Well, thanks to some nice friends ;-), it was shown to me that the theme for the site was not working out as well as I would have liked under IE. Grrr. So, installed XP in a VirtualBox instance and went about trying to fix it. Well, I wasn’t all too thrilled as to how the original theme was doing layouts (lots of big float-ed elements with some rather hacked padding/margin values), but under FireFox everything looked fine. Also, my bad, I didn’t do some reasonable size tests.
Long story short: IE still cannot do a good job laying out DIVs with CSS! I had to cut my losses and insert a layout table to contain the two columns. Argh! Anyway, under IE things look better as parts of the content are no longer being cut off.
Enjoy!
Tags: Maintenance, Web
After much ado and waiting, my old information has been cleared out of Google’s systems and I was able to successfully link corruptmemory.com to my existing Google Apps instance. Other than the long wait Google Apps is simply “da bomb!”
Anywho. I have everything squared away with the login system so, anyone who is interested can sign up and contribute!
I also did some more tweaking on the theme to move the login to the top and all, perhaps I’ll write a nifty AJAXian logger-inner, but argh! So much to do and I still have to friggin’ find a job! (yes, I’m currently unemployed).
The next priority is to get a simple app written for controlling the rest of the site and fill out some content. I have some code that could be made ready with a few hours work that I think people will find useful.
Anywho: Come! Sign-up! I promise some heady content soon enough, stand by!
Tags: Google, Internet, Maintenance, Web
Yarg! Google still has not cleared out the corruptmemory.com domain information from their systems, as discussed here.
Tags: Google, Maintenance
Well, rolled-out Fedora 10 on most of the machines in the home net. Most went without any hitch at all, but some hiccups.
One of the two Mac minis I upgraded didn’t properly update the boot loader, so the machine was not bootable. Fortunately the fix was simple, boot the DVD and go into rescue mode, then:
$ chroot <system disk mount mount point> /bin/bash
$ ldconfig
$ source /etc/profile
$ grub-install /dev/sda
$ exit
$ exit The above procedure will get the machine booting, but without a pretty bootup graphic, which is fine now. To get a pretty boot graphic scavange the following config as necessary:
default=0
timeout=5
splashimage=(hd0,0)/grub/splash.xpm.gz
hiddenmenu
title Fedora (2.6.27.5-117.fc10.i686)
root (hd0,0)
kernel /vmlinuz-2.6.27.5-117.fc10.i686 ro root=UUID=5bdcf2f3-17c6-4342-9863-9f8b10cfa9b7 rhgb quiet
initrd /initrd-2.6.27.5-117.fc10.i686.img Remember, your UUID will be different than mine. In other words: the above is an example, not exactly what you should be using.
After that, you should get a booting system.
Once booted, I ran a yum update from the console before logging in for the first time. The interesting thing is that in Fedora 10 the X screen is on console 1 not console 7, so CTRL+ALT+F1 seems to do nothing, CTRL+ALT+F2 works fine though.
$ yum check-update
$ yum -y update I had problems with some of the repositories that have not been updated for fc10 yet, just edit the appropriate file in /etc/yum.repo.d and disable the offenders for now.
Tip: If you haven’t yet, install the fastest mirror yum plugin to significantly improve yum’s performance:
$ yum -y install yum-fastestmirror Also, if you are using nVidia drivers, fc10 installs a new kernel so, re-run your nVidia driver installer to build against the new kernel.
Next, the SELinux profiles are not completely updated on the disk so you will likely get some AVC violations, fortunately, the corrective steps are in the reports.
I still have a problem with the two Toshiba laptops I have resuming after being suspended (the computer completely resumes, but the audio does not work), I think I’ve developed a fix/work-around, but need to do more testing.
But Fedora 10 is sweet. A very nice upgrade to Fedora 9, which was itself a rather wonderful distro.
Tags: Fun, GNU/Linux, Hacking, Maintenance
Pretty smooth process overall. Because I have a lot of custom repositories set up in my /etc/yum.repos.d/ some of them are not fc10 ready yet so had to disable them.
