So a few weeks ago my brother lost his credit card and had it canceled. He also never updated our wireless account to auto withdraw from the new credit card. Because of this I found myself in a situation where I needed to rely soly on WIFI for calling and text for a few days till we were able to get our bill sorted out. I started this adventure thinking this should be no sweat since this is Android were talking about. There has to be an easy way to get 3G/4G/WIFI (read data plan only) calling. Read more ›
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I have been working on a few projects at VTTI that use Groovy/Grails and the GORM. Recently I ran into the need to store a map of lists in such a way that the user could edit it, but it would also persist between shutdowns of the application. If not, a ton of “response types” and “event types” would have to be recreated. So there are two obvious options for saving this information, either write it to a file, or persist it to the database. Since IT dislikes extra files and folders mucking about, I decided it would be best to just keep everything in the database because I could. I figured, “GORM will just take care of my objects and build all the tables and set everything up nicely.” That is until I threw it a domain class with a map of lists I wanted persisted to the database. That launched me into a quest of how to solf my data structure conversion issue! Read more ›
Tags: array, development, gorm, grials, groovy, hibernate, json, list, map, serialize, work
How it started -
I recently switched to Linode for a basic VPS (512 MB RAM, 20 GB storage). I wanted to be able to install absolutely what ever version of what ever software I wanted. Since I have become very familiar with Arch Linux (I run it on all of my home computers now) I decided to make that my server OS for the time being. Along with being lightweight, minimalistic and always up-to-date arch offers an awesome set of packages and the best package manager I have ever used. Par of Arch Linux’s appeal is the Arch Wiki. A repository of important information for installing and configuring packages for Arch. So when following the guide for nginx, I also installed PHP-FPM for PHP/CGI.
All is well until weeks later I notice my memory usage tends to balloon after a few days (some times hours). After hours of toying, poking, prodding, and messing with WordPress settings, I figured out that PHP-FPM was the culprit. At times consuming 300+ MB of memory! Something had to be done, but what? After a good bit of digging and a few key parameter changes later PHP-FPM was well within the memory constraints of my server and website performance became noticeably faster! Read more ›
I just finished getting some self signed certs installed on the server. This means all sites will have SSL logins and I can start allowing people to register! Also look for a follow-up post on how I made it all work.
Update -
The server has been switched from self signed certs, to Free StartCom class 1 certs. Now stephentanner.com and wiki.stephentanner.info are now SSL/TLS protected for logins or browsing.
7-7-11
The Setup -
LVM and Luks encryption can be a simple and effective combination to keeping your data safe. However, encryption tends to complicate things a bit when it comes to data recovery and system repair. In order to repair a grub install, most people can just use a live “rescue” Linux CD to either boot to their system or to mount their install and chroot in to run commands. When you put your root pariton in an encrypted LVM, then accessing your data takes a bit extra work. After doing the research here is how I was able to access my data, and restore GRUB so I could once again boot back into my system.
So first a little background on my system. Recently my trusty Dell died on me. First the wifi card died back in Jan of this year and then in late Feb my graphics card and hard drive went simultaiunusly. I ordered a new Lenovo based on several reccomendations from fellow VTLUUG members. The new system has a hefty 500GB and so to actually use that space better, I set up roughly 100GB for Windows 7 Ultimate Signature edition, 100MB for /boot and the remaining 300GB went to an encrypted LVM. Why encrypted? Why not? My system stores plenty of my personal info that is completely protected when I shut it down for traveling. Also the LVM lets me grow and shrink partitions on demand. Read more ›
Today I got an email from a mailing list I am currently subscribed to and someone pointed out that a new version of Skype for Linux was released. The last release of Skype for Linux (2.0.x) was indeed plauged with bugs, refused to let me (or any one else I know) use both mics built into my Dell laptop. Video would stutter, drop calls were frequent, and crashes happened more often than not. All in all by any real definition Skype sucks. Unfortunately, the OS X client works well (although still not as well as the Windows one) but still lacked the full love of the dev team. Worst of all, Skype just has not worked since I (and a friend of mine) switched to Jaunty (Actually Linux Mint 7) and Pulse audio is the new default. A few weeks ago, the Skype for Linux blog was updated saying a new beta was on the way. Beta? Nearly a year of work and all you have is a new Beta? For a second I was confused but then I remembered this is Skype, closed source, take it or leave it, Skype. Read more ›
When visiting my friend Mark, he introduced me to a simple app called fluid. This OS X application captures web apps and lets you run them as embedded in a window like a native application. Then he showed me why that was even significant. He then pulled up a digg link he made. Then a reddit one. He continued to show off other cool features and stuff. Then he told me some sad news. Fluid is only for OS X. Then after he knew he had crushed my spirits, he told me about prism being “The one for Linux.” When I finally got-round to checking it out, I realized I had indeed heard about it a while back and that being more than just “the Linux one” it was fully cross platform. Read more ›
Firefox has grown a lot over the last few years. It’s US market share is currently greater than 21%. With so many of us on line every day, that means a huge chunk of people are using Firefox. By no means is Firefox the best browser in every aspect but because is does a damn fine job at the majority of things. It is constantly becoming better using thanks to the active community of developers and users. The best thing though, is it modular architecture. The Gecko engine that they use allows people write many useful plug-ins while also allowing users to easily tweak many settings to improve performance. Taking a look at my favorites, you will hopefully see why Firefox remains my preferred browser.
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Yesterday I posted about tweaking Deluge. In there I also talked about the block lists.Today I decided I would take the time to update the script that compiles all the blocklists to one file every weekend. Read more ›
Yesterday I noted that I prefer the Deluge BitTorrent client for my torrenting (is that a word yet?) listing several reasons. Today I want to show you how to set it up to maximize its usefulness. From configuring network connection settings, to setting up the block list plug-in, there are plenty of features to tweak for more speed and reliability. Going tab by tab (in the settings window) I will be sure to point out what is most important. Read more ›