I thought I loved markdown. I thought Dillinger (an HTML5 Markdown editor) looked remarkable. So I downloaded and installed it on an Ubuntu 14.04.1 LTS server:

$ git clone https://github.com/joemccann/dillinger.git dillinger
$ cd dillinger
$ npm i -d
$ mkdir -p public/files/{md,html,pdf}
$ sudo apt-get install nodejs
$ sudo ln -s /usr/bin/nodejs /usr/bin/node
$ npm install express
$ npm install phantomjs
$ cd dillinger
$ node app

It looks beautiful and works perfectly and even includes the ability to export to PDF. But it seems that, for me at least, markdown without Vim just isn’t the same.

Shame that.

Until now.

In their infinite wisdom ICANN has enabled custom TLDs from $185,000 plus $25,000 per annum.

Needless to say, this limits their availability only to large companies. No longer is there a level playing field - large companies can pay for a TLD that is simply not available to smaller companies, organisations or individuals.

Does this matter? Well I don’t know for certain, but this is the first time that part of the Internet has been closed off to the rest of us, and it just doesn’t feel right to me.

• http://chrisjrob.wordpress.com/feed/

I did consider setting up my own Wordpress server, but rightly or wrongly I decided to save myself the effort, time will tell whether that was the right decision or not!

I have decided to set up a web for my wider family, as a place to chat and share information. I’ve had some experience with Drupal 6, but knowing how tough it can be to upgrade between versions of Drupal, I decided to opt for Drupal 7.

Drupal is great for one main reason - it is extendible to the n’th degree - a Drupal site can be a blog, a forum, a static site, a database application. In fact there is very little you can’t do with a Drupal site. There is a price to be paid for all the functionality, I do see Drupal as being something of a jack of all trades and yet a master of none, but, if you want flexibility without the need to host multiple services, then Drupal is it.

Installing Drupal was very simple, providing you know how to configure mysql (or another database). The instructions are clearly laid out in the tar.gz; although newer users would probably be best advised to find a howto.

Having googled for a decent link for you, I have found nothing, so here goes a brief howto - from memory (you have been warned):

Install prerequisites (hopefully I haven’t missed any that won’t be brought in anyway):

$ sudo apt-get install apache2 php5-common php5-mysql \
libapache2-mod-php5 php5-gd

Visit Drupal 7 page and copy the link to the  tar.gz file for Drupal 7 and download to a suitable directory on the server:

$ wget http://ftp.drupal.org/files/projects/drupal-7.0.tar.gz

Extract contents and change into the Drupal directory:

$ tar -xvvzf drupal-7.0.tar.gz
$ cd drupal-7.0

Read the INSTALL.txt file and follow the steps to move the installation to its proper home (under debian /var/www):

$ cd ..
$ sudo mkdir /var/www/drupal
$ sudo mv drupal-7.0/* drupal-7.0/.htaccess /var/www/drupal/

Set the ownership and group on the new directory:

$ sudo a2enmod rewrite
$ sudo /etc/init.d/apache restart

Once installed Drupal 7 looks very attractive and feels a very slick product. I was particularly impressed by the ability to paste a link to a Drupal module tar.gz file and click Install. Doubtless this is not the recommended way to install modules, but it worked fine.

One thing that most users will wish to install is a WYSIWYG editor, and after much trial and error I found that the CKEditor module (and not the WYSIWYG module + CKEditor) worked best.

On the downside, I am struggling to find all the modules that I need. As in previous versions of Drupal, there are a great many that have still not updated for Drupal 7. In particular, I would like an instant messaging module, but cannot find such a thing.  I would imagine this issue will get easier over time, and I would rather be on the current version now and be able to add features later, than be on the old version now with all features and have the worry about how I am ever going to upgrade!

Install Ruby on Rails3 on Debian Lenny

Warning

I know nothing about Ruby on Rails, but this is how I ended up successfully (I think!) installing it. There may be better ways.

Download and Compile Ruby

At the time of writing, the current version is 1.9.2

• http://www.ruby-lang.org/en/downloads/

I tend to use checkinstall wherever possible, so that I can manage the package via apt-get and dpkg.

$ sudo apt-get install checkinstall

$ wget ftp://ftp.ruby-lang.org//pub/ruby/1.9/ruby-1.9.2-p0.tar.gz
$ tar -xvvzf ruby-1.9.2-p0.tar.gz
$ cd ruby-1.9.2-p0

$ ./configure
$ make
$ sudo checkinstall

Set the version number to 1.9.2

Install Rails

$ sudo gem install rails

Install Passenger

N.B. This assumes you are using apache2.

$ sudo gem install passenger
$ sudo passenger-install-apache2-module

Please read thoroughly the output from this the last command, as it will give you the information you require for the next section.

