Installing Apache on Ubuntu: apt-get versus doing a classic configure through make install process

We've been creating new virtual servers at work using Ubuntu snapshots on Openstack.

Most of these new instances are, unfortunately, bare bones. This is due to Openstack being new to most of us; and as our config engineers start to create more robust template snapshots - hopefully won't be as bare-bones going forward.

I was told by my manager during the initial setup that I shouldn't use apt-get for the installation of Jenkins. I was curious about that but didn't inquire at the time.

A day ago I did try using apt-get after my initial build of Apache 2.2 ran into issues when I enabled all modules.

At the initial install using apt-get I noted that the default install directory was under /etc/apache2.

Another unconventional difference was putting the port where the apache HTTP server runs into the ports.conf file under the root directory. I tried to override this by updating httpd.conf but that was not read when I restarted.

Finally I realized I had to use a2enmod command to install the rewrite module and then use the service command to restart Apache.

Ultimately, after all these quirky changes for Apache on Ubuntu, I tried to rebuild using the tar distribution I built earlier.

This time I specified all the modules that I wanted when I did configure on the command line [in addition to those supplied by default], ran make and did a make install. I was then able to start Apache and configure everything in httpd.conf under the conf directory.

Sometimes going back to the classic installation method is the best way to go.

Eclipse > Customizing the project explorer view. Not showing external libraries in your root directory

I do almost all of my automation development in Eclipse these days.

I usually import most projects through the Eclipse maven plugin, and then I can check out/in files through the Perforce plugin.

Before I build in Eclipse I usually run mvn clean install -Dmaven.test.skip=true, after I've gotten the latest changes from the depot.

The most recent time I did an mvn eclipse:eclipse -DdownloadSources=true build that reset my Eclipse project explorer view and one project I used started to show all the imported JAR files in the root directory making it bit cumbersome to use.

I was helped by a colleague to customize my view with the downward caret looking symbol to the right of the project explorer view.

Here are some screenshots:

After selecting the Customize View, scroll down to Libraries from Extenal and select the associated checkbox, then save.

This should resolve all the JARs showing in your root directory.

Finally resolved inability to change WebEx One Click Meeting Topic

When I first started using WebEx 3 years ago for my current job I accidentally set the WebEx One-click meeting topic to my colleagues' name.

When I tried to update the one click meeting topic it wasn't very intuitive and I gave up pretty quick.

I tried looking a couple of times when WebEx would launch but there didn't seem to be a way to do it in Meeting Center when you were actually in a meeting.

Finally decided to do another Google search and came up with Cornell's site:

Cornell's web site

Basically, you need to go to the WebEx Meeting Center website, which in my case is Meeting Center.

Then you click My WebEx on the top task bar in the browser winder, This will bring up a new page and on the left hand side gutter, click on Productivity Tools Setup.

When the Productivity Tools Setup page appears, there should be a 'virtual' card that appears in the middle of the screen.  Click Edit Settings on the top right of the card.

Then you'll be able to edit your meeting topic name.

Wouldn't it be easier for WebEx to have a global settings link from the Meeting Center main page instead of burying a change in settings with multiple mouse clicks?

First foray into Splunk

As I continue my testing endeavors into our more recent enterprise offering here at work, I've had the opportunity to test our logging framework's newest support: Oracle 11g and Splunk.

Oracle is old hat. Splunk is a little more exciting.

We've been using Spunk a lot for logging and the associated analytics in our two older products so it's nice to have support for it going forward for our newer access management offering.

For a Spunk newbie, I'd say it's pretty easy to install and for a certain log size, is free without having to buy a license; which is convenient for testing.

I was able to use Splunk on Mac OS X, read some basic docs, point it to some Splunk formatted log files and get it working within 3 hours.

We use blitz4j on top of log4j and the setup in blitz4j didn't require a lot of time from the developer too.

