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

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 electrons react with acid in the mouth, creating a chemical reaction that breaks down plaque and kills bacteria. The toothbrush requires no toothpaste, and can operate with about the same amount of light as needed by a solar-powered calculator.

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!!

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

Seeing as there are little no reviews of these kind of things specific to linux I thought I would share my thoughts on the first day with my new lover and how they react to my other lover: Ubuntu.  I’m not going to go over packaging and all the other nitty gritty details that most reviews dive into, I’ll just let you know the one thing you care about: How do they sound?

Well up until now I’ve been using  a pair of Panasonic earbuds (Best pair of ear buds I have ever owned for bass which is saying a lot as these cost me 30,000 pesos – 15$ – in Colombia and they out perform my $200.00 Bose buds sitting in my room) and the sound has been fairly impressive up until this point so it would take something pretty special to really make me say ‘wow’.  Obviously an over ear headset is going to outperform buds but the quality of those buds was so high with the music I listen to that I wasn’t sure at how much to expect.

If you want to skip the review and just get to the goods I’ll lay it out right here: Do NOT waste your money on these headphones.  Without the bullshit proprietary drivers that run only in windows these headphones will consistently disappoint you at absolutely every turn.  The same can probably be said for all USB headphones I would imagine and these are no exception.  So until creative gets out of the last century and open sources their drivers these headphones will no doubt be put to use as a paper weight versus anything else.

First Impressions

In linux, to be honest, the difference isn’t astronomical as far as what they are delivering.. Clearly these things are 10 times the size of ear buds so the overall sound is a lot richer and a bit boomier when it comes to the progressive house I listen to.  Putting on classical the sound is a fair bit cleaner although it going to take something at 320k to really hear the difference in sound.  Again because it’s an over ear experience the sound comes through richer as well.

In windows you can take everything written above and multiply it by 10.  The sound is insanely deep and booming when the equalizer is adjusted.  These things rattled on my head and massaged my soul with amazing thumping beats.  It’s enough to make me almost want to go into Windows to do as much work as I can.  Shit that sound was impressive..  I made sure only to take a taste of it though, just a few seconds or else I would probably be in Windows right now.  So keep in mind non of the limitations I describe here have anything to do with the hardware, this is a badass headset.  It all comes down to the lack of proper support and drivers for linux.  GGAHHH!!!

Volume

Now this is a USB only headset and I am guessing that is playing a part into why I am unable to really crank these things.  I mean don’t get me wrong it goes moderately loud but it doesn’t pound my head like when I had my Bose set which plug directly into the audio jacks.  I mean I can feel the beats but it’s not leaving my ears ringing after a long session of Jan Waterman which is the only way to listen to such brilliance. I am able to amp it up more through pulse for classical music than I was with my buds but with trance it starts to distort when I dance around 170%.

As you can guess it the same cannot be said for the windows experience.  These things fucking exploded on my head.  It was so loud, so deep and so bloody distortion free that I had to shed a little tear for not being able to experience that in linux.

The Microphone:

Truth be told one of the main reasons I’m buying this is the mic.  I haven’t done an IndustryBroadcast in months and months and month because my old usb mic kicked the bucket.  So a critical criteria was mic quality and most of the reviews had nothing but good things to say about the mic.

First thing that rocks about it is that it is detachable.  So if I’m out or whatever and don’t need it, I don’t need to have it sticking off my head.  Definitely like that.  The quality of the sound is decent.  It’s nothing amazing by any stretch, and this has nothing to do with the software as it sounds the same in windows.  My voice comes across as really damn deep, almost unnaturally so for those who are used to hearing me through my built in lappy mic, and while they claim this is a noise canceling mic, when I was in windows with the proper drivers loaded and software running I really didn’t pick up a crystal clean sound even though all windows were closed and appliances off in my surrounding area.  It was dead quiet in my apartment and i was still getting a bit of noise that I had to clean up with Audacity.  So overall the mic works decently but I wouldn’t buy these just for that.. If you’re doing podcasting you’re better off getting a proper mic and a proper pair of headphones.  If you’re gaming then these will definitely do the trick and make you sound like a manly man while you’re at it.

