Unix / Linux / *BSD Software | The Tlog - a technology blog

Archive for the 'Unix / Linux / *BSD software' CategoryPage 2 of 6

AWStats fix for Portuguese search engines

Published

1 year, 11 months ago

in Unix / Linux / *BSD software and World Wide Web

. 2 Comments

If, like me, you use the current CVS version of AWStats, you may have found that, since they recently added Sapo to its list of known search engines, if your web site is located in Portugal (like mine are), your top search query is, suddenly, “Resumo“. Even if your site is in English.

“Resumo” is, in this context, Portuguese for “short version“, and it’s included by default in all Sapo queries. But why is this happening?

I’ve tracked it down to an AWStats bug, which I reported to the author, along with a patch. That patch, in addition to fixing that problem, also adds support for Clix queries. For more details, including the patch itself, please visit the SourceForge page for this bug.

WordPress 2.0.5 is out

Published

Pedro Timóteo

1 year, 11 months ago

in Blogging, Blogging software and Unix / Linux / *BSD software

. 0 Comments

As usual, get it from the usual place, and follow the instructions if you’re upgrading from a previous version. I’ve just upgraded 11 blogs in about a minute (most of which was spent backing up the databases and the files, in case Something Bad ™ happened).

List of changes here.

Apparently, there’s a new problem when running on a server with FastCGI installed: it may give a 500 error in some cases. If that’s your situation, there’s a workaround.

Flash 9 for Linux (beta) is finally available

Published

Pedro Timóteo

1 year, 11 months ago

in Browsers and Unix / Linux / *BSD software

. 0 Comments

(seen on ruimoura.net)

At last! Until recently, the newest version was Flash 7, which is only a couple of years old. But now you can download the Flash 9 beta, which is working perfectly here (SUSE 10.1)!

Now I can enter TotalWar.com again!

EDIT: just switched back to Flash 7. Some pages, such as this one, made the browser hang for several seconds each time I switched to that tab - and that’s in a fast computer. It seems the “beta” label is well deserved.

Firefox tip: closing tabs with middle-click on Linux

Published

Pedro Timóteo

2 years, 2 months ago

in Browsers, Firefox and Unix / Linux / *BSD software

. 7 Comments

In Firefox, on Windows, it’s quite useful to be able to close tabs by middle-clicking on them. But on Linux, by default, what middle-click does (either on the tab or on the main page display) is to open whatever is on the clipboard in the current tab.

But you may prefer middle-click to work as in the Windows version. If so, just open about:config, then search for

middlemouse.contentLoadURL

and change it to False. Simple as that.

Assorted new releases

Published

Pedro Timóteo

2 years, 3 months ago

in Browsers, Instant Messaging, Unix / Linux / *BSD software and Windows software

. 1 Comment

First, Windows Live Messenger (formely MSN Messenger) is out.

I’ve only tried it out for a minute, and all of my contacts were still using MSN Messenger 7.5. Still full of ads, but there’s a Mess.be patch to remove them, and tinker with it, which I haven’t installed yet, but I’ve used the MSN 7.5 version for months, and it made it bearable.

One new feature: you can talk to people while “appearing offline”, now. Of course, they’ll instantly realize that you aren’t really offline…

Second, Opera 9 is finally out. Lots of new stuff to explore. It passes the ACID2 test, and is still by far the fastest modern browser in the world. Firefox is still my primary browser, but Opera is a joy to use. Also (via Pedro Fonseca), a list of 10 features you’ll find only in Opera. Note that all of them are for version 8.0 - the new version has even more unique features.

WordPress 2.0.3 and bugs

Published

Pedro Timóteo

2 years, 3 months ago

in Blogging and Unix / Linux / *BSD software

. 2 Comments

Yesterday, I updated my blogs to WordPress 2.0.3, the latest version. Today, when editing one of my comments, I discovered an annoying bug: it added escape characters (backslashes) to all quotes or apostrophes. The only way to get the comment “right” was to copy it to the clipboard, delete it and add it again… which would be even more annoying if it wasn’t the most recent comment. It also added some weird “are you sure?” dialogs when editing comments.

So, I searched around, and there’s a plugin to solve these 2.0.3 annoyances (and which will deactivate itself automatically if the version isn’t 2.0.3). It’s called WordPress 2.0.3 Tuneup, and it fixes:

* #2760 “Are you sure?” dialog for comment editing no longer appears
* #2761 “Are you sure?” dialog no longer adds slashes to info passed through it
* #2764 After editing a comment, you are properly redirected back to your original location
* #2776 New in version 0.2: “Are you sure?” dialog for user editing no longer appears
* #2782 New in version 0.3: “Are you sure?” dialog for link editing no longer appears
* #2806 New in version 0.4: Deletion of links works when JavaScript is turned off

I’m using it now, and it’s working great.

Drupal 4.7

Published

Pedro Timóteo

2 years, 5 months ago

in Unix / Linux / *BSD software and World Wide Web

. 0 Comments

Yup, it’s out. A lot of interesting stuff, too.

