The latest VMware Server version is 2.0.2, released on October 27 of this year, so I thought I would give it a spin. The downloads are available as RPMs, so that was the obvious choice for my Fedora Core 8 server. FC8 is pretty rusty now, but that means the kernel is stable, which also means that the VMware Server integration (i.e. the local compiles) work without any complaints. Nice. The 2.0.2 version is a maintenance release, but I was hoping it would fix my VMware Infrastructure Web Access startup problem. After a reboot, all the VMware daemons are running, but the first time I try and connect (via the… Read More
Continue ReadingSendmail Tweak
Although the Rails ActionMailer class is easy to test, I wanted to really use it in development mode to check all my settings in the config/email.yml file. The Fedora code base pretty much sets up sendmail out of the box, but with ISP’s possibly blocking port 25, and router configs, etc. etc, things can get confusing. The basic test from the Linux command line: put the mail in the mqueue directory, but it was going nowhere. Then I remembered the /etc/mail directory, specifically the access file: Since I set my router to act as a DHCP server, I had to add the IP assignment for the Fedora box: and then… Read More
Continue ReadingIntegrating OpenID with Authlogic
I won’t take any credit here. If you want to do this, jump right over to the Ryan Bates Railscast Number 170. He totally nails it – just follow along and adjust for the views you are actually using, and it’s operational in a jiffy. Sweet! The only thing that didn’t work for me was the install for the open_id_authentication plugin. I had to copy and install the files manually. I note that the install worked when I tried it again while writing this article, so maybe it was a temporary github problem. It’s a funny thing about OpenID, though. When I ask my technically competent acquaintances about it, the… Read More
Continue ReadingHAML and Apache Encodings
I’m playing around a bit with the HAML gem. It broke my Apache / Passenger server immediately. The original error message looked something like: /!\ FAILSAFE /!\ 2009-05-01 10:05:18 -1000 Status: 500 Internal Server Error invalid byte sequence in US-ASCII Google to the rescue. On Linux machines, you should have a /etc/sysconfig/httpd file. I added HTTPD_LANG=en_US.UTF-8 and all was well after restarting Apache. This took awhile to find, so here’s the URL to the Rack Development Google Group, of all places. There is some info on OSX as well. http://tinyurl.com/m8oxnz Google has added at least 10 points to my IQ. Make that 20 points.
Continue ReadingA Word About WordPress
Last week there was a fair amount of buzz about WordPress security issues. Here’s an Information Week article and also a short blurb from IT World in case you’re not a WordPress user. And, here’s a rant about lazy admins from a long-time user of WordPress. Two things jump out at me here: 1) WordPress is being described as a “self-hosted” application, and 2) upgrading WordPress is surprisingly clumsy, given the assumption in 1). That’s not entirely fair – there is an “automatic” upgade path, but it presupposes that you have the necessary access permissions to whatever server is running WordPress, which may not be true if you are running… Read More
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