Reaper-X .:[ ID ]:. » Linux

Slow Yum Update

Reaper-X — Sat, 20 Oct 2007 12:29:16 +0000

So yesterday i just experience a very strange problem related to yum update and in this case it happens to my local Linux box which is powered by Centos, what makes it strange is … i’m not updating anything on my centos box, because i just want to uninstall some library which got installed previously (faac and faad) because … well i prefer to compile the library myself … but let’s keep that aside shall we ? :)

Okay the actual problem came when i try to use various yum related command such as yum remove, yum check-update and update (and as i said before i just want to use the yum remove command but later i tried using all yum command that involves fetching headers) because that problem occur when trying to fetch the header files (you’ll notice that it takes a really loooong time even to fetch the base header file which is just 1.1 kB)

So i tried browsing around the net to see if there’s also someone who’s experiencing the same yum problem, and found a nice article about it from a Fedora site (sorry can’t remember the exact link). That article says that slow update in Yum usually came when there are new kernel coming out (though i didn’t see new kernel coming out) and thousand or more Yum users tries to connect to the server at the same time which caused that timeout problem

So what is actually the solution to solve this problem ?

1. Get the mirror list manually

2. Use your preferred mirror manually instead of letting yum choose the best mirror for your box, and don’t forget to edit it manually in your YUM repository file

3. Done

If it’s for me, in the end i just choose the mirrors.kernel.org baseurl because i found that is the fastest mirror to me :)

0x87485B96 | Tags : Linux

Hardening Wordpress with Mod Rewrite and htaccess

Reaper-X — Sat, 01 Sep 2007 11:17:01 +0000

It’s been a while since the last time i wrote tips or whatever you called it :P … so i decided to write some tips on how to hardening your wordpress installation. As as you already guessed, this tips might be useful if you’re using Wordpress as your platform (blog, etc)

But first as a reminder, this is not a perfect way to secure your wordpress installation (because of various reasons / factors), but at least it’s going to harden your wordpress installation

And as a note, this is tested only on Apache Web server, and you’re allowed to override the configurations using .htaccess file and lastly … you need to have mod rewrite installed and activated (don’t worry if you can use Custom Permalinks that mean you’ve mod rewrite enabled on your hosting / server)

Okay without further ado … here are the tips :

1. Disable Directory Indexing

By disabling directory indexing, you can prevent people seeing through your directory structure

Step to Disable it :

Create or edit .htaccess file on your public_html directory and add this into your htaccess :

Options -Indexes

2. Removing Wordpress version number

Some people think that hiding your wordpress version number is not necessary, so feel free if you want to implement it or not

Step to Remove it :

Remove this line from the header.php file of your currently used theme :

also if you’re feeling a little bit adventurous, you can also remove the generator line from wp-includes/feed-*.php. Because by default wordpress is going to show your wordpress version number from your blog feed

3. Protecting WP-Admin Directory

In this example i’m going to tell you how to protect your wp-admin directory by checking your IP Address (it can be used even on dynamic ip address)

Step to Protect it :

3.1 If you’re using Static IP Address

Create new .htaccess file inside your wp-admin directory and add these lines into the newly created .htaccess file

RewriteEngine On RewriteCond %{REMOTE_ADDR} !^123\.456\.789\.0 RewriteRule .* http://www.domain.com/ [R,L]

3.2 If you’re using Dynamic IP Address

RewriteEngine On
RewriteCond %{REMOTE_ADDR} !^123\.456\.
RewriteRule .* http://www.domain.com/ [R,L]

What the above configuration does, is checking your IP Address first to see if you’re allowed to any file inside the wp-admin directory or not and if you’re not allowed to view it, you’ll be redirected automatically to specified address (you can use any address) by using 302 Found Header (Temporarily Moved)

As a side note, if you want the easiest way to password protect your wp-admin directory you can use this plugin by askapache or if you prefer to do it using the manual way … you can check blogsecurity website

4. Protecting wp-login.php and wp-register.php or any file you choose

Now you’ve protected your admin directory … but there’s one more step to do, especially if you’re the only person on your blog and also disabling user registration.

