Linux Is Fun and Stuff, but…

Aaron Toponce — Tue, 14 Feb 2006 15:17:58 +0000

…setting up a Linux server, and evern worse, being the system administrator is a pain in the butt!!!111!!!11!one

Okay, here’s the thing. I am now hosting the OALUG site on my Ubuntu web server. No big deal. I am hosting 3 other sites as well. Being a web admin is not that bad. Lately, however, I need to set up a mail and DNS server for the OALUG group. I’ll get to that in another post as to why.

First, I asked a friend what packages I needed and what needed to be done, as he has done it before. He gave me the link to an excellent howto, and for the most part, everything went smoothly, until I began installing packages I already had installed, like MySQL. Don’t ask.

Everything started breaking. First it was MySQL, then PHP, then Apache2. Then, after updating the repositories in my source.lst file, 280 packages broke, including the Linux kernel, the Ubuntu desktop, and a top more.

As you can see, MySQL, PHP and Apache2 are working just fine now, I hope (I’ll really find out if this post doesn’t submit). All the packages that I broke, I have fixed. But I was up until 2:30 in the freaking morning fixing them. And that was before I even had the chance to get my web server as it was before all this mess.

Now, before all you Microsoft advocates come out of the woodwork saying, “We told you so Aaron. Windows is easier and less cryptic to use than Linux”, I have to say that I have learned a ton. And, despite the lack of sleep, the 300 new gray hairs, and ulcers that I developed, it was actullay, in an odd sort of way, fun. I got to see deep inside the server. I edited config files, changed all sorts of permissions, added, removed and readded packages, and really got to know a lot better how my Linux server works. I wouldn’t trade that for an easy GUI that handles everything for me.

Am I finished? No, I still have a little more to go. And I will probably break more packages on the way, but, I will learn more than if I purchased a program to do to the job for me. And I will be more qualified as a Linux/UNIX system admin. I would never apply for such a job. The stress would kill me, but my qualifications have just jumped through the roof.

Web Server Market Share

Aaron Toponce — Mon, 21 Nov 2005 03:04:18 +0000

Way to go Apache! Apache leads the web servers with the largest market share by far, with almost 70% of servers using Apache. Microsofts IIS takes second place with a measly 20%, which is interesting, seeing as though most people running XP have their web server IIS turned on by default. So that percentage is very generous. The other web servers such as NCSA and Sun make up the ramaing 10%, according to Netcraft.

Check out the image below:

Market Share for Top Servers Across All Domains August 1995 – November 2005

WordPress, URL Rewrite and Apache2

Aaron Toponce — Fri, 07 Oct 2005 05:13:04 +0000

Okay, this is something that I have been spending the last 3 hours doing. Needless to say, I was getting quite frustrated. However, I have figured it out, and I share my experience here.

WordPress has the ability to take full advantage of Apache’s mod_rewrite module. Using your .htaccess file crammed to the brim with regular expressions, you can modify the URL in your address bar dynamically. A URL in your address that looks like:

1	http://www.pthree.org:8080/?p=6

can be rewritten to look something like:

1	http://www.pthree.org:8080/2005/05/19/How_PHP_Works

However, WordPress lacks fundamental detailed documentation concerning the mod_rewrite matter, and Googling around for hours just took me in circles. The only thing that came to mind was common sense. In other words, I was making much more difficult than it had to be.

Here’s how to properly configure the mod_rewrite module with WordPress 1.5 using Apache2:

First, make sure that the root of your blogs directory has writeable access. If the root directory of your blog is /home/user/public_html, make sure that public_html is writeable by everyone (chmod 777). Don’t worry, you can change it back to something more secure when we finish. Once your directory is writeable by everyone, open your blogs admin page, navigate to permalinks under URLs, and configure the look of your new dynamic URL in the text box, then save your settings. After saving your settings, if you are told you now need to edit your .htaccess file, then you didn’t make the root directory writeable. Try again. For convience, I have included the contents of what your .htaccess file should look like:

