Another 15 minutes » Projects

New blog theme

Draupner — Tue, 01 Jun 2010 16:28:43 +0000

Today I changed my blog theme, just thought it was time for a change and I liked this design and what it can do, hope you like it too. I will do some more modifications and additions to it still so it’s not quite done. Related posts:New theme New theme Related posts:

Server disk crash

Draupner — Fri, 01 Jan 2010 10:08:22 +0000

A few days ago I suffered from disk failure on two disks in my RAID5 array, which forced me to re-install the server from scratch and restore it from older backups. The server is soon up again and Penskyfiles Radio will be online with it. No related posts. No related posts.

Howto setup WordPress automatic updates without FTP

Draupner — Fri, 10 Jul 2009 15:46:40 +0000

If you run your WordPress blog on some hosting partner you probably have the automatic updates of WordPress core and plugins working, but if you ever setup your own Linux server and trying to run WordPress on it, it is likely that this will not work out of the box, especially if you’re running multiple websites on the same server.

I don’t want to use some 3rd party plugin for this to work or FTP, so I investigated what it is that makes it work in my hosting partners server, but not my own. I figured it was some PHP configuration missing but it was much simpler than that.

You will need root-access to the server to continue. The problem is that the webserver process (httpd) does not have write permission to the files (let’s say in “/home/user/public_html” for example). The httpd process is most likely to run as user “nobody”, “apache” or “www” (it must not run as “root”!). One possibility to fix this is to set the directory public_html as write permitted by anyone, but that is not a good solution so I won’t write how.

Instead we wan’t to change owner of the files to match. To find out which user is running your httpd process you can login as root and issue the command

ps -axu | grep “httpd”

One process will run as root to bind to the port, but the other ones should be another user.

The easiest thing to do, and this is how many hosting partners have set it up, is to make sure the owner of public_html and all subfolders and files is the same user which is running the httpd process.

I am running Fedora Linux and in my case the user is “apache”, so while still logged in as root I just run the command

chown -R apache /home/user/public_html

This will change owner if the public_html directory, which is the root directory in my Apache configuration, and all subfolders and files. Now the automatic updates will work right away!

vardagsmysterier.se

Draupner — Wed, 01 Apr 2009 06:08:12 +0000

This will be my first post in Swedish since it only applies to Sweden.

Jag har skapat en ny liten enkel men rolig sida, www.vardagsmysterier.se, där man kan dela med sig av sina observationer om konstiga saker i vardagen och vardagsmysterier samt lite förklaringar på vanliga frågor man ofta undrar över. Än så länge är sidan inte så välfylld, men jag valde att lägga ut den ändå. Jag sökte lite inspiration i helgen på nya sidor och detta är ett av resultaten efter ett par timmars knappande.

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Redecorating my home

Draupner — Wed, 25 Mar 2009 11:57:53 +0000

I have been redecorating my home for a few weeks now, on and off. Getting rid of old and ugly bookshelfs and getting new more stylish ones that match some furniture I already have. I got the furniture and lights from IKEA, the “Expedit” bookshelf though came with no holes on half of the bookshelfs (!), so I had to drill them myself (takes too much time & energy to bring 100 kg of shelfs back to the store), but after a while I got them up. Then I also got the “Malm” bureau with a glass pane on top, a “Hopen” bed table with frosted glass drawers, and another “Benno” CD-storage in silver. Along with that I got a new spotlight lamp in the ceiling and diod lights for nice effects in the bookshelf etc. I was glad to see that my ceiling was in fact wooden and not concrete like the walls are, so it was easy to do the fixed installation of the spotlights. I also already had the multicolored diodstrips behind the TV, which is a really nice feature. Below are before & after pictures of the room, it’s more clean and modern now, it turned out pretty good. Take a look…

It’s not all done yet, I still have some painting to buy and hang up (and fix the lighting for it) and also a picture I will create myself from photos of my vacation in New York City 2008. But so far with these changes the room feels alot bigger and more open. I might also get a bigger bed at some point as I first planned. So far I spent around 700 euros for this and a couple of evenings of assembly.

