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Miscellaneous

Internet, Miscellaneous, Technology
Comments restored… for now
November 19th, 2007 (2 years, 8 months ago) by Jeff | Permalink | 2 Core Dumps

Follow up from the last post: Comments should be working again, although not in a fashion that I’d prefer. I had to completely disable Admin-SSL, thus login and login cookies are no longer secure. If you logged in while it was active, you’ll likely need to log in again before you can post, even if you check the “remember me” box. I’m still looking into why it doesn’t work. There’s a known limitation that shared SSL setups will fail to recognize logins in insecure mode, but they say nothing about dedicated setups like mine, which I would think would imply that it ought to work. Then again, I also had some mod_rewrite rules in place, but I experimented with removing those and so I don’t think they’re part of the problem.

I suppose this isn’t a big deal for you guys, since I doubt anyone will be all torn up over making sure their logins to some random guy’s blog are secure. It affects me more than anyone else, because I’d feel much safer if I could protect the admin parts of the site with a layer of encryption. Still, in places where I really need encryption I can verify it still works, so I guess the blog will just have to be open. :\
Internet, Miscellaneous, Technology
Comments broken, still working on it
November 19th, 2007 (2 years, 8 months ago) by Jeff | Permalink | Dump Core

It has come to my attention that comments don’t appear to be working here at the moment. I strongly suspect this is due to the Admin-SSL WordPress plugin that I’m currently using to secure parts of the blog. It seems to forget that you’re logged in when you’re not accessing a secure URL (i.e. you’re not in SSL mode). I’ve tried a few of the workarounds suggested, but none are working. I have a hunch on a few things to try, but that will have to wait until I have more dedicated time to work on it. (I’m currently watching the little guy by myself at the moment.) I’ll post an update when I think it’s been fixed.
Miscellaneous
Facelift
September 7th, 2007 (2 years, 10 months ago) by Jeff | Permalink | 2 Core Dumps

I was getting tired of the modified default WordPress theme I’ve been using, so I decided to do a little cosmetic surgery. I’m now using the Upstart Blogger Minim theme from Upstart Blogger, modified for my personal tastes. Still doing some tweaking, but I really like the very clean look of it.

I’m pretty busy today, but I hope to post some interesting stuff soon.
Miscellaneous, Technology
Back from SIGGRAPH, minor blog structure change
August 24th, 2007 (2 years, 11 months ago) by Jeff | Permalink | 1 Core Dump

Sorry again for the silence, everyone. The past several weeks have been rather hectic. Obviously, I’m back from SIGGRAPH, which was earlier this month. The con report on the GPF site is forthcoming; the slideshow is finished, but there’s no link to it from anywhere yet (until this one). Then as soon as I got back, my wife had to first fly to Portland, OR, for a week, then this week she’s in Seattle, WA. Three week-long business trips back-to-back, and whoever isn’t criss-crossing the country is busy watching the little guy. It’s a wonder I’ve had time to do anything except breathe.

Anyway, the second purpose of this quickie post is to let everyone know I’ve made a minor structural change to the blog. I’ve changed the permalink structure from the WordPress default which uses parameters on the query string (http://www.jeffdarlington.com/?p=4) to something hopefully a bit more user-friendly that combines the date and the page “slug” (http://www.jeffdarlington.com/2005/02/17/i-hate-blogs/). I’ve implemented a series of complex Apache mod_rewrite rules that should allow old permalinks to work transparently, not only from the old WordPress query style but also from the old Movable Type links of yore. If anyone encounters a broken link or a link that points to the wrong page, please let me know so I can adjust the rules. Obviously, it would be best if you could update any links you have to this site to the new URLs, but I’ll try to be as accommodating as possible.

I have more interesting things to post, so I’ll hopefully have those up soon.
Internet, Miscellaneous, Software, Technology
Move complete… I hope
July 11th, 2007 (3 years ago) by Jeff | Permalink | 1 Core Dump
If you’re seeing this post, then welcome to the new server! Our new host is Slicehost, a small hosting service that caters specifically to online developers. I have to say that so far, I’m pretty impressed. I had a few bumpy points getting SSH started and the initial setup was so bare-bones I had to install a ton of packages just to get functional (including fundamentals like tar and which), but it’s moving a lot faster than the old site sitting behind the cable modem.

