maildrop and postfix

This is quite a short entry, it's mainly to help out anybody that needs to debug the same as me, as it took me a while to find the right information online.
If you're using postfix, and use maildrop you probably also use mailfilter rules to move your mail into the relevant folders on IMAP for you. Well if things don't go where you expect, or don't seem to drop into the folders you need to debug. Telling maildrop to debug and what to look for isn't exactly intuitive.
I'm using postfix, maildrop and ispconfig, so your config may be a little different, but the debugging should be the same. In your postfix master.cf you should have your maildrop line, something like:

maildrop  unix  -       n       n       -       -       pipe

  flags=DRhu user=vmail argv=/usr/bin/maildrop -d vmail ${extension} ${recipient} ${user} ${nexthop} ${sender}

Which puts it into delivery mode with user vmail. So in your /home/vmail (or whatever user folder it's set to) will be your .mailfilter generic file. It's in here you can setup the logging location:

logfile "/tmp/maildrop.log"

VERBOSE="9"

Seemed to work nicely for me, it was only a temporary log I wanted to look at. No need to restart postfix as it's called on the fly. Reading that file you'll see something like:

Date: Fri Jun  3 20:10:51 2016

From: Homebase <homebase@homebaselife.com>

Subj: Be BBQ ready

File: /home/mydomain/myuser/.                                (154696)

Which in this case shows the email was dropped into the default inbox folder. If it was filtered into an alternative folder you'd see:

 

Date: Fri Jun  3 20:10:51 2016

From: Homebase <homebase@homebaselife.com>

Subj: Be BBQ ready

File: /home/mydomain/myuser/./SOMEFOLDER/                                (154696)

Or similar to that. Easy!
Also if you want to log bits in the filter itself, open up the .mailfilter for your user account, and add in lines like:

log "== some log words =="

And that will literally log that to the file. Good to check your if conditions are working or to dump out some temporary fields.

That's it really!

 

 

Home improvement - painting and such like

I'm opening up a blog post for a slightly unusual topic. Decorating. We're planning on finally getting round to decorating our house (It was a new build 2yrs ago, so everywhere is builders magnolia that's as thin as skimmed milk) and so the choices of what to do, where and how are all starting to bubble up between me and my wife. (We've not even asked the kids yet, as who knows how many more options and choices that will open up!)
So, the main choices we're trying to come up with are:

• Where to start - What room should we try first!
• What to do - painting, a bit of wall art, wallpaper
• How to do it - Tips and tricks on making it easy (!) and the right way to do things.

So I'm also after comments too, so feel free to let me know tips or tricks or any suggestions you have on how we should do this to give a good result.

My thinking so far:

Where to start - Probably our master bedroom, it's at the top of the house with adjoining en-suite and has low ceilings and strange angles/corners (It's built into the roofspace of the house). Initial thinking is just to paint, but for a bedroom what colours to go for. Light colours would make sense, it's not got a huge window so increasing the room light by paint would be better (No dark oaky types), our furniture is also light wood colours so keeping it light. Light grey colours with a feature wall with extra colour seem to be an idea that keeps coming into my head, because of the strange shapes of the ceiling though not sure how you would approach this. Other colours such as light pastel colours would maybe be an option?

What to do - I think wallpaper is discounted, as I hate the stuff, hate putting it up and removing it, so I reckon this one isn't going to be an option. Wall art, possibly, we did this in the children rooms and it looks really good, but not sure it would fit with what we want for our bedroom.

How to do it - This is the thing. I've never been a great painter or decorator, so I just do what I think is right. Go and buy a load of masking tape, and mask along the skirting board, and along the ceiling, around light fittings and electrical sockets. Then get a roller, slop some paint in the tray and roller away, trying to keep it even. Do you keep the strokes up and down or side to side? How thick do you apply the paint? And when I get to the fiddly bits and get a paint brush, how do you make it look the same, brush strokes always look different and it looks like you've 'highlighted' the socket you've painted around since the brush strokes stick out more! This is the bit that I always struggle with! So this is the part that needs the most input from those that know better, so I'm hoping somebody hears my struggle and tells me the right thing to do!

I look forward to comments or suggestions :-)