Christian Pelczarski's Blog

On Apache's page for mod_deflate they have a sample configuration titled "Compress everything except images". In this configuration it has an exception for Internet Explorer to only compress the mime type of text/html because IE 6 and below doesn't properly compress some other mime types ( javascript,css,xml,etc). However, I have found this configuration to be faulty by careful packet inspection using fiddler. I found by having the "!" in front of both no-gzip and gzip-only-text/html that everything ( js and css ) still was getting compressed in IE 6. By only having the "!" in front of the no-gzip text/html was compressed and not js or css. Internet Explorer 7 compressed everything as expected.

This configuration works at enabling compression of only text/html for Internet Explorer 6 ( IE 7 and 8 work fine with compression of most types of files ). Also, note that I don't have a browser match for Netscape and IE 5.5 and below because our web application doesn't allow them.

  SetOutputFilter DEFLATE
  #Highest 9 - Lowest 1
  DeflateCompressionLevel 9

  # IE 6 can only gzip text/html mime type. 
  # Must have a ! in front of no-gzip but NOT in front of gzip-only-text/html
  BrowserMatch \bMSIE\s6 !no-gzip gzip-only-text/html

  SetEnvIfNoCase Request_URI \.(?:gif|jpe?g|png)$  no-gzip dont-vary
  SetEnvIfNoCase Request_URI \.(?:exe|t?gz|zip|bz2|sit|rar)$ no-gzip dont-vary
  SetEnvIfNoCase Request_URI \.pdf$ no-gzip dont-vary

Invoke is a fantastic mixin within Prototype.js; however, whether you are looking at the bungee book or the Prototype.js API using invoke in a "custom" way is not explained. Meaning, all the examples are for either built-in Javascript methods(substring) or Prototype methods (toUpperCase). What if you wanted to use a user-defined function with invoke?

function expandTagHelper(element){
  ne = element.next();
  ne.toggle();
  if( element.innerHTML == '+' ){
    element.update('-');
  }else{
    element.update('+');
  }
}

el = el.select('span.tag_excerpt_show'); 
el.invoke('expandTagHelper')

This will not work.

What you must do is add this function to the Element object

// My personal Element methods 
Element.addMethods( {
  expandTagHelper: function(element){
    ne = element.next();
    ne.toggle();
    if( element.innerHTML == '+' ){
      element.update('-');
    }else{
      element.update('+');
    }
  }
});

el = el.select('span.tag_excerpt_show'); 
el.invoke('expandTagHelper')

This will work.

Are you a business shipping from Canada to the U.S.? N.G. Jensen has an easy way to automate this process. See here.

 ssh -D 7777 user@sshserver.com

Simple right? however, I couldn't get the proxy working. I kept on getting errors in lynx like

Proxy request sent, awaiting response... No data received.

and

Connection refused

Same with wget, though the errors where different. Let me tell you, I tried everything! I did all the stuff suggested when googling around like messing with /etc/ssh/sshd_config settings like AllowTcpForwarding and others. Moreover, I have three different servers to test on.

Save yourself the headache and set up Apache as the proxy. First edit httpd.conf as such:

Listen 7777

# Of course mod_proxy needs to be enable -- it is with most distros
ProxyRequests On
ProxyVia On

<Proxy *:7777>
Order deny,allow
Deny from all
Allow from localhost
</Proxy>

Next, do a /etc/init.d/httpd graceful.

Then, on your local machine do this:

# -C is to compress the data thru the tunnel
ssh user@sshserver.com -C -L 7777:localhost:7777
    

I spent three hours trying to get ssh -D working; Apache proxy with ssh -L took 5 minutes.

JD is up to his hypocrisy again.
Consider this post where he again accuses of Flash bashing. He turns right around and bashes himself.

