Site Changes

As you can all tell, I made a few changes to the site. This was mostly inspired by my new install of WordPress 3.0. I decided to give the new 2010 theme a shot for a while. I think it looks great. Very simple yet functional at the same time. Happy joy! Regardless, I am working on an article on Fedora 13 right now. (Hint, I am using it right now and love it…) I also have another article coming on 64 bit flash. Adobe is going to hate me… Again…

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Nagios kills group/user associations required by Webmin/Virtualmin

So here we go again! I am looking around for a new monitoring setup. I install Nagios to take a look at it on my CC box. My CC box is currently running several sites through Webmin/Virtualmin. When I installed Nagios, I noticed that all of my sites stopped working with the exception of Webmin itself and Nagios.

The errors associated with this issue are a standard 403 on the client side. On the server side you get “pcfg_openfile: unable to check htaccess file, ensure it is readable”.

In my quest to fix the issue, I double checked permissions to ensure that they were correct. They were. I double checked that the apache group existed and was working correctly. It was. I searched high and low for a fix for this issue. I even wrote a support request to the people over at Nagios right before I uninstalled it out of anger and spite (which didn’t fix the issue either BTW). Sadly, about 10 minutes after hitting the send button, I had a thought.

The way that Virtualmin works is to include the apache user in the groups it creates for hosting accounts. It appears that Nagios removed the apache user from all groups except for the one that it created. Good times huh?

The easy way to fix it on a small box is to add the apache user back to the groups for your hosting users. If you have a larger box, go ahead and script it. After you are done getting apache added back to your hosted groups, go ahead and restart Apache and all should be good in the world again.

Oh yeah. A message to the good folks over at Nagios. You have known about this issue for quite some time due to the multitude of Plesk, CPanel and Virtualmin users that have asked about it or related issues. Why don’t you go ahead and fix it? You lost a potential paying customer today because this simple issue has not been resolved.

All done. Ciao all.

Posted in Linux, Tutorials | Tagged , , , , | 2 Comments

Enabling Sudo on Fedora 10

Since I posted my 64 bit flash tutorial, I have been getting a lot of questions on how to enable a user to sudo on Fedora 10. For those of you that wanted it, here you go! Oh yeah, next time, RTFM. *grin*

Note that I am doing all of this from the command line. If you care to survive the Linux world, you should at least have a vague idea of how to use the command line. A terminal from within X will work fine as well for these steps.

Also note that this will work with MOST distros out there. I have yet to see a problem with any that I have tried, but I mostly work in the RPM world, so my exposure to other distros is somewhat limited.

Get logged in and open a terminal window if your system starts X automatically. If you need a tutorial on how to do that, google will be your friend for a while. Before we actually edit anything, we will be finding out what groups your user belongs to you will be looking for a couple of them that are quite important. “wheel” and whatever group mirrors your username.

[dude@computer ~]$ groups
dude wheel pulse-access pulse-rt pulse
[dude@computer ~]$

Once you are logged in and know what groups you belong to, you will edit “/etc/sudoers“. This will require you to be root to do this. (Type in “su” at the command prompt and enter the root password for the system when you are prompted.) Once you are root, enter the following command.

vim /etc/sudoers

Here is where those groups come in handy. If you had wheel listed, we simply have to uncomment a line. If not, we have to create a new line that includes your users’ group. It will make sense in a minute.

Lets start with the less likely situation that wheel was part of your groups list by default. You have two lines that you are looking for within sudoers.

# Uncomment to allow people in group wheel to run all commands
# %wheel  ALL=(ALL)       ALL

# Same thing without a password
# %wheel        ALL=(ALL)       NOPASSWD: ALL

It is quite simple at this point. If you would like to require that the sudo enabled users put their password in every time they run a command with sudo, uncomment the “# %wheel  ALL=(ALL)       ALL” line by removing the # at the start of the line. If you don’t wish to require a password for every use of sudo, do the same with the “# %wheel        ALL=(ALL)       NOPASSWD: ALL” line.

Now, what if you are like 99.9% of the fresh installs out there? What if you are not part of the wheel group, or have a situation where you only want your user to have sudo access? This is also very simple. Simply change “wheel” on whichever line you prefer to your group name and uncomment as before.

Done!

If you have issues using VI, there are a multitude of VI tutorials on the net. If you would rather use EMACS or nano or something, feel free. It should all work the same.

Posted in Fedora, Linux, Tutorials | Tagged , , , , , | 1 Comment

WordPress MU redirect loop during install

I am using WordPress MU for a project that I am working on right now and I have run into and found a solution to a problem that seems to be plaguing the blogsphere. The sad thing is that the solution was already posted in the MU forums, but not given the proper attention. I am here to fix that.