Here's a snippet of the way we setup inside our blitz4j config file:

### Logging for Splunk
#
# To include API audit logging for Splunk, uncomment the log4j.appender.
# ex: "log4j.logger.apiaudit=INFO,apiaudit,SplunkApiAudit
#
# log4j.appender.[your string here]=org.apache.log4j.DailyRollingFileAppender
# log4j.appender.[your string here]=./logs/splunk.log
# log4j.appender.[your string here].Append=true
# log4j.appender.[your string here].DatePattern='.'yyyy-MM-dd'.log'
# log4j.appender.[your string here]. layout=com.netflix.logging.log4jAdapter.NFPatternLayout
# log4j.appender.[your string here]. layout.ConversionPattern=%d subject="%X{AUDIT.subject}" authMech="%X{AUDIT.authMech}" client="%X{AUDIT.client}" method="%X{AUDIT.method}" requestUri="%X{AUDIT.requestUri}" responseCode="%X{AUDIT.responseCode}" %n

You don't have a SNAPSHOT project in the reactor projects list

We use Eclipse, Perforce, Jenkins and Artifactory here at work.

Since maven uses a lot of online repositories we do regular builds in Jenkins (after logging in) and then Maven releases.

Maven releases are tricky and sometimes our local setups are a little different where we use local (.m2) repositories or non snapshot versions.

If you get a message like this make sure you have -SNAPSHOT in your POM and resubmit.

For example you'll need:

<version>1.0.0.15-SNAPSHOT</version>

Changing a battery on my Iphone 4S is too difficult

I bought a new battery for my year and half old Iphone 4S.

In addition to the battery I bought proper tools to do it myself.

Everything seemed to work well, except for a little difficulty taking out the original battery that was glued into place.

I thought I had done everything right but when I restarted the IPhone 4S I was getting the message: "Searching..." The phone turned on and I could use everything, including wireless, but no connectivity to the AT&T network.

Seems other IPhone 4/4S users have encountered similar problems when I did a search on the internet.

I already went to the ATT store and they tried a working SIM card. No luck.

Tomorrow I try the Apple store and if no continual luck I'll try a repair shop.

I think I'm sick of Apple not having user friendly replaceable parts like a battery.

Update >>>

Went to the Apple Store Saturday morning before the opened and they couldn't help me. They asked me to reset the phone completely and restart and they took the phone in back to open it up briefly. They couldn't see anything wrong.

Second, I went to the ATT Store to see about early replacement. They couldn't offer me an upgrade deal until September 1st

Third, I went to a local repair shop: "Bouder Mac Repair," and paid $40.00 for diagnostics and a possible fix. Unfortunately, I shelled out $40.00 and no luck.

Saturday evening I posted the Iphone on cragistlist. Got some bites and sold the phone on Sunday for $150.00. They guy I sold it to works for ATT so I'll presume he had an easy way to fix.

Now using Google voice with my ATT phone number forwarded to it.

Exploring writing headers and using mod_rewrite with Apache 2.2

I've moved to a new group at my job and I'm currently testing a product similar to a reverse proxy/WAM.

We are trying to add some initial rewrite capabilities for headers, cookie attributes, and URLs received back from the server we are proxying for the client.

I was having some initial setup problems with Apache.

Enabling mod headers and rewrite is pretty straightforward in Apache's httpd.conf file.

The tricky part after that was building up a file to test adding headers, trying a 301/302 redirect when I need to test modifying server responses.

The file in question I used was .htaccess. That way I could customize it for certain folders I was working on.

Some caveats/notes:

1) I screwed up a common RewriteCond rule that I saw on the web. The !-f and !-d don't have any spaces. Otherwise, if you have spaces you'll get errors in your error log with the title > bad flag delimiters

2) Adding headers to return in the response is pretty straightforward. Even bogus ones work just fine :)

3) Redirects for basic redirect testing in the same web folder are easy. You just need to know a little REGEX.

4) After each change I did restart httpd.exe to reload the changes.

Here is an example .htaccess file that I used:

Header set URI "http://hostname.test.com/URIsubpathTest/"
Header set Content-Location "http://host.test.com/TableOfContents.html"
Header set Location "http://anothertest.com:8080/index.html"
Header set BogusHeader "http:///URIsubpathTest/"
Header set Set-Cookie "BEC=abc123; language=English; Path=/englishPath/replaceThis/BlahString; Domain=testdomain.tryitout.net"


RewriteEngine On
RewriteBase /
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d
RewriteRule . /index.html [L]
RewriteRule ^requestedpage.html$ /redirectpage.html [R=301]
RewriteRule ^originalrequested302.html$ /temppagefor302.html [R=302]