"do something to fix the awful problems of browser disparity"

We wrote an RIA in XHTML/CSS/Javascript using the Prototype library and it even works in Konqueror ( which, by the way, there is no way to get flash working -- in Konqueror ). John, how many times have you used ( or eluded to in subtle way ) that false argument? Cross browser application development is not rocket science! The proof is in the pudding -- how else do you explained the explosion of these type of (cross browser) web applications. Although, cross browser compatibility is more important than in years past you can still just target IE if you are in a small vertical market. Flash as presentation run-time ( Volkswagen website,YouTube ) needs to run on all modern OS's( because VW wants to reach as many as possible -- marketing wise ); however, applications are different. Consider that Adobe doesn't make a Linux version of Photoshop. Textmate only runs on OSX. It is tolerated that applications that do something valuable aren't available everywhere.
I guess my point is that for a long time Flash has held up this false-argument that cross platform ( I am talking about for applications not presentations ) is a key feature. It is a feature but it is not key one. Remember Oddpost in 2003? They didn't listen to the dogmatism of cross platform ( they released a Win/IE only web app. ) and they were sold for 30 million to Yahoo.

"and molasses-like evolution"

Webkit and Gecko are evolving fast and IE 8 is already in the works. Moreover, as a developer I like that the (X)HTML/CSS/JS environment is more sane than the MS ( .NET 1,1.2,2,3 ) and Adobe ( AS, AS1,AS2,AS3,Flex 1,2,3,Flash MX,8,9,CS3 ) circus that they want you to play. I live in San Diego and I like to go to the Beach(there is my bias)! Granted that molasses-like needs to be further defined; however, I hold that this is not true ( even by today's standard of software development ).

Stay tuned as I continually refute JD's bias and hypocrisy.

Here is the situation: You want to move to Linux as your full time desktop but you can't live without the iSiloX plugin for IE. Sure, you can install a virtual PC with VirtualBox or VMWare; however, that is such a pain you never end up iSilo'ing anything. Also, do you waste an hour every month Googling around to see if anyone made a iSilo plugin for Firefox yet?

Does this describe you?
Ok, here is a solution.

• 1.
• Install ies4Linux. I use Ubuntu Edgy and it was a breeze. Follow their simple install instructions Note: they have specific instructions per distro. Also, don't be logged in as root. Do this setup from your user account.
• 2.
• Download iSiloX 4.01. 4.32 might work but I didn't try it.
• 3.
• From your user account, not root, run this exact command. WINEPREFIX=~/.ies4linux/ie6 wine iSiloX401Setup.exe. Obviously, I am switched over to the directory where I downloaded iSiloX401Setup.exe.
• This will popup the install for iSiloX. Just complete the install wizard like you would on Windows.
• 4.
• Finally, run ies4linux ( ~/bin/ie6 ) and you will see the little iSiloX icon on the IE toolbar. See screen shots below.
• 5.
• The ies4Linux team's work is enabling users and web developers to switch to Linux as a full time desktop so please donate to their project

Problem:
One thing that always drove me crazy was not being able to get the full listing from the ps command. For example when doing ps -elf it will cut off the command column. Even dumping it to file is no help, as the command column will get cut off if it goes beyond the 80 char width.
Solution:
Use the width switch:
ps -elf --width 500 | grep java.*encode
-o switch is handy too
ps -u apache --width 1000 -o "%p|%a" | grep java.*# the -u switch only shows processes with the user of apache
Here is are a list of other column descriptors that can be used with the -o switch
%C pcpu %CPU
%G group GROUP
%P ppid PPID
%U user USER %a args COMMAND
%c comm COMMAND
%g rgroup RGROUP
%n nice NI
%p pid PID
%r pgid PGID
%t etime ELAPSED
%u ruser RUSER
%x time TIME
%y tty TTY
%z vsz VSZ

Can be found at issuetrackr.com

RHTML, Ruby, and RXML in Homesite 4.5 and above! Got to love it.

Get it here.

Do yourself a favor and go with Mongrel over mod_fcgid -- which is the preferred method when using Apache 2.x and fastcgi -- when installing Rails and Apache 2.2.

Note: I need Apache installed on port 80 because I have PHP apps running there.

