Archive for December, 2009
I am offering maintenance contracts to a few businesses now and I want to be able to keep track of any issues they may have for billing purposes as well as the many other obvious reasons you should keep track of this information. I have been looking around for quite some time now and have not found the right application to use. I was searching through synaptics for another application and came across Request Tracker. Here is what I did to get it installed:
1. Need to install some pre-requisites.
aptitude install libalgorithm-dependency-perl libapache-session-perl libapache-sessionx-perl libapt-pkg-perl libarchive-tar-perl libcache-cache-perl libcache-simple-timedexpiry-perl libcalendar-simple-perl libcarp-assert-more-perl libcarp-assert-perl libclass-accessor-perl libclass-autouse-perl libclass-container-perl libclass-data-inheritable-perl libclass-factory-util-perl libclass-inspector-perl libclass-returnvalue-perl libclass-singleton-perl libclone-perl libcompress-zlib-perl libconfig-tiny-perl libconvert-binhex-perl libcrypt-ssleay-perl libdatetime-locale-perl libdatetime-perl libdatetime-timezone-perl libdbd-sqlite3-perl libdbi-perl libdbix-dbschema-perl libdbix-searchbuilder-perl libdevel-stacktrace-perl libdevel-symdump-perl libdigest-sha1-perl liberror-perl libexception-class-perl libexporter-lite-perl libextutils-autoinstall-perl libextutils-cbuilder-perl libextutils-parsexs-perl libfile-find-rule-perl libfile-flat-perl libfile-ncopy-perl libfile-remove-perl libfile-slurp-perl libfont-afm-perl libfreezethaw-perl libgd-gd2-noxpm-perl libgd-graph-perl libgd-text-perl libhtml-format-perl libhtml-mason-perl libhtml-parser-perl libhtml-scrubber-perl libhtml-tagset-perl libhtml-tree-perl libhttp-server-simple-perl libinline-perl libio-socket-ssl-perl libio-stringy-perl libio-zlib-perl libipc-sharelite-perl liblocale-gettext-perl liblocale-maketext-fuzzy-perl liblocale-maketext-lexicon-perl liblog-dispatch-perl libmail-sendmail-perl libmailtools-perl libmime-perl libmldbm-perl libmodule-versions-report-perl libnet-daemon-perl libnet-ssleay-perl libnumber-compare-perl libparams-util-perl libparams-validate-perl libparse-recdescent-perl libpath-class-perl libplrpc-perl libpod-escapes-perl libpod-simple-perl libpod-tests-perl libprefork-perl libregexp-common-perl libset-intspan-perl libsub-uplevel-perl libterm-readkey-perl libtest-classapi-perl libtest-exception-perl libtest-inline-perl libtest-pod-perl libtest-simple-perl libtext-autoformat-perl libtext-charwidth-perl libtext-glob-perl libtext-iconv-perl libtext-quoted-perl libtext-reform-perl libtext-template-perl libtext-wikiformat-perl libtext-wrapi18n-perl libtext-wrapper-perl libtime-modules-perl libtimedate-perl libtree-simple-perl libuniversal-exports-perl libuniversal-require-perl liburi-perl libwant-perl libwww-mechanize-perl libwww-perl libxml-libxml-common-perl libxml-libxml-perl libxml-namespacesupport-perl libxml-parser-perl libxml-rss-perl libxml-sax-perl libxml-simple-perl libdbd-pg-perl
I don’t think this is all of them because based on some steps below I am still missing dependencies. We will get to those later though.
2. I then downloaded the latest 3.8 release to my home directory with the following command:
wget http://download.bestpractical.com/pub/rt/release/rt.tar.gz
3. Then I extracted the archive.
tar xzvf rt.tar.gz
4. Run the configure script
cd rt-3.8.6
./configure
5. This is where I ran into problems. That is obviously why they have this command.
make testdeps
I got several missing dependencies and so I ran the following command to solve the problem. And it worked.
make fixdeps
6. Now after all of the dependencies have been met it is time to run the installation.
make install
7. Now we need to configure our database. The default location for the config file is here:
/opt/rt3/etc/RT_SiteConfig.pm
The default settings are all stored in /opt/rt3/etc/RT_Config.pm. You can copy and paste the correct settings you want to change into the /opt/rt3/etc/RT_SiteConfig.pm file. Here are the ones I changed:
8. Now back in the source code directory. Run the following:
make initialize-database
You will have to type in your mysql root password here for this part. It will automatically create the database for you. So don’t use one that has already been made here.
