GeekTank

Car Paint Damage (Chips, and Pits)

Jordan — Wed, 21 Dec 2011 19:52:36 +0000

I’m working on my car to try and get some of the paint chips and pits out of the paint. Here are some pictures of the problem area’s.

I’ve been looking online at a couple of solutions.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=dVkJT_hL6Zs&feature=related

OtterBox Defender Series iPhone 4S Warranty Pictures

Jordan — Wed, 21 Dec 2011 18:56:34 +0000

The OtterBox Warranty Department asked that I provide them with pictures of the problematic OtterBox I purchased. Here they’re, as you can see the bottom iTunes Port cover has a small rubber line that is suppose to fit into the hard shell case, mine was defective upon receiving it. It worked fine for a while then just stopped working completely.

Why DomainPeople’s New Domain Manager Sucks

Jordan — Wed, 14 Sep 2011 16:41:03 +0000

DomainPeople upgraded their Domain Name Manager, which now doesn’t allow the creation of Name Servers based on your domain name. So you’re required to submit a ticket to create/update your Name Servers based on your Domain Name. I’m so glad I moved to Hexonet, because I have direct access to this.

UPDATE: If you read the comments below, Andrew has pointed out that DomainPeople has added an option for “Register Nameservers” which should then allow you to register nameservers based on your domain.

Configuring MySQL for Low Memory VPS

Jordan — Thu, 08 Sep 2011 16:06:52 +0000

I’ve found the following configuration helps when you’re trying to squeeze out as much memory from a VPS as possible.

[mysqld]
port = 3306
socket = /var/lib/mysql/mysql.sock
skip-locking
key_buffer = 16K
max_allowed_packet = 1M
table_cache = 4
sort_buffer_size = 64K
read_buffer_size = 256K
read_rnd_buffer_size = 256K
net_buffer_length = 2K
thread_stack = 64K

# For low memory, Berkeley DB should not be used so keep skip-bdb uncommented unless required
skip-bdb

# For low memory, InnoDB should not be used so keep skip-innodb uncommented unless required
skip-innodb

# Uncomment the following if you are using InnoDB tables
#innodb_data_home_dir = /var/lib/mysql/
#innodb_data_file_path = ibdata1:10M:autoextend
#innodb_log_group_home_dir = /var/lib/mysql/
#innodb_log_arch_dir = /var/lib/mysql/
# You can set .._buffer_pool_size up to 50 - 80 %
# of RAM but beware of setting memory usage too high
#innodb_buffer_pool_size = 16M
#innodb_additional_mem_pool_size = 2M
# Set .._log_file_size to 25 % of buffer pool size
#innodb_log_file_size = 5M
#innodb_log_buffer_size = 8M
#innodb_flush_log_at_trx_commit = 1
#innodb_lock_wait_timeout = 50

[mysqldump]
quick
max_allowed_packet = 16M

[mysql]
no-auto-rehash
# Remove the next comment character if you are not familiar with SQL
#safe-updates

[isamchk]
key_buffer = 8M
sort_buffer_size = 8M

[myisamchk]
key_buffer = 8M
sort_buffer_size = 8M

[mysqlhotcopy]
interactive-timeout

Apple TV XBMC sources.xml Location

Jordan — Tue, 06 Sep 2011 01:11:36 +0000

/private/var/mobile/Library/Preferences/XBMC/userdata/sources.xml

Pasword Protected Sub Directories Missing on Index Listing with Apache2

Jordan — Sun, 04 Sep 2011 09:14:38 +0000

If you’ve setup a folder that allows listing of the directory index, you will be presented with that directories contents. Folders and files will be show and you can navigate through each folder. However, if you’ve password protected a sub directory, it will not show up in the listing. This is because its considered to be protected and the user should not be able to access it.

To override this option you must place the following into your root .htaccess file, not the one protecting the folder.

