Apache will not start and no errors in log file!

If anyone has ever run into Apache not starting and showing no errors in the log file, you are not alone.  I recently ran into an issue where out of the blue, one of my Apache servers would not restart.  After much Googling and putting some different posts and suggestions together, here is what I came up with and it worked.

RedHat Linux has a log size limit for any log at 2GB.  In my case I found that the php_error.log had grown over a long period of time and I had not used rotate logs on that one.  This can also happen to your web logs and web error logs, so make sure to rotate all logs.

If Apache will not start, run the following:

service httpd status:
httpd dead but subsys locked

Run httpd -t to see if you have any syntax errors in your httpd.conf file

If that comes back clean, run httpd-X:
File size limit exceeded

If you see the above, you have a log somewhere that has grown way too big.  Make sure to look in all places where a log that affects Apache in one way or another has not grown over 2GB in size, php logs, apache logs, etc.

I hope this helps out someone else and makes their journey to fix it a lot quicker.

New Windows OS Finally – Windows 7 Features – Release 10-22-2009

I am pretty excited to what comes of the new launch of Windows 7.  I think this will do what it is supposed to and take the stability and structure of what we all loved in Windows XP and merge it with some of the flash and flexibility (not all the headaches) that Vista was supposed to be.  Some of the new features in Windows 7 are:

Home Group -
HomeGroup takes the headache out of sharing files and printers on a home network. Connect two or more PCs running Windows 7, and HomeGroup makes it easy to automatically start sharing your music, picture, video, and document libraries with other people in your home. – Read More

Performance Enhancement -
Microsoft took a hit in Vista with some performance issues.  It has made some lean decisions in Windows 7.   When hunting for something, you want answers, not delays. In Windows 7, search results pop up faster. Sorting and grouping of search results is also significantly quicker.   Read More

Remote Media Streaming -
With Remote Media Streaming, MS took note of the ability of their Entertainment Software and now gives you the ability from one Windows 7 machine to another (has to be 7 to 7 though – another ploy for you to buy more machines ).  This allows you to travel and connect back to your home machine to stream your music.  Read More

Windows Search has been dramaticall improved and streamlined to give you better experience in finding your stuff.  I do wonder though, how it will stand up over time with cache issues and virtual memory – this was one area I think MS could have done a lot better in XP. 

There is also more support for 64-bit apps.  Although, I am still not convinced that the average user needs or will benefit from 64-bit processing, since there are still a lot of applications out there that are still strictly 32-bit.  If you are running a server, then maybe 2008 Server 64-bit would be a fit for you.

You can read more about what Windows 7 has to offer here.

October 22 2009 is the big day for the release.

Powermat – New way to charge your devices

Wow! That is all I can say about the Powermat that allows you to charge your devices by placing them on the mat. This is amazing stuff. What we get next? In case you have not seen or heard of this yet, Powermat has a charging mat that allows you to lay your cell phone or DS or what ever on the pad and charge without wires. The Pad plugs in and you set your devices on the pad for charging. So, you don’t need all those chargers for your devices anymore. Get the pad for around $100 and you are set. I have seen so many people have to replace their chargers either because they wrap them up all the time and screw up the wiring, lose their charger, or have to bring multiple chargers with them for different devices. They offer a portable folding mat as well as a home mat.

Portable, foldable Powermat charger for your handheld devices

Home and Office charging mat from Powermat

Aysling Digital Media Solutions and Woodwing software

For those of you out there that have web cms’ that need to get information from print cms or you are in an InDesign workflow and you are looking for a way to use valid, valuable xml to post your Design items to the web, the Woodwing solution is for you. If you are not familiar with Aysling or Woodwing, visit the Woodwing website for more infomation. You can also view this recent press release about Aysling and Woodwing.

I could go on for pages and pages about the ability to publish to the web from the Woodwing platform, but I think you should check it out for yourself and find out. They have some talented integrators that will help you get the most out of your Adobe InDesign and InCopy files. I had posted a while ago about trying to extract InCopy xml and make it useable on the web – disaster. I had also mentioned the K4 system that, at the time seemed like the best solution. After working with Woodwing and seeing their commitment to software development and changing with the times, I can say that this is the solution that will take printed material to the next level.

