Skip to content
accelerando

Monthly Archives: May 2007

A little vpn zoo

18-May-07

I have the need to use both Cicso Systems VPN Client as well as Watchguard Mobile Users VPN Client on Microsoft Windows (2000 and XP). I’ll never understand, why this stuff can’t be well standardized.

It’s a little tricky installing both.

First, install Ciscos Client, reboot, quit the client, removed it from autostart and then go to your services tab and change the starttyp of “Cisco Systems, Inc. VPN Service” from automatic to manuell and stop it like so:

Cisco

Afterwards, you can install the Watchguards stuff. Again, reboot and remove their client from autostart. Then, deactive the current watchguard security policy, go to services and stop the following both services and set them to start only manually:

Watchguard

Both clients are mutually exclusive. You must stop both Watchguard services befor you can start the Cisco Service and vice versa. The clients won’t start respectivly won’t run without their corresponding services.

Additional information: If you need to use these products in a virtual machine like i do, it helps a lot to set the network mode to “bridged”.

WordPress 2.2 Update

17-May-07

Wordpress 2.2 arrived a day ago.
Updating was no problem at all. Prominent new features are wigdet support without the need for an external plugin and a working atom 1.0 feed.

I could drop two plugins: the widget plugin and the atom10 plugin. Nice. All others work as before (some important to mention are UTW, WP-Cache and the nice extended live archive(*).

A really nice site effect of the update: the WP Team finally managed to put a “SET NAMES blah” into wp-db.php, so that setting “UTF-8″ i.e. in wp-admin really means UTF-8 in the database. I always hacked my wp-db(**) for my other blog planet-punk.de, since there are a lot of old posts from another legacy system that _are_ indeed UTF-8 but which where maltransformed by wp without that hack before 2.2.

I do have a local development system on my mac but i tend to test things twice or more often. Other people maybe don’t have or want that luxury and need to udate their blogs directly on the server. Either way, it’s a good idea, to put your blog to maintenance while updating your wp core files. This is easily accomplished with .htacess and mod_rewrite. First create a file “maintenance.html” for your visitors. Than look up your external ip and add the following to your .htaccess:

<IfModule mod_rewrite.c>
RewriteEngine On
RewriteCond %{REMOTE_ADDR} !87.78.68.17 [NC]
RewriteRule ! maintenance.html$ maintenance.html [R=301,L]
</IfModule>

and replace 87.78.68.17 with your external ip. Remember commenting these entries when you’re done.

(*) If you have any questions about my plugins, don’t hesitate to ask, i just don’t want a plugin list in case of bugs in any plugin.

(**) The hack was: Add the following to __construct in your wp-db.php (./wp-includes/) :

	$this->select($dbname);
	$this->query("SET NAMES 'utf8'");

Ruby on Rails vs. J2EE

16-May-07

Dem habe ich nichts mehr hinzuzufügen. Gefunden auf superdeluxe.ch

Sichere Passwörter

14-May-07

Gespräch mit einem Informatiker am Wochenende

“Wir speichern unsere Passwörter jetzt sicher in der Datenbank.
Base64 kodiert.”

Waaah… *wegrenn*

Removing 3rd party apps from .mac sync services

09-May-07

I recently tested Yojimbo and decided i have no use for this kind of tool, so i thrashed the app and all config files in my ~/Library.

Some weeks later i reinstalled another Mac and set up the .Mac Synchronisation. No problem at all.
I needed my ftp favorites on both machines so i turned to the first to tick the checkbox and saw a broken Yojimbo entry. Not on my mac!

After a little googling i found this tip: Reset the .Mac Sync Server with Syncrospector.

Syncrospector is a little apple tool you can get for free here.

Be careful. The author on macosxhints suggests to reset all sync services which could end up in a total lost of all your contacts. He writes:

Open Syncrospector in the StickiesExample -> Applications folder. Don’t bother trying to use the Unregister button to eliminate any third party client identifiers. I tried “unregistering” Yojimbo’s entry after launching, quitting, and removing the application itself from two of my Macs.

The “Unregister” button in Syncrospector indeed works! The author made one mistake (as did i): he trashed the app before unregistering. To tidy up your sync services with Apples tool, you must not thrash the app in question before but afterwards.

I just downloaded Yojimbo, run it once, unregistered after quitting and than again, moved it to trash and the damaged sync entry was gone.

Close
E-mail It