Slicehost does one thing that I think is really pretty slick, especially from a hard-core geek’s point of view: Unlike most web hosts who give you a little sandbox to play in and tie your hands on what you can and cannot do, the “slicers” give you your own virtual server with root access. That’s right, you have the keys to the virtual kingdom. That means you decide what gets installed on your box, from the Linux distro (no other OSes are supported at the moment, but they do offer several distros) to the individual server applications. Want a LAMP box? You got it. Prefer Fedora to Ubuntu? (Me! Me!) Here you go. You decide what gets installed. The caveat to such permissiveness, of course, is that if you screw it up, it’s your own darn fault. That’s okay, though, because your virtual server shouldn’t affect anyone else sharing the box and you can rebuild your “slice” at any time, wiping it clean and restoring it to its original pristine state. Pay a nominal extra fee and you’ve got backup snapshots that you can also restore in the case of catastrophic failure.

One thing to watch out for is the waiting list. They appear to allocate hardware dynamically based on their current user base (keeping some servers in reserve for redundancy) and then purchase new machines based on their projected demand. If you sign up for the smallest package with the minimum prepayment plan, you could be looking at several weeks of wait time. However, if you’re willing to pay a little more in advance, you’ll be moved up the list. I decided to prepay for six months instead of three and was told I’d have my “slice” in “less than a week.” I ended up getting it in a few hours. Yep, that’s technically less than a week.

Initial annoyances (I’m not sure I’d call them complaints):
- It appears something was up with their Fedora repository. My initial setup did not include the SSH package, and since that’s the only remote access package installed by default (telnet and FTP are rightly left in the bit bucket) , I couldn’t log on. I contacted their support site and got a response in about an hour or so. Unfortunately, it was already getting late, so I couldn’t stay up to see if the fix they gave would work. However, I was able to log in licketty split this morning with no problems. (I then took the opportunity to lock the box down tight; this site proved quite helpful in that regard.) A small part of me cringes inside, wondering what might happen if I have to rebuild my slice and this repository isn’t working again….
- While it’s great that they give you a clean slate to work with, they really give you a clean slate. As mentioned above, some things you just take for granted on a *NIX box like tar and gzip were nowhere to be found. I think it’s fine that I have to install MySQL, Apache, and PHP on my own; not everybody’s going to use those and they may have a database, Web server, or scripting environment they prefer over those options. But no tar? No gzip? Not even which? I lost track of how many seemingly fundamental packages I had to install, stuff I just naturally expected to be there. Not a major complaint, mind you, but an annoyance, as it took far longer to get the system to the point that I could actually function than it did to get the blog moved.
All in all, though, I think I’m going to like this new home. If you’re interested in checking them out, click the link in the first paragraph and poke around. If you decide to sign up, though, come back here and click my referral link. A little kickback is always nice.

Of course, now that we’ve moved, commenting should be re-enabled. If you created an account before the move, it should have been ported over. (The internal user ID numbers got switched around, but since no one was able to post after I switched to WordPress, I don’t think that really matters.) Feel free to log in and make sure your account is accessible.

Feed readers: Please update your feed links now. You’ll find the new RSS and Atom links in the “Feed Me” section of the sidebar. Remember, the old “domain:port” URLs will no longer work.
Internet, Miscellaneous, Technology
Return of the move
July 10th, 2007 (3 years ago) by Jeff | Permalink | Dump Core

Sorry for the recent silence, everyone. It wasn’t my intention to seemingly disappear for several weeks. As you might guess, it’s been entirely real life craziness keeping me hopping. There were several occasions were I actually planned to post something, only to get distracted and never get around to it.

Well, here’s some news definitely worth posting. I mentioned quite some time ago my plans to eventually move the blog from its current home—my Linux box Demeter sitting behind my cable modem—to somewhere a bit more stable. Not that Demeter herself is unstable, mind you, but the current hoops we have to jump through just to get the blog online have caused casualties to its usefulness, like killing commenting and making our RSS/Atom feeds go through odd channels. While my dynamic DNS service does an admirable job in getting the raw HTML to you guys, it’s not suitable for a long term solution.

The point is that it looks like the move is going to finally take place, only the final destination isn’t where I originally intended. I was planning to move to Keenspot on the back end, largely because I am already familiar with them and how their servers are set up. Of course, this also meant the blog would be loaded with ads to cover the bandwidth costs (unless, of course, you’re a Keenspot PREMIUM subscriber). Not something I’m particularly thrilled about, but I was viewing it as a necessary evil. (After all, it’s the ads (and PREMIUM) that currently keep GPF a float. Lately all our other revenue streams have been high and dry.)

Well, Chris Wright over at Help Desk managed to change my mind. He pointed me to his current web host, and after taking a cruise around their site and FAQ, I was hooked. I have a number of ambitious online plans in the works, all of which require some rather stringent and quirky software requirements. These guys seem to cater directly to online developers, meaning they’re a lot more likely to accommodate my unusual needs, and their prices are ridiculously beyond reasonable. (I’ve never seen a bandwidth plan as cheap as theirs.) So I’m going to move over to them, at least on a trial basis, to see how things go. If everything goes over well, expect to see some rather obnoxious plugging in the future.