In seeing what their version 6 product can do, I think small and large shops alike will like the fact that they have developed plugins for quick posting of content. These plugins include posting directly to WordPress, Facebook, Twitter and Drupal. Since they understand that there are big engine cms’ as well as the opensource route, they have made it possible for the large and small to get their content from print to web, whether it be a marketing piece, or a full book.

Using my.cnf to set mysql to full utf8 standard

With the big push to make everything utf8 compliant and useable so that we do not run into special characters issues – you have all seen the &#44s type symbols on websites. This is due to a non-standard character set setting in browsers. There are many different explanations for this on the web, my focus is to try and help others who are looking for the fix. I have seen a couple of ways of doing this, using mysql command to try and SET NAMES, or SET default_character_set=utf8. I was looking all around for the way to set this globally, making note that I was able to set the server, the database settings, but not all in one fell swoop. After many searches and frustrations, I found the answer. This posting not only has the fix, but explains it very well. If you want to read the full article, go here. Here is the fix to do in the my.cnf file in mysql 5 and up:

[mysqld]
init_connect=’SET collation_connection = utf8_general_ci’
init_connect=’SET NAMES utf8′
default-character-set=utf8
character-set-server=utf8
collation-server=utf8_general_ci
skip-character-set-client-handshake

You must then stop mysql and restart it to have these settings take effect. Might I also mention that if you have full access to your server, I would recommend installing webmin on it. If you do not know what webmin is, it is a self-serving gui web service for managing your linux or mac server.
This is also going to be the second or third place I look from now on (other than my documenation wiki and notes) when I forget how to do this the next time I set up mysql. I hope this quick information helps the next person out that has to find out how to convert the default character set of mysql from latin1 to utf8.

You also need to make sure you convert any databases that you did not make utf8 when you made them. You will need to dump the database, re-create the database – no need to choose utf8 as the charset if you have done the above. If not, you will need to do the above, or choose utf8 as the charset. There are also scripts available for example if you google them for conversion. The other option is to leave it as is and make all of your queries use the SET NAMES parameter, which is a pain.

Will Oracle kill mySQL, and will Postgress emerge stronger?

With the recent closing of the Oracle deal to purchase Sun for $7.4B, many are wondering if this is the last straw for mySql. With barely anyone, if anyone, left from the mySql coding department left, how will Oracle deal with mySql and will they let it fade away. mySql has been the largest open source database for many php programmers for a long time, and now everyone running personal and commerical apps on the popular database are left to wonder if they need to start looking more closely at Postgress. Postgress touts its platform as being “The most advanced open source database”. You can find out mor about mySql and Postgress on their sites.

This reminds me of a few years ago when mySql and FrontBase were battling it out to see who would take over the open source database market. Well, we all know who won that battle. In order to stay in the limelight, Oracle will need to keep the mySql project running as it always has, and not think it will thrive on its own without development and work. Obviously they are looking to make up the $7.4B somewhere, and open source software does not pay the bills. The release of mySql 5.1 did not go so well, leaving many wondering if the lack of team experience on the project, and not having many, if any, of the original members working on the project means there will be no future for it.

I was not a big fan of mySql until a couple of years ago when they implemented stored procedures and a more stable base. Now, I, like so many others have my share of mySql db’s running in different enviromnets. I am and will always be on the MSSQL bandwagon, because I think it offers so much more than mySql. But, for what it is, and what I have seen it capable of doing, it can hold its own in many areas in web and system development. The biggest drawback I always hear is, you want to pay $11k for MSSQL over free mySql? Well, it has its place.

Bottom line – I will start looking at Postgress to see how and if I need to start transitioning. Hopefully not. My note to Oracle – Keep this product and project alive. It may not bring in the same dollars as your main database product, but I think it will go a long way in saving face. Good luck to all you developers out there!

When and Who not to listen to about SEO!

I recently got sent an article written by John C. Dvorak from PCMAG.com about Long SEO Url’s.  The article “SEO Fiascoes: The Trouble with Search Engine Optimization” was a huge rant about how someone gave him advise on using long urls so that Search Engines find his articles better and return better findings, and how he thought the whole thing was a load of crap!  Wow,  first of all, I encourage anyone who finds this post, or the above article to hold onto their seats, because it is really an amazing display of bad advice and rants about what he obviously knows nothing about.  Now I have read other content written by John, and he is animated, and does know a lot about technology and the industry.  But on this topic, I think he should stay away.