Size, Shape, Comfort

My ears are totally covered, I picked these up at 2pm today, and outside of a workout and dinner I’ve had them on ever since.  Totally comfortable, no pinching or anything anywhere.  Cushioning is soft and fluffy and I have lots of room inside for my ears

The Design:

See picture above, these things are badass!  I bought these because they received the best overall review of any gaming headset around and they were under $100.00 at New Egg.  I also haven’t bought a SoundBlaster product in 15 years so it felt awesome to support a company that’s done so much to change the audio landscape of the digital world.  But I am not going to lie and say I wasn’t super super stoked to have this gorgeously designed throw-back to 1980′s sci-fi on my head.  I mean if storm troopers are grooving to good tunes they are doing it with the SoundBlaster Arena on their head, and dammit so am I!  This goes for the color and general shape, but these bad boys are sleek and not bulky by any stretch.. I was actually surprised at the small size of the box when I picked them up.  I was expecting, from the pictures, that these things would be much more obtuse and large but they are the perfect size.  That and the black on a white body is brilliant.  Best looking headset on the market in my mind.

So there you have it!  If you want something that just cranks the sound out and you are using linux only I would go for a Senheisser or something else that goes into your audio jacks.

• The sound quality is good in these,  overall decent but nothign to write home about and my ears certainly aren’t going to be bleeding(in the best way possible) anytime soon.  I’m almost considering running VMware all the time just for music because these things absolutely rock in Windows.  So if you’re a windows user put your money into these bad boys, they will rock your world like nothing else.
• Mic is decent, good for gaming, decent enough for podcasting but nothing to write home about at all.  If you’re serious about casting go and buy a professional mic for $70.00 and use a cheaper $30.00 headset.  If you are gaming this is the way to go.  The mic detaches which is a huge plus
• Design rocks the cock, these are wicked looking phones that set your head apart from the rest
• Comfortable as anything else.  But phat padding around the ears with plenty of room will keep the tunes coming for hours and hours without discomfort.

Bottom Line:

Do NOT, and I repeat DO NOT waste your money on these headphones if you plan on using them primarily in linux.  Contrary to the reviews the microphone is nothing out of the ordinary and the sound quality in linux is the same as the $10.00 pair of Earbuds I picked up in Colombia.  These headphones will be a complete waste of money if you cannot use the proper drivers to support them.  Nothing against creative in particular, but USB headphones which require proprietary Windows Only drivers to run will completely underperform and dissapoint you at absolutely every turn.

Hope that helps, if anyone has any suggestions for how to improve the audio quality to something approaching windows I would love you forever!

So today I stumbled upon a motherload of amazing 3D space art at http://joejesus.deviantart.com and I go completely gaga over space art.. My wallpapers are all sci-fi scenes, I just can’t get over how breath taking some of these are.  So I raided the guys stash and ended up with around 30-40 new pieces for my wallpaper slideshow and like hell was I going to enter all of these in by hand so off I went searching for a nice little script that would do it for me.  I mean come on, one of the reasons I’m a linux user because I gave up the notion that time consuming repetitive tasks were something that you had to do by hand and sure enough I found a wonderful gentlemen over at the ubuntu forums who coded up a beauty of a script that worked like a charm.  So make sure to head over to : http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?p=9578962 and give the guy a big thank you hug for saving you hours of work, and read the instructions on how to use it.

Here’s the script, just copy and paste this into a file, chmod it to 755 and you’re off to the races:

#!/bin/bash
echo “<background>”
echo “  <starttime>”
echo “    <year>2009</year>”
echo “    <month>08</month>”
echo “    <day>04</day>”
echo “    <hour>00</hour>”
echo “    <minute>00</minute>”
echo “    <second>00</second>”
echo “  </starttime>”
echo “  <!– This animation will start at midnight. –>”

if [ $# -lt 4 ]
then
echo “usage: $0 <hold duration> <fade duration> file1 file2 …”
echo “example: $0 60 5 /path/to/dir/*.jpg /path/to/dir/*.png”
exit 1
fi

hold=$1
fade=$2
first=$3

#remove hold parameter
shift
#remove fade parameter
shift

while [ $# -gt 0 ]
do
echo “  <static>”
echo “    <duration>$hold</duration>”
echo “    <file>$1</file>”
echo “  </static>”
echo “  <transition>”
echo “    <duration>$fade</duration>”
echo “    <from>$1</from>”
if [ $# -gt 1 ]
then
echo “    <to>$2</to>”
else
echo “    <to>$first</to>”
fi
echo “  </transition>”
shift
done
echo “</background>”

In my experience with talking with folks that are much more tech savvy than I, one of the most surprising things is how few people know about Netvibes, even more surprising is how few people in the world actually use this brilliant free resource.   I’ve had this post in draft forward for well over a year now but after sitting down with an old friend who is a Mensa candidate with computers when compared to me and realized that even he has never heard of netvibes I decided to finally finished this bad boy.