So this time we’re going to protect wp-login.php and wp-register.php, and here are the step to protect it :

Step to do it :

– Open the .htaccess file on the root of your public_html directory and choose which method that you like

4.1 Deny Access to wp-login.php by showing forbidden message

Order deny,allow Deny from All Allow from 123.456.789.0

4.2 Deny Access to wp-login.php by redirecting it to the specified address :

RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} wp-login.php RewriteCond %{REMOTE_ADDR} !^123\.456\.789\.0 RewriteRule .* http://www.domain.com/ [R,L]

As a note, you can also use Dynamic IP Address just like on Protecting WP-Admin Directory Method

That’s it … you’re done … hope this small wordpress tips can be useful for you

0x87485B96 | Tags : Apache, Guide, Linux, Wordpress

PHP-FastCGI, Suexec, and XCache Installed

Reaper-X — Sat, 18 Aug 2007 02:27:17 +0000

After 1 week thinking about on should i install PHP-FastCGI with Suexec combined with XCache (PHP OP-Code Cache) because my current host aren’t going to support it (although they say, they can help me installing it) if i’m going this way, i’ve decided to use them all together eventhough i have to do it all by myself (as learning purpose of course) … and after 6 hours (or more) playing around with it … i managed to set them all nicely

Btw if you ask me, why i really want to use PHP-FastCGI with Suexec and XCache eventhough my host aren’t going to support it, the answers are :

Running PHP as Apache Module isn’t really good (although it’s the fastest and the easiest to configure with), because it’s running under Apache userid not your own userid. But if it’s for me, i do not like to chmod some of my files / directory into world writeable
PHPSuexec takes too many resources although it’s secure (from security point of view), but it has the other advantage, because if you run PHPSuexec, you don’t need to chmod some of your files / directory into 777 (beside chmod 777 is not going to work with PHPSuexec). Unfortunately the downside from this method is … i can’t use any PHP OPCode cache / any php accelerator out there

So based on that conclusion, i try reading various material about this stuff on the web, and found that the best solution is to use PHP-FastCGI with Suexec enabled to run under your own userid, and the good side from this method is you can use PHP Accelerator. Fortunately there’s someone who’s using an almost identical server setup like mine so i can simply follow his guide (although i need to do some little modification because i can’t seem to get the .fcgi script to run if i’m not putting it in some directory that is allowed to execute CGI) :D

0x87485B96 | Tags : Apache, Linux, PHP, Web Servers

Client denied by Server Configuration

Reaper-X — Tue, 07 Aug 2007 12:31:04 +0000

This is perhaps might be useful especially to those who’s using managed server / managed vps (or have anything related to core system component installed and configured for you) and keep seeing client denied by server configuration message on your site error_log (via CPanel or other method) … because that’s what happened to me today

I keep seeing someone trying to access this site and get blocked immediately, but what makes it strange this error message only appear on some of my pages. Although when i tried to access those pages, i can see it without problem at all (yes, i have mod_security installed), so that mean there’s something wrong somewhere in my apache configuration because if it’s caused by hotlink protection, i already make sure it still can be viewed by those who’s blocking their referer address

So after taking a good look into the httpd.conf, i found that my current host already configured apache to load some configuration rules outside the httpd.conf, and after checking each conf i found something i haven’t seen before

DOSHashTableSize 3097
DOSPageCount 2
DOSSiteCount 50
DOSPageInterval 1
DOSSiteInterval 1
DOSBlockingPeriod 10

Note : the above directives is a sample

Of course the next step would be searching what this configuration directive actually does, and then i find out that my host currently use mod_evasive as protection measure againts HTTP Ddos attack

So what do i do then ? of course after i read what those configuration directives do (you can see it from the readme file attached in the mod_evasive file), i reconfigured it by increasing it value slightly to make sure that it’s working properly

0x87485B96 | Tags : Apache, Linux, Web Servers

Configuring Mangos for TBC Server or WoW Classic Server - Setting up Private WoW Server

Reaper-X — Thu, 28 Jun 2007 11:07:58 +0000

Copyright www.reaper-x.com | Configuring Mangos for TBC Server or WoW Classic Server - Setting up Private WoW Server by Reaper-X

Update : You can browse this site software category if you’re looking for my mangos release or my custom mangos release … btw i’d suggest you to get my mangos release first because it has been tested with WoW 2.2.3 and will be updated frequently (even easier than anything written on this old post because i already include everything you need to run your own wow private server except for mysql program of course)

Or you can also look at the recent software section located at the footer section of this website to see the new update to my mangos release :)

This is the second part of the Creating your own World of Warcraft Server using Mangos

The First part is all about Installing and Configuring MySQL on your Windows Machine
The Second part is about Configuring the WoW Mangos itself
The Third part is all about Setting up Private WOW Server for Lan Party
The Fourth part is all about Installing and Setting up Apache Webserver with PHP

