd-index.c
# cp mu-ng/src/mu-cmd-index.c mu-0.7/src/
# cd mu-0.7/
# ./configure
# make
# make install

That’s all you need to get started. There’s no other tool like ‘mu view’ (formerly mu-msginfo) for getting instant command line outputs of an email formatted in maildir format. I instantly fell in love with it when I first used.
Wish a nice playing with it!

As I used ‘beep’ program already a few times in Ubuntu I knew it would be interesting to use it with new ‘-n’ feature instead of using issuing beep command for an each frequency beep. That is, the whole script here at http://redmine.pfsense.org/repositories/annotate/pfsense/usr/local/bin/beep.sh can be translated into a single beep command of:

beep -f 500 -l 155 -n -f 400 -l 155 -n -f 600 -l 155 -n -f 800 -l 155 -n -f 800 -l 155 -n -f 600 -l 155 -n -f 800 -l 155 -n -f 500 -l 155 -n -f 400 -l 155 -n -f 400 -l 155

But after installing beep and running didn’t make any sound. I witnessed that spkr kernel module as well as the motherboard speaker were well being detected but still no sound. After investigating, it turns out that its bug in kernel earlier than 2.6.18-164 interestingly using external speakers instead of PC’s internal one for producing system bells. Basically its a bug called as an ‘aggression’ for a feature that breaks of with any newer kernel release. I saw multiple bugs relating to the problem in Red Hat’s bugzilla https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=532444, https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=525390 and https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=526751. So, I hit upon the CentOS 5′s lastest kernel, 2.6.18-194.8.1.el5 and that gave me back my system beeps

[root@Bassu ~]# dmesg | grep -i ‘speaker’
input: PC Speaker as /class/input/input2
[root@Bassu ~]# lsmod | grep -i spkr
pcspkr                  7105  0

Almost I finished adding beeps in rc.local and shutdown, I stumbled upon a good init script which I modified a bit and added chkconfig parameters so it can be added into RHEL’s ntsysv services – exactly what I needed! Then I found another beep melody for Beethoven’s theme

beep -f 659 -l 460 -n -f 784 -l 340 -n -f 659 -l 230 -n -f 659 -l 110 -n -f 880 -l 230 -n -f 659 -l 230 -n -f 587 -l 230 -n -f 659 -l 460 -n -f 988 -l 340 -n -f 659 -l 230 -n -f 659 -l 110 -n -f 1047-l 230 -n -f 988 -l 230 -n -f 784 -l 230 -n -f 659 -l 230 -n -f 988 -l 230 -n -f 1318 -l 230 -n -f 659 -l 110 -n -f 587 -l 230 -n -f 587 -l 110 -n -f 494 -l 230 -n -f 740 -l 230 -n -f 659 -l 460

Add below script to file, /etc/init.d/beep, make it executable and do a ‘chkconfig –add beep’ to add it as a system service.

#!/bin/sh
# chkconfig: 2345 95 20
# description: Beep PC speaker with analog melody on startup and stoppage
#
# processname: beep
NAME=beep
BEEP=/usr/bin/$NAME
MELODY_START="-f 65.4064 -l 100 -n -f 130.813 -l 100 -n -f 261.626 -l 100 -n -f 523.251 -l 100 -n -f 1046.50 -l 100 -n -f 2093.00 -l 100 -n -f 4186.01 -l 100"
MELODY_STOP="-f 523.251 -l 100 -D 100 -n -f 391.995 -l 100 -D 100 -n -f 329.628 -l 100 -D 100 -n -f 261.626 -l 200"
SCRIPTNAME=/etc/init.d/$NAME
#ARGS="-e /dev/input/event0"
# Exit if the package is not installed
[ -x "$BEEP" ] || exit 0
case "$1" in
 start)
 $BEEP $ARGS $MELODY_START
 ;;
 stop)
 $BEEP $ARGS $MELODY_STOP
 ;;
 restart|force-reload)
 # Do nothing
 ;;
 *)
 echo "Usage: $SCRIPTNAME {start|stop|restart|force-reload}" >&2
 exit 3
 ;;
esac

With that said, coming out of Mario world and now going back to my laziness

UPDATE:

