Tar + SSH

This would be the best way to recursively copy a directory over SSH.

tar cf - dir/ | ssh host.com tar xf -

Steps to make encfs work on Debian GNU/Linux

Compile or install a kernel with support for FUSE (found in `make menuconfig` under Filesystems).

sudo apt-get install fuse-utils
sudo vigr && sudo vigr -s # add yourself to the fuse group
su - `whoamì` # alternatively you can logout and login again
              # to update your group
mkdir $HOME/.crypt $HOME/crypt
encfs $HOME/.crypt $HOME/crypt

Answer the questions (pass phrase etc), go with default settings in most cases.

DONE!

NTFS on Linux

Use ntfs-3g to get good support for read/write on NTFS. FUSE is required.

Out Amarok, In Songbord

I've been looking for a replacement for Amarok. I don't like the idea of depending on KDE software unless I really need to.

I've settled for the really nice Songbird, which has a very active development team (blog) and is based on Mozilla (xulrunner). For me, it's perfect. I have a fairly large music library and it's nice to once again have the ability to discover it. One big playlist is actually a huge advantage compared to Amarok's design where your playlist consists only of a small, manually selected subset of your music collection. I know there are dynamic playlists in Amarok and blah, blah, but those features just didn't cut it for me. Plus it's nice to see there are quite a few plugins for Songbird.

It's not faster than Amarok but it's not slower either. There are a few bugs, most notably one regarding handling of symlinks in watch directory. I guess it'll be fixed in due time.

Unfortunately, it's not packaged for Debian GNU/Linux yet. You can still download it and run it from your home directory though. I urge you to try it out!

Get songbird.

Debian + lighttpd + php5 + phpmyadmin + virtual hosts

I installed a webserver with Debian GNU/Linux etch tonight. I wanted to set up ligttpd, phpmyadmin and vhosts, which proved to be easy enough.

1. Installation

apt-get install php4-cgi lighttpd phpmyadmin

2. Enable PHP

To get PHP working, run the following command

lighty-enable-mod fastcgi

3. Get phpmyadmin running

To configure phpmyadmin, add the following to your lighttpd.conf

alias.url = ( "/phpmyadmin" => "/usr/share/phpmyadmin" )

Please note there are no trailing slashes, which enables us to reach phpmyadmin from both of these:

example.com/phpmyadmin
example.com/phpmyadmin/

4. Configure vhosts

I want my site to be reachable from www.example.com and example.com. I also want my users to be able to reach their personal pages, located in ~/public_html, from username.example.com.

This was my solution:

$HTTP["host"] =~ "^(www\.)?example\.com$" {
    evhost.path-pattern = "/var/www/"
    alias.url = ( "/phpmyadmin" => "/usr/share/phpmyadmin" )
}
else $HTTP["host"] =~ "example\.com" {
    evhost.path-pattern = "/home/%4/public_html/"
}

Note I have moved the configuration for phpmyadmin so it can not be reached from the users' subdomains.

5. SSL

For added security, run the following in the directory /etc/lighttpd.

lighty-enable-mod ssl
openssl req -new -x509 -keyout server.pem \
-out server.pem -days 365 -nodes

Hope this helps.

Selecting the fastest debian mirror

Use the tool apt-spy before netselect-apt. netselect-apt needs traceroute, which is unavailable behind some firewalls while apt-spy does not.

New blog

I've been thinking about setting up this blog for a couple of years now. The idea is very simple. Whenever I have a problem with any of my computers, or whenever I find a great solution to a common task, I will post it here.

I am not a native english speaker. The reason for having the blog in english is simply the fact that every once in a while, when you are googling some weird problem, you get exactly one hit. The problem is that it is in some language that Google can not translate! So even if that very page contains the solution to your problem, it will never help you. This really annoys me and is plain evil. So I will try to be a friendly neighbour and write in a language that people actually are able to understand.

I will not make any claims as to having the most original solution, and I will not guarantee it will work for everyone. What I am saying is that it worked for me, so you could give it a try. Then you are on your own.

So, my friends: Let us RTFM and GTFW!