Okay and before i start i’d like to warn you first especially to those who’s using Dial Up Connection because there are a lot of images used here and the previous mysql installation guide although i’ve optimized it further

Without further ado … here’s the guide ;)

Requirements :

If you’re planning on creating :

– The Burning Crusade Server :

Compiled Mangos Revision 3900 or above for Win32 / Windows (the latest revision compatible with latest SDB at the time i wrote this post) but feel free to upgrade it later if you want but do not forget to update the SDB too
~~SDB Full Dump by Ozay Turay (to make thing simpler) that is compatible with Mangos Revision 3900+~~
~~Latest Ad.exe to extract map from Mangos SVN Repository~~
~~Latest DBC Extractor~~

Okay i've decided to upload my own compiled mangos to make thing easier, for more info see this new post

Btw ... the installing mysql part is still the same ... so if you need information on how to install mysql refer to the part 1

Note : Since most people who compiled Mangos for Win32 already included DBC and Map Extractor in their release you should use that one first. And unfortunately i can not give direct link to the files so you must try it by yourself and judge which version is the best for you :)

Btw some people prefer (especially to those who’s using high speed internet access – not me of course –) to download the extracted maps and dbc from somewhere rather than extracting it directly so if you are using the same high speed connection you might like to use this option

– World of Warcraft Classic Server :

That’s it … unfortunately since it is using the old mangos revision you’ll notice more bugs compared to latest / newest version for TBC … and since i dont have TBC Client installed, i can only give you a how to guide to configure your mangos server based on my experience when doing remote assistance to someone who asked for help via MSN

Btw if you’re going to create WoW Classic server you can use my extracted DBC Files

Side Note : Basically since there are no differences on creating WoW TBC Server and WoW Classic Server the only thing you should change is just the filename … don’t worry if you don’t understand what i'm talking about right now, soon you’ll know about it :)

Creating Directory Structure :

Okay i assume you’ve finished downloading all the required stuff and now its the time to configure your mangos. But before that you need to extract the required files first into your harddrive and organize it before starting to configure mangos (although this step optional but i think organized directory structure looks better but that is just my own opinion)

Look at the image below for a good explanation about this :

The daemon directory is where you should extract the mangos program itself
The data directory is where you should put the extracted maps and dbc folder (soon you’ll know about this process)
The SDB is just a temporary directory to be used when importing the SQL Files

Extracting Maps and DBC Files from World of Warcraft Game :

Now this is when the ad.exe and dbc extractor came. But first we are going to use the ad.exe. And here’s the step

Copy the ad.exe into your WoW Game directory (usually C:\Program Files\World of Warcraft)
Create folder called maps
Run the ad.exe and wait until its finished
Move the maps folder into C:\WoW\data (if you’re using the same directory structure like me)

After you’ve finished extracting maps now it is the time you use DBC Extractor … and here’s the step to use it

Extract the MPQE.exe (and it’s dll if available) into your WoW Game Data directory (C:\Program Files\World of Warcraft\Data)
Create shortcut to the MPQE, right click on it and choose properties and adjust it’s target into "C:\Program Files\World of Warcraft\Data\MPQE.exe" /p dbc.MPQ DBFilesClient\*.dbc
Run the shortcut and wait until it finished
Rename the DBFilesClient folder into DBC
Move the DBC folder into C:\WoW\data (if you’re using the same directory structure like me)

If you want a more detailed explanation look at the screenshot below

and then the shortcut properties

Importing the SDB Files :

Okay we have finished extracting the maps and dbc files required for mangos, now we need to import the database first before you can run mangos program

and here’s the summary on how it done :

If you’re going to create WoW Classic Server

Extract the SQL files from my mangos sql dump into C:\WoW\SDB (if you follow my directory structure)
Open Command Prompt
Run the sql query from the command prompt (look image below for an example on how to use the query)

and here’s what it’ll looks like when it’s finished

Note : Because some people prefer to see the importing process (some say it’s like Matrix .. lol), i decided to use -v (verbose) switch but if you prefer not to see it you can safely remove the -v switch

If you’re going to create TBC Server

Here’s the summary on how it’s done :

Extract the SDB Full Dump for Mangos Revision 3900 into C:\WoW\SDB
Extract the Mangos Program / Archive into C:\WoW\Daemon\Mangos
Go into C:\WoW\Daemon\Mangos\SQL
Copy the create_mysql.sql and realmd.sql into C:\WoW\SDB
Open the Command Prompt
Execute the same query as above but adjust the filename first