Before:

After:

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PS3 Media Server

Draupner — Wed, 17 Dec 2008 20:39:02 +0000

Today I tested “PS3 Media Server“, a software that allows you to stream and view media from a PC to a Playstation 3, like HD movies. This is pretty much the same functionality as TVersity, which I have written a guide to on this blog, but PS3 Media Server is supposed to be able to handle 1080p videos with ease and also to include subtitle files and many other things.

PS3 Media Server is a free software that was released in version 1.00 just a few days ago, it requires no installation and no setup, for me it was pretty much working right out of the box (probably because I had all codecs already installed from my TVersity installation). I could share my movie-folder and it came up on the PS3 in seconds and I could play DVD ISO-files with no configuration at all. The only problem I had was with video and sound sync, they were several seconds out of sync, but I managed to solve that by disabling the “auto A/V sync” option in the transcoding configuration. The program has a large buffer that is visualized on the main screen and it works very well, there were no stuttering at all throughout the movie.

I liked this program alot, I will probably use this instead of TVersity now because TVersity is slow on updates, takes alot of memory and CPU usage and stutters sometimes in videos. This program seems much faster and more efficient. I’m looking forward to try it out with full HD videos and subtitles and see how everything works.

Upgraded WordPress

Draupner — Thu, 11 Dec 2008 07:30:17 +0000

I upgraded the blog to WordPress 2.7 just now, there should be little changes to the blog appearance itself but the changes are behind the scenes, which is looking pretty good. Related posts:WordPress 2.7.1 hacked? Howto setup WordPress automatic updates without FTP Related posts:

VMWare Server upgrading

Draupner — Mon, 03 Nov 2008 19:56:54 +0000

I’ve been using VMWare Server on my server at home for some time for experimental purposes on different setups with clients, servers and networks. I think it’s an amazing tool and very valuable and useful. Today I decided to upgrade my installation from 1.0.3 version to 2.0.0. I encountered some issues I had to solve, but I soon got it to work. Here is how…

When finished downloading the installation file of almost 600 Mb from vmware.com and starting the setup, it recognized my previous installation and began the upgrade process. In the beginning of the installation I got a message that a policy set by the administrator that prevented this installation. I had no idea what policy this was, but when I started the setup a second time it suggested that I didn’t install this product to a domain controller, but I continued anyway, since I have no choice right now.

Then it began to install, but after a while it complained about “Error 1718: File was rejected by digital signature policy”, this occurs when trying to install a large package and Windows have too low virtual memory to verify its signature. There is a hotfix for Windows 2003 Server (not for XP) for this on Microsofts website (KB 925336), which I downloaded and installed.

After that the installation went through and all virtual machines was automatically imported and started. The main difference I noticed right away was that there were no longer a console, but everything is now a web interface (VMWare Infrastructure Web Access 2.0.0) which actually works very well and I’m also used to this platform since we’re using VMWare Infrastructure and most other products from VMWare at work also.

I did some virtual hardware upgrades, upgraded VMWare Tools and there were no problems at all, everything seems to be up and running as it should.

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New theme

Draupner — Sat, 25 Oct 2008 23:26:14 +0000

I installed a new theme on the blog today and modified it to fit my needs, credits to the original creator “deniart”. I will probably continue to do small changes with fonts and some colors over the next couple of days to fine tune the design. I hope you like it? Abit more vivid than the last I think.

I also take the opportunity to share a nice song with you, “Cry for you” by September. I like the intro and melody of it alot.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=pxu6iQ28arw

UPS battery replaced

Draupner — Fri, 24 Oct 2008 13:56:26 +0000

Got the new battery pack for my UPS now and the internal temperature seems to be low and stable so far, it’s been charging now for an hour. I’m glad this solved the problem because getting a new UPS would’ve cost alot more money since it was out of warranty.