Web developer musings… and then some.

The Outlook settings to connect to the server are as follows:

servername = livejournal.com
username = wayne

Replace the LHS with the RHS as specified below:

Incoming (POP): openmail.servername, port 110
Outgoing (SMTP): openmail.servername, port 25

E-mail address: username@servername
UserID: username.servername
Password: password

We also have a webmail feature that you will be access through any web browser:

http://openmail.servername/

UserID: username@servername
Password: password

I just downloaded and installed WordPress 2.1 over the weekend. The UI is beautiful.

I would have wanted to develop my own tool (WaynePress, you know), but upon evaluating the competition, I think I just might refrain from this foolish inclination. Check it out:

wordpress.org/

AWStats is a traffic analysis program written in Perl. It can generate really nice charts for your reporting purpose. This is accessed in any web browser; e.g.:

http://www.xxx.yyy/awstats/awstats.pl?config=www.xxx.yyy

Basically you append the “/awstats/awstats.pl?config=www.xxx.yyy” portion to the URL. Of course, before this the AWStats installer would have modified the Apache config file (httpd.conf) to add some directives for AWStats.

It is also good to setup a cronjob for the updating of stats, so the values presented are near-live.

Config files are typically found in /etc/awstats.

# pwd
/etc/awstats
# ls
awstats.www.xxx.yyy.conf
data

The data folder is to be left alone. I suppose it stores AWStats-specific values. To create a new site, copy the example config file and modify AT LEAST the parameters:

LogFile="/var/www/html/www.xxx.yyy/logs/access_log"
LogType=W
LogFormat=4
SiteDomain="www.xxx.yyy"
HostAliases="xxx.yyy"

Here I’m assuming that file requests to the path specified in LogFile, with the Apache directive:

CustomLog /var/www/html/www.xxx.yyy/logs/access_log common

So requests are saved here, and then AWStats will analyze it.

Note: its best to use a separate log for each site, esp on a shared hosting server, otherwise AWStats will have some complaints.

After that, you can save the file, and run:

# perl /usr/local/awstats/tools/awstats_updateall.pl now

This will update the statistics for all AWStats sites.

To follow-up upon my post yesterday, I’ve decided that stop pursuing the MEPIS issue. Just get FC6, since I’m pretty comfy with Red Hat flavoured distros anyways.

FC6 can be downloaded from:

ftp://ftp.oss.eznetsols.org/linux/fedora/6/x86_64/iso/

The 4GB ISO download took about 3+ hours, which is pretty fast as I am using SCV MaxOnline.

Burned it onto a DVD, used VMWare (again) and lo and behold, after a lengthy install process, I have Zod.

: )

I’ve decided to shift my development onto the Linux platform, as XAMPP just doesn’t cut it for me anymore. I’d rather become more familiar with development on a proper platform, although, of course this FC6 image is going to be my playground.

I got this Ruby on Rails book, am going to try it out later in the day. Yes, I’m somewhat slow, but better late than never!

I tried installing SimplyMEPIS 6.0 yesterday.

It’s a bootable CD, so I placed it in the tray, and lo and behold it booted up nicely. The login prompt was for either root or demo user (with passwords root, demo respectively), so I happily keyed in root/root.

Except that there was no output on screen. The (PS2) keyboard was lit, but no output. The (USB) mouse was dead. Great.

So I turned to VMWare. The boot/keyboard/mouse went well, and I clicked the “Install MEPIS” icon. Basically I had a 4GB partition for MEPIS, so I had it formatted to ext3, and used the GRUB loader. It took about 30 minutes for the install to complete, fine, since it was using 256MB RAM and I can’t really expect zippy performance in VMWare.

GRUB loaded, the kernel loaded (2.6.xxx I can’t remember the exact) and then:

kernel panic – not syncing : VFS : Unable to mount root fs on unknown-block(0,0)

Right… seems like it occurs in flavours of Ubuntu and Debian (of which MEPIS is based on) so I’m not too sure how to solve the problem.

Advice, anyone?

Q: Disable the global filters?

A: Find the filter, nullify it — WARNING: irreversible.

