Category Archives: Linux Servers and Software

General Linux server and software information.

Gallery 3 for photo site

I have used Gallery 1.x http://gallery.menalto.com for years on my site and it always worked well for my needs and sat inside my old PostNuke CMS.

I had tried to upgrade to Gallery 2 at some point but failed.

Now that I really do need to upgrade I have found that the Gallery 3 has been out and stable for some time, but the upgrade process requires G1 -> G2 -> G3 as there is no G1 ->G3 path.

So I am currently working on a Gallery upgrade.

Migrated my old G1 install to my dev server and modified the config so that it would run correctly.

Installed Gallery 2 and tried following the migration instructions. This included a need to Activate the URL Rewrite plugin. This gave me some grief as it would not go past the ‘configure’ option. Until I realised that I need to ‘tick’ the select box ‘Force’ in the PathInfo screen when clicking on Save. This forces the save despite the system not correctly detecting the PathInfo success.

Next I installed Gallery 3 and that is a real improvement over the convoluted process for installing in G2. They have taken the lead from WordPress with the really simple install process. Enabling a migration from G2 to G3 is running and from there I’ll be looking to start doing some themes and plugins.

The purpose is to get my toy car collection visible and start updating as it has not changed in 5 years!

Automysql Backup deleting old files

I was looking for an update to Automysqlbackup that would allow me to delete older files and keep down the disk space being used. The daily and weekly directories are rotated in version 2.5 that I have used for the last couple of years, but the monthly are retained in perpetuity.

Sourceforge has version 2.5.1-01 as the latest from 2010 which I grabbed to see what has changed.

While Mark over at his MySQL Fanboy site has also made some updates to Automysqlbackup to add some deletion options. The download link in his post is broken, but you can find his updated Automysqlbackup script in his Files area.

Now, just to be sure of what I was working with I ran up BeyondCompare (the excellent comparison tool that I have used for years) to see what Mark had done to Automysqlbackup and what the new version held.

To start Marks version is based from the July 2010 2.5.1-01 Sourceforge release and he has updated the version numbers as he added features, currently 2.5.3 released Jan 2011. Except in the script proper at line 511 where it is still v2.5.2. I think it could be added as a constant in the settings at the top of the file which would ensure consistency.

There are a few other changes he has made including directory chmod’ing of 700 to the directories that it makes. Again I’d prefer to see this, if it exists, not to be hard-coded but driven by a setting that can be modded at the top of the file like:  PERMISSIONS= ‘0700’  or 0770 as I would prefer.

Now the bit I was interested in was the retention of older files.  The new version from Sourceforge has added monthly rotation settings which are hard coded into 2.5.1-01 as 5 months.  Marks 2.5.3 provides two new constants that allow for the selection of periods other than 5 months or weeks.

In the end Marks changes dont really help me, so I am sticking with the 2.5.1-01 version for the moment. However some of the features he has added may be useful in the future so the time I spent today was not wasted.

Windows 7 and Samba domain joining issue

It seems like I cannot get away from this as an issue.

I’ve got a SME Server with samba 3.2.15 on it and I use it as my PDC for the Windows 7 workstations.

I wrote about settings etc for Windows 7 last year when I first had an issue, but it seemed to be ok.

This week while I built and installed a new PC for myself I could not get it to connect to the domain.

The error I kept getting was that the domain controller could not be found.

Having tried everything that I had used previously including the Samba registry settings, I ended up trawling via Google.

I located this website with a utility for joining domains.

And having downloaded and run it, it works. Simple as that. It just works.  I love it.

Strange thing is that it says that all it does is what I was doing manually. In any case, I am now joined to the samaba domain. Job done.

WordPress SME Server 8 iBay .htaccess resolved

This WordPress site is hosted in a WordPress Network setup, i.e. the equivalent of the old MU setup.

I have had this working fine on the live site (where you are now) but had issues with the wp-admin failing with a 404 error in my development server based on SME Server version 8 beta6.

As it turns out the hours of messing around I did came down to a very simple fix.

The .htaccess file has to be adapted for operation within an SME Server iBay.

The WordPress recommended configuration assumes that WordPress is in the root of the site:

[code]
# BEGIN WordPress
RewriteEngine On
RewriteBase /
[/code]

while an SME Server iBay is in fact a Rewrite process as well.

[code]
# BEGIN WordPress
RewriteEngine On
RewriteBase /ibayname
[/code]

This will allow the Rewrite’ing of the wp-admin to work with the Network settings for the virtualised sub-directories for the sub-blogs.

My Reference: Apache 2 Rewrite Documentation

My post at contribs.org the home of SME Server.