Latest Blog Posts
Need to fix SimplePie
2 March 2025
A million visits a month

I get a consistent monthly number of Apache visitors on littlesvr.ca, roughly ranging between 10 and 20 thousand. A couple of years ago I put my OPS courses (OPS345 is the most popular) on wiki.littlesvr.ca (same hardware). I forgot to analyze the logs at the end of january, and just did it now for january/february. … Read more

2 March 2025
2024 littlesvr

Last year I decided to upgrade my public-facing server. Some history: I bought a Micro-ATX motherboard without looking up the size, I assumed it’s the smallest form factor. It isn’t, the smallest one is Mini-ITX. So the new motherboard didn’t fit in the old case. The new one is massive: I put 64GB of RAM … Read more

15 March 2024
Blocking Postfix/Dovecot access for some local users

I have an “everything” Linux server currently running Slackware 15. Sometimes I need to create users in /etc/passwd for some particular use case, but both my Postfix and Dovecot authenticate against /etc/passwd to grant access. It took a long time to figure out how to get that done. Finally I did it: Postfix Edit /etc/postfix/master.cf; … Read more

Who is Andrew Smith?

And what's a solutions engineer? My goal in life is to design and develop solutions for people - to make them less frustrated, to give them better tools, to let them concentrate on more important things.

I'm an engineer specializing in Linux and open source software: I use it as a platform to create desktop, server, and embedded device applications, libraries, and services.

If you have a question about my work - by all means contact me, I'll be happy to talk to you about it.

Around the USA in 90 days
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90 day RV trip around the perimiter of the USA. Read more

2011 - Bolton-Toronto Kayak
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Day trip from Bolton to Toronto down the Humber river. Read more