Roj’s Tech Corner

Sometimes you just feel like generating a random 16 digit number.

Basically non-existent.

Invision’s stance on it is since Google can index their forums without them, why should they bother? But generally Google gives more weight to the page name than the content when ranking so someone using SEF urls will be listed above you. But even more important, if you want to run Google Adsense on your forum, SEF URLs are almost mandatory. Google places a lot of stock in the name of the page when selecting keywords for ads it will display on it. Having a page name of “/forum/index.php?showtopic=1274;st=20″ does nothing to help.

To be fair, there is FURL. The author of the modification has done some nice work with it. But it suffers from problems when the query string doesn’t match exactly what the code is looking for. For example, if the session id is in the query string, FURL will not see it and the link is left at /index.php?ses=xxxxx. And it only works on the first page of a topic (last I checked). After that, it’s back to the /index.php?xxxx

Then there is the recent Community SEO. This might work if you want to spend more money for SEF urls than you spent for the forum software itself. But there is another slight problem with this mod that bothers me more than the hit to the wallet. The URLs it generates look identical to what FURL generates. In other words, it appears that the author of this mod used FURL in his code. This raises copyright issues that I would prefer to stay away from.

So after trying FURL and later removing it and not shelling out the money for Community SEO I decided to write my own mod for Invision Power Board search engine friendly URLs. It will also be GPL’d and given away free. And it’s almost ready for use. Just working out some bugs I’m finding while unit testing it.

What I’ve got so far is: say that you have a forum at /forum/index.php + a forum named “Politics” + a sub-forum named “Republican” + a topic in that forum called “John McCain’s latest snafu” + a member named “Ralph”. The URLs would then be:

Forum index: /forum/forums.html
Politics index: /forum/politics/topics.html
Republican index: /forum/politics/republican/topics.html
Topic: /forum/politics/republican/john_mccains_latest_snafu.html
Member Profile page: /forum/members/ralph

Any extra information in the query string is appended to the URL automatically. So if a session id is present, then the url becomes: /forum/politics/republican/john_mccains_latest_snafu.html?sess=xxxxxx.

The reason I’m dropping the dime on it now is that I could use suggestions for it. What would you like to see in it?

Installed my first Redhat 5 server this week. The install went without issue. But when I configured it for LDAP authentication and started up autofs, none of the user home directories were mounting.

A quick look at the log file showed nothing. No errors, no nothing. Then I found Redhat’s documentation for the changes they did in autofs 5. Turns out they changed it from guessing what type of schema you are using to allowing you to specify exactly what schema should be used. Nice, especially since it will eliminate a lot of noise in syslog. But apparently their changes do not like how I have mine set up by default — which was configured in a not so nice way just for a Redhat ES 3 box.

My network has a mix of Redhat, Suse, Solaris 8,9,10, and a lot of Windows PCs. We use Redhat’s Directory Server (which is the old Netscape LDAP). When it came time to put in the automounts, we found that Solaris insisted on the rfc2307bis schema, using automountMap entries. Redhat ES 3 insisted on using the old style nisMap entries. So a comprimise was reached. Both were put in and a script written to add both entry types when creating a new user. Wasn’t hard since Solaris looks for auto_master and Linux looks for auto.master. So auto_master got the automountMap entries, auto.master got the nisMap entries.

First thing at tracking this down was turning on some logging for autofs. The default is now no logging. Edit /etc/sysconfig/autofs and change DEFAULT_LOGGING=”verbose” (or debug if you need more). After turning this on, I finally found what it was choking on:

master_notify: syntax error in map near [ nismapname ]

Redhat 5 defaults to the nisMap entries and it was finding the auto.master entry in the directory but it was not liking what it found. Since the exact same entries work fine with the older Redhat and Suse boxes, I figured they were fine and rather attempt to correct them for Redhat 5 and break everyone else, best route was to get Redhat 5 to like what is in the LDAP directory.

