I’m happy with that.

“Am getting a message when I try and "post draft and edit online".  See pictures attached of the messages."

Uh oh. Nothing had changed in the config of the web server for months – and adding extra disk space to the server wouldn’t cause this.

I looked at the Apache error logs – nothing. I couldn’t see anything that would be causing this. Typically it’s a permissions or xml-rpc problem that’s kicking up a complaint in Windows Live Writer.

Other blogs on the same server were working perfectly; I could upload via xml-rpc as well. Very strange.

Eventually I tracked down an alert in /var/log/warn that was flagging “cannot read inode bitmap” – whenever I tried to upload an image via xml-rpc. Even stranger. This really didn’t make any sense – but it looked like early signs of a corrupt root filesystem and being unable to write to temp.

I dismounted everything and tried to fsck the disk – and then the world of pain unraveled. The entire root filesystem seemed to have junk – it’s ext3 so should be pretty robust. I’ve no idea what caused it – but the end result was that most of /etc was toasted and there were some 10,000 entries in lost+found.

The upside is that the mysql and web data are all on seperate disks – so really easy to reconstruct the server. I had backups of my PHP, mysql and Apache confs – as well as all the data. The only slog was updating the Apache/PHP/MySQL stack to the correct (current) versions for my uses.

What I learned:

• backups are great – but separating the data from the OS is a real winner
• backup the config files for the core apps
• document the correct versions of core apps. Currently Apache 2.2.10, PHP 5.3.2 and MySQL 5.1.3 – these all work together without problems

Total downtime – about eight hours. Real time spent fixing this – about three hours.

I also moved several of the blogs to WordPress 3.0 RC1 – it’s been really stable so far on the main blog. I also had to do a latin1 to utf8 conversion on one of the older blogs. Always painful – but a one time hit. I need to add that to the change control/validation for the next round of big updates.

More mysql optimisations – indexing, caching and some memory work.

I finally found a version of php5-eaccelerator that worked against PHP 5.2.12 on SLES 11. That seems to be working well right now.

This term it’s time to start up LEGO robotics again; we’ve limited the pre-school class to 4th and 5th grade – so we should have a pretty reasonable level of logic and construction skills.

I’m writing up the rules and the playbook for this session. We’re going to focus on three areas – similar plan to previous sessions:

- construction: gears, gear ratios and torque

- software: planning, prototyping, iterative troubleshooting

- project: communication, team work, documentation

The requirement is going to be:

Build a robot that can pull the largest mass on the sledge provided. A successful ‘pull’ will be over 50cm (20 inches)

Using the same robot chassis (you can change wheels and gears – but not rebuild the robot) cover a long, straight race course (~5m/~15 feet)in the shortest time.

Produce a display board for your project showing your design, thoughts, diagrams, photos and program.

Here’s the issue. I have several sites that check that a user is logged in. These use runphp or exec-php so I can write/include PHP on the page:

<?php
/* Short and sweet */
global $user_level,$post,$user_login;
// get user information
get_currentuserinfo();
echo "Please wait … securing your connection …";
if ( $user_level == 0) {
// $user_level == 0 is anonymous or not logged in user
wp_redirect(get_option(‘siteurl’) . ‘/photos/sorry’);
}
else {
// $user_level >0 means they are logged in at least
wp_redirect(get_option(‘siteurl’) . ‘/wpg2′);
}
?>

The issue I’ve always had with this is that the standard wp_redirect writes the location information cleanly; because we are already in the page (and headers have already been written) Apache throws up and kills this:

[Thu Dec 31 04:51:18 2009] [error] [client 10.0.0.1] PHP Warning:  Cannot modify header information – headers already sent by (output started at /www/foosite/wp-content/themes/regulus/header.php:5) in /www/foosite/wp-content/plugins/php-modify-headers-apache/php-modify-headers-apache.php on line 38, referer: http://foosite

The hand written fixes checked to see if headers had been sent; if so then do the naughty meta http-equiv refresh with the url instead.

if( !headers_sent() ) {
if ($is_IIS)
header("Refresh: 0;url=$location");
else
header("Location: $location");
} else
echo "<meta http-equiv='refresh' content='0;url=$location' />";
}

Testing the plugin now. Details later.

