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 »

Twitter Updates for 2010-04-12

• You are easily distracted by your desire for comfort now and w… More for Leo http://twittascope.com/?sign=5 #
• CoAPP – installer, package management for open source software for Windows. http://coapp.org/index.html Apache & PHP to be CoAPPed soon #

Twitter Updates for 2010-04-12

• You are easily distracted by your desire for comfort now and w… More for Leo http://twittascope.com/?sign=5 #
• CoAPP – installer, package management for open source software for Windows. http://coapp.org/index.html Apache & PHP to be CoAPPed soon #

Twitter Updates for 2009-08-30

• @aseemsood #Cambridge #Azure 340R does not have HDMI audio. rt ? in reply to aseemsood #
• Apache.org attacked http://bit.ly/lgV9X
  #apache #

Twitter Updates for 2009-06-20

• #icicibank I can't use my atm card because I opted for overdraft OD. That's the reason my card was swallowed by an ATM. Will cancel the OD #
• #icicibank says I can't use my atm card if I go for an over draft OD #
• @pankaj_shukla the news means there wud not be a new #xbox console. #Natal (motion sensing camera system) wud work with current xbox 360 #
• #pidgin #yahoo recent issue. http://tinyurl.com/na8ygg This worked for me. Make sure to Quit & restart Pidgin after entry in the hosts file #
• tested #Slowloris HTTP DOS attack. Apache (2.2.3) stopped responding (in about 2 mins). Does not affect system cpu/memory. #
• Setting timeout to 30 (secs) in httpd.conf seems to prevent simplest #Slowloris perl script usage "-dns <server>". executed from 1 machine. #
• @vinodunny #slowloris besides OMG and world, a serious concern. The perl script is very easy to use. Script kiddies will start playing in reply to vinodunny #
• @kbhargava burrp.com http://delhi.burrp.com/ #
• @vinodunny cool! in reply to vinodunny #
• @vinodunny edge is suppose to go upto 32KBps but I guess u don't get such or ur kind of speed everywhere. R u at home? #
• @achitnis I don't know about slot thingie but have read somewhere about guys getting 32KB (if not 48!) @vinodunny still getting the speed? #
• @achitnis then how come @vinodunny is getting such speeds? #
• @achitnis yea so all that I was saying is its possible to get such speeds with Edge even practically. Will read up on the slots bit. #
• @achitnis perhaps u made a typo in ur earlier tweet. Edge is 48 KBytes/sec which is 384 Kbits/sec #
• @vinodunny @achitnis via @sharat_j Meet Kishore Singh aka @kbhargava http://twitpic.com/7vv0y #
• @achitnis look at the Miyan "Kaan" #
• @vinodunny @achitnis I wish pocket outlook in #windows #mobile had built in IMAP IDLE support #
• @kbhargava #pidgin #yahoo. http://tinyurl.com/na8ygg This worked for me. Make sure to Quit & restart Pidgin after entry in the hosts file #

Display Microsoft Word’s Special Characters through Apache

Recently, I carried out a Linux server upgrade for a client where I did a clean install of the latest operating system/distribution. Since it was a clean install I had to backup and note down the earlier configuration (of mail server, web server, database) and redo those changes. Mostly I preferred not to simply overwrite with the backed up configuration files. I rather documented and edited the configuration manually.

It all seemed to have gone smoothly and the new server has been up and running. But one not-so-fine day, the client started complaining that some HTML pages are not displaying properly. These were showing question marks (?) and some other weird characters. I figured out that these HTML pages were generated using Microsoft Word and had those special characters (closing quotes, double hyphens etc.). I discussed with the client that this could be a web browser problem because it is not able to use the correct character set. Read the rest of this entry »