Finally, after waiting an eternity Nautilus has a compact list view. My eyes can now rest a bit.
Tags: GNU/Linux, Maintenance
Yeah, like so many I have a FaceBook account, but honestly, I really do not like hanging out on the site, too voyeuristic for my tastes, but I know a lot of people spend time there so I wanted to keep a chat-line open. Well, there is a plugin for libpurple (the underlying library that Pidgin and Adium use) that allows libpurple IM clients to directly connect to the FaceBook IM service. In Fedora there is an RPM package:
$ sudo yum -y install purple-facebookchat I’m sure that there are packages for Ubuntu and derivatives.
Once installed just add your FaceBook account (email/password) and you’re off! It is a much nicer way to deal with FaceBook than lurking on the site all the time, ugh.
Tags: Internet
Did some behind-the-scenes work tonight. Getting git repositories in order. Broke stuff up into public and private repositories. Upgraded version of WordPress. Also, getting ready for a major fork of the theme. The theme of this site is based on the Stardust theme by Tommaso Baldovino. The original theme is a bit too big in a lot of places. I liked the 2-columns layout and “variable” size (why do people use fixed-sized layouts? I will never understand), but some more tweaking is needed. Firstly, the layout uses PNGs, I have no idea how the site renders on IE since I only have GNU/Linux available to me at the moment. Secondly, there are a number of image overlay tricks that are not always working (like on my Android Web browser).
Also, beefed up startup script on router. More on that in the future. For now: bed.
Tags: Hacking, Maintenance
In Googling around for some git-related issues, came across this site:
http://rails.wincent.com/blog/new-site-launch
Most of the site they custom built to provide a more seamless experience for the user: blog, wiki, issue tracker and such. All in Rails. Overall very cool. I have many of the same ideas in mind. WordPress is nice, but a hackers gotta hack!
Also this guy has some stuff up on RubyForge: http://rubyforge.org/projects/wikitext
Also very cool, and implemented in C. This is similar to the way I want to go about building the server-side DOM implementation in Ruby: some lightweight Ruby wrappers around a core in C. Ruby is so damn slow.
Tags: Example Site, Programming, Rails, Ruby, Web
Now since I have my new-fangled cable Internet service with my 5 static IPs I got to work figuring out how to best use this new techno-inter-magic while trying to keep my expenditures as close to $0 as possible.
For a server I’m going to use my old Compaq laptop, after all, it has a built-in UPS! (not that the rest of my networking hardware that is needed to keep a site up in the eventuality of a power failure has a UPS ;-).) Also, it is the next machine I have that is outfitted with 2GB of RAM. For this I installed Fedora 9.
The real problem was the router. Optimum provides a router (Cisco 800-based), but it’s all locked up. The only thing this puppy does is expose to my network the 5 raw, completely unblocked IP addresses. Ideally I wanted one piece of hardware that can NAT firewall my network but where I could manage multiple external (WAN) IP addresses. All the routers I had with their intrinsic software aren’t intended for this purpose: they’re “consumer grade” after all – just for connecting to broadband. Fortunately, there are a lot of good hackers out there that realize that this perspective from vendors is pure nonsense. Those hackers have come up with their own firmware replacements for many devices.
The options I had available to me were:
The places I look for some firmware goodness were OpenWrt and dd-wrt.
The NetGear would be ideal because it does not have wireless capability so I would not be sacrificing anything when I put it down the basement, but no-dice. The Linksys is a no-go on OpenWrt because the “brain trust” at Cisco decided to go with a proprietary OS for all newer versions of the WRT54 series after version 3 resulting in a smaller amount of flash making it is harder to build a decent system. However, dd-wrt has a micro version that fits in the V7 WRT54. Downloaded it, flashed it, held breath, and YESS! It worked! For sure the dd-wrt ROM is a significant improvement over the intrinsic firmware: you get performance graphs, real DMZ support telnet to a BusyBox shell, and a whole lot more. But this is the “micro” version. A number of things have been stripped out like many command line tools (ls for instance) and no ssh server, only telnet. It would be possible to proceed with the Linksys, but I wanted to see if what could be done with the ActionTec. Well, OpenWrt can be made to work! Just not so easily, but after carefully following instructions, reading a ton about Redboot (VERY COOL BTW) I got the puppy to boot Linux! After a little more hackery I got the OpenWrt image to boot into a Linux system on power up.
