12-Nov-2006

BLOG RUNS
using Wordpress - on Diana, of course. It was very easy (like I thought) to enable multiple blogs on that machine without having to copy everything. Just using a search list as a root directory and copying and adjusting the configuration file did the trick. Of course, after adding the new root to the server configuration (since it has it's own logical root), but that would be needed anyway. Theer might still be some issues but the main fact is: it works great. I have requested to incorporate the required changes in the main code stream - we'll see.
The new address is www.grootersnet.nl/sysblog/ (don't forget the last "/" otherwise it wont work yet - one of those little annoyances...)
cURL
is required to be set up to get the Blogger content (this blog, that is), but HP's PHP-engine that is used for WASD to be able to handle PHJPO code, does not include it - and the cURL site claims it ought to be built-in since 4.0, and since HP's PHP engine is based on 4.1, so you would expect it to be included. Alas, is isnt. But I could download 7.15-2 for VMS and installed it, but without rebuilding the whole PHP stuff, it's not possible. And rebuilding PHPSHR from scratch, without the required logicals or even MMS files? I don't want to get onto that!.
Having that, I could give it a try to get the data and I did. However, it's quite a lot of work to get it all into the new blog...

10-Nov-2006

Update of Wordpress
to 2.0.5 after craeting a backup (see yesterday's issue). Deleting all files unless otherwise stated is a bit srastic, so I renamed the directory, created a new one and filled it up with all the "old" files. I downloaded the new zip file (the tar.gz file cannot be expanded on VMS since gunzip doesn't recognize it as a gzip file...) and unzipped it, fired the upgrade script and that was just it.
At least, it looked like that but it wasn't: publishing a new post seemed not to return - it simply failed. The page however was published so it was just the return to the edit pages that failed.
So I still had to do what was in the guide.
After that, It's all Ok!
Next
is to create several blogs. It must be possible since the database contains a "BlogId", by which I presume different blogs carry different ID's and so there can be multiple blogs on the same code. Following the good practice to have each on them on a (concealed) device by itself, that logical could be a search list: first the blog root, and second the general code. Blog-specific code can than be kept on the blog directory itself.
Oh, the wonders of VMS!!!!

09-Nov-2006

Wordpress works!

One problem I could solve myself - which gave the admin page the proper look. The other one required some assistnace but I was on the right track.
Anyway, it's just 4 lines:
redirect /wordpress/ /wordpress/index.php?
redirect /wordpress/**/ /wordpress/*/index.php?
exec /wordpress/**.php (cgi_exe:phpwasd.exe)/wordpress/*.php ods=5 script=syntax=unix script=query=none map=once
pass /wordpress/* /wordpress/* ods=5 search=none
and now Wordpress is up and running.
Not for the real stuff yest, it will require some extra work and investigation, to be sure the product is up to the standards.

But...
still one thing more to cover, but I think this is merely a PHP problem.
Craeting backups requires write access to two directores because some data is written there (the backup itself and some metadata). That's not really a problem, were it not that PHP will just look to the UIC-based protection, and ignore ACL's.
Workaround: use PHPMYADMIN (running as well) or mysqladmin.

Security
Someone requested assistance on problems with the OSU webserver and my suspicion is that this is caused by intrusoin detection. To help him, I created a small procedure to scan the accounting files for people using bad passwords quite often and I found some attempts on Diana abusing the FTP account (port 21) since 01-Jan-2005: twice assuming Diana is a Windowes machine (who else would try to overflow the server with FTP logins as "Administrator" several times a second - for over an hour!. And one trying to attempt to login as 'root'.
All failed, of course.
But now I now scan accounting on a daily basis - nothing found anymore.