An example on how to execute the query is like below (you must do this in order) and using the same path as the above image

mysql -u root -p -v < create_mysql.sql
mysql -u root -p -v -D realmd < realmd.sql
mysql -u root -p -v -D mangos < the_filename_used_on_sql_dump_from_e_turray.sql

And that’s it you’re finished importing the database required :)

Editing Mangos Configuration :

You’ve finished extracting maps, dbc and already imported the database required but now what else ? of course you need to edit the mangosd.conf file itself

Now here’s the summary on how it is done :

Go into C:\WoW\Daemon\Mangos
Open the mangosd.conf using wordpad (you can not edit it using notepad, because it is using Unix Line Break)
Change the datadir into C:\WoW\data
Save it

Now here’s some screenshot of the mangos configuration file editing process :

Make sure everything is working as it should :

Now you’ve done almost everyting required to make your own wow private server … now before started playing it you need to make sure that everything is okay before starting to connect to your own server

Here’s how it is done :

Run the realmd.exe (C:\WoW\daemon\mangos\realmd.exe)
Run the mangosd.exe (C:\WoW\daemon\mangos\mangosd.exe)
See if one of the above process close itself automatically or not. If one of the process close itself automatically after launched that means there’s something wrong with your configuration try restarting the configuring process from the beginning

And now here’s the screenshot if your mangosd and realmd process is working as it should :

The last step for configuring mangos and wow, editing the Realmlist used by WoW to connect :

After everything is okay, now there’s one more thing left for you to do … which is editing the realmlist.wtf file inside your WoW Game directory (C:\Program Files\World of Warcraft\realmlist.wtf) using your favorite text editor. You can use notepad or wordpad to do this

The default realmlist.wtf file should be like this :

set realmlist us.logon.worldofwarcraft.com

and then change it into

set realmlist 127.0.0.1

Creating Test Account for yourself :

Okay now you’ve created and set up everything but there’s still one more thing left and that is creating a test account with normal player status for yourself. And this process is really simple actually all you have to do is just typing this on the mangosd window (above image)

create desired_username desired_password

Okay that’s it you just created a test account that can be used to connect to your own wow server. If you get error message and / or stuck at realm loop i'm sure there’s something wrong with your configuration or you’re not using compatible mangos / wow client

That’s all for this part … stay tune for the next part ;)

As a side note, this is the first time i'm using lots of images on my guides and i'm looking forward to your opinion about this (tell me if you like it this way or would you prefer text with few screenshot or images) :)

Update :

To those who’s still having problem with Mangos like finding the correct mangos version,etc. I’ve decided to upload my own compiled Mangos Revision 4431 with Scriptdev2 241, and also included DBC Extractor (Thanks to XLayer for his DBC Extractor) and VMaps Extractor. And also mirrored the SDB 0.7.3 with Changesets 208 from http://opensvn.csie.org/NewSDB

And here’s the file :

~~Mangos 4431 with ScriptDev2 124~~
~~SDB 0.7.3 with Changesets 208~~

Another Update : See my new post about new Mangos 4488 Update with Silvermoon Database ... and tested with WoW 2.1.3 Client ... just look at the screenshot below

All you have to do (i assume you’ve completed all of the steps involving mysql installation, and also already extract the DBC and VMaps files) is just :

1. Import / Overwrite the database with this new SDB (if you want the easiest way to start all over again from the Importing SDB step, you can execute the create-database.sql inside my Mangos 4431 archive (in reaper-sql directory) using this command :

mysql -u root -p < create-database.sql

mysql -u root -p -D mangos < SDB_0.7.3_Changeset_208_Rev1.sql

mysql -u root -p -D mangos < reaper4431.sql

Note : Make sure you’re in the same directory as the create-database.sql and the SDB_0.7.3.sql when executing that command

2. And then the next step is, importing the sql files inside the scriptdev2-sql directory (2 files) like below example (must be in order) :

mysql -u root -p -D mangos < scriptdev_full.sql

mysql -u root -p -D mangos < scriptdev_additional_req.sql

And you’re done :)

Perhaps the above might sound confusing for some people, so if you need help just leave comment here

Here's a screenshot taken using Mangos 4488 Scriptdev2 134

0x87485B96 | Tags : Emulators, Guide, Linux, Software, Tutorials, Video Games, Windows

