Author: Daniel Mettler

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New server will arrive soon..

Finally I’ve ordered a new server to replace the not-so-reliable barebone Mini-ITX server that runs this site. Initially, I actually wanted to build the server all by myself, assembling the best SME server components I can get. As it turned out, I would have had to import most of the components from different suppliers, making do-it-yourself assembling a very time consuming and risky (ad)venture. I thus decided to order a nice (but not cutting edge), hopefully well-tested, pre-built server from Dell.

It’s a customized variant of the Dell PowerEdge 1800 with the following specs:

  • 2 x Intel Xeon Irwindale 3 GHz with EMT64 (the Intel analogon of AMD64), HTT and XD/NX-bit support, 800 MHz FSB [ UPDATE: Dell upgraded the two Xeons to 3.2 GHz for free! Thanks! :) ]
  • 2 x 1 GB DDR2 SDRAM
  • SATA RAID Controller PCI Card (seems to be an Adaptec RAID controller)
  • 2 x 160 GB 7200 RPM SATA hard disks for HW RAID 1
  • Remote Management PCI Card

All that for about 3.2k CHF which is a reasonable price (not counting a 500 GB SATA II HDD for incremental backups I will buy elsewhere as Dell has only 250 GB HDDs).

If I would have assembled a server myself, I had probably chosen AMD Opteron CPUs, an ASUS K8N-LR motherboard, a 3ware 9550SX SATA II RAID controller and two fast 500 GB SATA II HDDs. But it’s very difficult to get these components in Switzerland, not to mention getting them from a single supplier. Further there’s the risk that the components don’t harmonize once they have been assembled.

The server will arrive on April 21 and I expect that migration will take at least another 1 to 2 weeks (as I need to recompile Gentoo and adjust the settings for the new environment).

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KeyJnote

KeyJnote is a program that displays presentation slides. But unlike OpenOffice.org Impress or other similar applications, it does so with style. Smooth alpha-blended slide transitions are provided for the sake of eye candy, but in addition to this, KeyJnote offers some unique tools that are really useful for presentations.

It didn’t work on my Windows laptop, but it certainly looks like a bright idea to me! Note that the “J” in the name is a bit misleading – KeyJnote is not implemented in Java but in Python ;)

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numlock.ch changelog partly updated

As you’ve probably noticed, I’ve finally managed to migrate the posts and comments to the new publishing software (which is WordPress, mainly due to the fact that it can be conveniently kept current using Gentoo’s portage system). The outgoing links/blogroll is still not migrated though (as I don’t have them ready in an OPML file for easy importing) – it will be done ASAP.

Note that links of RSS/XML/Atom feeds and of the blog itself are not necessarily final yet (expect some changes during the next couple of weeks)

Stay tuned and thanks for your patience!

Dani

P.S. If you’re wondering: The design of the blog will be migrated too, of course ;)

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Apache: How to deny access to a parent directory/location only

If you want to deny public access to a parent location (let’s say /projects/), but allow public access to a sub-location (/projects/myproject/), use the following statement in httpd.conf:

<Location /projects>Order allow,deny</Location>
<Location /projects/myproject>Order deny,allow</Location>

(can also be used for <Directory> statements etc.)

Note that the URL of the sub-location must include a trailing slash (e.g. “https://news.numlock.ch/projects/myproject/”)

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FireBug – debug Javascript, DHTML and AJAX in FF


FireBug is a new tool for Firefox that aids with debugging Javascript, DHTML, and Ajax. It is like a combination of the Javascript Console, DOM Inspector, and a command line Javascript interpreter.

FireBug – JoeHewitt.com

In preparation for an upcoming Java EE project, I’m also doing some advanced GUI prototyping using DHTML, Javascript (and eventually AJAX, where it fits in). FireBug comes in handy :)

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Gentoo: The -vt option of emerge

The -vt option of emerge is very useful for finding strange dependencies when doing world updates. E.g. when the question is “Which ebuild is causing X11 to be installed on my headless server all of a sudden?”. Just add -vt to emerge -puD world:

emerge -puDvt world

..and take a look at the root of the relevant tree. In this case, the culprit was “fte”:

[nomerge      ] app-editors/fte-20050108-r3  -X +gpm +slang
[ebuild  N    ]  virtual/x11-6.8  0 kB
[ebuild  N    ]   x11-base/xorg-x11-6.8.2-r6  -3dfx -3dnow (etc.)
[ebuild     U ]    x11-apps/ttmkfdir-3.0.9-r3 [3.0.9-r2] 19 kB