Talking about the Mario, I just created its beep command from some random junk of frequencies I found. So, here it goes:

beep -f 330 -l 137 -n -f 330 -l 275 -n -f 330 -l 137 -d 137 -n -f 262 -l 137 -n -f 330 -l 275 -n -f 392 -l 550 -d 550 -n -f 262 -l 412 -n -f 196 -l 137 -d 275 -n -f 164 -l 137 -d 137 -n -f 220 -l 275 -n -f 247 -l 137 -d 137 -n -f 233 -l 137 -n -f 220 -l 275 -n -f 196 -l 205 -n -f 330 -l 205 -n -f 392 -l 275 -n -f 440 -l 275 -n -f 349 -l 137 -n -f 392 -l 137 -d 137 -n -f 330 -l 275 -n -f 262 -l 137 -n -f 294 -l 137 -n -f 247 -l 412 -n -f 262 -l 412 -n -f 196 -l 137 -d 275 -n -f 164 -l 275 -d 137 -n -f 220 -l 275 -n -f 247 -l 137 -d 137 -n -f 233 -l 137 -n -f 220 -l 275 -n -f 196 -l 205 -n -f 330 -l 205 -n -f 392 -l 275 -n -f 440 -l 275 -n -f 349 -l 137 -n -f 392 -l 137 -d 137 -n -f 330 -l 275 -n -f 262 -l 137 -n -f 294 -l 137 -n -f 247 -l 412 -d 275 -n -f 392 -l 137 -n -f 370 -l 137 -n -f 349 -l 137 -n -f 311 -l 275 -n -f 330 -l 137 -d 137 -n -f 207 -l 137 -n -f 220 -l 137 -n -f 262 -l 137 -d 137 -n -f 220 -l 137 -n -f 262 -l 137 -n -f 294 -l 137 -d 275 -n -f 392 -l 137 -n -f 370 -l 137 -n -f 349 -l 137 -n -f 311 -l 275 -n -f 330 -l 137 -d 137 -n -f 523 -l 275 -n -f 523 -l 137 -n -f 523 -l 550 -n -f 392 -l 137 -n -f 370 -l 137 -n -f 349 -l 137 -n -f 311 -l 275 -n -f 330 -l 137 -d 137 -n -f 207 -l 137 -n -f 220 -l 137 -n -f 262 -l 137 -d 137 -n -f 220 -l 137 -n -f 262 -l 137 -n -f 294 -l 137 -d 275 -n -f 311 -l 275 -d 137 -n -f 294 -l 275 -n -f 262 -l 550 -d 550

$ ssh -vl abbas 10.10.10.251

Last login: Mon Jul  5 03:58:16 2010 from 10.10.10.243
Could not chdir to home directory /home/abbas: Permission denied
/bin/bash: Permission denied
debug1: channel 0: free: client-session, nchannels 1
Connection to 10.10.10.251 closed.
Transferred: sent 2048, received 2072 bytes, in 0.0 seconds
Bytes per second: sent 51120.7, received 51719.8
debug1: Exit status 1

# stat /
File: `/'
Size: 4096          Blocks: 16         IO Block: 4096   directory
Device: fd00h/64768d    Inode: 2           Links: 23
Access: (0700/drwx------)  Uid: (    0/    root)   Gid: (    0/    root)
Access: 2010-07-04 04:02:02.000000000 -0400
Modify: 2010-07-02 10:14:43.000000000 -0400
Change: 2010-07-05 03:58:50.000000000 -0400

Cheers.

To add to it, this just becomes more anguish when common, rather I would say major, Linux applications suck in changing the default sender address off from ‘root’ (although some apps like ‘exim -f’ and mutt having SET FROM defined in ~/.muttrc allow you to change sending address while emailing from command line but this isn’t what I needed). And so called mighty default MTA, sendmail just brings more panic to it when trying to change it during an in-mail transport (btw, I already dislike sendmail mainly cause of its sluggishness during startup and restart)! As I really had to do something about it and I already knew that Exim’s address rewriting can be helpful here so after installing it and changing default MTA with ‘alternative –config mta’ I added a quick rewrite at transport.

$ grep -A 5 remote_smtp /etc/exim/exim.conf | tail -5

driver = smtp
headers_rewrite = root@*  some-email-address@example.com fsr

This worked but didn’t change the FROM field’s name as expected. I tried combinations of different settings including the rewrite tag ‘F’ but the FROM envelop address kept showing the original sender root. I was searching till I stumbled upon http://www.exim.org/exim-html-2.00/doc/html/spec_32.html#SEC671 where it states the FULL ‘from’ envelop address is changed with ‘w’ tag and allows to have a new sender name (RFC 822) to be configured. So I added.

$ grep -A 5 remote_smtp /etc/exim/exim.conf | tail -5

driver = smtp
# Adding to rewrite the stupid root@ FROM field which I hate
headers_rewrite = root@* "Abbas <some-email-address@example.com>" fsrw
return_path = some-email-address@example.com

And boo you naughty (!) root