Note: This post pertains to a default Suse 10.1 install with C/C++ and Kernel Development checked. Also, Apache2 prefork was installed on setup. Apache2-devel was installed after setup. Mysql and Ruby packages where not installed on setup or after. Mysql is a binary install at /usr/local/mysql and admin username and password are set.
Ruby(1.8.4) and Rubygems(0.8.11) were built from source. Rails was then installed via gems( including all dependencies) and the version is 1.1.2. These items must be done to follow this post.
Logged in as root.

1. Install typo:
   

   cd /srv/www
   # because we are running Rails 1.1.2 we need to install the most current typo from subversion
   svn checkout svn://typosphere.org/typo/trunk typo
   
   cd typo
   chown -R wwwrun .
   chgrp -R www .
   chmod -R 755 .
   mv config/database.example.yml database.yml
   vi config/database.yml
   # in database.yml make both dev and production database names typo
   # and put in the username and password
   # Setup database for typo  -- assuming your in /srv/www/typo
     /usr/local/mysql/bin/mysqladmin -u root -p create typo
     /usr/local/mysql/bin/mysql -user=username --password=passwd typo < db/schema.mysql.sql
   /srv/www/typo/rake migrate
   

2. Setup and Run Mongrel:
   

   gem install mongrel
   cd /srv/www/typo
   mongrel_rails start -e production -d
   

3. Hook up Apache to Mongrel
   

   # first we need to install the Apache modules for doing proxies
   # From the command line type yast
   yast
   # once in yast goto Network Services -> HTTP Server
   # It may prompt you to Continue or Cancel --> chose Continue
   # Once in the config screen hit the tab key till you get to Server Modules. 
   # Then toogle status for all proxy* modules to Enabled. 
   # There should be four of them. Lastly, click Finish.
   # Restart Apache2
   /etc/init.d/apache2 graceful
   # Edit /etc/apache2/listen.conf to enable this
   NameVirtualHost *:80
   # Setup Virtual host
   cd /etc/apache2/vhosts.d
   vi typo-blog.conf
   # contents fo /etc/apache2/vhosts.d/typo-blog.conf
   <VirtualHost *:80>
     ServerName   myblog.blog.net
     DocumentRoot /srv/www/typo/public/
     ProxyPass / http://localhost:3000/
     ProxyPassReverse / http://localhost:3000/
     ErrorLog /srv/www/typo/log/server.log
   </VirtualHost>
   # Restart Apache2 
   /etc/init.d/apache2 restart
   

Presto, and no fastcgi or scgi!
to have Mongrel start on a reboot edit /etc/init.d/boot.local to have a line like this
cd /srv/www/typo/
/usr/local/bin/mongrel_rails -e production -d
# Or Something like this. This is for two servers.
/usr/local/bin/mongrel_rails start -e production -d -p 3000 -c /home/unchainedradio/html/rails_apps/podcast_new/
/usr/local/bin/mongrel_rails start -e production -d -p 3001 -c /home/unchainedradio/html/rails_apps/cbcsandiego/

Before I get to the solution here is a quick note on devel packages I needed to install before I could do this php compile.

./configure --with-mysql=/usr/local/mysql --with-zlib --with-apxs2=/usr/sbin/apxs2 
--enable-ftp --with-pdo-mysql=/usr/local/mysql --enable-mbstring --prefix=/usr/local/php
 --with-gd --with-mysqli=/usr/local/mysql/bin/mysql_config --with-curl --with-openssl 

libidn-devel
libapr1-devel
libapr-util1-devel
readline-devel
apache2-devel
libxml2-devel
openssl-devel
curl-devel

It is strange that a lot of these devel packages are not available through the default YaST setup(for Software Management). I mean apache2-devel is an essential package to developers. Don't make it so difficult for me to install such a package.

Anyway, because when installing APC it looks for apxs and not apxs2, doing a pecl install apc will not work. However, the following little hack will do the trick:

which apxs2

my result was /usr/sbin/apxs2

ln -s /usr/sbin/apxs2 /usr/bin/apxs

cd /usr/local/php/bin

./pecl install apc

After this there is plenty of info out there to finish the configuration.

I just installed Suse 10.1 on a Toshisha Tecra 8200 with a Linksys WPC11 v.4. Suse recognized it; however, it is the wrong driver. Here is how to get 10.1 and this wireless card working.