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# BEGIN WordPress
<IfModule mod_rewrite.c>
RewriteEngine On
RewriteBase /
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} -f [OR]
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} -d
RewriteRule ^.*$ - [S=50]
RewriteRule ^(welcome)/trackback/?$ /index.php?pagename=$1&tb=1 [QSA,L]
RewriteRule ^(welcome)/feed/(feed|rdf|rss|rss2|atom)/?$ /index.php?pagename=$1&feed=$2 [QSA,L]
RewriteRule ^(welcome)/(feed|rdf|rss|rss2|atom)/?$ /index.php?pagename=$1&feed=$2 [QSA,L]
RewriteRule ^(welcome)/page/?([0-9]{1,})/?$ /index.php?pagename=$1&paged=$2 [QSA,L]
RewriteRule ^(welcome)(/[0-9]+)?/?$ /index.php?pagename=$1&page=$2 [QSA,L]
RewriteRule ^(author-colophon)/trackback/?$ /index.php?pagename=$1&tb=1 [QSA,L]
RewriteRule ^(author-colophon)/feed/(feed|rdf|rss|rss2|atom)/?$ /index.php?pagename=$1&feed=$2 [QSA,L]
RewriteRule ^(author-colophon)/(feed|rdf|rss|rss2|atom)/?$ /index.php?pagename=$1&feed=$2 [QSA,L]
RewriteRule ^(author-colophon)/page/?([0-9]{1,})/?$ /index.php?pagename=$1&paged=$2 [QSA,L]
RewriteRule ^(author-colophon)(/[0-9]+)?/?$ /index.php?pagename=$1&page=$2 [QSA,L]
RewriteRule ^(blogroll)/trackback/?$ /index.php?pagename=$1&tb=1 [QSA,L]
RewriteRule ^(blogroll)/feed/(feed|rdf|rss|rss2|atom)/?$ /index.php?pagename=$1&feed=$2 [QSA,L]
RewriteRule ^(blogroll)/(feed|rdf|rss|rss2|atom)/?$ /index.php?pagename=$1&feed=$2 [QSA,L]
RewriteRule ^(blogroll)/page/?([0-9]{1,})/?$ /index.php?pagename=$1&paged=$2 [QSA,L]
RewriteRule ^(blogroll)(/[0-9]+)?/?$ /index.php?pagename=$1&page=$2 [QSA,L]
RewriteRule ^feed/(feed|rdf|rss|rss2|atom)/?$ /index.php?&feed=$1 [QSA,L]
RewriteRule ^(feed|rdf|rss|rss2|atom)/?$ /index.php?&feed=$1 [QSA,L]
RewriteRule ^page/?([0-9]{1,})/?$ /index.php?&paged=$1 [QSA,L]
RewriteRule ^comments/feed/(feed|rdf|rss|rss2|atom)/?$ /index.php?&feed=$1&withcomments=1 [QSA,L]
RewriteRule ^comments/(feed|rdf|rss|rss2|atom)/?$ /index.php?&feed=$1&withcomments=1 [QSA,L]
RewriteRule ^comments/page/?([0-9]{1,})/?$ /index.php?&paged=$1 [QSA,L]
RewriteRule ^search/(.+)/feed/(feed|rdf|rss|rss2|atom)/?$ /index.php?s=$1&feed=$2 [QSA,L]
RewriteRule ^search/(.+)/(feed|rdf|rss|rss2|atom)/?$ /index.php?s=$1&feed=$2 [QSA,L]
RewriteRule ^search/(.+)/page/?([0-9]{1,})/?$ /index.php?s=$1&paged=$2 [QSA,L]
RewriteRule ^search/(.+)/?$ /index.php?s=$1 [QSA,L]
RewriteRule ^category/(.+)/feed/(feed|rdf|rss|rss2|atom)/?$ /index.php?category_name=$1&feed=$2 [QSA,L]
RewriteRule ^category/(.+)/(feed|rdf|rss|rss2|atom)/?$ /index.php?category_name=$1&feed=$2 [QSA,L]
RewriteRule ^category/(.+)/page/?([0-9]{1,})/?$ /index.php?category_name=$1&paged=$2 [QSA,L]
RewriteRule ^category/(.+)/?$ /index.php?category_name=$1 [QSA,L]
RewriteRule ^author/([^/]+)/feed/(feed|rdf|rss|rss2|atom)/?$ /index.php?author_name=$1&feed=$2 [QSA,L]
RewriteRule ^author/([^/]+)/(feed|rdf|rss|rss2|atom)/?$ /index.php?author_name=$1&feed=$2 [QSA,L]
RewriteRule ^author/([^/]+)/page/?([0-9]{1,})/?$ /index.php?author_name=$1&paged=$2 [QSA,L]
RewriteRule ^author/([^/]+)/?$ /index.php?author_name=$1 [QSA,L]