First off, no matter what, I could not get autofs 5 to work with the auto.master or the auto_master entries. These entries list where to find the /home automount entries and it is specified in /etc/auto.master with the line:
# Include central master map if it can be found using
# nsswitch sources.
#
# Note that if there are entries for /net or /misc (as
# above) in the included master map any keys that are the
# same will not be seen as the first read key seen takes
# precedence.
#
+auto.master


The +auto.master tells it to include anything it finds in LDAP or NIS. Commenting that out removed that issue, but requires specifying where the /home mount entries are. To do so, add this to auto.master:
/home auto.home

Now create /etc/auto.home and add the following to it:
+auto_home

This tells it to include the mounts in can find in auto_home in the LDAP directory. But one more thing. I told it to look in the section that has the automountmap entries, so we need to tell autofs we’re going to use that schema. Back in the /etc/sysconfig/autofs file, uncomment the lines for a rfc2307bis schema:
DEFAULT_MAP_OBJECT_CLASS="automountMap"
DEFAULT_ENTRY_OBJECT_CLASS="automount"
DEFAULT_MAP_ATTRIBUTE="automountMapName"
DEFAULT_ENTRY_ATTRIBUTE="automountKey"
DEFAULT_VALUE_ATTRIBUTE="automountInformation"


Restart autofs, check that it works. If so, turn of the logging again. Took me a couple hours to get it working but works fine now. I would like to figure out why it wouldn’t work with with the auto.master or auto_master entries. If I latter want to add more default mounts to the servers, I’ll have to manually configure Redhat 5 to look for it while all the other servers will pick up on it right away.

I was tasked with setting up a network for a new company, a population of 4 employees so far. They had already made the decision to go strictly with Macs for desktops and laptops. They wanted a server to share files on and handle their email. Since they already were a Mac shop, why not get an XServer for them? And that is what I did.

The Hardware

As with anything Apple, the hardware is sleek. It’s a silver 1U server that racks pretty easily and looks a bit like an overgrown Macbook except the lid doesn’t swing open. All the connections you need are on the back. I had no problem hooking it up to our KVM switch. Two GB Ethernet ports, as well as all the other standard connections on the back. On the surface, there isn’t much not to like.

But I do have some gripes about it. For one, it does not come standard with a raid controller. Who sells a $5,000+ server these days without at least throwing in a cheap raid controller? The other thing, probably owing to its 1U height, is that it only holds 3 drives. Normally for a server that will serve files or email I will create two raid 1 arrays — a small one for the OS and a large one for the file share/email. If a drive dies, it’s not going to kill the server and bring productivity to a halt. This requires 4 drives, which forgetting the physical limitation o f 3 drives, the lack of a raid controller makes it a mute point.

The 3 drive bays on the front make swapping drives pretty easy. Just push in on the face plate to release it and pull it out. I wouldn’t recommend doing it while the server is running though. Each drive has an indicator light on it for online and access status. For some reason, the lights on the 3rd drive of this one don’t want to light up even though the drive is in use. Might have to get that fixed.

Other than that, the hardware seems fine. OSX Server obviously runs well on it. Writing a server OS to work well with the hardware it’s running on is a lot easier when you control what hardware can be used. But the reason to get the XServer was for the OS. In theory, it should make managing the Macs on the network easier…..in theory.

Bottom line: Unless you have a network with a lot of Macs on it and you want a server that will work with them, then an XServer is a decent buy. Otherwise, I think it’s overpriced for what you get — especially given some of the software it ships with, which I’ll start griping about tomorrow.

Things get done quicker when you can keep you hands on the keyboard. But launching a program in Windows usually involves clicking on the Start button, Programs, the program group the application is in, then finally the application you wanted. Mac users have Quicksilver for quickly finding and launching applications using the keyboard, but what about Windows?

Enter my latest favorite Windows utility: Launchy. Launchy is to Windows what Quicksilver is to OSX. Once installed, all your applications are just an ALT-Space key combination away. Want to launch firefox? Press ALT-Space, then start typing it’s name. Once Launchy finds it, it displays its name and logo:

Hit the enter key and Firefox is running. Run MS Word? Just ALT-Space, w…o…r… There it is!

Launchy can do more than just launch applications also. Want to open a bookmark you have for boston.com? ALT-Space, b..o…s..t… There it is! Need to do simple math? ALT-Space 5312/331. Pretty neat.

Launcy can be customized to index any directory you like. It defaults to your program files directories but you could tell it to index all .doc files in your My Documents folder. Then you can launch any Word document straight from your keyboard. You can also change the skin or even the hot-key combination for bringing it up.

Launcy is developed by Josh Karlin and is released under the GPL license.