So, what does this mean for you? Right now, not much. For the time being I’ve temporarily disabled sign-ups for commenting. Comments aren’t working right now anyway, and preventing anyone new from signing on should make moving the database easier. (Existing accounts should be intact once the move is complete.) The switch in the DNS should be largely transparent, so those of you who visit the site directly shouldn’t notice anything different (other than the odd nested frame set inserted by the dynamic DNS should be gone).

The real funky stuff will come with the feeds. By now, most of you should be using the “domain:port” URLs for RSS and Atom feeds. These bypass the dynamic DNS and go directly to the web server on the port it’s really running on, not being nested through the DNS’ frames. Unfortunately, there won’t be a graceful transition for the feeds, as I have no intention of running the web server on multiple ports after the move. (It’s technically possible, but probably a waste of resources.) So those of you reading the blog via the feeds might want to come by the site periodically and check in for updates, at least until we know the transition has successfully taken place. New feed URLs will be posted once the move is complete. (Of course, I ought to just go with FeedBurner and hide all this behind-the-scenes garbage, but I’m also lazy and I’d rather do things myself.)

So when is all this going to go down? I’m not quite sure yet. The new host has a waiting list as they allocate hardware dynamically based on demand. I’ve been told it should be “less than a week,” which could be anywhere form one to two days. Tack onto that a day or two for me to move the database and debug everything, and it could easily be a week or more before you’ll notice anything. As usual, though, you should be able to just pop in here anytime and get the latest, regardless of which host we’re currently on.
Miscellaneous
No move just yet
April 23rd, 2007 (3 years, 3 months ago) by Jeff | Permalink | Dump Core

If you haven’t noticed, the blog hasn’t moved yet. I know I mentioned that I expected to have it moved by last weekend, but with the Keenspot server troubles, I decided to hold off and wait until the Keen Tech Crew has finished cleaning up the debris on their end. I’ll try and give you an ETA when I have one. Until then, keep using all the same old links and feeds.
Internet, Miscellaneous, Technology
So… what happened?
April 5th, 2007 (3 years, 3 months ago) by Jeff | Permalink | Dump Core

Most of you are probably wondering what happened yesterday with the blog. For those who may not have seen it, folks visiting the site via a Web browser were being redirected to another site. I won’t post its URL, as I don’t particularly want to give them any more Googleshare, but it seemed to be some sort of portal site in a language I didn’t immediately recognize. Some of you have speculated that this might have had something to do with the impending move to Keenspot, or perhaps with Keenspot’s current DNS server problems. While I wish those were the case, unfortunately they weren’t.

It looks like it was a problem with my dynamic DNS service, DNS2Go. As previously stated, DNS2Go has an HTTP redirection service that lets me forward “www.jeffdarlington.com” on standard HTTP port 80 to the site’s real IP address at its real non-standard port. This is the component that seems to have failed. Going to www.jeffdarlington.com took you to the mysterious site; however, if you went to jeffdarlington.com:8081 (the site’s real port number), you got the blog. (The style sheet didn’t work, of course, because WordPress hard codes the domain name in all URLs, including to the style sheet. But the content itself was still available.)

I put in a support ticket last night with DNS2Go’s tech support and got the following response this morning:

It was something on our end and we have resolved that problem.

Not very descriptive, but accurate; the site is obviously now up. My guess? I think they were hacked, and they don’t want to admit it. Their own main domain was also down during this time, and all of my domains that used the redirection service in some fashion were affected. I haven’t had a chance to independently research this theory with the conference going on and all, but it seems a bit more suspicious to me than just a technical glitch.

Anyway, things are back to normal now. The move to Keenspot is currently slated for the weekend of April 20th, just in case anyone is interested in knowing.
Internet, Miscellaneous
Movin’…
March 28th, 2007 (3 years, 4 months ago) by Jeff | Permalink | Comments Off

Just a heads-up, gang. As previously mentioned, it looks like the blog is going to be moving. I’ve finally received the official go-ahead from the powers that be at Keenspot that they’re okay with the move. I’m not sure yet when it will officially happen, but seeing as I’ll be on a business trip next week, it might be a week or two. I’ll have to iron out the details with the Keen Tech Crew first.

So what does this mean for you? Well, if you read this blog via a Web browser, probably nothing. Just keep using the old www.jeffdarlington.com domain name and you shouldn’t notice any difference, just that one day the blog won’t have Keenspot ads and the next day it will. Isn’t the magic of DNS grand? (If the ads bother you, then I’ll go ahead and make the prerequisite plug for Keenspot PREMIUM, which removes those ads and puts a few extra bucks in my pocket at the same time.)

