Unable to telnet to remote mail servers on port 25 SMTP

Issue: unable to telnet to port 25 (SMTP) of remote mail servers from windows based machines.

Solution: Your antivirus program may be blocking SMTP connections.

In my case, Avast 5.x blocks all outbound SMTP, IMAP, POP and NNTP connections by default. It's supposed to prompt you when it detects an unsecured connection, but I suppose that's only from actual mail clients, not from the CLI.

Avast specific solution:
1) Open Avast Control Panel
2) Click on Mail Shield
3) Click Expert Settings
4) Click on SSL accounts
5) Add the host name/ip, protocol, port and type of security your connection will use
6) OK your way out of there

If all else fails, turn off Avast/AV completely and test your connection.

This worked for me on Windows XP, Vista and Windows 7.

GoDaddy SSL .crt File Won't Uncompress/unzip in Windows 2003

I ran into a problem today with Windows 2003 not wanting to uncompress or unzip all the required ssl certificate files from the GoDaddy certificate zip file you download from their certificate manager. The problem appears to be that post SP1 in 2003, the operating system blocks certain files from being uncompressed when they are downloaded from the internet. In this case, it would unzip the .p7b file, but not the .crt file in the archive. My solution:

1. Right mouse click the zip file
2. Choose "Properties"
3. In the general tab, click the button "Unblock"

Now you should be able to uncompress all the files in the zip archive.

Expanding Windows System NTFS Partitions in ESX

1. Shut down VM
2. Increase disk size in VIC or via command line with

#vmkfstools -X

#vmkfstools -X 30G /vmfs/volumes/datastore_name/vm_name/vm_name.vmdk

3. Boot off Windows 2008 CD
4. At welcome screen choose "Next"
5. Choose "Repair Your Computer"
6. Choose "next"
7. Choose "Command Prompt"
8. At dos prompt, type: diskpart
9. Type: list volume
10. Type: select volume 1
11. Type: extend
12. Type: list volume
13. Type: exit
14. Type: exit
15. Choose "restart"

Reference: http://kb.vmware.com/selfservice/microsites/search.do?language=en_US&cmd=displayKC&externalId=1007266
KB Article: 1007266

WordPress RSS Feed Widget: Links in New Window

I saw a lot of people ask this question in various forums with little to no assistance from the community at large. The majority of the responses told people to install a different widget called "Better RSS Widget" - That's all fine and nice, but no one had an actual solution to the question of "How do I edit the default rss widget in wordpress?" Here's my solution (as of WP 2.9.2):

1. Open default-widgets.php
2. Look around line 842 for a line that contains the list item <li> for the link in the widget. I found mine by searching for the string: class="rsswidget"
3. Add to this link: target='_blank'

If the above instructions don't make sense to you, then you should probably save yourself the headache and just install the "Better RSS Widget". I have no idea if newer versions of WP are going to break this fix, so you're on your own. I suppose I'll be installing the "Better RSS Widget" as well if a WP update breaks this functionality.

Strip Owner Password from Encrypted PDF

This handy dandy command script will allow you to strip the owner password out of a pdf file:

gs -q -dNOPAUSE -dBATCH -sDEVICE=pdfwrite -sOutputFile=unencrypted.pdf -c .setpdfwrite -f encrypted.pdf

Works in linux, mac and cygwin.

Alternately, you can crack the owner or user password from a pdf file using the open source utility PDFCrack:

http://pdfcrack.sourceforge.net/

Additionally, you can remove copy/print/save security from a PDF via Ensode's handy online tool over at: http://www.ensode.net/pdf-crack.jsf

Avast 5 - Thunderbird: Server is not an IMAP4 server

Fresh install of Thunderbird and Avast 5. Thunderbird is unable to connect to your mail server via IMAP. You receive the error message:

<servername> is not an IMAP4 server.

With the release of Avast 5, there are new heuristic methods used for allowing imap and pop connections to mail servers. Avast is supposed to automatically prompt you for an action to take, but this sometimes gets messed up.

Solution:
1) Launch Avast user interface
2) Click Real Time Shields
3) Click Mail Shield
4) Click Expert Settings
5) Click SSL Accounts
6) Manually add your IMAP mail server account information - if it is already listed, delete it and manually add it. Be sure you know what you're doing here. If you're unsure, contact your email provider for help
7) Check your mail. If you're still seeing the IMAP4 error, try closing and restarting Thunderbird.

This solution works for both Thunderbird 2.x and 3.x

Element CFID is undefined in SESSION

This is an issue I came across with a site hosted on a shared hosting server. The problem is a misconfiguration in the CF Admin. The solution:

1) Login to the CF Admin
2) Navigate to the Server Settings page -> Memory Variables
3) Un-check the option Use J2EE session variables
4) Check the options Enable Application Variables and Enable Session Variables
5) Submit the changes