9. Now you will need to configure your Apache server settings for your new site. Here is an example using mod_perl 2.x
<VirtualHost *:80>
ServerName rt.n-demand-designz.com
DocumentRoot /opt/rt3/share/html
PerlRequire “/opt/rt3/bin/webmux.pl”
<Location />
AddDefaultCharset UTF-8
SetHandler perl-script
PerlResponseHandler RT::Mason
</Location>
ErrorLog /var/log/apache2/rt.ndd.com.error.log
# Possible values include: debug, info, notice, warn, error, crit,
# alert, emerg.
LogLevel warn
CustomLog /var/log/apache2/rt.ndd.com.access.log combined
ServerSignature On
</VirtualHost>
10. Now you just need to restart apache.
11. Installed! Now it is time to start configuring Request Tracker!
People keep complaining about the mail server and when I go look through the log files and do various testing procedures it seems as if nothing is wrong really. Needless to say I was searching through Google and found a nice little script that will search through your mail logs and give you some detailed information in a human readable format. Seems as if there are quite a few neat little scripts on this page. Oh well, it is worth checking out if you manage any Linux mailservers.
I know this has been beaten to death. But maybe at the end of my post I will give you my bash auto-install script. I can’t say that it will be perfect, but if you have SSH access to your box, it will definitely be worth checking out!
On to the list!
1. Meta Robots – This tool is great! Who wants to create meta tags. Such a chore. This little gem does it for you based on the keywords in your article! Would rather do a little editing than create it from scratch! Here is a direct download like for this one: download
2. Aizatto’s Related Posts – This is another lazy webmaster tool. Will find other posts with related keywords on your blog and link them automatically. Here is a download for the latest version as of this post: download
3. Cross-Linker – Yet another lazy webmaster tool. If you constantly link keywords to webpages, Internal links or external, then this plugin is a dream come true. Pick your keyword and the link you want it to represent and viola. Your pages automatically have links on them. No highlighting and creating a link everytime. Here is a direct link to the latest and greatest version: download
4. WordPress Affiliate Pro – This has got to be the best plugin ever for WordPress. Who wants to manage affiliate links on their site? This plugin allows you to easily type in a keyword and your affiliate link and viola. Immediately that keyword anywhere on your blog is a new affiliate link for you. Here are a few videos for you to check out as well:
This is not a free plugin, but it is worth every penny!
5. Article Marketing Automation - This is not really a plugin per se, but it is the bees knees. If you have been looking for free human generated content that is guaranteed to be unique, then this is your solution. You can have an unlimited number of blogs on there post as many articles as you want. All for free. I mean seriously, how much better does it get?
Oh well, I have a ton of other Plugins for WordPress that totally rock. I will save them for later though. Best of luck and feel free to hit me up if you have any questions on any of these plugins or how to effectively use them on your site!
I am trying to build a new dedicated MySQL box on a Sun x2200 server. I have been going through Operating Systems like mad. Solaris, OpenSolaris, Debian, Gentoo. Amazingly Gentoo so far has been the easiest to get everything setup and working properly. Even better everything is compiled and optimized for my hardware specifically.
I never thought it would be this difficult though. I really like my Sun hardware and love ZFS and the clustering capabilities of Solaris. Oh well, can’t win them all I guess. I am happy with Gentoo though and the performance is more than acceptable.
Using authorized_keys2 file instead of passwords is a huge time saver. Also a little bit more secure. As long as you keep your key files secure on your computer.
First a few prerequisites.
1. You need to ensure that OpenSSH is installed on your box.
2. You need to have connected to at least one machine. You need to make sure that your .ssh folder is in your home directory.
Now on to the good stuff.
Here is how I do it:
1. First you need to create a private DSA key with OpenSSH.
ssh-keygen -t dsa
It will prompt you for a password. This is your backup to a compromised system. You can use one if you wish, you don’t have to if you don’t want to bother with a password. This creates one file in particular that is important: ~/.ssh/id_dsa.pub. The other file it creates is just id_dsa and it is in the same location as well. One is a private key, id_dsa, and the other is a public key, id_dsa.pub.
2. Now you need to place your public key in the ~/.ssh/authorized_keys2 file on the target computer. Depending on your setup there are a couple of ways to make this happen. First way is to just scp the file to the new box.
scp ~/.ssh/id_dsa.pub account@my.server.com:/home/account/.ssh/authorized_keys2
Second way is to append the public key to the authorized_keys2 file on the remote machine:
cat ~/.ssh/id_dsa.pub | ssh account@my.server.com -C ‘cat – >> /home/account/.ssh/authorized_keys2′
That should pretty much do it. Pretty simple thing you can do to help secure your machine and make connecting to your remote boxes quick and painless.