If the message “NameVirtualHost *:80 has no VirtualHosts” appears during Apache start and no one of your virtual hosts is recognized it can be solved by changing the file /etc/apache2/sites-enabled/000-default and /etc/apache2/ports.conf. Within both files I’ve changed declarations “*:80″ to “*”:
/etc/apache2/sites-enabled/000-default
<VirtualHost *>
/etc/apache2/ports.conf
NameVirtualHost *
Note that all your virtual host configurations also have to be defined with “<VirtualHost * >”.
Your desktop is running with Windows and you often need to connect remote servers using SSH then you will already know PuTTY. You will also know that it’s getting frustrating to enter the passoword every time. There is a simple way to login to remote machines using RSA/DAS keys.
What is needed?
First of all you will need to download the PuTTY.exe. And to generate the keys on your Windows desktop you’ll need to download PuTTYgen.exe as well.
Key Generation
Start PuTTYgen.exe after download and press the Generate button. Now follow the instruction and move the mouse cursor over the desired area. I’ve used the default parameter [x] SSH-2 RSA with a key length of 1024 bits.
I leave the Key passphrase empty because I don’t want to enter any passwords during login.
To have the key later available for other servers use the “Save public key” and “Save private key” button. My private key is saved as haifisch.ppk and my public key as haifisch. By the way, haifisch is German and means shark.
Now mark the generated public key, copy it to the clip board and paste it into ~/.ssh/authorized_keys file on the remote server of the user you want to login as.
PuTTY Configuration
Keys have been generated and stored on the remote server, therefore PuTTYgen can be closed now and the PuTTY.exe is needed now.
In PuTTY under the item “Session” enter the host name of the remote server and connection type SSH. Next choose “Connection/Data” and enter the remote user name. Also the previously defined private key is needed, it is given in “Connection/SSH/Auth” using the “Browse” button. In my case it’s haifisch.ppk.
When all settings are done go back to “Session”, enter a name for this session and press “Save”.
That’s it. Try it by double clicking on the saved session.
Login via Desktop Icon
If you want to have a desktop icon which opens putty and logs into a remote server generate a file e.g. www.myserver.com.bat with the content:
start C:\temp\putty\putty.exe -load "Session Name in PuTTY"
Now generate a link to this batch file on your desktop and login in by double clicking.
Did you know that Internet Explorer 6 is already 7 years old? The browser is older than Star Trek “Enterprise”, TV Show 24, Xbox and Nintendo Gamcube. Unbelieavable! This out dated web browser causes headache to many web developers who need to do some extra work to get their webpages compatible with this browser.
Now several companies and people started discontinuing support for IE6 on their homepages. There is a web site iedeathmarch.org “ID Death March” which wants to tell people on the net to no longer support IE6.
Finally after 2 years running Debian “Etech” 4.0 the new version Debian 5.0 codename “Lenny” has been released. The new release is dedicated to Thiemo Seufer, a Debian Developer who dies on December 26th, 2008 in a tragic car accident. Read more information about “Lenny” on the Debian homepage.
As you know only the early bird catches the worm, I immediately decided to update one server to Lenny. Sure, sometimes the worm isn’t delicious but if you are dealing with IT stuff you will know this kind of bad tasting worms already.
Okay the good news are: The worm wasn’t bad tasting in this case. Find my upgrade report below.
Upgrade Procedure
First I started with:
apt-get update
And received the error message:
There are no public key available for the following key IDs: 4D270D06F42584E6
Fine, next apt-get update was done again and several packages have been updated. It was prompted if a new /etc/mysql/my.cnf should be installed or my old one should be kept. I decided to keep my old one.
Afterwards I upgraded the distribution with apt-get dist-upgrade and many packages have been downloaded and installed.
For several config files it is again prompted if the old one should be kept or overwritten. I decided to backup to old configuration files and overwrite them with the new ones from the current distribution. I wanted to make sure that I don’t run into conflicts. Using this way the upgrade is performed very quick.
In the next step I adapted all my changes from backuped config files into the new ones. In my case mainly the Apache2 and MySQL configurations.