I’ve blogged about this before – and raised a trac ticket. I’m probably going to write a plugin to solve this one for good.

Here’s the change – around line 863 of wp-includes/pluggable.php

/*
** Remove header injection piece - fix for exec-php
** evilzenscientist - 27 Dec 09
** originally from 28 May 08
** ref http://trac.wordpress.org/ticket/2860

        if ( $is_IIS ) {
                header("Refresh: 0;url=$location");
        } else {
                if ( php_sapi_name() != 'cgi-fcgi' )
                        status_header($status); // This causes problems on I
                header("Location: $location", true, $status);
        }
}
endif;

**
*/

/** added new header injection and refresh
** http://trac.wordpress.org/ticket/2860
** evilzenscientist - 28 May 2008
*/
if( !headers_sent() ) {
if ($is_IIS)
header("Refresh: 0;url=$location");
else
header("Location: $location");
} else
echo "<meta http-equiv='refresh' content='0;url=$location' />";
}
endif;
/** end of change */

Looks pretty nifty – and everything seems to work ok so far.

From Mark Jaquith:

http://wordpress.org/wordpress-2.9-beta-1.zip
Big features to test:
• Basic image editing (rotate, flip, resize, crop)
• Post/Page image thumbnails. Enable the admin UI by declaring support
in your theme: add_theme_support(‘post-thumbnails’);
• Trash, with undo functionality, for posts, pages, comments
• Comment Meta table and functions — like Custom Fields/postmeta but
for comments
• Easy media embeds, oEmbed — paste a URL on its own item and have it
turn into embed code
• register_theme_directory() which enables plugins to bundle their own
themes, without copying (BuddyPress, primary example)
• Combo upgrader — get notified of plugin updates in the WP core
upgrader, as well as being informed of crowd-sourced compatibility
information for the plugins.
It’s bug-fixing and polishing time! Our priorities should be, in this order:
1. Fixing regressions in old features/behaviors
2. Squashing bugs in the new features
3. Polish

There’s a ticket on it here – http://core.trac.wordpress.org/ticket/10890

The easy fix is to comment out the lines where the modules are loaded:

WeatherIcon.php

55 # Fixes a bug in l10n.php where some guy decided there was no reason
56 # to load files which are required for their l10n functions if no
57 # language is defined in WordPress.
58 #require_once(ABSPATH . 'wp-includes/streams.php');
59 #require_once(ABSPATH . 'wp-includes/gettext.php');

Kudos to the team for getting on top of this.

Here’s the scoop off wp-hackers:

http://wordpress.org/wordpress-2.8.5-beta1.zip
2.8.5 will probably release sometime in the next 24 hours.  Changes since 2.8.4:
http://core.trac.wordpress.org/log/branches/2.8?action=stop_on_copy&mode=stop_on_copy&rev=12075&stop_rev=11811&limit=999
Summary:
* Fix for trackback DOS
* Removal of permalink_structure eval
* Remove some create_function() calls
* Disallow unfiltered uploads by default, even for admins. Enable it
again with define(‘ALLOW_UNFILTERED_UPLOADS’, true); in wp-config.php
* Add extra escapes here and there for some backside coverage
* Retire two old importers
* A few small bug fixes
This is mostly a security hardening release.  There’s nothing exciting
unless you are concerned about the trackback DOS bug. Anyone who wants
to DOS your blog can do it regardless, but the trackback DOS bug makes
it easier for people to be annoying.

Gallery v3 is in beta right now – I expect it will be RC then released by the end of the year.

Couple of things to look at here on the migration from Gallery 2:

• migration of hundreds of thousands of photos from G2 to G3

• permissions
• post-migration clean-up
• storage and CPU churn

The other set of updates is around WordPress itself.

Three interesting updates – first WordPress 2.9 is going to go beta soon; release in maybe December. That’s going to need some poking and investigating. I’ve already found a couple of changes in alpha that break some plugins.

