We previously reported ...

... that I couldn't get the dspam CGI working properly without some form of suexec execution, because it wouldn't correctly redeliver false positives from the quarantine unless it ran as user dspam.  In so saying, I misspoke, because I forgot a detail.  (Well, two, actually.)

The first detail I forgot was that I'd just upgraded Dspam from v3.6.8 to v3.8.0, in the midst of everything else.  While I was at it.

The second detail I forgot was that when I installed Dspam 3.6.8, I'd found it had a problem redelivering false positives from quarantine using Postfix's sendmail-replacement utility as a local delivery agent, because Dspam made the false assumption that all possible local delivery agents require a -d command-line option when re-injecting mail for delivery.  This turns out not to be the case, which is a problem, because the -d option isn't set in a configuration file, it's hard-coded into dspam.c regardless of the configured local delivery agent.

At the time, I reported this as a bug against Dspam.  Evidently, either no-one ever read the bug report, or no-one ever did anything about it.  Since I never found where precisely the hard-coded -d was coming from, I wrote a simple patch for my own use here that scans the arguments to the local delivery agent and changes -d (which causes local re-injection to fail, if present) to -i (which, when processing a single message at a time as I have it configured, is harmless).

So I just re-applied that patch againt Dspam-3.8.0.  End of problem.

But it's still stupid for that -d to be hard-coded.

Things that make you go "WTF?"

Something I've thought about before, and which Pirate asked about on the way to the school bus stop this morning.  Most states these days have mandatory seat-belt laws for everyone.  Here in New Hampshire, seat belt use is recommended for everyone, but still mandatory for children (up to age 18, actually).  You can be cited and fined for not having a seat belt on your child.

So how come school buses don't have seat belts?

On a slightly different subject, NPR reported on the way back from the bus stop that medical insurers in New Hampshire are considering not paying hospitals to treat conditions caused by medical errors.

Sure makes sense to me... if I'm a mechanic, and I'm working on your car, and I fuck something up that was fine when you brought the car in, you should expect it to get fixed on my dime, not yours.  Why should a hospital be any different?

Stupid Dodge Intrepid tricks, part n

In the continuing tradition of Stupid Dodge Intrepid Electrical Tricks, I just drove back from Shaw's with no instrument panel lights.  At all.

But that's OK; I wasn't really missing out on anything.

You see, I didn't have any instruments either.

Yeah, that's right, the entire dash is dead.  Unless you switch from low to high beam (but not high to low) and hold the switch back.  Then the entire panel works (well, except for the blown fuel gauge backlight bulb that can't be changed without tearing the dash apart).  For as long as you hold the switch back.  The moment you have to let go of it, the panel's dead again.

I am sick and tired of this damned car's seemingly never-ending series of random electrical faults, and at this moment in time I fully intend to never buy another Chrysler product.

Bedtime stories

When reading kids their bedtime stories, the most frightening thing to upon opening a book bearing the name of some classic fairy tale is "Retold by ..."

Because when you see that, you just know it's going to SUCK.  Because if the ... "reteller" ... had any actual writing ability, they'd be coming up with their own story, instead of filing the serial numbers off someone else's to make the result copyrightable.