RewriteRule ^([0-9]{4})/([0-9]{1,2})/([0-9]{1,2})/feed/(feed|rdf|rss|rss2|atom)/?$ /index.php?year=$1&monthnum=$2&day=$3&feed=$4 [QSA,L]
RewriteRule ^([0-9]{4})/([0-9]{1,2})/([0-9]{1,2})/(feed|rdf|rss|rss2|atom)/?$ /index.php?year=$1&monthnum=$2&day=$3&feed=$4 [QSA,L]
RewriteRule ^([0-9]{4})/([0-9]{1,2})/([0-9]{1,2})/page/?([0-9]{1,})/?$ /index.php?year=$1&monthnum=$2&day=$3&paged=$4 [QSA,L]
RewriteRule ^([0-9]{4})/([0-9]{1,2})/([0-9]{1,2})/?$ /index.php?year=$1&monthnum=$2&day=$3 [QSA,L]
RewriteRule ^([0-9]{4})/([0-9]{1,2})/feed/(feed|rdf|rss|rss2|atom)/?$ /index.php?year=$1&monthnum=$2&feed=$3 [QSA,L]
RewriteRule ^([0-9]{4})/([0-9]{1,2})/(feed|rdf|rss|rss2|atom)/?$ /index.php?year=$1&monthnum=$2&feed=$3 [QSA,L]
RewriteRule ^([0-9]{4})/([0-9]{1,2})/page/?([0-9]{1,})/?$ /index.php?year=$1&monthnum=$2&paged=$3 [QSA,L]
RewriteRule ^([0-9]{4})/([0-9]{1,2})/?$ /index.php?year=$1&monthnum=$2 [QSA,L]
RewriteRule ^([0-9]{4})/feed/(feed|rdf|rss|rss2|atom)/?$ /index.php?year=$1&feed=$2 [QSA,L]
RewriteRule ^([0-9]{4})/(feed|rdf|rss|rss2|atom)/?$ /index.php?year=$1&feed=$2 [QSA,L]
RewriteRule ^([0-9]{4})/page/?([0-9]{1,})/?$ /index.php?year=$1&paged=$2 [QSA,L]
RewriteRule ^([0-9]{4})/?$ /index.php?year=$1 [QSA,L]
RewriteRule ^([0-9]{4})/([0-9]{1,2})/([0-9]{1,2})/([^/]+)/trackback/?$ /index.php?year=$1&monthnum=$2&day=$3&name=$4&tb=1 [QSA,L]
RewriteRule ^([0-9]{4})/([0-9]{1,2})/([0-9]{1,2})/([^/]+)/feed/(feed|rdf|rss|rss2|atom)/?$ /index.php?year=$1&monthnum=$2&day=$3&name=$4&feed=$5 [QSA,L]
RewriteRule ^([0-9]{4})/([0-9]{1,2})/([0-9]{1,2})/([^/]+)/(feed|rdf|rss|rss2|atom)/?$ /index.php?year=$1&monthnum=$2&day=$3&name=$4&feed=$5 [QSA,L]
RewriteRule ^([0-9]{4})/([0-9]{1,2})/([0-9]{1,2})/([^/]+)/page/?([0-9]{1,})/?$ /index.php?year=$1&monthnum=$2&day=$3&name=$4&paged=$5 [QSA,L]
RewriteRule ^([0-9]{4})/([0-9]{1,2})/([0-9]{1,2})/([^/]+)(/[0-9]+)?/?$ /index.php?year=$1&monthnum=$2&day=$3&name=$4&page=$5 [QSA,L]
</IfModule>
# END WordPress

Realize, this “How’To” is only for Apache2. For Apache 1.3 or earlier, there is loads and loads of documentation on the web. Google around for it.

Now that your .htaccess file is created and edited, you need to edit your default file found in /etc/apache2/. You should be familiar with this file, as you needed to edit it to set up your website on a Linux server. Under the proper virtual host, add:

1	AccessFileName .htaccess

Then, you will need to allow access to files in the document’s root directory. This is done by:

1	AllowOverride All

That’s it! Believe it or not, it is fairly striaght forward, and quite easy. Again, I was making it way too difficult trying to edit my apache2.conf, httpd.conf, php.ini and a number of other files to get it working, not even thinking about my default virtual directory file.

A list of permalinks for you WordPress blog can be found at http://codex.wordpress.org/Using_Permalinks.

Aaron Toponce » Apache

Linux Is Fun and Stuff, but…

Web Server Market Share

WordPress, URL Rewrite and Apache2