On a side note: like all good Linux distros both OpenWrt and dd-wrt can be extended through community created packages. OpenWrt actually has a package manager opkg that works a lot like aptitude or yum, very sweet.
The only problem I ran into with the ActionTec setup was that you install a very bleeding edge image, and the Web-based UI tools and boot scripts do not set up NATing and the firewall correctly no matter how many pretty web pages you fill out. But never fear! This is Linux! I just installed my own boot script after the networking script and poof! working firewall and packet forwarding!
Here’s my script (stored in /etc/init.d/custom_rules)
START=45
LAN=eth0
WAN=eth1
VWAN0='<some ip>'
VWAN1='<some other ip>'
WEB1='<internal server 1>'
VPN='<vpn server>'
start() {
/usr/sbin/iptables -I INPUT 1 -i ${LAN} -j ACCEPT
/usr/sbin/iptables -I INPUT 1 -i lo -j ACCEPT
/usr/sbin/iptables -A INPUT -p TCP -i ! ${LAN} -d 0/0 --dport 0:1023 -j DROP
/usr/sbin/iptables -A INPUT -p UDP -i ! ${LAN} -d 0/0 --dport 0:1023 -j DROP
/usr/sbin/iptables -I FORWARD -i ${LAN} -d 192.168.0.0/255.255.0.0 -j DROP
/usr/sbin/iptables -A FORWARD -i ${LAN} -s 192.168.0.0/255.255.0.0 -j ACCEPT
/usr/sbin/iptables -A FORWARD -i ${WAN} -d 192.168.0.0/255.255.0.0 -j ACCEPT
/usr/sbin/iptables -t nat -A POSTROUTING -o ${WAN} -j MASQUERADE
/usr/sbin/iptables -t nat -I PREROUTING -p tcp --dport 80 -i ${WAN} -d ${VWAN1} -j DNAT --to ${WEB1}:80
/usr/sbin/iptables -t nat -A PREROUTING -p tcp --dport 22 -i ${WAN} -d ${VWAN0} -j DNAT --to ${VPN}:22
}The command-line environment in OpenWrt is much nicer than the “micro” dd-wrt envirement: vi, ls, and most typical command-line stuff you would expect is there. All the config stuff is in nice text files located under /etc/config. The root file system is a mount of the flash ROM image using jffs the file system especially designed for flash – all my changes are persistent as one would expect. Very sweet.
One warning – the OpenWrt firmware does not properly support the ActionTec wireless chip at the moment, but that is not a loss for me since I would have disabled wireless anyway for this puppy.
So now I have Linux all the way out to the borders of my network, and life is good.
Tags: Embedded systems, Fun, GNU/Linux, Hacking, Maintenance
Yarg! Google snafu. Now I have to wait.
I wanted to use Google Apps to manage my mail for corruptmemory, so I thought I had to set up a new GA instance for the corruptmemory domain (I already have an instance of GA for my home that my family uses).
Well, I went through the GA setup process, including verifying that I own corruptmemory.com domain, only to discover that I could have kept things simpler and added corruptmemory.com as an alias in my current GA instance. Ugh. So I search around to find a way to delete the GA instance I just created, and lo-and-behold such an option exists! *poof* my new instance is gone, but wait there’s more: on the final delete screen it says that it can take up to 5 days for all references to corruptmemeory.com to be removed from Google’s “systems”.
Well, unfortunately this translates to is that now I cannot add corruptmemeory.com to my current GA instance until everything gets cleared out of Google’s “systems”. This means I cannot open up the blog to people who want to register until this happens. Oh well.
Tags: DNS, Google, Internet, Maintenance
Next Page »
|
