30-Jul-2005

TUD
Check the XP machines for a change. AntiVirus and system need a checkup. Started with Athene, just XP because Anti-Virus is updated automatically. It's a small one this time: just the program that checks the activation. This is no problem - all havce a valid (legal) installation.
Found new MSN toolbar. Yep, why not? Well:
It will change the home page to be MSN.COM and that cannot be changed "due to security restrictions". Not even by the administrator. Even worse: it will connect to the internet when searching the harddisk.
Removing it required a system restore, because it still kept the reference to MSN as home page unchangable. After that, ani-virus didn't come up properly and had to re-installed. Ok, SYSMGR's mistake, since that had been updated before a restore-point was created on installation of the new MSN toolbar (that does NOT create one. Another reason not to install that!)
Done Hera and Aphrodite as well, but here NO MSN update either, now knowing what's wrong there. For a change, without any problem.

This took all time, so no progress on the Pivot front. One thing, though: users cannot register themselves????

But for the rest, Diana just does it's job.
Checked the logfiles - had some attempts from German script kiddies to get into the FTP account. At least, it looks like that. Have to create a script to find out what ISP they use and have the taken off-line due to these attempts? (No good ISP will allow hacking attempts, would they...)

29-Jul-2005

Do it again, Joe...
Re-installed the application - apart from the web - in a separate environment so restore would be easy. Checked all double dotted references and changed all but last into underscore - like the files are stored on the disk. Next removed the old, broken environment and re-craeted it from the just edited one.
Primarily, it works, but there still are some flaws: test weblog doesn't come up properly: texts don't show up and calendar isn't complete; there is HTML missing, the file ends all of a sudden. There must be some big error in a PHP script....

Time limits - so next check will be done somewhat later. Need to do some housekeeping first.

28-Jul-2005

Blown to pieces....
Enabled Debug mode in Administration revealed some more items to be changed: there are more files that contain multiple dots where referenced - one of them causing store to fail. Changed more of them and looked deeper and changed some more. After that, purged the whole lot and removed files expected to be created before today. Alas - that, or something else, blew the application: new blogs could not be created; that is: Pivot said it did exist but the directories that would hold the blog were missing and were never craeted - so files could not be stored either....
Existing files in the created blog were now missing as well, and logging in that one kept showing up even when specified it should not log nor debug....

Have to redo the whole thing!

27-Jul-2005

PIVOT RUNNING!!!
After a minor change to include a required file (pv_core.php referenced a file that containes multiple dots but it was stored with all but last dot changed to underscore) and adjusting APACHE$COMMON:[PHP]PHP.INI to include almost all modules, PIVOT could be started and used. Just creation of a weblog seems to go wrong somewhere, still to be investigated. But creating new entries is no problem:

so preview works great.
Only : saving won't work:


But there IS a start...

26-Jul-2005

Pivot installed
There was a small time slice left, in which the PIVOT non-DB content management system could be installed on Diana, under the (protected) home web. It required some hacking with directtoy names and logicals but now it can be started.
However, it' not yet working. The primary screen shows up but then the application crashes and gives a nice error screen:

Might be the double dot in filename default_theme (dot) inc (dot) php? There has been trouble before withis this feature that Apache 1.3 cannot handle. Wait for 2.1 that should be out in a few weeks (and allows non-STREAM_LF files), or chance all filesnames AND their references. That is quite a lot of work, probably. On the other hand, it may be worthwhile.
Funnt part: the zip, as retrieved from the internet, seems to be built on Windows, given the way EDIT shows the content: ending on each line, so it can be done on Windows.

25-Jul-2005

Still no time....
No time again. AAARGH. Started with processing the hodiday pictures pretty late in the evening, so no time to do anything more than lower the restrictions on mail. Some accounts cannot reach the domain since their domains cannot be resolved to IP address, or their IP adddresses can not be translated into domains. Lifted these, temporarily.

24-Jul-2005

If time permitted ...
...TOMCAT 2.1 would have been installed (including the required changes to have it all running as is found it does), and some PHP stuff like PIVOT (CMS without a database).
But alas.
XP maintenance on Athene, Aphrodite and Hera left too little time. Stupid systems! Patches + patches + AntiVirus updates + Malware scanner updates + tuning what is to be run and what's not + Disk defragmentation and re-organisation consumed time, as well as administrative duties (as always in the weekends).