Enable Passenger

$ cd /etc/apache2/mods-available

Create or edit the following files, using the output from passenger-install-apache2-module above.

passenger.conf

<IfModule mod_passenger.c>
PassengerRoot /usr/local/lib/ruby/gems/1.9.1/gems/passenger-2.2.15
PassengerRuby /usr/local/bin/ruby
</IfModule>

passenger.load

LoadModule passenger_module /usr/local/lib/ruby/gems/1.9.1/gems/passenger-2.2.15/ext/apache2/mod_passenger.so

Enable in Apache

You should now be able to enable the apache module with:

$ sudo a2enmod passenger

Update Vhosts

This will vary depending on your system, but you are aiming to have a vhost configuration similar to the following:

<VirtualHost *:80>
    ServerName www.yourhost.com
    DocumentRoot /somewhere/public    # <-- be sure to point to 'public'!
    RailsEnv development              # <-- change to testing/production as appropriate (see note below)
    RackEnv development               # <-- change to testing/production as appropriate (see note below)
    <Directory /somewhere/public>
        AllowOverride all             # <-- relax Apache security settings
        Options -MultiViews           # <-- MultiViews must be turned off
    </Directory>
</VirtualHost>

By default, passenger uses the Ruby on Rails production database, which may or may not be appropriate, depending on where you are in the development process. If you are still developing your rails app, then you may want to set in the above:

RailsEnv development
RackEnv development

In theory you only need the former, but the presence of the file config.ru in your application directory makes passenger require RackEnv instead.

Otherwise, when making changes to your database, do remember to:

# db:migrate RAILS_ENV=production
# touch tmp/restart.txt

Otherwise your application will not work.

ISPConfig

If you are using ISPConfig, then I currently have this working by adding the following to the sites Apache Directives in the admin control panel:

DocumentRoot /var/www/web11/web/blog/public
<Directory /var/www/web11/web/blog/public>
    AllowOverride all
    Options -MultiViews
</Directory>

And then edit /etc/apache2/vhosts/Vhosts_ispconfig.conf and remove the old DocumentRoot line from the relevant vhost section. Unfortunately you will have to do this everytime you change your site configuration. This is very poor, there has to be a better way.

Installing JQuery

These are rather poor notes, you are probably better looking elsewhere, but the key thing is that the long and complex instructions for installing jquery that abound on the Internet should be avoided. The installation should be a mere couple of commands.

Either type:

$ gem install jquery-rails

Or as I preferred, edit your Gemfile (in the root of your rails project) and add:

gem 'jquery-rails'

My handwritten notes don’t say this, but I believe you would then need to run:

$ bundle install

And then (add --ui on the end of the following command to include the jquery UI):

$ rails generate jquery:install

This is just a list of the hacks or fixes that I currently have in place on Iceweasel. These were not my invention, and surely I owe a debt of thanks to various sites; unfortunately I have no way of knowing which sites.

Some of these hacks are too facilitate system wide control, others help to maximise performance on a thin client system.

Iceweasel Global Preferences

/etc/iceweasel/pref/iceweasel.js

// This is the Debian specific preferences file for Iceweasel
// You can make any change in here, it is the purpose of this file.
// You can, with this file and all files present in the
// /etc/iceweasel/pref directory, override any preference that is
// present in /usr/lib/iceweasel/defaults/preferences directory.
// While your changes will be kept on upgrade if you modify files in
// /etc/iceweasel/pref, please note that they won't be kept if you
// do make your changes in /usr/lib/iceweasel/defaults/preferences.
//
// Note that lockPref is allowed in these preferences files if you
// don't want users to be able to override some preferences.

lockPref("extensions.update.enabled", true);

// Use LANG environment variable to choose locale
lockPref("intl.locale.matchOS", true);

// Disable default browser checking.
lockPref("browser.shell.checkDefaultBrowser", false);

// ========= LTSP SPECIFIC HACKS ========

// Disable "safe browsing" feature that hogs CPU, HDD, etc. etc. in LTSP
lockPref("browser.safebrowsing.enabled", false);
lockPref("browser.safebrowsing.malware.enabled", false);

// Disable annoying location-bar suggestion "feature" that is sludgy with thin-clients
lockPref("browser.urlbar.maxRichResults", 0);

// Disable offline/disk caching of web pages
lockPref("browser.cache.offline.enable", false);
lockPref("browser.cache.disk.enable", false);
lockPref("browser.cache.memory.enable", false);

// ========= PROXY HACKS =========

lockPref("network.proxy.type", 1);
lockPref("network.proxy.share_proxy_settings", true);
lockPref("network.proxy.http", "192.168.1.254");
lockPref("network.proxy.http_port", 800);
lockPref("network.proxy.no_proxies_on", "localhost, 127.0.0.1, 192.168.1.0/24");

// ========= MISC HACKS ==========

lockPref("browser.startup.homepage", "http://www.example.co.uk/");
lockPref("app.update.enabled", false);

Iceweasel Image Caching

I understand that, on websites with certain size of image, that the thin client xorg starts to take a ridiculous amount of memory, resulting xorg dieing and the thin client returning to the login page. The following may help:

$ sudo echo "MOZ_DISABLE_IMAGE_OPTIMIZE=1" >> /etc/profile

References

I must apologise for the lack of references, if you recognise some of your work in the above, please do accept my apologies.