So what is netvibes? Well to quote Wikipedia(as I so often do):

Netvibes is the first personalized dashboard publishing platform for the Web including digital life management, widget distribution services and brand observation rooms.

What the hell does this mean layments terms?  Well to quote http://hubpages.com/hub/What_is_Netvibes:

It is a service that allows users to set up their own customized start page composed of “modules” which can contain a wide variety of information from dozens and dozens of other sites. One of the most obviously useful things to include in a module is an RSS or ATOM feed of a popular blog or news service. Since RSS updates in almost real time, this allows users to, at a glance, arrange a customized list of news from a wide variety of sites all on one page.

Got it yet?  In short, and in my experience introducing others to netvibes, it will single-handedly change the fundamental way you use the internet.  Before Netvibes when I wanted to go and check my news sites one by one, bbc.co.uk, cbc, reuters.com, slashdot.org, etc etc.  I would spend about an hour a day and probably get through 10-12 sites and read about 5-15 news articles. With netvibes I currently have about 70 news, tech and science sites, along with 80 or so blogs covering business and video game development and finally my favorite DJ’s.  Think this would be overwhelming, are you already thinking that you wouldn’t use this anyways because who can handle that much information?  Well think again, the problem with the information we have online isn’t that we are presented with too much of it, it is how it is presented.  Believe it or not but Netvibes does such an amazing job at presenting it to you that you never feel overwhelmed.  Ever, infact i feel far more overwhelmed going to cnn.com and trying to find stories I want versus going to my general news section and browsing the headlines from The BBC, Cnet, CBC, CNN, The Guardian, Truthdig, The Register, Castanet, CTV, and finally TED.   It’s literally that good and it will literally change the way you interact with the internet.

An Example of a simple Netvibes layout

Obviously underneath all of this is RSS feeds.  If you don’t know what an RSS feed is just click on that orange icon directly underneath ‘Subscribe’ on the left side of this page.  You will be taken to the RSS feed for this site and all updated websites today will have an RSS feed hiding somewhere.  What Netvibes does is parses the information from as many RSS feeds as you want it to, organizes it into modules which you can customize, vary how many feeds are showing up, how they are displayed.  It makes it easy to take it at one glace, scan the headlines, mouseover what interests you and then I just middle click to open all the stories in new tabs.  I’ll queue up 10-15 stories, read em, and then queue up another 10-15 stories, rinse and repeat.  Most sites will even have RSS feeds for specific sections so on CNN for example I don’t have scan through the latest bullshit Celebrity dish to find actual news.  My list of sites and feeds has certainly grown over time.. Every time I stumble across a site for the first time and love the content I’ll grab the RSS feed and throw it into the mix.  It probably started with 8-10 news sites and now it’s well over 100, the best part is that it never gets overwhelming as the more sites I add the more I organize them and create separate tabs within netvibes for specific content (IE: tech or Spirituality).  You can go to http://www.netvibes.com/netflow and take a peek at how I have my setup and organized.  As you can tell by the above link you also have the ability to share some or all of your netvibes with the world

Another Layout

On top of handling RSS feeds netvibes has a plethora of widgets that you can plug into your page.  I have weather forecasts for various cities around the world, my good spreadsheets are tied in, todo lists and it even checks my gmail and hotmail.  As I mentioned before, Netvibes completely changed the way I interact with the virtual world and I consider myself fairly net savvy.  I’ve become more efficient, more organized and the amount of information I take in every day has increased 10 fold.  All thanks to this one free brilliant little service.

Widgets Galore

]]> http://blog.netflowdevelopments.com/2010/07/09/netvibes-this-will-change-your-life-your-virtual-one-at-least/feed/ 0 http://blog.netflowdevelopments.com/2010/07/06/drupal-and-me-chapter-8-large-file-uploads-causing-server-connection-to-reset/ http://blog.netflowdevelopments.com/2010/07/06/drupal-and-me-chapter-8-large-file-uploads-causing-server-connection-to-reset/#comments Tue, 06 Jul 2010 10:10:15 +0000 admin http://blog.netflowdevelopments.com/?p=487 Well this was a jolly good problem that took 4 hours to fix.

