Crazy Emacs Installation
October 27, 2008 Posted in Ports
Emacs installation installed total 45 ports. I should have defined WITHOUT_X11 for ‘make install’. Read More
Mail Aliases
October 27, 2008 Posted in Email
I’m using postfix on my server, there are at least three aliases file:
/etc/aliases
/etc/mail/aliases
/usr/local/etc/postfix/aliases Read More
Using Traceroute
October 26, 2008 Posted in Networking
This is a great tutorial on traceroute, including exercise and an online tool. I can traceroute to my server successfully from my desktop or VPS, but most online tools failed. The one in the above link also has a TCP mode, isn’t traceroute based on ICMP? Maybe that’s why other online tools failed – they only use ICMP mode. Read More
Named: the working directory is not writable
October 26, 2008 Posted in DNS
If I do:
# tail -f /var/log/messages &
# rndc reload
I will get the error message:
named: the working directory is not writable. Read More
Reverse DNS
October 26, 2008 Posted in DNS
In my last post, I mentioned Gmail marked emails from my server (by php script) as spam due to SPF error. The other reason is that reverse dns didn’t work either. If reserve dns works, since email’s client and server usually use the same IP, Gmail treat it as spf pass (smart guess). Read More
SPF
October 25, 2008 Posted in Email
Emails sent from my server were marked as spam by Gmail, one of the reasons is SPF error, which can be checked by viewing the email header. Added SPF record for DNS zone file according to openspf.org, they have a generation tool. Read More
Apache Error Log File
October 24, 2008 Posted in Apache
The Apache error log file, defined in httpd.conf for each virtual host, are very important, I used to ignore them. They not only help locate strange website errors, but also give problems that webmaster can’t easily find. Read More
Hardware Problem
October 21, 2008 Posted in FreeBSD General
When I started working on my new FreeBSD server, I got a few weird errors, such as: server rebooted by itself; strange errors when installing ports, but worked the second time, it happened to all three packages I installed. Read More
MySQL Backup and my.cnf
October 21, 2008 Posted in MySQL
Check MySQL version when you restore database.
Recently I switched to a different hosting provider, I always directly tar the MySQL data directory, but this time I got lots of problems. Some websites worked well, some gave lots of table-corrupted errors. Later I found it’s due to the MySQL versions 
. On my old server it’s 5.0, and 5.1 on the new one. Reinstalling 5.0 solved the problem. Read More
Google App configuration for bind
June 23, 2008 Posted in Email
On some websites, I really don’t want to use free email address for contact, but spam email is an endless war. Google App allows me to use my own domain as email address, I can also enjoy all the power and features of Gmail, and it’s free! What a perfect solution! If you are hosting your own email server and not satisfied with it, I strongly suggest you to give Google App a shot. Read More
Upgrade to PHP 5 and MySQL 5
March 8, 2008 Posted in PHP
There is really no any reason to continue using PHP 4 and MySQL 4 except being lazy. The upgrade was quite smooth and took about 1.5 hours including compiling time. Read More
Happy Chinese New Year
February 6, 2008 Posted in Misc
Today is the Chinese New Year’s Eve, welcome to the Year of Rat!
I wish everyone a happy and fruitful new year!
Confusing Server Debug in Eclipse
February 5, 2008 Posted in My PHP Journey
The server debug (Debug as PHP web page) in Eclipse is quite confusing. For example:
- It always opens the browser despite the setting ‘Open in Browser’ is unchecked.
- The Apache error often pops up without a clue. It seems caused by the settings of ‘Debug Dialog’.
Read More
Eclipse
February 4, 2008 Posted in My PHP Journey
PDT User Guide in the help manual is very helpful, I followed its ‘Basic Tutorials’ smoothly until I tried the debug part. The server debug configuration is confusing to me. After lots of attempts, I finally got Eclipse working with XDebug.
Read More
My PHP Journey
February 4, 2008 Posted in My PHP Journey
As a long time C++ and Java developer, I have managed to modify/debug some PHP scripts with the help of PHP manual, but never spent time learning it. I don’t dare to start a PHP project without systematic learning. The performance, security risks and language specific details should be taken seriously, which requires solid learning and practice.
Read More