Maya 2009 64bit Font install / missing fonts in Fedora et. al

Missing fonts in Maya on Fedora, and other Linux distros

A problem with missing font files in Fedora, prevents some text and labels from displaying
properly in the program windows. For example, texture names may
not appear as expected below the texture icons in the Hypershade window.
Also some other packages needs to be installed on some distributions, not on Ubuntu, as I know of, but I’ll writ it down anyway.
Download and install the following rpm or .deb files (names vary slightly so make a search for something similar:

1. xorg-x11-fonts-ISO8859-1-75dpi
2. xorg-x11-fonts-75dpi
3. Xinet.d
4. tcsh
5. libXp (for both .i386 .x86_64)
6. libXp-devel (for both .i386 .x86_64
7. mesa-libGLw mesa-libGLw-devel )
8. gamin-devel (for libfam.so)
9. Autofs

Problems with Nokia N Series Phones?

I’ve always been a fan of Nokia’s N series line of mobile phones.
Ever since my first Nokia N72, I’ve used N series, except for a short period where I recently tried the Nokia 5800 Xpress Music phone.
Now it’s back to N series. Anyway, I recently had a problem that I googled about and tried different approaches for solving for days, with no success. The phone would not install software, no matter what. No new Maps, no new apps, no new nothing! I was completely stuck. All the phone said was “Unable to Install”. Not very informative… :-(

This may bee common knowledge for the techno/gadget geeks out there, but I found that by using the command:
*#7370#

I was able to completely format the phone, and it worked again! This command removes EVERYTHING on your phone. Contacts, messages, the works, so be sure to do a backup first…

Just as a tip for those that experience strange problems on Nokia N-Series phones.
I don’t know if this works on other models…

Configuring a newsreader with Stunnel SSL

It seems that many folks out there are having hard times getting their non-ssl enabled newsreader to talk ssl with the nntp server.
The thing is that if you want to use SSL for encrypting your news reading habits (or any other ssl enabled habit) you can use Stunnel to work as a local SSL “proxy” to tunnel different protocols.

Read all about it at http://www.stunnel.org

So. I just wanted to post a recipe for making stuff work. This works for any newsreader, not just Pan. Knode and all the others also works through stunnel.

First of all you need to download and install stunnel. This can be done through your distribution’s package manager, or downloaded and built from http://www.stunnel.org

Depending on what version of stunnel you get or your distributions setup script, you may or may not have a stunnel.pem file lying around in your file system.
This is a SSL certificate file, that stunnel needs. You could use the default stunnel.pem, if you’re not going to use it for anything but getting stunnel up and running. That is you don’t want the certificate to represent any part of you or your organization.

I use an older version 3.x of stunnel, because that’s what my package manager gave me. I didn’t get no stunnel.pem file. If this is also your case, you have to make one of your own.

This is done with the openssl tools. The stunnel.pem needs to be in the right format to be parsed, and have the correct permissions to it, or else things won’t work.
I’m no wizard of SSL, so my guide may freak someone out, but at least I got it working…

I did the following:

openssl genrsa -out priv.pem
openssl req -new -x509 -key priv.pem -out stunnel.pem -days 1095


Now the format of the stunnel.pem needs to be like the following:

-----BEGIN RSA PRIVATE KEY-----
MIIBOQIBAAJBAKF94YxmWBxpQIl1OWAj0VqWSrYgh3LuNtWRN71g6lP4nSYLKqBD
iJemS7yXXxaOQSJzl/iTsnee6x5o0CVMc58CAwEAAQJANViQ9kEkoBYAtKedkW2j
.... (more blabla here)
-----END RSA PRIVATE KEY-----

-----BEGIN CERTIFICATE-----
MIICQDCCAeqgAwIBAgIJANiDZT8yJWiaMA0GCSqGSIb3DQEBBQUAMEwxCzAJBgNV
BAYTAkdCMRIwEAYDVQQIEwlCZXJrc2hpcmUxEDAOBgNVBAcTB05ld2J1cnkxFzAV
... (more blabla here)
-----END CERTIFICATE-----


To make this file, I simply copied and pasted the privatekey from priv.pem into stunnel.pem.

Now you need to save your stunnel.pem anywhere you like. You’ll point to it in the stunnel.conf file.
Allso you need to have the correct permissions for the file, more accurately 600. Issue this command on the file:

chmod 600 stunnel.pem

Now it’s time for the config file stunnel.conf, located (on my system) in /etc/ssl/stunnel/stunnel.conf
If it isn’t there just create it with sudo vi /etc/ssl/stunnel/stunnel.conf
(You need to have root privileges, so use sudo or su before using your editor of choice. I chose vi.)
Then type in these silly lines:

client = yes
key = PATH TO YOUR STUNNEL.PEM FILE HERE

[nntp]
accept = localhost:119
connect = SERVER:PORT OF YOUR NEWS PROVIDER HERE
(mine is news-europe.giganews.com:563)

Now that is pretty much it. Type sudo stunnel, to start stunnel, or as root /usr/sbin/stunnel.
make sure it is running with

ps aux | grep stunnel

You should see a pid there.
Now configure your newsreader to use localhost as server address and 119 as port.
You should be able to connect, knowing that your traffic is now secured with SSL.

Hope this helps.

Baltazaar