Don't like that, at all.

Well, perhaps later this week, but it remains to be seen if that would really happen. There is so much else to be taken care of (work on the hilday pictures to get them published, for instance).

20-Jul-2005

Webserver update
Yesterday, a number of upgrades to be installed on Diana have been downloaded: SWS (Apache) 1.3-1, Tomcat 2.1, the MOD_PHP module and Java 1.4.2-p2.
Tonight, SWS has been updated, but that didn't go in a wink. Actually, the upgrade wasn't the problem, that went smooth as usual, TOMCAT came up like always, but the webserver failed to start. Via apache$$server.log it was found that files did have the wrong protection (yes, quite obviously if installed under the SYSTEM account), they were owned by SYSTEM and just owner and group had access; no access therefore, for APACHE$WWW, and so the server didn't start. Changing ownership didn't work either since some files were found to be not accessable (File access conflict) even when both SWS as TOMCAT were stopped. In the end it turned out that SYS$STARTUP:APACHE$CONFIG had to be executed to get things right - and that was not in the release notes. At least, it was not noticed.
Not that it helped a lot, now startup complained about someting in MOD_SSL. Well, disabled that for the moment, it isn't used at the moment anyway. After that, both Tomcat and Apache started as smooth as always (though time-consuming), so on the edge of available time it was up and running again.
See if we can do PHP tomorrow (installing Pivot CMS, perhaps?), or some time next wek(end), and get SSL to work.

Athene's performance is getting worse and worse, for no appearant reason it will freeze for a while. Again a motherboard issue? It's the second new board in a few weeks, and nothing has changed in the mean time. Or could it be a matter of the BELKIN wireless card software? Not neccessarily, since freezing happens without network as well. But some Belkin related service does exist and may trigger problems.
In a much lesser extent the same problem occurs on Aphrodite, but that might be a problem with WindowsXP, or applications, that cann ot handle the latest HT Pentium4 in there. Cannot be a Belkin problem since the software is not installed there.
To be investigated...

(Updated 26-Jul-2005, 14:15)

18-Jul-2005

Crash invetsigation...
Gathered some data to investigate SWB crash, by request as an answer on ITRC, and sent it back to ITRC.
...more downloads...
Downloaded new versions of Apache (1.3-1) and SOAP (2.0, based on AXIS), because it may be needed to share education with a collegue developer in the US, and a new version of JAVA (1.4.2, Patch 2), using Aphrodite since SWB on Diana was crashing (see yesterday). Installed new JAVA version after having stopped Tomcat. Restarted it - and tried SWB again - and now it works ????... I don't get it.
Found TOMCAT starts with JAVA 1.4.1, still available on the machine. New version (2.1) downloaded, this is to be installed some day - not too far off - together with SWS 1.3 and SOAP.
Have to download XML interfaces as well.
...and PC updates
Done the defragmentation of Athene and cleanup of Hera. First is somewhat faster and doesn't stop that often in responding. Antivirus on Hera also updated - was a number of weeks behind. Defrag to be done there.

17-Jul-2005

Delayed maintenance
Returned from a two week holiday, had to do some delayed maintenance on Diana: archiving, consolidating, cleanup... And patches and therefore the system was rebooted. Sitelog to be updated, it's old (beginning of May, I think)
...new software hickup...
Installed new version of Secure Web Browser (based on Mozilla 1.7.8). SYLOGIN.COM has been adapted so the command is available for everyone logging in, and the files are installed so even non-privileged users can use it (Why does one require privilege to browse the Web? Well, at least ONE question to ask...) and it worked well - until TOMCAT was started; now SWB crashes with ACCVIO:

$ @sys$common:[cswb]mozilla
Starting MOZILLA-BIN...
%SYSTEM-F-ACCVIO, access violation, reason mask=00, virtual ddress=0000000000000000, PC=FFFFFFFF809A84E8, PS=0000001B
%TRACE-F-TRACEBACK, symbolic stack dump follows

To be posted on ITRC and see what might be the point.
...and PC trouble
Performance problems on Athene - company laptop - and Hera, first needs its disk reorganized (that is: defragmented), second a cleanup. First done today, second to be done later.
Sometimes, Aphrodite still freezes, for no appearant reason, during a minute or so. To be investigated