Last progress made: August 2 2003 04:50PM
Forum discussion thread here: Rant Server Thread.
Server IP Upgrade
Mar 13 2003
Just a quick note. We have changed the IP address of the server today. All DNS should be OK, but let me know if you find any problems.
Still Working On Some Server BugsDec 6 2002
In case any of you were wondering, there are still some issues with the forum. I had to make the filesystem automatically touch all of the php files in order to prevent Apache from continuing to munge the cache-expiry times of the scripts that generate the forums. I also had to change some other people's scripts in order to get them working with register_globals turned off (you know who you are). Please let me know if you encounter any other problems. Check the archives for more details.
Bugs in PHP 4.2.2 / APACHE 2.0.40Nov 20, 2002 (2:55PM PST)
Found some new bugs in RedHat Linux 8.0 today, with a couple of workarounds. Here is the
deal. Let us suppose that you install RedHat 8.0 and have some PHP scripts you are running...
"BAD" idea.
Stick with RedHat 7.3. The problem is that 8.0 comes with Apache 2, which does
not play nice with PHP yet. It is in fact still considered beta. The first bug I have run
into is that cache control is whacky, exacerbated by what is reportedly an inconsistency
in the way IE caches pages. My biggest problem was with PhpBB, since the codebase is fairly
large. Here is the solution as brought to me by the
nice people
on the phpBB support board...
I'm running Apache 2.0.39 and PHP 4.2.2, but I'm sure that it will work on later versions.
I've had the same ridiculous problem with the browser-caching, I've solved it by adding some META TAGS to my overall_header and overall_footer HTML files in my style's template. (Yes, META TAGS in overall_footer too!)
First, I've commented the three header() function calls that you can find in the phpbb file, located at [phpbb directory]/includes/page_header.php, near the end of the file, starting at the line number 449:
header ('Cache-Control: private, pre-check=0, post-check=0, max-age=0');
header ('Expires: ' . gmdate('D, d M Y H:i:s', time()) . ' GMT');
header ('Last-Modified: ' . gmdate('D, d M Y H:i:s') . ' GMT');
Comment them, so they look as follows:
// header ('Cache-Control: private, pre-check=0, post-check=0, max-age=0');
// header ('Expires: ' . gmdate('D, d M Y H:i:s', time()) . ' GMT');
// header ('Last-Modified: ' . gmdate('D, d M Y H:i:s') . ' GMT');
You can also just delete those three lines.
Those lines puts a header in the html connection wich is sent to the user, due to the fact that those headers are included as POST data, they have more priority than conventional META TAGS. (I think is for that reason, not sure)
So, now we don't have any cache-control information with the pages that are sent to our phpbb users. To ensure that the pages will be always reloaded, and not taken from the cache, I've added the conventional META TAGS to my overall_header.tpl file, located in [phpbb directory]/templates/[theme name]/
<meta http-equiv="Pragma" content="no-cache">
<meta http-equiv="cache-control" content="no-cache">
<meta http-equiv="Expires" content="-1">
Remember that those metas have to be inserted inside the head ... /head tags. Also, I've read somewhere that some versions of IE browsers have a bug in their cache control, and the solution is to put one meta in other head ... /head section, located at the end of the HTML page.
To do this, I've inserted the following lines in the file overall_footer.tpl, located in the same place as the header:
<head>
<meta http-equiv="PRAGMA" content="NO-CACHE">
</head>
Remember to insert those three lines outside the body ... /body tag, but inside the html ... /html tag, si it looks as follows:
------------------
(... whatever HTML your overall_footer.tpl has ...)
</body>
<head;>
<meta http-equiv="PRAGMA" content="NO-CACHE">
</head>
</html>
------------------ It worked fine for me, and without using the "touch" trick.
Hope it works good for you too.
Big changes this weekend for the Rant Server. I updated and upgraded the entire thing from Linux Mandrake, to Red Hat 8.0. In the past I have always been afraid to run a RedHat with a .0 after it, but I have been qualifying this one for a while, and I am pretty happy with it overall. PHP 4.2.2 and APACHE 2 are interesting, and I have installed APT-GET to make updates less painful.
I have also been working on some cool new software for generating the web pages for my clients sites. More information on the front page soon!
Cthuugle Sept 12 2002I set up a search engine called Cthuugle (you know... like Google? haha?). Check it out and tell me what you think!
Moved My HomepageAug 17 2002
No big deal, just took a few minutes and moved the Space Meat site over to the main Rant Server. Mainly just an uptime thing, but also helps to avoid catching shit from Shaw later on, in case somebody ACTUALLY LINKS TO ME...
Firewall and Stuff
Jul 29 2002
There is a new firewall installed on the Rant Server, and we should be now immune to attacks on either our MySQL Database Server, or any other open ports. The firewall we are using is a heavily modified version of the Mon Motha firewall. Stole their ICMP protection and anti intrusion stuff, and replaced with a single NIC basic firewall for the fron side.
~User DirectoriesJul 27 2002
I just added some user directory support to some of the users on the Rant Server. This page is now mirrored on the ~enki url. As an added bonus, I added a firewall to the server, but shut the whole system down when I accidentally flushed the firewall tables with a default policy of DENY set up. Result? No connectee! Nothing works. You can't even auth locally if you try. The system will be back up on monday morning.
Forums
Jul 27 2002
Just added a new forum to the Rant server for RantRadio. You can check it out here.
UPDATE: I have also added a forum for Porn On Beta. You can read it here.
UPDATE: I have also added a forum for Quoth's personal page. You can read it here.