Category: Articles
Send GoogleMails from another address without "on behalf of"
There was a blogpost on gmailblog a while back, which explained how to use a own smtp server to avoid the "on behalf of" message in clients like Outlook.
The cool thing, this does not only work, if you have a custom smtp-server! I tried to add smtp.gmail.com as custom server: the "on behalf of" was gone!
mcrypt and PHP 5.3 on Ubuntu Jaunty
My dedicated server still runs on ubuntu jaunty. I wanted to move on to php 5.3 (php 5.2.16 was the final release of the php 5.2 series). The issue is: php 5.3 is not available in jaunty repositories, because it will stay at 5.2.
Installing php 5.3 was simple, just add to:
the following:
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deb-src http://php53.dotdeb.org stable all
Install the dotdeb pgp key:
Update the apt cache and upgrade php5:
But when you want to install phpmyadmin again now, it fails.
Luckily you can get that (mcrypt) by adding the lenny updates repository manually:
add:
Install the debian gpg:
Now update again:
and install php5-mcrypt flawlessly:
I commented out the new sources.list entries after the install, because I don't need them to be checked on every update.
HTTPS + NGINX with self signed SSL certificate
If you want to use https with nginx on your dedicated server, you have the option to buy a certificate. The other way, even though less secure for your clients: create a self signed certificate.
I want to show, how you can create a self signed certificate and how to use it with nginx on an ubuntu linux.
Open a root shell and head to the nginx configuration folder.
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# cd /etc/nginx
Generate the self signed certificate and answer the questions.
Now make the files only visible to the owner (root).
Add the ssl section as new site:
with this code:
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listen 443;
ssl on;
ssl_certificate /etc/nginx/server.crt;
ssl_certificate_key /etc/nginx/server.key;
server_name ssl.example.org;
location / {
root /var/www/ssl.example.org;
index index.php;
}
# ... and so on
}
Reboot nginx:
Head to your site: https://ssl.example.org. You'll recieve a message in your favorite browser saying that the certificate is insecure, because the author signed it on his own. You have to make an exception.
This does not look very professional. So you should use this procedure only for projects, where you can live with this 'error message'.
Configure an Agavi Site with NGINX (using PHP-FPM)
I was used to configure my Agavi site with Lighttpd and recently switched to Nginx. The setup for Nginx was not so common to me, so I decided to write down what I had to do to configure it properly. Here is an example for dracoblue.net. Please change the parts of the script to suit your needs (the necessary parts are highlighted with "HINT:").
First of all install php5-fpm. On ubuntu I did it this way:
Now create a new file:
And add the following:
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listen dracoblue.net:80;
# HINT: Add the servername, so Agavi is able to see that it's dracoblue.net
# Otherwise you'll get something like "localhost" here
server_name dracoblue.net;
location / {
# HINT: The directory where index.php is
root /home/dracobluenet/tags/1.0.0/pub;
index index.php;
# HINT: All files except those in "static" should be served by index.php
location ~* ^/(favicon.ico|robots.txt|static) {
break;
}
# HINT: All files except those in "static" should be served by index.php
if ($uri !~ "^/(favicon.ico|robots.txt|static|index.php)") {
rewrite ^/([^?]*)$ /index.php?/$1 last;
}
}
location ~ \.php($|/) {
include /etc/nginx/fastcgi_params;
fastcgi_pass 127.0.0.1:9000;
# HINT: The directory where index.php is + $fastcgi_script_name
fastcgi_param SCRIPT_FILENAME /home/dracobluenet/tags/1.0.0/pub$fastcgi_script_name;
fastcgi_param PATH_INFO $fastcgi_script_name;
}
}
As you can see, for projects I usually have only a "static" folder which is not served by agavi. This keeps the amount of work low, which nginx needs to do for each request to decide whether it should be served by php or not. I also added robots.txt and favicon.ico since you usually have them in root, too.
Restart nginx.
LFE (sub-woofer) disabled in Ubuntu 10.10 Maveric Meerkat
When I updated to ubuntu 10.10, I had this mysterious problem.
The sub-woofer just worked one time right after I clicked the "5.1 System" in the ubuntu sound options. As soon as a song ended, the sub-woofer was mute again.
I expected this to be an issue of the pulseaudio integration in 10.10. The reason was way simpler!
In 10.10 by default:
is set in
Just change this to
and pulseaudio will mix the 2 channel sound tracks up to the 5 channels including LFE!
Cannot connect to ICQ on Ubuntu Maveric Meerkat
Today I expirienced the issue, that empathy (the ubuntu icq, msn, facebook, ... client) was not able to connect to ICQ anymore.
To fix that issue, just install pidgin ppa (yes, I know you want empathy, but you'll need libpurple to fix it for empathy!).
Then
You'll see something like:
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Configuring libpurple0 ein (1:2.7.5-1ubuntu2+pidgin1.10.10) ...
and everything is fine again. Just restart empathy!
Thanks to twenty-three for the hint.
