Big SW upgrade on server

December 20th, 2009

About 26 oir so hours ago I started to upgrade stuff on my server. mainly I wanted mysql which also implied php.
so, I made a maintanence page for apache to take care of all the sites and hit it on. but I just couldn’t install mysql. scripts were freezing (like mysql_install_db) and using the –skup-grant-tables was not helping either.
Took me almost 12 hours to figure out that the DNS server was still running and it used mysql. Stopping the DNS server got rid of that problem.
Then came php. I was getting:

checking for MySQL support for PDO… shared
checking for mysql_config… no
configure: error: Cannot find MySQL header files under

I just couldn’t figure out what the problem was until I digged into the configure script. on line 65536 i had

for i in /usr/local /usr ; do

which is stupid because it was not taking into account my –with-mysql selection in command line. so I modified that line to be:
for i in $PHP_MYSQL /usr/local /usr ; do

and problem solved.

I then had to modify some of the scripts as they were spitting depcrecated and erros on the screen but hey, that’s just upgrading life.

and finally, the last one was joomla.

Parse error: syntax error, unexpected T_GOTO, expecting T_STRING in path_to_/components/com_resource/controller.php on line 193

I wasn’t paying attention that the error was actually in com_resource so I upgraded joomla to latest (which wasn’t a bad idea anyway). and when it didn’t go away I woke up to reality and tried to upgrade resource from mighty extensions BUT… their site is down. To be more precise, the domain does not resolv. get a load of that.
I sent them a tweet reply since I have no idea how else to contact them.

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First results of web directory “cleanup”

December 17th, 2009

A few days ago I started on some major changes in my webdirectory as I wrote here.
So after 3 days of not being confirmed, a site will be moved to un-approved. after 14 days of not being confirmed, it will be deleted.
After the first 3 days, over 200 sites were moved to un-approved. But something tells me that the number will raise considerably as now the number of approved sites has dropped to half, from over 700 to 300 and something.
Go-go-go 🙂

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Semi-open mode in my web directory

December 13th, 2009

I finally managed to make some time and implement step 1 in making my web directory semi-open. that is, it now sends a confirmation email to all submissions. It is programmed to send 2 emails every 5 minutes.

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Ditching opera

December 5th, 2009

As I wrote here a while ago I become very unsatisfied with opera. Unilt recently it was “only” the huge memory consumption. But ever since version 10 (even 10.10) a lot of sites stopped loading as I wrote here
So finally I ditched opera. I migrated all my bookmarks and everything to firefox and the email and rss feeds to thunderbird. I had to install a tab manager and a speed dial plugin into FF to have my usual operation mode but now that’s done and I feel like “home”.
Sorry opera but instead of getting better you got worse.

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UserVoice.com in the house

November 25th, 2009

I just setup uservoice.com feedback system on my site.
I added it to my old includes (old site), joomla includes (new site) and the blog.
Maybe I’ll add it to the forum and gallery as well, but I’ll think about it.

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Where is the spam comming from?

November 16th, 2009

For a good few weeks or even 2 months now I am getting a lot of “canadian” spam. mainly pills and shit. I was wondering wtf happened when it suddenly hit me. I had a canadian client in the medical area which basically ditched me for whatever reasons, totally unprofessional. Now that I think about it, he might have something to do with this.
And if he does and he has indeed something to do with this, I have only one question: Are you fucking out of your mind?!
I have an idea of a pretty good anti-spam filter for these emails (they all share some stuff but it’s not easy to get it strait out). So in the following 1 or 2 weeks I’ll write it and then, up yours.
I’ll probably make a dnsbl so that others can use it too.

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mod_security sucks big time

November 1st, 2009

I installed mod_security a little while ago and guess what: nothing works anymore.
I mean god, are you guys really that stupid not to test against the major scripts our there? wordpress, joomla !!!! gallery, phpbb, etc, nothing works.
Jesus Christ, what kind of a stupid shit is this? It reminds me of the days I tested various firewalls for window and got into core force.
I’m gonna google for a bit to see if there is any good resolution for this but if not, go screw you guys.
I mean I added like over 10 rules to th exception list according to various findings and nothing, I can’t even post a damn shit.

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libapu: apu library not found.

November 1st, 2009

whilc compiling mod_security I got:

checking for libapu config script… no
configure: *** apu library not found.

it took me about 5 min to figure out what the libapu was: lib-apr-util

so the following fixed it:
./configure –with-apxs=/etc/httpd/bin/apxs –with-apr=/etc/httpd/bin/apr-config –with-apu=/etc/httpd/bin/apu-config –with-lua

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Possible DOS attack caught on time

October 22nd, 2009

My server suddenly went under a very heavy load, similar with a DOS (Denial Of Service) attack. Luckily I was 1 foot away form it and heard the hard-drive working like crazy so I ssh-ed in the server, checked the running processes, noticed it was a high load on mysql (only possible via web), did a netstat, found the offending IP and temporarely -j DROP-ped it out with iptables. the load stopped suddenly so my finding was right.

this is the offending ip: 85.92.222.254
anyone know the guy behind it, hit him hard in the head.
will see if he returns and if he does, the -j DROP will become permanent.
Just for the record I currently have 7 IPs with permanent -j DROP . I should probably remove them since they are pretty old and with the use of DHCP the IPs probably belong to a ton of other people now.

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Huge album with photos from India

October 11th, 2009

I have started to share my photos from the trip I took to India in 2006.
There are a lot of photos there, just as a glimpse, in the second day there I took about 800 pictures.
I will share most of them, but in time. Right now I am working on the second day and that will be it for today and probably for the next following days/weeks.

Enjoy.

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