challahc

Backups using logrotate.d

2008-01-07 14:38:35

Logrotate is generally used to rotate log files and keep a certain number of them. After that number is reached the oldest gets deleted. This is to keep filesystems from filling up. Good stuff. But I just realized that my scripts were basically doing the same thing. I was creating a tar file of the document root of my webserver, rotating about 5 of them and deleting. Same thing for the postgres dump files. So why not use logrotate? Here is the file I'm using to backup my docroot, it is placed in /etc/logrotate.d: root@bug:/etc/logrotate.d# cat challahc_docroot /opt/backups/docroot.tar { daily missingok rotate 7 compress nocreate sharedscripts postrotate cd /opt tar cf /opt/backups/docroot.tar ./www endscript } In order for this to work, you need to run the postrotate section by hand first. cd /opt tar cf /opt/backups/docroot.tar ./www Waiting to test this... Update: Works! root@bug:/opt/backups# ls docroot.tar etc.tar mysql_dump postgres_dump docroot.tar.1.gz etc.tar.1.gz mysql_dump.1.gz postgres_dump.1.gz

Apache rewrite for SEO

2007-09-16 23:08:29

So, the requirement was to take the search keywords and embed them in the path of the URL. The search application was written to take these arguments from the HTTP GET query string. For example:



Person wants to search for chicken and cheese.

Search applications expects:
www.site.com/search/do_search?params=chicken+cheese

SEO wants:
www.site.com/search/chicken+cheese/

This seemed complicated at first, but I was pretty sure we could do something. Apache mod_rewrite to the rescue! I am of the opinion that apache should be the webserver of choice in nearly every situation , and that mod_rewrite is 90% of the reason to do so. In this situation (and most) a single rewrite rule is all it takes.



RewriteRule ^/search/(.*)    /search/do_search?params=$1 [QSA,P]

The first part of the rule ( ^/search/(.*) ), tells mod_rewrite when to rewrite the url. This is a regular expression that says, the path starts with search ( ^/search/ )and ends with an unknown set of characters that we need to save for later ( (.*) ). The second part is what the path will be rewritten to. So we want to hit the app at /search/do_search and we want to pass params=$1. The $1 will be whatever we matched with (.*). The last part are options. QSA is query string append. This takes any additional parameters that may have been passed to the original path and appends them to the end of our params=$1 using & where appropriate. P is for proxy, which means that the client will never see any of the magic that we are performing on the back end and most importantly (debatable) the search engine will not see the magic.

I am no expert at SEO, but hopefully this will help us pwn teh google. Even if it doesn't, sometimes its fun to solve problems like this.

wifi lock down

2007-07-07 16:59:09

Not only was it broadcasting the SSID, but the router config has not been touched. These were just plugged in and "hey honey it works! guess i'm done." Default password on these was blank. I was tempted to turn on the remote administration and leave them open to the internet to devour. I figure in a few years these kids around here will be teenagers, so they'll get pwnd soon enough. This also had me thinking that I should lock my own network down even more. I'm using WEP because it's all my router supports. Time for a new router.

server upgrade and cleanup

2007-06-08 22:14:13

I used to use wordpress, and so I was still running mysql and php to support that. I did some searching and found an application called httrack. Httrack will spider a site and make a static copy of it for offline viewing. In my case it is for online viewing of a used to be dynamic application. You can see the results here. Mysql and php have both been uninstalled now. I feel better about running only one database. Not having php feels good too, considering I've never even written anything in php.

mythtv hdtv

2007-05-28 10:21:12

I had the card working in ubuntu sort of, but I could never get it to do HD which is the whole point. So I have the ATSC working in gentoo, but not the NTSC. NTSC is the analog broadcast ATSC is the digital and HD. So, I was happy to get an HD picture on there, the only issue is that the box can't handle displaying it. I can use the cpu to do the mpeg decoding, or there is xvmc which offloads this on the gpu. Using the cpu the broadcast seems to be in slow motion, and with xvmc it skips. Since heat and noise are issues here I want to use xvmc and I'm looking into a better video card. The one in that box is a pci geforce 4 64mb. I'm thinking anything with more ram and agp would do the trick. At this point I'm thinking geforce 6 series. I think it will be plenty for this machine. If I could do pci express I would go 7 series maybe, but even with pci-express, this is a 1.6ghz processor and 512mb of ram. Not exactly game box material.