Problem Description

When installing WPMU, if the installation is not completed because of a database issue, an endless loop will occur. This happens because the DB is not populated with the correct information, but the wp-config.php has already been written. Every time you hit the index.php, it tries to look at the DB and notices that the information is not there. Default behavior seems to be to try again, which has the same behavior as the first time through. Endless loop, here we come.

Yeah, I know it is more complicated than that. I am trying to keep it simple.

To be truthful, this was my fault for not having my DB permissions set up correctly during install.

The Fix

The simple way to resolve the issue is to rename or delete the wp-config.php that was generated during the first install. After this is done, reload the site and go through the install again. Make sure you have corrected the DB problem before you go through the install again.

The Bitch

While it was my fault that I had the DB permissions jacked up, the WPMU installer needs to be tweaked a bit to avoid this issue. If the DB stuff fails, we should probably avoid writing the wp-config.php with information that isn’t going to do a whole lot of good and will probably scare off someone that isn’t as determined as I am.

This is the part where I get comments and emails telling me to fix it if I am that worried about it. This is also the part where I tell you that I am not a programmer. I am an admin and an enthusiast. If I could fix it, I would damn well do it.

This is also the part where I explain that this isn’t a gripe against WordPress MU or WordPress in general. They are great tools. I am just trying to help someone that might be having the same problem I had.

Ok. That’s all. Go about your business.

Posted in Tutorials, Wordpress MU | Tagged , , | 24 Comments

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00100000011011010110010100101110001000000101001101100001
01110110011001010010000001111001011011110111010101110010
01110011011001010110110001110110011001010111001100100001

Posted in Uncategorized | 1 Comment

RUNNNNNNN!

 

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111001000100001001000000100010101010110010001010101

001001011001010000100100111101000100010110010010000

0010100000100000101001110010010010100001100100001

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Bailouts, Bonuses, and Bullshit.

If this doesn’t explain exactly what I have been thinking for the last while, I don’t know what will. Read and learn.

Posted in Uncategorized | 1 Comment

Greatest Parody Site EVARRRR!

Ok, you all have to check this out. I am going through fark.com/geek earlier, and I see this things about this superjesusfreak site that is attacking Olivia Munn. So I go, check it out, have an insane laugh, and decide to play along. In fact, I think I chose my camp on my first comment. I will be THAT guy. Hah

Either way, go check it out. I was just rolling when I was reading some of their stuff and watching some of their vids… Just some instant HILARITY!

http://www.christwire.org

You won’t be sorry.

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The XP install from hell…

Ok, so it wasn’t THAT bad. Lets get into some backstory…

My mother wanted to get a scanner so that she could make all of her pictures into ones and zeroes. I started looking around for something that would work for her needs and couldn’t find anything that would work with SANE. Go figure.

Ok, sidenote. Seriously. If CUPS can give support to damn near anything that prints since probably the 1950′s, why can’t SANE do something at least somewhere near that?!

I decided that since there wasn’t any simple way, short of writing a driver for the new scanner *cough*, that I could make this work with Fedora 10 in the timeframe I was working with.

So I get the new XP license in the mail today. I double check that the backups are done on her system. I put the CD in and reboot. I get the almighty Black Screen of Insanity +5. As you can imagine, I am getting a little bit pissed by now. I reboot real quick and jump into the BIOS to make sure that there isn’t anything odd looking in there. Nothing odd. Reboot and try to install again. No go again.

In the past, I had the same problem with a system that previously had Fedora Core 4 on it. Microsoft seems to want to make us jump through hoops if we are forced to go back to their stupid OS for any reason.

Come to find out, this is a partitioning issue. I guess that Microsoft doesn’t know how to read a partition table if it was written by another OS. Somehow, my jaded nature just doubled.

The solution was to rewrite the partition table with GParted. I downloaded the ISO from the GParted website and burned it using another system. After inserting the CD and booting from it, I was able to completely erase the partition table. A quick reboot from there, and Windows XP decided that it wanted to start working.

The moral of this story is very simple. Microsoft has been trying to find ways to keep ahead of Apple and the Linux community for years. They have done some good things and a load of bad things. The problem is, they have continued to write shoddy software. Their market share is slowly seeping over to the *NIX side of things, and they still fail.

Windows 7 may be able to turn this trend around, but what I have seen suggests that they are simply stealing ideas from the Linux community to rewrite and impliment in their own OS. Eventually, I believe this will catch up with them.

Posted in Fedora, Microsoft | Tagged , , , , | Leave a comment

Congrats to the Utes on their win.

It was a great game and Utah came out on top. Congrats guys. Now get to work for next year!

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