Note: I had a default install with Kernel and C/C++ development checked.

1. Open up Yast -> Software configuration -> install all packages that begin with ndiswrapper*
2. Getting the drivers from Linksys here
3. Unpack. There are two files NET8180.INF and rtl8180.sys. Run the following command ndiswrapper -i NET8180.INF
4. Typing ndiswrapper –l should tell you whether the hardware is present and functional.
5. Type ndiswrapper -m.
6. Now run ‘depmod && modprobe ndiswrapper’ and your wlan0 interface should come up.
7. Network configurator found and my wireless access point and a selected it.
8. To enable the card at boot time I added modprobe ndiswrapper to the /etc/rc.d/boot.local file.

Object.extend(Array.prototype, {

   implode: function() {
	    return (this.constructor == Array) ? this.flatten().join().replace(/,/g,'') : this;
	}
	
 });

This extension is useful in conjunction with the collect method. For example

temp_ar = [ 'hello','jim','Bob','Stevens' ];
gather = temp_ar.collect(function(value,key){
             xml = '<item>' + value + '</item>';
	     return xml;
	});
alert( gather.implode() );
// output: string "<item>hello</item><item>jim</item><item>Bob</item><item>Stevens</item>"

Actually, the problem was with resolving host names.
Note: I was using DHCP and Shared Networking on Virtual PC.

Solution:

edit /etc/resolv.conf and put in there your DNS server for your internet connection.
ie: nameserver 198.6.1.1

I know it sounds kind of obvious but I thought for sure that this information would have been passed via DHCP. Therefore, I was looking in other areas for the problem and I ended up wasting more time then I would have liked.

I have used quite a few XML writing classes. Builder for Ruby is the best one.

I helped a friend set up a podcast and Builder -- which is built into Ruby on Rails -- made it a breeze.

I am going to post the creation code because creating some of the nodes involved some heavy trial and error. The documentation is a bit sparse.

xml.instruct! :xml, :version=>"1.0", :encoding=>"UTF-8"
xml.rss "version"=>"2.0" do
  xml.channel do
    xml.title 		 'Unchained Radio Podcast'
    xml.link 		'http://podcast.unchainedradio.com'
    xml.pubDate	     pub_date Time.now
    xml.language    "en-us"
    xml.ttl 		 "40"
    xml.generator    'Ruby on Rails'
    xml.description  'Rocking your World View.'
    xml.image do
    	xml.url          'http://podcast.unchainedradio.com/images/logo2.jpg'
    	xml.title	  'Unchained Radio'
    	xml.width	396
    	xml.height     64
    end
    xml.itunes :author, 	'Gene Cook, Jr.'
		xml.itunes :subtitle, 'Rocking your World View'
		xml.itunes :summary, 	'Rocking your World View'
		xml.itunes :keywords, 'religion atheism reformed '
		xml.itunes :explicit, 'clean' 
		xml.itunes :image,:href=>'http://podcast.unchainedradio.com/images/logo2.jpg'
		xml.itunes:owner do
			xml.itunes :name, 'Gene Cook, Jr.'
			xml.itunes:emai,	''
		end
		xml.itunes :category,:text=>'Religion' do
			xml.itunes :category,:text=>'News'
		end
    for entry in @podcasts
      xml.item do
      	mp3 = "http://podcast.unchainedradio.com/podcast/#{entry.file}"
        xml.title 			entry.title
        xml.link				mp3
        xml.dc :creator , 'Gene Cook, Jr.'
        xml.category 		'Uncategorized'
        xml.guid 				mp3
        content = entry.description
        xml.description content
        xml.duration entry.duration
        xml.pubDate 		pub_date(entry.last_updated_at)
        xml.enclosure :url=>mp3,:type=>'audio/mpeg'
        xml.itunes :author,'Gene Cook, Jr.'
        xml.itunes :subtitle,entry.title
        xml.itunes :summary, content
        xml.itunes :explicit,'No'
        xml.itunes :duration,entry.duration
      end
    end
  end
end

Pretty nice, eh??

Go here to see the output.