Steve Kemp's Blog

Jose Carlos Garcia Sogo: Whilst breasts are everywhere I find it highly inappropriate for people to link to videos of them on Planet Debian.

I'd comment to that effect upon your post but I'm getting a 500 error from your server.

In other news Joey Hess reminded me this evening that it is pretty much the 1 year anniversary of my Xen Hosting setup.

In the next few days, once I've checked dates and looked to see if we can upgrade, etc, I'll be requesting payment from those people who wish to continue.

Russell Coker has recently started posting random tech-tips and recipes in his blog :

To improve things in this regard I plan to increase the number of posts I write with solutions to random technical problems that I encounter with the aim of providing a resource for google searches and to randomly inform people who read my blog.

This is nice to see on Planet Debian - although I hope we continue to see the personal entries.

For anybody else who is considering posting things like this I would be delighted if you'd copy them to the Debian Administration website. There have been numerous times when I've been just about to write something on a topic, seen it posted elsewhere and figured I shouldn't do so:

• Because it would be duplication.
• Because it would look like plagiarism

(Notable examples off the top of my head: Introduction to OpenVZ, Introduction to GIT, several Xen pieces.)

I don't get many submissions, which I'm getting resigned to, but it is easy and people really really are greatful for new posts.

In other news linuxlinks.com are a bunch of spammers and will be reported as such. I utterly fail to care that they've added "my software" to their list; if I cared I'd join their site and agree to receive emails from them..

After a lot of hacking I've now got chronicle displaying comments upon entries.

Since my blog is compiled on my home desktop machine and comment submission happens upon a remote machine the process involves a bit of a hack:

Publish Blog

The blog is compiled and uploaded to the live location using rsync.

Wait For Comments

Once the blog is live there are embedded forms which may be used to receive comments.

The CGI script which is the target of the forms will then write each comment out to a text file, located outside the HTTP-root.

Sync Them

Prior to rebuilding the blog the next time I update I rsync the comments directory to my local machine - such that the comments posted are included in the output

This my local tree looks something like this:

~/blog/
|-- comments/
|-- data/
|-- output/
|-- Makefile
`-- chroniclerc

Here I have a Makefile to automate the import of the comments from the live site to the local comments/ directory, rebuild, and finally upload.

All this means that I can rebuild a blog created by a combination of plain text post files and plain text comment files.

It also means that there is a fair lag between comment submission and publication - though I guess there is nothing stopping me from auto-rebuilding and syncing every hour or two via cron...

I'll make a new release with this comment.cgi script and changes once the package hits Debian unstable...

I installed Debian upon a new desktop machine yesterday, via a PXE network boot.

It was painless.

Getting xen up and running, with a 32-bit guest and a 64-bit guest each running XDMCP & VNC was also pretty straightforward.

There is a minor outstanding problem with the 32-bit xen guest though; connecting to it from dom0, via XDMCP, I see only a blank window - no login manager running.

GDM appears painlessly when I connect via VNC.

The relevent configuration file looks like this:

# /etc/gdm/gdm.conf
[security]
AllowRoot=true
AllowRemoteRoot=true

[xdmcp]
Enable=true

The same configuration on the 64-bit guest works OK for both cases.

(I like to use XDMCP for accessing the desktop of Xen guests, since it means that I get it all full-screen, and don't have to worry about shortcuts affecting the host system and not the guest - as is the case if you're connecting via VNC, etc).

Weirdness. Help welcome; I'm not 100% sure where to look

Anyway, once again, a huge thank you to the Debian Developers, bug submitters, and anybody else involved peripherally (such as myself!) with Debian!

I love it when a plan comes together.

SSL

ObRandom: Where is the cheapest place to get an SSL certificate, for two years, which will work with my shiny Apache2 install?

Somebody, rightly, called me for not having SSL available as an option on my mail filtering website.

I've installed a self-signed certificate just now, but I will need to pay the money and buy a "real" one shortly.

So far completessl.com seems to be high in the running:

• 1 year - £26
• 2 years - £49

For double-bonus points they accept Paypal which most of my customers pay with ..

ObQuote: The Princess Bride