I’ve implemented the Audio Module this week to allow our Sound team to upload soundtrack, foley and effects work just the same as the 2D and 3D guys upload their work.  Unfortunately when I went to upload a 40MB .ogg file the connection to the server was reset pretty much exactly after 60 seconds.  So, easy enough I figured I’d just have to go into my php.ini file and change the max upload sizes, max connection times and all of that fun stuff.  Well I went through and changed every conceivable directive in there that had anything to do with connection times and upload sizes.  Nada!  I created .htaccess files in the /drupal dir with php_values to the same effect.. Nada!  I went to one of my wordpress blogs and tried to upload the same file and guess what?  SAme thing happened, re-assuring me that this wasn’t a drupal only problem.  So I tried increasing the Timeout value in apache, nada.  Got onto IRC on #php and no one had a clue.  Hours and hours of googling led to ZERO solutions.  It wasn’t until I decided to try this in Opera instead of Firefox that I was able to get a glimmer of understanding as to what was going on.  Just to once again re-iterate how much better of a browser Opera is than firefox, how exponentially better in every conceivable way except for compatability, Opera is compared to firefox, it took me 30 seconds to figure out and solve this problem once I had opera loading the pages.  Instead of just sending me a nebulous Server Connection Reset error after 60 seconds like FF did, Opera immediately spat out a 413 Error ‘Entity too large’.  Why Firefox didn’t touch on client_max_body_size 300M;

this at all, ever is beyond me but it was a simple matter of going into  my nginx.conf file and “setting client_max_body_size” to 300M and the problem was solved.

Sooo, if you are experiencing a Connection reset error while trying to upload files and you just happen to be running Nginx go and check out your nginx.conf file and make sure client_max_body_size is set nice and high.

I’ve also been forced to remove /misc/jquery.form.js entirely which limited some of the editor modules I could use.  However I found out the secret with getting a good working WYSIWYG editor in drupal and that is to NOT use the editor modules at all.  Instead go out and get the WYSIWYG API and follow the instructions carefully.  It makes a huge huge difference because I tried CKeditor next and guess what?  It was a complete mess, wouldn’t load anything, just crapped out.  I would say this is because of my muching around with the jquery stuff, however when I use the WYSIWYG API and then go grab the CKeditor files from: http://ckeditor.com/ , load it into my /sites/all/libraries/ directory and have the API load it up it works like a charm.  Not only does it work like a charm but this editor is saawweeett.. Definitely recommend CKeditor for you and all of your friends.

So I went in and deleted all of the other editor modules and now I have a perfectly functional editor for all my stuff and my drupal install is shaping up nicely.   I know, I know I said I would get to the SVN but the inability to edit posts properly grabbed my attention here.. So now I’ll pitter patter and get at er!

One last thing, I was having trouble with putting images into posts and then upon previewing them not having them show up.  Turns out that if you don’t have full html set as your input type then this doesn’t work, so I just had to go in and set full html as my default input format.

Comment notify is a great little module that I didn’t even think about over the past week and a half of drupal setup but it is such a common sense one that I wonder how it was overlooked.  Especially when considering the way the forum’s are setup.  This module was actually quick and painless to setup.   You just head over to http://drupal.org/project/comment_notify download it, install it and then the configuration is pretty straight forward if you follow the directions.  But without your users will not be able to subscribe to forum threads and with it everyone can be auto-subscribed to their own comments which is great to keep the team communication going full bore.  Something that is so important when you are organizing people around the world

The second Obvious but Overlooked aspect of my setup was the fact that as an admin my view is going to be different than my teams view.  For some things this is a no brainer like admin menu’s and configuration screens, however when I am outside of the administration area of Drupal I just assumed that everyone would be seeing what I am seeing.  Not so much.  After writing a big long instructional article on cataloging submissions and organising assets I had one of my team members inform me that half of the links and buttons I referenced in the article didn’t exist for him.  So I created a quick dummy account, granted it the same perms as the other users and lo’ and behold I had 1/2 of the menu’s than with my admin account.  I just had to go through the roles and permissions setup for the users and grant them all access to the modules that they needed to use but definitely something to check after you spend a week going nuts and setting up a flurry of features.  Double chck that your users have access to them