If you’re checking for updates via one of the XML feeds like RSS or Atom, you might want to periodically peek in via a browser, especially if I seem even more silent than usual. (Yeah, I know, that’ll be hard to notice as my updates are somewhat sporadic. Sorry about that.) The reason I mention this is that the feed links currently bypass the dynamic DNS’ Web forwarding (i.e. the translation from the domain name on port 80 to the IP on the real port; check this post for the gory details). Unfortunately, when the site moves to Keen, that alternate port will no longer be available and the XML feed links will return back to port 80. To anyone currently using the feeds on the alternate port, the feed will appear to break. You’ll need to keep an eye on the feed URLs to notice when they update. I’ll look into ways to redirect them, but I doubt Keenspot will be willing to jump through those hoops just for me.

If you don’t read this blog, then… well… what are you doing here, then?

I’ll try and keep you apprised of things as often as I can. I plan to move as much data from one site to the other as possible, so hopefully those of you who have already signed up for commenting shouldn’t need to worry about signing up again. Thanks in advance for your patience.
Internet, Miscellaneous, Technology
Recent site problems
January 8th, 2007 (3 years, 6 months ago) by Jeff | Permalink | Dump Core

If you’re reading this post, congratulations. That means our recent site problems have been resolved… at least for the moment. Below is the rough rundown of what happened this weekend, for those of you who care. There’s lots of technical jargon below, so if you don’t care, feel free to blindly ignore the rest of this post and live in ignorant bliss. Trust me, it’s probably a safer place to be.

For those who didn’t already know, this site and the gpf-comics.net domain are both hosted on my personal Linux box behind our cable modem. This was originally intended as an experiment to teach myself the ins and outs of running a Web server (specifically Apache), but over time it morphed into a cheap form of hosting that gave me complete control over the hardware and software involved. Keenspot hosts the main GPF site and they do a very good job of it; but to be perfectly honest, I have no clue what hardware they use, only a hunch about the software (because I have SSH access), and I couldn’t tell you for the life of me where the server is located. I like having directly physical control over the GPF Store (which is back online, BTW), which gives me a lot more confidence in what happens to my customer’s data. I also like knowing how things work.

My Apache setup is moderately complicated. I briefly touched on it before, but I’ve been using a number of virtual hosts to serve several sites on the same machine. The blog and the Store are the main sites I run, but I also have a number of other domains that I’m currently sitting on and forwarding to other places with the intent of using them for future purposes. Apache happily listened to all these requests and parceled out the right stuff to the right people without breaking a sweat. Until this weekend, that is.

Unfortunately, I think the success of this blog was part of its undoing. I haven’t looked at the logs to confirm it, but I think the recent “Ben vs. Darth Vader” post brought a bit of unwanted attention from my cable service. The increased download traffic probably caught their attention and they blocked port 80 to my IP. One reason I strongly suspect this is that my SSH access didn’t go away and I could still access the Store using the HTTPS port, so I knew Apache and my Linux box were up and they were still online. I tried a number of workarounds throughout the weekend, working in small batches here and there during stolen moments, but each fix seemed to break something else.

At the risk of revealing to my ISP what I’ve done, here was the winning solution. My dynamic DNS service lets me forward HTTP requests to different ports transparently. Since port 80 was blocked, I forwarded gpf-comics.net to port 8080 and jeffdarlington.com to 8081. (I couldn’t forward them both to the same port, because this redirect seems to strip the domain name from the request and only feeds Apache the IP, thus making name based virtual hosts moot.) The other domains, which were originally just being bounced by my Apahce, are now being forwarded directly by DNS2Go so they never reach my box. Since HTTPS seems unaffected, it’s currently still pointing to the same place. The good news is that most of your bookmarks and links should continue to work, so don’t change them (in case I need to tweak the configuration again). The caveat is that if you’ve been using “jeffdarlington.com” to access this site instead of “www.jeffdarlington.com” the redirecting will probably break. The redirect only works with the “www.” so please use that URL.

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Miscellaneous

Internet, Miscellaneous, Technology

Comments restored… for now

Internet, Miscellaneous, Technology

Comments broken, still working on it

Miscellaneous

Facelift

Miscellaneous, Technology

Back from SIGGRAPH, minor blog structure change

Internet, Miscellaneous, Software, Technology

Move complete… I hope

Internet, Miscellaneous, Technology

Return of the move

Miscellaneous

No move just yet

Internet, Miscellaneous, Technology

So… what happened?

Internet, Miscellaneous

Movin’…

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