Adobe’s Flash plugin (v10.3) is setup to check for updates on restart. However, at least recently, on my setup, there have been a couple of little annoyances. Either it launches and tries to check for updates before my wifi connects (rare) or it tells me that it must be run with administrator permissions. The end… Continue reading Updating the Flash Plugin
Verify that SSL caching is working
To verify that SSL caching is on, check the Session-ID across multiple sessions (i.e. resume/reconnect) – they should be the same: openssl s_client -host HOSTNAME -port 443 -reconnect | grep ‘Session-ID:’ The equivalent, using gnutls-cli should be: gnutls-cli -V -r HOSTNAME |grep ‘Session ID’
PHP-FPM on Amazon’s Linux
Update (Oct 1, 2011): The release notes for the newest version of Amazon’s Linux (2011.09) state that “PHP scripts have the option of using PHP-FPM.” PHP-FPM is now included in the amzn-main repository, and can be installed via yum install php-fpm (it is installed to /usr/sbin). As a point of mention, if you want to… Continue reading PHP-FPM on Amazon’s Linux
Installing Heartbeat on Amazon’s EC2
I am currently working on setting up a small high availability server cluster on Amazon’s EC2 cloud. Such a setup requires several underlying technologies to work together. Common among these are a distributed file system, a load balancer, and some form of monitoring and resource control. This article looks at the one aspect of ‘monitoring’… Continue reading Installing Heartbeat on Amazon’s EC2
Rotating EBS Snapshots: ec2-prune-snapshots
Following the significant disruption of EBS volumes in April, the importance of backups was once again brought to the forefront. Amazon’s method of generating EBS backups is the ‘snapshot’ – a differential backup stored in S3. While Amazon provides tools for creating snapshots (either command line, or via their API), a script that is quite… Continue reading Rotating EBS Snapshots: ec2-prune-snapshots
VirtualStore – A few more hidden files
Having not used Windows 7 much (and having skipped over Vista), I was rather surprised to discover that I was unable to locate files that were saved by a particular program. In this case, the program saved the files in its application folder, under %programfiles%. Now, having no clue about the virtualization in effect, I… Continue reading VirtualStore – A few more hidden files
Generating a pure-ftpd RPM for Amazon’s Linux
The only ftp server the amzn repository has is vsftpd. While, as the name suggests, vsftpd is supposed to be ‘very secure’ many other ftp servers have a comparable track record for security. Of these, pure-ftpd is easily configured and offers a wealth of features. Pure-FTPd is easily configured, and as it comes with an… Continue reading Generating a pure-ftpd RPM for Amazon’s Linux
ec2-consistent-snapshot on Amazon’s Linux AMI
Update: the complementary article to this one, on Rotating EBS snapshots has now been posted. After the recent failure of EBS volumes on Amazon’s cloud, backup is quite likely something to be considering. If, during the aforementioned incident, recent snapshots of the affected EBS volumes were available, it might have been possible to relaunch instances… Continue reading ec2-consistent-snapshot on Amazon’s Linux AMI
Rebuild Icon Cache
Recently, after upgrading a program (FileZilla in this case), the program’s icon would not display on the desktop (Windows 7). Even deleting and recreating the shortcut resulted in a broken icon (although, the shortcut itself worked fine). No amount of refreshing the desktop made a difference. The quick fix was to rebuild the icon cache,… Continue reading Rebuild Icon Cache
DKIM/Domainkeys signing via DKIMproxy
With the ever increasing volume of SPAM being transmitted, many email services look toward more elaborate ways to authenticate email. Beyond the obvious – content – two commonly used methods (perhaps with some variations), include sender policy framework (SPF), and DomainKeys Identified Mail (DKIM). Both of these require the use of DNS records to function.… Continue reading DKIM/Domainkeys signing via DKIMproxy
Prime Factoring with PHP
A surprisingly large number of math based computer problems appear to require factorization, finding prime number, or prime factoring. Presented below is a reasonably fast algorithm for prime factoring a number – it is limited to the integer size on PHP (231-1). It should be a fairly trivial exercise to modify the function below to… Continue reading Prime Factoring with PHP
Setting up Subversion
Subversion is a versatile version control system. This article looks at how to set up subversion on Amazon’s Linux (RHEL/CentOS derived), and the necessary setup for using it with Apache (proxied through Nginx), as well as the setup of a repository, and the use of hooks to automatically update a live (non-production) working copy. Basic… Continue reading Setting up Subversion
Setting up NodeJS
It is quite unfortunate that one only has a finite number of hours to dedicate to learning new things, for inevitably there are things we skim over, or worse yet, don’t even know exist. Today, as I was looking for efficient ways of implementing server push for a project of mine, I came across NodeJS.… Continue reading Setting up NodeJS
Scriptless backup with cron
With the new release of WordPress, it is time to ensure that one has a good backup in place before upgrading. While many elaborate systems exist for creating backups, sometimes one just wants a quick and easy way to get the job done. As such, I present below, an easy procedure for a daily incremental… Continue reading Scriptless backup with cron