Learning to use Centos distro

Reaper-X — Sat, 16 Jun 2007 05:52:57 +0000

Previously i said that i just installed Ubuntu to run as a guest host under my Windows XP box via VMWare. Unfortunately even after i’ve updated my ubuntu system (completely) i'm not really that interested on using Ubuntu, i decided on using Centos 5 instead because i plan on setting up proxy server (using Squid), and any other server related tools

The primary reason why i choose centos instead of other linux distribution, is because centos widely used on various webhosting / server on VPS level (Just in case i want to move this website into VPS based hosting in the future) … and i take this as learning approach to make myself familiar with the Centos distro …

The installation process was running smoothly without problem at all (i choose to use GNome as desktop and later i switched into XFCE4), so after finished installing everything the next step of course updating the centos kernel by using Yum and continue by updating the other software installed and then configuring squid … unfortunately all of them are done via the Gnome desktop / XFCE desktop … and of course that’s not the way i want it to be (i'm sure most server which is using Centos does not use X Server beside using X Server means more memory used)

So the next step of course looking a documentation on disabling the x server or at least exiting from the GDM … because i’ve tried using gdm-stop but it just go back to the login screen

and after a while i found the answer to this question, you just need to use /sbin/init 3 if you’re already logged in into the GDM

of course it’s time consuming if i have to use that command everytime i start the virtual machine, because i just want it to be started as console (to reduce memory consumption because i want the virtual machine to always run even when i play game on windows because if the x server started it is using more than 512 MB of system memory) …

and once again i searched for an answer to this question and found one in short time. To disable GDM and X Server from autostarting you just need to edit /etc/inittab and replace the runlevel 5 into runlevel 3 … and to confirm this i need to reboot and it’s working as it should (of course) with the exception that squid process and bind wasnt started by default

and since its not convenience to enable / start squid and bind manually everytime the virtual machine started, of course i need to edit the service so squid and bind process are going to be started automatically when the virtual machines turned on

to do this, i just need to use ntsysv command and configure so squid and bind will be started automatically … and finished … and the results is the memory consumption reduced to 288 MB (a big improvement of course)

as a side note, i did not install the vmware-tools since it’s not compatible with the selinux on centos. And yes now i'm a big fan of this distro :P

0x87485B96 | Tags : Journal, Linux, Personal

VMWare Workstation 6 and Ubuntu Dapper Drake 6.06 LTS

Reaper-X — Mon, 11 Jun 2007 11:34:13 +0000

So yesterday i just downloaded a copy of VMWare Workstation 6 Trial version because i just want to try out various Linux Distribution under my primary box which is a Windows XP machine. And as the first test, i just want to see how good VMWare 6 compatibility with Ubuntu 6.06 LTS (Dapper Drake)

First, i created the Ubuntu ISO (CD Image) that i received a year ago, since i prefer to use it that way and then continue installing it … and no problem so far … everything works great (of course because i saw Ubuntu on the VMWare compatibility list page) except for one thing … the Guest Computer (Ubuntu) can’t connect to the internet using the Host Computer

Of course if the Ubuntu machine can not connect to the internet that means there’s no point for me to use it. But instead of giving up i try to play around with the VMWare Virtual Network Settings. From using Bridge, NAT, and Host Only mode. Unfortunately none of them worked (i already reactivated the eth0 from Ubuntu for more than 20 times with no luck)

So i try to use the custom networking mode from VMWare, and set up a new Host Virtual Adapters as shown below

and then configure it to act as DHCP …. like below image

and then set up the NAT

As for the rest, i deactivate and then reactivate the eth0 from the Ubuntu Networking configuration and let it get the ip address automatically via DHCP and … done …

The next step would be testing if i can internet from Ubuntu installed on VMWare and … surprisingly it works :D … that means i can update my Ubuntu from the virtual machine (currently i have updated to use K7 SMP Kernel and works great) … and then configuring SMB

So the conclusion is … if you got similar problem like this … maybe you should try using manual method too (although VMWare manual says Bridge and NAT is / might be the easiest way to connect your Virtual Machine to Host Machine) :P

As an addition, i’ve tried using DSL (Damn Small Linux 3.3) on VMWare 6 and it works fine too (of course installed to local HDD instead of booting using DSL ISO’s)

0x87485B96 | Tags : Guide, Linux, Software, Windows

Digg Protection using htaccess

Reaper-X — Tue, 15 May 2007 11:00:22 +0000

Today i just saw a referer to this site coming from Digg Upcoming page (i guess someone submit this blog to Digg website) although i doubt that it’ll reach the main page, but i think it is better for me to prevent this site from going down (the worst case is my page changed into my host suspended page) just in case someone submit this site to various big website and it appear there