The other WordPress change that I’m going to look at is the merge of WordPress MU into WordPress core; also the new features of BuddyPress on top of WordPress (MU or core).

The BuddyPress/WPMU will let me offer multiple blogs to Rachael’s cubs and other leaders. 

I remember back to the first ever WordCamp in summer 2006 in San Francisco. That was a fun day of sessions for the new platform.

Documented in several places – libxml2 2.7.x and greater have a known issue.

One workaround is to force in libxml2 version 2.6.x

Not the most glamorous fix – but opensuse.org has the old libraries from openSUSE 11.0

The better (but more complex) fix is to upgrade PHP to 5.2.9 and libxml2 to 2.7.3

opensuse.org has the correct pieces from openSUSE 11.1

http://www.peteware.com/blog/2009/01/fixing-libxml2-php-wordpress-and-the-missing-angle-brackets/

http://www.peteware.com/blog/2008/12/wordpress-libxml2-bug/

http://josephscott.org/archives/2008/12/problems-with-libxml2-for-wordpress-xml-rpc-users/

http://josephscott.org/archives/2009/03/conclusion-of-libxml2-issues-use-php-529-libxml2-273/

It is possible to pull the latest builds from subversion – but that’s really focused on the core hacker.

New in WP 2.7 was the ability to update automatically.

There were a few challenges with this – permissions, PHP modules, various host implementations – but I found it generally quite successful.

I found a great FAQ here – http://dd32.id.au/2009/02/20/wordpress-filesystem-abstraction-faq/

From the same author is a very cool plugin – core-control – it lets you enable and disable various transports – and shows the status of them.

Prior to that I had several online things – including a static html status and news diary.

Here’s a post on this from April 2005 – my first online web page was in 1993!

Also John Godfrey updated the audit-trail plugin.

I remember talking with Ronni Colville from Gartner in early 2000 about how what was then known as “Enterprise Software Distribution” would always keep evolving – but would never really change.

Today the challenges are many – mobility, bandwidth, expectations of users, privacy, security, compliance – all tied into a real budget squeeze.

At the same time there is a continuing trend towards consolidation.

In the past week or so we have seen Configuresoft, Solidcore and most recently Cassatt be acquired.

My gut feeling – most of the virtualisation management, run-book automation and niche players will be gone by year end.

A wave of smaller ISVs are rising to replace them. I’ve met with some great new talent in this space – and just as I discussed with Ronni in 2000 – it’s still the same problem to solve.

I’ve dragged the theme through a miriad of WordPress alphas, betas and releases; and added a stack of plugins and widgets to the side.

My ideal is a clean, two-column, widget-ready theme. Fast to load – and able to support the Gallery2 integations.

I upgraded a couple of blogs to WordPress 2.8 beta early this morning – and I had problems with a single plugin – Audit Trail by John Godley.

The symptom was that on login you got a blank screen and Apache/PHP threw this:

[Fri May 29 11:59:05 2009] [error] [client 10.0.0.1] PHP Fatal error:  Call to undefined method AT_Auditor::_weak_escape() in /www/<foo>/wp-includes/wp-db.php on line 487, referer: http://<foo>/wp-login.php?redirect_to=/

The plugin itself is nicely written – and as part of the safety mechanism it uses wpdb::escape to explode out anything before injecting to the database.

One change in WP 2.8 looks like it affects this – login redirects are now urlencoded by default – http://core.trac.wordpress.org/ticket/9817 – and that looks like it’s clashing with the line above.

The temporary fix for me is to modify part of the plugin to not call into wp::db – and instead assume that the url has already been exploded out.

wp-content/plugins/audit-trail/models/audit.php

line 173

//               $operation = wpdb::escape ($operation);

The risk for my implementation seems small – I’m only using audit-trail to track logins and logouts.

So if you are hunting down some generic <function>::_weak_escape errors in WordPress 2.8 beta – take a trawl through your plugins and see if there is a wpdb::escape call. There may be some relatively low impact fixes out there.

Summer 2000 I was talking to an audience of customers and resellers in South Africa about how the directory, identity-driven management and ZENworks specifically could manage anything. The concepts of management by exception and the extensibility of the Novell Directory Services (as it was then known) were ideal for this.