Apache2
After doing this Apache2 started with the message “NameVirtualHost *:80 has no VirtualHosts” and no one of my virtual hosts was recognized. I resolved this issue by changing the file /etc/apache2/sites-enabled/000-default and /etc/apache2/ports.conf. Within both files I’ve changed declarations “*:80″ to “*”:
/etc/apache2/sites-enabled/000-default
<VirtualHost *>
/etc/apache2/ports.conf
NameVirtualHost *
Note that all your virtual host configurations also have to be defined with “<VirtualHost * >”.
APT
To receive the updates for “Lenny” edit the file /etc/apt/sources.conf and change the line:
deb http://security.debian.org/ etch/updates main contrib non-free
to
deb http://security.debian.org/ lenny/updates main contrib non-free
Grub
One special thing on my server here (Strato root server) is the Grub configuration. The server is configured with SATA RAID 1, therefore partitions are mounted on /dev/md0 and /dev/md1. After every kernel update I manually change the /boot/grub/menu.lst file. Here I copy the two parts for the latest running kernel and simply adjust the kernel versions:
Hard disc full? No idea where are all the big files?
There is a free version of TreeSize from JAM software available which calculates the size of all folders of your hard disc. You can also expand the folder Explorer-like and find out where all the disc space is wasted. JAM software also offers a professional version which is capable of scanning network folders as well.
If you deal with media files like audio and video you will sometimes need more technical information about such files, like codec, bitrate, fps, aspect ratio and more. To gather such information there is a nice tool called “MediaInfo” available for download. Once installed MediaInfo just right click on your media file and open it with MediaInfo. That’s all.
Which information does it display?
General: title, author, director, album, track number, date, duration…
You are looking for a video player which simply plays your movies? Sounds easy, but usually the Microsoft Media Player complains some missing codecs, other players are slow, often crashing… Watching different kind of video formats seems difficult on the PC. Too many formats are available, .WMV, .MOV, .MPG, .AVI and many more.
The crazy thing: .WMV is not equal .WMV. The codec behind is really a different thing. In my opinion best solution would be that only MPEG2 and MPEG4/H.264 would be used. But as usual licensing and other policital issues make it more difficult. So we are faced to a very high number of video formats and codecs.
Quite annoying for the user who only wants to watch a movie which will often not work. My suggestion is to use the VLC media player. It’s free to use, supports almost any video format and works on all well known operating systems.
Furthermore it supports many options for video streaming. Below is a screen shot of a NASA HD video which shows the Endeavor launch on mission STS-126. There you will find other HD videos.
February 15th, 2009 Category: iPhone
For photo freaks Flickr.com offers a special web page for mobile devices. To have Flickr on your mobile just enter m.flickr.com within the browser of your mobile device and you are able to:
Upload photos directly from your cameraphone
Check out the latest uploads from your friends & family
Read recent comments posted on your photos
Search around for new stuff
More information is available on the help page for mobile devices on the Flickr site:
Sites like ipodovserver.com and macrumors.com reported that there is may be an updated version of the 16GB iPhone 3G on the way. The site also shows images of the back side of this may be new iPhone. On the pictures a new model number A1303 is shown which has not yet appeared on any iPhone model.
I’m pretty sure that Apple will bring a new iPhone in future, that’s sure. But the back side isn’t really interesting for me. In my opinion it would be really interesting if there will be new features and such kind of things.
So may be it’s really the picture of a new iPhone or may be it’s not, we will see what’s coming next from Apple. Seeing is believing or nowadays you would say sliding is believing.
I’ve already heared of robot vacuum cleaners, but I thought they’re still much more a toy than something else. But after watching some videos and doing some research I’m now sure: I definitely need a robot vacuum cleaner for my home!
Sounds pretty cool. During the time you stay at work the robot cleaner will clean your home. Hopefully such robots will be available soon which are able to do other work for me too.
The Roomba robotic vacuum cleaner from iRobot seems to be well known and a little bit cheaper compared to the Karcher Robocleaner. But according to some tests the Karcher product shows better performance. As soon as I’ve some additional money I’ll get such a Karcher I think. Price for it is about 1.200 Euro.
Anyone made experience with such a robot? Please let me know.