And now this is the method is use to try to redirect everyone who came to this site from big site such as slashdot. Btw i found this method via PlanetOzh at Joseph Scott’s Blog which is taken from Ottodestruct (although i get 404 error not found message when i tried to visit the page mentioned in Joseph Scott’s blog) … and of course Full Credits goes to them because all i do is just adding “/” add the end and modify it as necessary to use in this site also changed the port to 8090 because coral cache use that port now instead of the old 8080 :)

So here’s the code :

RewriteEngine on
RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} !^CoralWebPrx
RewriteCond %{QUERY_STRING} !(^|&)coral-no-serve$
RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} ^http://(www\.)?digg\.com [OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} ^http://(www\.)?slashdot\.org [OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} ^http://(www\.)?slashdot\.com [OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} ^http://(www\.)?fark\.com [OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} ^http://(www\.)?somethingawful\.com [OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} ^http://(www\.)?kuro5hin\.org [OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} ^http://(www\.)?boingboing\.net
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ http://www.yourdomain.com.nyud.net:8090/$1 [R,L]

As always the IfModule used to prevent your site goes berserk by returning HTTP 500 Error Code when modrewrite is not loaded in Apache. And i already tested this on this site, by faking the referer address to www.digg.com and digg.com without www (and as you can see, that this method only work to those who’s not faking / forging their referer)

And of course there’s downside when using this method which is already explained here :

The problem, of course, is that Coral runs on port 8090, and how many people will be blocked from that?

But i think it is still better than you got suspended by your host because your site causing high load on their server (if you’re using shared hosting) :D

0x87485B96 | Tags : Guide, Linux, Web Servers, Webmaster Tools, Website

Hostgator Tips : Temporarily disable ModSecurity

Reaper-X — Thu, 22 Mar 2007 04:11:54 +0000

If you’re hosted on Hostgator or any other host that use Modsecurity to protect their web server, you might notice some problems especially if you try to post something that has forbidden words / string in it (a good example is my previous post about Hostgator SSH Access). It seems the Hostgator modsecurity filter doesn’t allow some words in my previous post, so you’ll get HTTP 406 / Not Acceptable message (if you look at the http status header manually)

So what’s the best solution without compromising your system security ? .. you can add the below lines into .htaccess to disable modsecurity when you try to post something to your blog :

SecFilterEngine Off
SecFilterScanPOST Off

The above lines means : If modsecurity is found, it’ll disable the filtering function. If modsecurity not found it’ll do no harm to your server

And what’s next ? if you’re able to post to your blog successfully, you can remove the above lines from your .htaccess file or you can simply add # character before each line

0x87485B96 | Tags : Guide, Linux, Tutorials, Web Hosting, Web Servers

SSH Access and WGET on Hostgator

Reaper-X — Thu, 22 Mar 2007 03:57:52 +0000

Previously i have said that Hostgator doesn’t allow you to have SSH access for your shared hosting account, but since Hostgator allows you to use Ruby on Rails on your shared hosting account, this policies have been changed completely. Because now you can get SSH access (Jailed SSH), or if you’re also interested on using Ruby on Rails web framework for your website, you can also use it (although i havent tried Ruby on Rails yet, … and to be honest i'm still playing and learning Ruby on Rails right now) and that’s all thanks to Hostgator by allowing the use of SSH access

Beside by using SSH (with WGet) you can also install various script easily without the need to upload each files again using FTP program (well this is really useful for me, because of my slow internet connection)

How to get SSH Access on your shared hosting account ?

It’s real simple, you just have to send a photo id to the Hostgator support team and provide your hosting account information.

For example, i'm sending out my KTP (Kartu Tanda Penduduk, the personal identification card used in Indonesia) information to the Hostgator Support team, and then you just have to wait for them to activate your ssh access

After Hostgator activated your ssh access, you’ll notice that if you try to use WGet you’ll see the permission denied message, that’s because you do not have the necessary priviledges to use WGET by default so in order to get WGET activated for your account, you can tell them to activate WGET too (if it is for me, i sent them 2 email message, the first message to activate my ssh access, and the second email message to activate WGET)

How to fetch / retrieve files from remote server using WGET ?

The easiest way to retrieve wget from remote server is by using this command :

wget http://remoteserver/sample/files.tgz

and to extract it you can simply type this :

tar zxf files.tgz

What about SVN ? can you use it too on Hostgator ?