We were joking around concepts of management – and we came on ZENworks for Toasters.

Some Java fun in ConsoleOne – and we had a cool demo plugin for our internal Systems Engineers.

Video (AVI or AVCHD) –> Sony Vegas –> Flash Video studio (convert to flv) –> Amazon S3

I’m using the Flash Video Player plugin for WordPress – it’s nice and clean. Using Amazon S3 lets me put video in a datacenter in the US or Europe for pennies. That means my servers at home and my uplink don’t get killed by family viewing the lastest videos; it also means a measurable improvement in their experience. Viewing a video served from Amazon S3 in Europe to grandpa via DSL in London is very acceptable.

Finally the team got the Partner Solutions Guide to print.

Here is a proof copy (right) next to the 2007 partner guide on the left.

This will be printed and shipped to Las Vegas  – in time for the Microsoft Management Summit.

A big thanks to all of the System Center partners who provided their information, proofed and re-proofed their submissions. I hope you all find this guide useful – and another benefit of being in the System Center Alliance.

When I started in this role – just over a year ago – there were around 25 partners in the Microsoft System Center Alliance. Most of those were founder members of the Alliance which was announced at TechEd/IT Forum in Barcelona in November 2007.

The original members of the Alliance were a mix of the big, strategic hardware OEMs, a couple of larger ISVs with integration and then some smaller, focused ISVs who had been working with Operations Manager and Configuration Manager since the MOM and SMS days.

In the past year the System Center Strategic Partner and Alliance team have been growing in several ways.

First we added some significant additional resources last Spring – I was one of the new blood – we are focused on new partner acquisition, building a business and a technical relationship and also thinking about partnerships in non-traditional ways.

The second area of growth has been in our back-office procedures and processes – growing our capacity. Managing less than thirty partners is very doable in an Excel spreadsheet. Not so for eighty or the hundred or so that are ‘in flight’. I worked closely with my business manager on the process flow that we had, identified bottlenecks, inefficiencies – and we improved on the paper process. We added auditing, reporting and metric gathering capabilities. Most recently we moved this more efficient – but still manual – process online. We are now transitioning to a SharePoint based partner onboarding and management tool.

Finally we have used both of these investments to grow the number of partners in the Alliance.

We have gone from the twenty one founding members of the alliance to over seventy today. By the time of Microsoft Management Summit in just a few weeks we have have grown some more.

An example of this growth is in the System Center Partner Solutions Guide. When this was first created in late 2007 there were some twenty partners listed. Today I am just finishing up with the final proofing – and this edition has seventy three integrated partners listed. Such is the growth that we plan to revise this more regularly – not in 2010 – but before the WorldWide Partner Conference in July.

My next blog post will discuss some of the areas that have helped in growing the Alliance – technology, business and a critical mass of customers and partners.

Best installation of SLES yet – clean, fast – no major problems.

Single click install and deployment for IIS and the associated components.

I’m going to kick the tyres a little – but both Gallery and WordPress seem to be supported – and it looks like using MS SQL server too.

http://www.microsoft.com/web/gallery/WordPress.aspx

http://www.microsoft.com/web/gallery/Gallery.aspx

Maybe time to retire the SUSE Linux Enterprise Server and move to Windows 2008 ..

Good to see progress since the release of 0.7 last autumn; some of the Google Summer of Code projects are starting to get aggregated.

Hugin 0.8 beta is available; there’s a pretty decent Windows version at Allard Katans site.

It’s been a strange year with much change. Not only have I changed jobs; but also moved from Utah to Washington and sold and bought a house.

I’m still in touch with many ex-colleagues from Novell; it is strange that technologies such as twitter, facebook, LinkedIn, skype and even email have made communication so much easier than ever before. During the year I’ve seen a lot of good friends move on from Novell too. 2008 seems to have been a year of change for many.

I mentioned airline surveys usually included such examples to really only factor in results from ‘those that read the questions’ – too many times you see people tick ‘satisfied’ for everything.

Here’s an example from United – notice how there are pairs of similar questions that drive to a common result.