Archive for July, 2005

So I have been smashing my head against iolarah‘s website trying to get a couple PHP scripts working again. Try as I might, I couldn’t get PHP to pass POST or GET variables within the scripts. WTF?! It worked on the old Scummbox.

Thankfully I asked a co-worker why this would be.

Turns out, in PHP 4.x and above, PHP requires you to explicitly say that you want to import POST or GET vars. Preferably with a prefix. So with a prefix of xvar_ a POST var called edit would become xvar_edit. Obstensably this is for security reasons.

My beef is that I. Was. Not. Informed.

heh

I now have full reverse resolve on scummbox (the IP address resolves to pants.scummbox.org now) and I’ve also installed a range of IRC clients (ircii, BitchX, Epic-5) for your IRC idling pleasure

<EDIT> I have installed Webalizer so I can view the httpd-access.log easily. Woo statistics!</EDIT>

Today I configured the Holy Mail Triumvirate on Scummbox. Postfix, Courier IMAP and Squirrelmail.

Postfix confused me early on by sending mail fine, but not receiving mail. It turns out that the main.cf file needed a bit of editing (like telling postfix to listen on all interfaces) I have working e-mail!

Next up, Courier IMAP. This is required for webmail and for checking mail via a mail client. Courier installed fine, but I was getting errors when I tried to connect to port 143. Turns out that you have to manually enable the scripts in /etc/rc.d/ So I enable the courier-imapd script and run it. Now when I telnet into port 143, I see the proper imap banner. You would think that everything is go now, right? Wrong! I had forgotten to enable the courier-authdaemond startup script (the authdaemon is what verifies that you are you.) So after starting the authdaemon (and editing postfix’s main.cf again to enable writing to /home/$user/Maildir,) I have working IMAP service!

Now last (but not least) it’s squirrelmail time! I (wisely) decide to blow away the archived squirrelmail install and re-extract it from the archive. A simple setup and a quick install of php5-session (to enable the php sessions that squirrelmail requires) and it’s up and running.

Thus far FreeBSD is a dream to configure. I think I’m dangerously close to being a BSD Zealot

Um, I think I need a manual to figure out how to get around in here and do the things I want to do! It is confusing!

Help!

WordPress has replaced Movable Type, due to it being free and less ghetto to upgrade to.

Incoming mail doesn’t work right now, but outgoing does. Whack!

Any requests for services or software, comment here.

So after degenerative problems with Mandrake 9.2 (frequent crashes, partial upgrades due to dependency failure, etc) I have changed the system to a new OS entirely. Not even Linux. Scummbox, meet FreeBSD! The install went smoothly, adding services is a snap (via the Ports tree) and it seems to be stable thus far. *crosses fingers*

A brief problem with PHP and MySQL was fixed fairly easily (switching from using the pre-compiled packages via pkg_add to the compiled-on-the-fly portinstall command.) Courier IMAP is being a bit of a pain right now, but I’ll track that down soon.

I’ll keep updating with new information as it happens.