IndexOptions +ShowForbidden

httpd.apache.org/docs/current/mod/mod_autoindex.html

Apache dDoS “killapache” Sends Malformed GET Requests

Jordan — Fri, 26 Aug 2011 15:17:00 +0000

There is a bug in certain versions of Apache that is susceptible to a dDoS using malformed GET requests. You can find more information about “killapache” at the following site.

www.pentestit.com/2011/08/25/killapache-ddos-tool-freezes-apache-web-server/

There is no patch, however their is a work around for this bug which is provided below. In Ubuntu or Debian create a new file “/etc/apache2/conf.d/killapache-fix” and place the following code

# Drop the Range header when more than 5 ranges.
# CVE-2011-3192
SetEnvIf Range (,.*?){5,} bad-range=1
RequestHeader unset Range env=bad-range

# optional logging.
CustomLog logs/range-CVE-2011-3192.log common env=bad-range

You may need to install the “headers” module, which can be done by typing “a2enmod headers” and then you should be able to reload apache without errors.

Using “robocopy” to Copy EFS Files

Jordan — Wed, 24 Aug 2011 04:48:27 +0000

When required to move large amounts data from one location to another, we use robocopy. Why? It’s basically like rsync for Linux, it copies NTFS Security ACL’s and will do file compare on every file to ensure that the destination has the most current version of the file.

So when moving over 50 + user folders, it comes in handy. We simply run robocopy a couple of days before to do the large sync of data. Then we run it during a maintenance window to update any files that have been modified or created.

It works great! But its biggest feature is that it will copy EFS files without the need to have the EFS certificate/key. Using the /EFSRAW switch allows for the copy of encrypted files from one location to another without having to decrypt the data.

Fore more information on the robocopy syntax please see the following site:

ss64.com/nt/robocopy.html

JungleDisk – Server Daemon Not Responding, No Backups, Not cool?

Jordan — Mon, 15 Aug 2011 14:44:37 +0000

So I noticed that one of my servers wasn’t being backed up via email alerts recently. Usually I’m on top of it, but I noticed recently one less email from JungleDisk (I get completion notices on all JungleDisk Backups).

So I opened up the Jungle Disk Server Edition Management and found that I couldn’t connect to the machine I was trying to open. I thought, hrmm this happened before I just need to restart the “junglediskserver” process on the server in question. At which point I could then see the server listed in the Management console.

Once selected the server to see when the last backup was, I noticed it was 24 days from the last complete backup. I was super surprised and kinda ticked off because I didn’t notice this quick enough to fix it and neither did JungleDisk. I mean if there are 24 missed backup windows, don’t you think I should be notified.

I described the above to JungleDisk in an email to their Feedback address, lets see how they respond.

Update #1: I got a response from JungleDisk via email, they directed me to their Support System at which point I was able to post a feature request. But to my surprise their were already a handful of similar requests, so I dropped my two bits in. The one thread was over 2 years old. Great software, bad community relationship.

Update #2: I haven’t been following the thread on Jungledisk’s support site as I’ve pretty much decided to live with this problem. However, another awesome thing happened (I’m being sarcastic). Jungledisk was doing a backup and it either started super slow or during the backup it slowed down, either way the backup was going at 0.1k/s and wasn’t going to finish. It kept running, it missed the next backup window and I only knew this because I got no email about the job completing. You would think if a job takes too long and the next backup window is forthcoming, why not notify via email that it’s happening.

Simple Apache Expires Setup via .htaccess

Jordan — Mon, 15 Aug 2011 14:39:29 +0000

If you’ve used Google Page Speed then you’ve probably seen “Leverage browser caching” as one of the items on the Medium Priority list. And it’s a real simple fix if you’re running Apache. Just create or edit your .htaccess file for the site you want to enable it on and input the following.

<IfModule mod_expires.c>
ExpiresActive on
ExpiresByType image/gif "access plus 1 years"
ExpiresByType image/jpeg "access plus 1 years"
ExpiresByType image/png "access plus 1 years"
ExpiresByType text/css "access plus 1 years"
ExpiresByType text/js "access plus 1 years"
ExpiresByType text/javascript "access plus 1 years"
ExpiresByType application/javascript "access plus 1 years"
ExpiresByType application/x-javascript "access plus 1 years"
#ExpiresDefault "access plus 1 days"
IfModule>

And Viola, you’re now telling Web Browsers not to grab Images/CSS or Javascript unless otherwise required.