Archive for August, 2010

Public Key not working with user@server but does work with root@server

Weirdest thing about my FreeBSD server that’s been bugging me for a long time.. I’m able to create rsa/dsa keys for passwordless logins but the catch was that it would only work if I was root on the client machine loggin in as root on the server.  After 6 hours of trouble shooting and mostly relying on the geniuses over at #freebsdhelp on efnet, running sshd in debug mode, running ssh in -vvv mode it came down to a stupid little error in the /etc/ssh/sshd_config file.

The line in question was:

AuthorizedKeysFile      ~/.ssh/authorized_keys2

and whoever set it up originally bunged it up because it needs to be

AuthorizedKeysFile      %h/.ssh/authorized_keys2

to work properly or else sshd will always refer to /root/.ssh/authorized_keys2 no matter who’s loggin in..

Hopefully this will help someone else save the nearly full work day of time to narrow this mother trucker down

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Solar Powered Toothbrush to do away with Toothpaste

http://www.physorg.com/news201497680.html

To quote the article above:

Dr. Kunio Komiyama, a dentistry professor emeritus at the University of Saskatchewan, designed the first model of the unconventional toothbrush 15 years ago. Today, Komiyama and his colleague Dr. Gerry Uswak are seeking recruits to test their newest model, the Soladey-J3X. The toothbrush, which is manufactured by the Shiken company of Japan, will soon be tested by 120 teenagers to see how it compares to a normal toothbrush.

The Soladey-J3X has a solar panel at its base that transmits electrons to the top of the toothbrush through a lead wire. The react with acid in the mouth, creating a chemical reaction that breaks down and kills . The toothbrush requires no toothpaste, and can operate with about the same amount of light as needed by a solar-powered calculator.

Nginx 502 errors, php problems, wordpress, oh my!

Well today is a glorious day as I finally managed to fix a problem that had been haunting my server for a month or so.  In the end it was a solution that I’ve been taught countless times as something I should be doing by default when upgrading php but alas my mind is not on of the more expensive models and so it rarely does what it should..

So it all started with a fairly minor issue I noticed in WordPress.   When I would try to load up the media gallery I would be greeted with a nice 502  Nginx error.  I’m sure if I wasn’t running nginx then it would have a blank white page or an apache error.  So naturally I started with the nginx error logs which didn’t lead to much.. Then I setup php to log all errors and again that didn’t lead me to much, finally however I monitored my httpd-error.log and this lovely message turned up:

[warn] (2)No such file or directory: Cannot reinit SSLMutex
/libexec/ld-elf.so.1: /usr/local/lib/php/20060613/gd.so: Undefined symbol “zend_parse_parameters_none”

After some asking around on irc I was told that it was definitely a php problem.  Nothing more specific than that, just a php problem.  There were a bunch of forum posts saying it might have something to do with fastCGI but all the suggestions had no effect.  However there was one forum I foudn that through a suggestion out there that lit up a light bulb in my brain.  That being that if php5-extensions isn’t recompiled and reinstalled when php is updated sometimes the fit hits the shan.  Sure enough I had upgrade php5 a while back, and then again since then but hadn’t bothered to recompile the extensions.  Hell I hadn’t even recompiled Zend or Eaccelerator which is pretty standard.

So long story slightly shorter, I went in deinstalled and cleaned up my php5-extensions, reinstalled it and viola, problem solved!!

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Reason I love Linux #114 : You feel like a Wizard

http://rlv.zcache.com/ubuntu_rocks_mug-p1687251842722515612ob3n_210.jpgWhile this isn’t a reason for productivity or efficiency it certainly improves your mental state throughout your work day.  When you get experienced with linux you literally feel like a wizard.  Because, more often than not, it is more efficient to do things sans GUI you really get into the guts of the system, and because of the customizability of absolutely everything those guts begin to evolve over time, guided by your hand and personal style.   Not just in the aesthetics of the operating system but also the very command structure in terminal.  You build shell scripts for absolutely everything and so as your O/S ages it becomes more and more unique to you meaning that even another experienced linux user wouldn’t be able to sit down and accomplish what I can accomplish with my OS.  This causes a very deep and personal connection with you OS, as it works the way it works only for you and no one else.  So when you are going nuts in it, uses all of the little nuances that only you know you completely feel like a wizard because for anyone else looking over your shoulder, even another linux user it will look like magic at times.  Now for a non-linux user you can literally get away with renaming yourself Gandalf the Grey without anyone questioning it because none of what you are doing will make any sense at all but the results from your magic will be so far beyond what they even thought was possible in terms of efficiency, productivity, organisation and overall coolness with an operating system.

I mean shit, when I’m up late writing articles in the dark I literally light my screen on fire and work by the burning glow of the virtual flames

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