Tips N Tricks
Solved: Images load up partially when served by Apache Web Server
This was a very strange issue which showed up at one of my client’s Web application. The application is hosted on a Apache Web server and serves JPEG images. These JPEG files reside on a different server and mounted via CIFS (loosely called Samba mount) on the Linux machine running the Web server.
Now the issue was, many JPEG images, especially the larger ones, loaded up only partially in a Web browser (both Internet Explorer and Firefox). What made them load fully was pressing CTRL+R or clicking on Refresh/Reload several times. Bandwidth wasn’t an issue here, since this problem occurred even when browsing the JPEGs from the local network. Read the rest of this entry »
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Replacement battery for Android Dev Phone 1
This is a long pending post that I wanted to write. In April, after about a year of purchase of my Android Dev Phone 1 (a.k.a. ADP1), its battery started draining out. It became so bad that that I had to keep the phone always on charging. While at home/office, I used to charge it using USB/AC power. While driving, I kept it charging using a nifty car adapter.
After about a week of frustration and laziness (to search for a fix), I decided to buy a replacement battery. But the question was, whom do I contact for the replacement battery? HTC? Google? or Brightstar (the distributor) ? Phew…. Read the rest of this entry »
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Solved: ‘requires bundle org.eclipse.wst.xml.core’ error, while installing Google Plugin in Fedora Eclipse
The simplest way to get started with developing for Google App Engine, Google Web Toolkit and Google Wave is to use the Google Plugin for the Eclipse IDE. This plugin installs the SDK as well. Eclipse’s built-in wizard to add new software (plugin) makes it very easy to install the Google plugin. This wizard can be supplied with a URL (http://dl.google.com/eclipse/plugin/3.5 in this case) to a download site. Henceforth, Eclipse takes care of downloading and installing the plugin, along with associated dependencies, bundle or required software.
However, for me, installing the Google Plugin didn’t go as smooth as expected. I have been using Fedora Linux on my laptop since the last 5+ years. Fedora ships with the Eclipse IDE. When I tried installing the Google Plugin in Fedora Eclipse, I faced the following error. Read the rest of this entry »
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Solved: Garbled text in Putty
Putty is a popular and free Linux terminal/shell client for Windows. It allows one to connect to a Linux server using SSH (Secure Shell) or Telnet. I have been using it for as long as I can recall. But this issue of garbled text in Putty is what I have been ignoring, until yesterday.
Yesterday, I had setup Paradox database using DOSEMU on Linux, for a client. On Putty, the Paradox interface showed garbled making it unusable for the client. My instant suspect was DOSEMU. A quick check revealed that it’s happening with other apps too - those with a ncurses or text based user interface. Read the rest of this entry »
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Drupal 6: Different Page Templates for different Content Types
Given the flexibility of Drupal, a different page template depending on the Content Type is not very demanding. The good news is, it is very much possible. The bad news is you may have to struggle like me to find the simplest, neatest and working method to achieve it.
Reading the documentation and Googling would result in many methods – some are confusing, some are not so neat and others apply to earlier versions of Drupal. Following is my favourite method to setup different page templates, depending on the Content Type, in Drupal 6. Read the rest of this entry »
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Kindle to India: Frequently Asked Questions
I ordered an Amazon Kindle for a friend of mine. Before ordering the Kindle, there were various doubts and apprehensions about it’s functionality, cost and shipping to India. It took me numerous Google searches to conclude that Kindle is a safe and good buy for someone in India.
Kindle (Global Wireless) Image source: Wikipedia.org
Subsequently, I placed an order on behalf of my friend and the Kindle was shipped to New Delhi, India to my residence in about 2 days. I got to setup, configure and play with this nifty device, before I could hand it over to my friend. Read the rest of this entry »
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Joomla: Hide breadcrumb on the Home page
Typical requirement this is. You want to display the breadcrumb on the top of every page but the home page – also called the default page or the frontpage in Joomla. This is because you don’t just want the text “HOME” hanging on the top of your Joomla’s home page.
The “Home” may be already highlighted in the main menu, visitors know that they are on the home page and the breadcrumb is not aiding any navigation. Unfortunately, the breadcrumb module (called mod_breadcrumbs) in Joomla 1.5 does not provide any option to hide it on home page and show it on other pages. Read the rest of this entry »
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FTP Backups made easy
I do not recall backing up data over FTP (File Transfer Protocol) in the near past. Thanks to the SSH (Secure SHell) suite of programs like SCP (Secure Copy) and SFTP (Secure FTP), and RSync. But recently I had to setup a scheduled and unattended backup of data lying on a shared hosted server using FTP – the only available option at my disposal.
Wget is a popular and obvious choice to try out for FTP backups. But it didn’t work for me and threw an error saying cannot find .listing file. While I was about to dwell more into wget, I spotted the forgotten hero – lftp. Read the rest of this entry »
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Postfix: Log E-mails’ Subject
In Linux, you can view the statistics of incoming and outgoing E-mails by peeking into a log file called maillog (typically found in /var/log directory). Maillog provides the general information about the mails, for example, the sender and recipient(s), status – sent, rejected, bounced etc. I typically use maillog to check the destiny of mails. At times, it becomes difficult to spot a particular mail due to the sheer volume of mails being logged – especially on a production mail server.
For example: what if we need to check whether a particular mail sent by Person A has been delivered to Person B. Note that Person A might be sending lots of mails to Person B but we need to spot that one particular mail – say the one, which was sent by Person A but did not reach Person B. The only identifier, to identify a particular mail, in the maillog is the cryptic message ID. A better and more readable identifier would be the subject of an E-mail.Unfortunately, the subject of the mails is not logged, by default, in the maillog. But we can configure a mail server like Postfix to log the subject line. Read the rest of this entry »
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Secure File Transfer without Secure Shell
FTP (File Transfer Protocol) is the de-facto but unsecure method to transfer files. SSH (Secure Shell) and its family of services like SCP (Secure Copy) and SFTP (Secure FTP) allows you shell (telnet like) access as well as file transfer via SCP and SFTP, securely. By “securely” I mean the data is that flows across is encrypted including the username and password. SSH is a popular protocol for shell access and file transfer in the Linux world.
So given a choice, SCP/SFTP is a better option in terms of “security”. But enabling SFTP/SCP enables, by default, shell access too. Recently for one of my clients, the requirement was to use SCP instead of FTP while blocking shell access so that no user is able to login, in curiosity, nor could execute any program/script on the server, even by mistake. All they could do is to copy files across – from their desktop to the server and vice versa. But, I could not find anything in SSH configuration that barred SSH, while still allowing SCP. Read the rest of this entry »
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