Yes, you can use svn too. But if it’s for me i only use SVN to fetch the latest files from SVN repositories on remote server.

To fetch it (checkout), you can simply type this command :

svn co http://svn.server.com/files/trunk

And to update it, you can just type this command :

svn update

What about Ruby on Rails ?

You can use it too, but because i'm still learning about this topic, i prefer not to say it here maybe at a later time when i reached the begginer level (currently at novice level now) i could post another topic about this. So if you’re interested on learning about Ruby on rails you might try visiting their official website instead

Well .. that’s all about it :)

0x87485B96 | Tags : Guide, Internet, Linux, Web Hosting, Web Servers, Webmaster Tools

Hostgator Review, a Personal Experience

Reaper-X — Wed, 07 Mar 2007 05:01:43 +0000

Small information about Hostgator, quoted from their about page. Hostgator is a privately owned company founded in 2002 that has no debt, is very profitable, and has NO intentions of selling any time soon. We provide service to over 400,000 websites on our shared and reseller plans. We are the world's leading provider of reseller accounts with over 10,000 resellers who have chosen us to provide the network, servers, and support required to launch a hosting business

At the time i write this post, i'm currently hosted by Hostgator (dunno if in the future) i'm going to move into other web hosting company or not. But one thing for sure is, when i posted this .. i have been with hostgator for 8 months (until March 07). And without further ado, here’s my own complete hostgator review (including their server setup and so on), based on my personal experience with them :

Webhosting Plan Offered :

1. Hatchling Croc :

Price : $6.95 (paid yearly)
Storage : 50 GB
Bandwidth : 200 GB
Type : Shared Hosting

2. Baby Croc :

Price : $9.95 (monthly)
Storage : 100 GB
Bandwidth : 1 TB / 1000 GB
Type : Shared Hosting

3. Swap Croc :

Price : $14.95 (monthly)
Storage : 200 GB
Bandwidth : 2 TB / 2000 GB
Type : Shared Hosting

4. Semi Dedicated :

Price : $74.95 (monthly)
Storage : 25 GB
Bandwidth : 500 GB
Type : Shared Hosting, almost VPS like with the exception there’s no root access

Server Setup and Features :

Using CPanel and Fantastico that provides one click installation to various web application such as Wordpress
They are using PHPSuexec on their server which is a plus for security reason
You can choose whether you want PHP5 or PHP4 on your server
Using MySQL 4.1.xx as their SQL Database
Support Ruby on Rails
Adult supported (to those who’s interested on creating adult website)
On my current server i got this setup, Intel(R) Xeon(TM) CPU 3.20GHz with 4242960384 KB RAM
They can also give you SSH access to your own account known as Jailed SSH, and to activate this features you can just simply give them your photo id as identification

Server / Resources Usage Limitation :

Can not use 25% or more of system resources for longer then 90 seconds
Can only run cron entries with intervals of less than 15 minutes
There is a 200 hourly email limit per domain this limit is also applied towards mailman
30 Maximum Concurrent Connection to MySQL
If you’re using Hostgator nameserver and using shared hosting, the only option to change your DNS settings is by emailing them and ask them to change it
~~No SSH (this is not necessary to those who’s not interested on unix command)~~

Personal Opinion About Hostgator :

They’re a good webhosting company, good respond time from their sales and support team. And the Level 3 Support team is really good and does the job very well (24 Hours support). And as a side note, i live in GMT +7 timezone

Good Uptime, although sometimes there’s downtime but i'm sure that every webhosting out there has downtime issue (last night there’s downtime for about 45 Minutes reported by Pingdom Monitoring, and Siteuptime). If you want to see the uptime of this website, you can check my sidebar for it

The only thing i do not like from them is i have to email them everytime whenever i want to change / add zones to my domain. Maybe they should give access to zones editing or such stuff so i can modify my zones manually without telling them to do it whenever i want to add something (for example adding CName)

Other thing i like is the SSH access to simplify thing, although im not a unix expert

And the conclusion is, if you seek a reliable web hosting company and can be trusted, you might try using the Hostgator service and see it for yourself

0x87485B96 | Tags : Apache, Linux, Opinion, Web Hosting, Web Servers

DOSBox 0.70 Released

Reaper-X — Sun, 04 Mar 2007 01:55:24 +0000

To those who likes to play Old Dos games on their modern pc (with modern operating system of course), i'm pretty sure that most of the time the game you’re trying to play isn’t worked as you have expected.