# cd /
# find -type f -name "filter.book"
./var/www/cgi-bin/openwebmail/etc/filter.book
# cd /var/www/cgi-bin/openwebmail/etc/
# cat /dev/null > filter.book

Q: “Your request didn’t contain the proper session ID cookie — access denied!” error?

A: Hard drive may be full, run the disk free command:

# df -h
Filesystem            Size  Used Avail Use% Mounted on
/dev/sda3             7.5G  1.9G  5.3G  26% /
/dev/sda1              99M   13M   81M  14% /boot
/dev/shm              506M     0  506M   0% /dev/shm
/dev/sdc1              19G  746M   18G   5% /home
/dev/sdb1              38G  5.6G   31G  16% /var

Make sure the appropriate partitions are not full; esp /home and /var.

Just so I can stop pretending to be ignorant: traditional chinese (圖片) is distinct from simplified chinese (图片).

I was recently put in-charge of overseeing the database server migration — from Oracle to MySQL.

We had all worked really hard, making sure we stick to the schedule as prescribed. Until two days before the final migration, I realised that the web server couldn’t connect to the database server.

“Connection refused” it said.

“It must be the firewall!” I thought. Our client had co-located a web server, a backup web server and their old Oracle database, and we were not managing the firewall, so it was easy to pin responsibility on the much-maligned firewall. Then I looked at the firewall — it was allowing incoming/outgoing connections on the MySQL port, no issue. Hmmm.

So I wrote a script to test for connectivity:

error_reporting(E_ALL);
$link = mysql_connect('w.x.y.z:3306:/tmp/mysql.sock', 'wayne-devel', ...);
 
if (!$link) {
die('Could not connect: ' . mysql_error());
}
 
echo 'Connected successfully';
mysql_close($link);

There was no return value, not even the “Could not connect” message. So it was the weirdest thing.

It turned out, in ascending order of heartache:

1. the firewall on the database server was blocking incoming mysql connections
2. the firewall on the web server was blocking outgoing mysql connections
3. PHP was not compiled with mysql support on the web server

ARGH. Well. Better now then later I guess.

… setting up a home network.

I finally got down to setting up my old wireless router for a friend yesterday. Its a D-Link DI-624+. Now this should have be a relatively painless activity since I had set it up successfully before myself after 1-2 days of Internet-less pain. It was more about the DSL modem settings rather than the router! Now my friend uses a cable modem from SCV MaxOnline, a black box so to speak. Good, one less thing to worry about. Basically the setup is as follows:

1. The cable service provider assigns the external IP address to the modem;
2. The modem hooks up with the router;
3. The router assigns internal IP addresses to its clients (desktops, laptops).

I reset the router to the default settings (DHCP) and it was fine with the IBM Centrino laptop. Wired of course. Then we setup data encryption and wireless connectivity. Voila! Wired and wireless is fine. IBM laptops have their own network configuration software, and it was comprehensive enough that I could get wireless connectivity up and running within 5 minutes.

Time elapsed: 25 mins, inclusive of cleaning the top shelves for a place to put the modem and router and the fact that I had no mouse!

Now we go over to this Acer laptop in another room. Centrino as well. it should be a piece of cake because I just need to key in the wlan ssid and the network key. I use the Windows one, since Acer doesn’t provide the IBM equivalent of the network configuration software. But for some reason the internal IP for the Acer is incorrect, even though I’d made sure that the settings are the same. It doesn’t help that the laptop seems to having some virus/adware issues and slow as hell. I try various combinations to no avail.

Time elapsed: 1 hour 30 mins(?!?), inclusive of booting and rebooting the laptop into Windows.

I finally decide to shift the modem and router into the Acer room, wireless be damned. Billy Bombers was calling out to me. Within 2 seconds, the network card gets a correct IP address and Internet access is fine now.

Time elapsed: 1 hour 35 mins.

So… what was the issue? I used a workaround, but its simply not satisfying. It just might be the router? I should go upgrade the firmware the next time I’m down. Maybe that will help.

*update*

The local D-Link website navigates like:

Tech Support -> Drivers & Updates -> Wireless -> DI-624+

I would expect firmware updates and the link to be hosted here, but its just a product page with some setup information. Perfect.