My first community, which no longer exists, used Drupal, some years ago. It’s a pretty powerful system, with lots of options, tons of plugins and themes, sane defaults, and pretty easy to use.

I think I’ll play with the new version in the next couple of days… I don’t know whether I’ll actually use it for something, or just play with it. We’ll see.

Filtering "evil" popup ads with Squid

Published

Pedro Timóteo

2 years, 5 months ago

in Software, Unix / Linux / *BSD software and World Wide Web

. 3 Comments

Sometimes, using AdBlock in Firefox may be too restrictive; by default, it blocks all ads, and you may just want to block the annoying ones: popups.
Firefox blocks them quite well, but it’s not perfect; some ad services have found ways to get around the blocker.

In this particular situation, I found that denying, in my Squid proxy server, the ad services which bypass the popup blocker, works very well.
This has the advantage of blocking them for a complete network, instead of just one PC, too. And it’s independent of browsers.

Popups are already annoying enough; to make them work around a popup blocker (which means that the user really doesn’t want to see them) is evil. So, the fact that these companies’ ads are blocked even before they get to the PCs is a nice bonus.

Here’s my current list, which I block using dstdomain in squid.conf:

.zedo.com .paypopunder.com .t2t2.com .profredirect.com .dellonlinedirectly.com .farssearch.net .searchs123.com .freefa.net .clicksor.com .paypopup.com .adserver.com .yieldmanager.com .fastclick.net .tribalfusion.com

Whenever I see a popup ad, I just add its domain to the list. As you can see, it’s not huge - Firefox works quite well.
Enjoy.

EDIT: I’m not included popups which Firefox 1.5.x does block, or any other kind of ads. I can live with those - if not, I’d be using AdBlock.

EDIT 2: I’ll be updating this post whenever I find new ones. I’ve already added 2 domains since I wrote this post.

An Anti-Spam gateway #11: amavisd-new and Postfix

Published

Pedro Timóteo

2 years, 6 months ago

in Email, Spam and Unix / Linux / *BSD software

. 0 Comments

(NOTE: this is part of the “An Anti-Spam gateway” series)

Not much longer, now…

Add the following line to /etc/postfix/main.cf:

content_filter=smtp-amavis:[127.0.0.1]:10024

and the following lines to /etc/postfix/master.cf:

# amavisd-new smtp-amavis unix - - n - 2 smtp -o smtp_data_done_timeout=1200 -o smtp_send_xforward_command=yes -o disable_dns_lookups=yes

127.0.0.1:10025 inet n - n - - smtpd -o content_filter= -o local_recipient_maps= -o relay_recipient_maps= -o smtpd_restriction_classes= -o smtpd_client_restrictions= -o smtpd_helo_restrictions= -o smtpd_sender_restrictions= -o smtpd_recipient_restrictions=permit_mynetworks,reject -o mynetworks=127.0.0.0/8 -o strict_rfc821_envelopes=yes -o smtpd_error_sleep_time=0 -o smtpd_soft_error_limit=1001 -o smtpd_hard_error_limit=1000 -o receive_override_options=no_header_body_checks

(re)Start postfix. It should be listening on two ports now: 25 and 10025.

Quick HTML page creation

Published

Pedro Timóteo

2 years, 6 months ago

in Unix / Linux / *BSD software, Windows software and World Wide Web

. 0 Comments

A couple of days ago, I needed to create a basic, static HTML page, with mostly text and a couple of images, for another mini-site. I usually create those by hand, using a simple text editor; however, when the page is longer, it can be annoying to remember to close all the tags, replace every accented character with the proper ampersand code (e.g. á is á), and so on. In other words, it’s tiresome, because you can’t simply write the content.

On the other hand, I tend to dislike WYSIWYG HTML editors, as they, mostly, create “write-only code”. All I needed was for it to do what I said in the paragraph above: create the paragraphs automatically, replace the accented characters, and so on. And, also, create simple, readable, easily editable HTML, without adding unneeded stuff. In other words, what WordPress already does… but I didn’t want to use WordPress for that; it was to be a simple, static page.

I was pleasantly surprised with Nvu. It did exactly what I wanted, and the generated HTML was clean and virtually perfect - so much that, after I generated the initial version, I never touched Nvu again, it’s perfectly readable in a text editor.

(you can find the mini-site here, but, be warned, it’s in Portuguese, though an English version is coming soon.)

I’m guessing that Mozilla Composer (from SeaMonkey) would work equally as well, though I don’t have it installed.

WordPress 2.0.2

Published

Pedro Timóteo

2 years, 7 months ago

in Blogging and Unix / Linux / *BSD software

. 0 Comments

The WordPress guys have just announced WordPress 2.0.2, a security release. Upgrading it was quick and easy, and no database changes were required. All WordPress users should upgrade… or act like a PHB and believe that security problems only happen to “others”.