A guy I know also read this post and sent me the posts on this article.  Frankly, unless I am blind, I did not even see anywhere on the story itself to post a comment, or read comments.  In this case, I think it was a good idea that the author did not get raked over the coals on the same page as his article.  So, please read the replies he got here, because these people obviously know way more than the author.

I agree with every rebuttle to this article – first of all, the developer he talks about, either did not know, explain, or convey the concept of the url to the author.  Now, I am not a SEO expert and have some differing opinions on some SEO strategies than some of my colleagues, but we all agree that it is NOT a “snake-oil sale” as stated by the author.  I agree with the use of “longer” urls to convey what the story is about – note that PCMAG, does not even try to use SEO in its own pages.  Who can gather anything out of sitename.com/111,3456,22.000.aspx?  This is their url strategy!  Now their page titles are very SEO friendly.  Why not at least make your url sitename.com/article2/SEO_Fiascos_Trrouble_with_SEO_id=12456.asp?  Now the person who alerted me to the discussions (who also deals with SEO on a daily basis – read some of his posts here - shameless plug Rob), would say to me – Thomas, why not just show the article title in the url and get rid of the other garbage that no one cares about.  Well, I don’t think taking the other content, id and page extension out makes that big of a difference.

Please seek out the advise of a good SEO expert when looking to improve your SEO strategy.  Do not find mindless postings online like the above mentioned one and think that you are wasting your time.  If you think you are wasting your time with SEO, don’t rely on a web presence to increase your business traction.  Seek out resources to help you that have good information:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Search_engine_optimization

http://searchenginewatch.com/

http://www.pubexec.com/

http://www.emediastrategist.com/blog/

Maybe, actually, the author did this on purpose – to get more traffic and raise controversy and to get attention.  See, I am posting info about it.  If I am, I am sure others are, which actually brings more traffic back to his article and site.  Maybe he knows what he is doing afterall:)

Circuit City Closing Poll

Spam!Spam! and more Spam

No, this is not a tribute to Monty Python.  Although I am not a big fan of Monty Python, that is much funnier than what Spam I, and other techs have to deal with on a day-to-day basis.  It is not bad enough that we have to fight spam in our email inbox, but to have to fight spammers on web forms and contact us pages, is getting ridiculous.  What is worse, is that our phones may be next.  Yes, since we all have those nice nifty phones that allow you to do almost anything you can do on your computer, WATCH OUT!, spammers and hackers are after you.

Think I am paranoid, see this article on Comcast’s technology News section of their site – http://www.comcast.net/articles/news-technology/20081015/TEC.Zombie.Phones/?cvqh=cover_cellphones .  Read that, and tell me you don’t have to worry.  Soon, we are going to have to have shell script access to our phones to create ip blocks with.  This should be the next new creation -IP tables (firewalls) for cell phones.

The good old CAN-SPAM act has done little to actually stop the spam from hitting us.  It has actually increased since the passage of the Act.  The good news on it though, is that real marketers and B-to-B bulk senders are doing a much better job.  If we could get the best of Domain Keys, SPF and Sender ID to work, it would cut down on it some, as long as the spammers could not subscribe.  One thing that bothers me about the three types of technology to supposedly thwart spammers, is that they can actually use these methods just like legit companies.  Now, if that is not crazy, I don’t know what is.  You want to stop them, yet, all it takes to set up an SPF record is to go to your ISP and create the text file entry in its DNS.  With its 255 character limit, the spammer can then add multiple allowed hosts to its entry.  This is one big reason I have been reluctant to subscribe to any one of these methods.

Red Hat Enterprise Installation Number

This is just a quick post for anyone looking for, as I was, the quickest way to register your Red Hat Enterprise system with  RedHat after you install the OS – since you can install everything without entering the subscription number.  You just won’t get all of your updates, you would have to install most packages using rpm’s rather than running the updater.

I wish RedHat would have made this a little easier to find.  Maybe it is because I have not been using Linux for that long, but I did find this hard to locate.  All you need to do once your system is set up; and if you are like me, I did not have time to wait for my subscription # before I installed the system, as I was strapped for time and had to have a system installed asap; is go to a command prompt and type in:

rhn_register

This will then communicate to the REHL system that your machine is registered with them.  Of course, you have to have paid them for the subscription, and have that info on their site in your account info first.