And so that’s why DOSBox came into play, you do not have to worry about Old DOS game does not work on your Windows XP based system anymore eventhough you’ve already configured Windows XP to run that program in compatibility modes (although there might be some incompatibility issue, so far .. i can play every DOS games on my computer without problem)

Quoted from DOSBox page :

DOSBox is a DOS-emulator that uses the SDL-library which makes DOSBox very easy to port to different platforms. DOSBox has already been ported to many different platforms, such as Windows, BeOS, Linux, MacOS X...

DOSBox 0.70 Release provides more speedups and more compatibilities, and here’s the changelog :

Speed up the dynamic cpu core (certain games get much faster)
Add a dynamic fpu on x86 hosts
Improve the cycle guessing code (and make it default)
Better and more configurable joystick support
Improve the image and fat drives
Add nullmodem emulation
Various win 3.x enhanchments (video/audio/ems/win32s).
Improve CDROM detection and support
Speed up the screen drawing code
Add support for different keyboard layouts.
Various fixes to the (C/E/V)GA emulation
Extend and improve all types of emulated memory (umb/ems/xms)
Dynamic core should work on Intel Macs
Various timer related fixes
Added a few more graphic scalers

0x87485B96 | Tags : Emulators, Freeware, Linux, Open Source, Software, Windows

WXDownload Fast - Freeware Download Manager

Reaper-X — Sat, 03 Mar 2007 10:36:10 +0000

Just in case you’re searching for a new free download manager (i mean freeware of course) and can be used on multiple operating system. Maybe you should try WXDownload Fast (i'm sure that most of you never heard of this download manager before) .. and the truth is i'm using this download manager since this year (January 2007) after switching from other download manager although it is free too .. but let’s keep that aside shall we ?

Here are some of the most important features this Download Manager offer :

Segmented Download (up to 9 segment)
Scheduling Download
Bandwidth Limiting / Bandwidth Control
Manually enter referer url (normally you wont need this)
Progress Bar
and more but the most important thing for me is segmented download only

Personally i choose to switch into this free download manager because there’s no spyware, statistical tracking, sending anonymous usage data, etc in WXDownload Fast unlike some free download manager out there. But it is your decision thought ;)

As an addition, i’ve read someone saying that their CPU usage goes to 100% when they are using WXDownload on their system (link) but personally i’ve never had that problem ever since i'm using this program

0x87485B96 | Tags : Freeware, Linux, Open Source, Software, Windows

Wordpress 2.1.1 and 2.0.9 Released while bbPress going into 0.8.1

Reaper-X — Wed, 21 Feb 2007 10:08:25 +0000

Wordpress 2.1.1 has been released for public consumption and this new version contains 30 minor bugs fix. And also a recommended upgrade to those who is using Wordpress 2.1 series (although it's up to your decision whether you want to upgrade your Wordpress 2.1 installation or not) ..

And to those who still using the 2.0.x series. Version 2.0.9 includes security update to the previous Wordpress version to prevent XSS based attack. So you should upgrade to the new version as soon as possible

Other than that the bbPress also released the 0.8.1 version of their wonderful forums software today and contain small security update as well

0x87485B96 | Tags : Freeware, Linux, Open Source, Software, Windows, Wordpress, bbPress

Sun’s Project Looking Glass Released

Reaper-X — Fri, 22 Dec 2006 17:09:40 +0000

Sun Project Looking Glass has been released, and for those that didn't know about it, here’s a short description about Project Looking Glass

Quoted from LG3D Project Website :

What if your desktop was actually a 3D environment? What if your CD or movie database became a 3D jukebox? Project Looking Glass is based on Java technology and explores bringing a richer user experience to the desktop and applications via 3D windowing and visualization capabilities. It is an open source development project based on and evolved from Sun Microsystems' Advanced Development division.

As for those that want to run this program on their Windows XP box, you should note the following system requirement :

Windows Operating System Supported : Windows XP and Windows 2000
CPU : 1.4 GHz or faster recommended
RAM : 512MB recommended
Graphic Card : 3D accelerated graphics card, with at least 16MB VRAM and driver support for OpenGL, version 1.3 or greater. 16bit or 32bit color.

And if you’re interested on trying it in your system, you can go to this page to get the download location for various operating system (just make sure you choose the Stable Builds if you’re not interested on using Beta Product) ;-)

0x87485B96 | Tags : Freeware, Linux, Open Source, Software, Windows