I ran across some permissions errors on content that some users uploaded to a website. The files uploaded were not world readable so were coming up as forbidden:

This simple find command shows the offending files:

A quickie but a goodie.

Cheers, Mark

After a bit of fiddling and head scratching I managed to install Railo on Tomcat via Apache on my laptop running on OS X 10.5.6.

Tomcat

Firstly, download Tomcat 6

extract content:

Move Tomcat to a more secure place:

Railo

Download Railo custom version

extract and move into Tomcat lib directory:

Make Tomcat and Railo work together by modifying the web config file:

add the following inside the <web-app> element:

add the following inside <welcome-file-list> element:

Apache

Leopard OS comes with Apache 2, so you don't have to worry about installing it. However, you need to download The Apache Tomcat Connector source code.

Next you need to compile the source so that the resulting binary file is compatible with your Intel Mac architecture. I got this from Eric Rank's blog

cd into tomcat source:

Edit the apache-2.0/Makefile.apxs.in file.

Replace

with:

configure the build files:

now go into apache-2.0 directory and build:

Finally install

Now specify the connection between Apache and Tomcat. To do this you need to create workers.properties file. I created mine in /etc/apache2.

Paste the following:

Now we need to modify the Apache httpd.conf file:

Enable The Apache Tomcat Connector:

Underneath that tell Apache where your workers.properties file is located and add some logging info (could be useful):

Back to Tomcat

To test our Railo installation, let's create a test site by adding a new virtual host in both Tomcat and Apache. We do this by modifying Tomcat server.xml file (/usr/local/tomcat/conf/server.xml )

Apache

Now we need to create a virtual host entry in Apache as well:

Tells mod_jk to use the connector specified in your workers.properties file when it encounters a .cfm extension.

Important

Notice that in my Apache VirtualHost entry there is no DocumentRoot. I originally had it in there and it was breaking my Apache-Tomcat connection. It was driving me mad. It's probably because document root is already specified in /usr/local/tomcat/conf/server.xml.

One last thing, to start your Tomcat server type in this command:

shut down

My assumption is that the above steps would be very similar on other operating systems as long as you use the correct file paths.

Good luck :-)

Marko

MySQL has some really useful functions that make timezone support a bit easier as described in a previous blog post..

However, you need to do a tiny bit of setup work before you can use the functions. You need to load the timezone info from your system into the mysql db.

Thankfully, the MySQL Developers have included a very handy script that will do just that from a zoneinfo files which are used on Linux and on Mac's.

Obviously change the mysql params or add a -p if you have a password or are connecting to a remote server.

Check out the MySQL developer site for full details on MySQL timezone support

Cheers, Mark

I was cleaning up some source code yesterday and wanted to print it all out, however the Mac line endings (we use Mac's and Ubuntu mostly) were messing up the printout on my Ubuntu machine.

A quick google later and I found the solution, a program called 'tr', posting here for next time:

Obviously you could convert from Unix to Mac by reversing it.

Cheers, Mark

I've been looking for a while for a way to convert DVD's and other movies that I have into iPod format and have been failing miserably. That is until today, when I came across the unusually named HandBrake.

It does exactly what is says on the tin and makes it very easy to copy dvd's. Initially I used it from my Mac and it worked flawlessly.

I also tried the Linux version on Ubuntu Hardy (8.04) which has no GUI but it is pretty simple when you get the hang of it.

Here's a typical command line:

This reads from /dev/cdrom and uses the handy "iPod Low-Rez" preset which fixes it all up nicely for the iPod.

And here's one that takes the second title:

The wiki has more information on command line usage.

Happy iPodding.

Cheers, Mark

I came across Mozilla Prism the other day and while I'm still deciding if it's going to be a permanent addition to my machine so far so good.

Prism is a cut down version of Mozilla which is designed to run single sites from icon - what's the use of that you may ask? Well it allows you to have an icon on your desktop for Gmail or Google Calendar or docs or analytics and get to it nice and quickly.

It also free's up some much needed screen real-estate as all the other toolbars relevant for a web-developers browser can get in the way and are not used when you are using you email and calendar.

Additionally - as web developer I tend to restart firefox more often than some - and having my email seperated from that is nice.

Give it a try and see if you like it. On Ubuntu Hardy you can do the following to install it:

On other platforms (windows,mac or other linux versions) you can go to the Prism site and download it.

For the different applications check out the Bundles section or the User contributed bundles section.

Obviously this shares a lot of similarities with the adobe AIR platform albeit not as full featured. It will be interesting to see what further development plans there are for the prism platform.

Cheers, Mark

I had been using Dia for all my charts and diagrams, and it does a very good job. The only downside is that it doesn't produce very pretty charts of the like of Omnigraffle.

However, inspired by this article, I'm starting to use a new solution, Inkscape, that fulfills my criteria that works on Linux, Mac and Windows.

	Dia	Omnigraffle	Inkscape
Can create pretty pictures	No	Yes	Yes
Cross Platform (Linux, Mac, Windows)	Yes	No - Mac only	Yes
Open Source	Yes	No	Yes
Open file format (to work with version control)	No - Binary	No - Binary	Yes - SVG
Export to PNG	Yes	Yes	Yes

Now you may argue that Inkscape is not a diagraming tool but a generic drawing tool. This is true, but with the addition of a few templates of pre-drawn items it become a very good diagramming tool.

I've created a few simple flow chart elements which I use and also scoured the net for some SVG icons for network based diagrams which were sourced from Gnome (via Ubuntu) and from Quantum Bits.

Templates Previews

Download

Download the svg templates (right click - Save As):

• Flowchart Template (SVG) (10k)
• Network Devices Template (SVG) (1.6M)

Give it a try - it's very easy.