VPS hunting

I finally decided to get a VPS for my projects. I narrowed the list down to the following providers: Slicehost and Linode I decided to go with slicehost because of their focus on developers so I went to their site, chose a 256mb slice and proceeded to enter my details and credit card information. I gleefully submitted the purchase form thoroughly expecting that in a few minutes, I'd be configuring my very own VPS but lo and behold, I got an error message regarding my card failing verification. I've been using my credit card for online purchases since I got it and this is the first time I was denied. Anyways, I used their contact form to report the incident and in fairness to them, they gave an immediate reply which didn't help. This situation leaves me with only one choice at the moment and that is to try Linode. It might have been a blessing in disguise as it was then that I realized that Linode offered a much better deal i.e. more memory for the same price. The purchase went smoothly and my server was up in a few minutes. I chose to use the Ubuntu 8.0.4 LTS Hardy Heron Server build. Hopefully I'll have all the services running soon.

Trac on Ubuntu 8.04 LTS

I just got a VPS and decided to go with Ubuntu 8.04 LTS. Here's how I installed trac on the box. The commands below were executed after logging in as root apt-get install trac apache2 libapache2-svn subversion mkdir /var/tracs cd /vat/tracs trac-admin foobar initenv chown -R www-data:www-data /var/tracs nano /etc/apache2/sites-available/foobar <VirtualHost *>     ServerAdmin webmaster@foobar.com     ServerName projects.foobar.com     DocumentRoot /var/tracs     ScriptAlias /tracs /usr/share/trac/cgi-bin/trac.cgi     <Location /tracs>       SetEnv TRAC_ENV_PARENT_DIR "/var/tracs"     </Location>     <LocationMatch "/tracs/[^/]">         AuthType Basic         AuthName "trac"         AuthUserFile /var/tracs/projects.htpasswd         Require valid-user     </LocationMatch>     ErrorLog /var/log/apache2/error.trac.log     CustomLog /var/log/apache2/access.trac.log combined     AddHandler cgi-script .cgi </VirtualHost> a2ensite tracs htpasswd -c /var/tracs/projects.htpasswd myusername mypassword mkdir /var/repo cd /var/repo svnadmin create foobar chown -R www-data:www-data /var/repo apache2ctl restart

Fixing "CHM can not be displayed errors" due to a Microsoft security patch

Because of a security patch for Windows, CHM files located on a remote folder accessed via UNC path will fail to open. The security setting can be relaxed by modifying the registry key HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\HTMLHelp\1.x\ItssRestrictions setting MaxAllowedZone to dword:00000002 or if you trust me enough, download this file to your windows xp desktop and double click it.