Category Archives: Sys Admin

Material related to systems administration.

Bash aliases

Posted on by
Reply

I was reading my default .bashrc file, and found the following:

# Alias definitions.
# You may want to put all your additions into a separate file like
# ~/.bash_aliases, instead of adding them here directly.
# See /usr/share/doc/bash-doc/examples in the bash-doc package.

if [ -f ~/.bash_aliases ]; then
    . ~/.bash_aliases
fi

This suggested that I wanted a .bash_aliases file for my aliases, so I set one up:

jj5@sixsigma:~$ cat .bash_aliases
alias home='cd ~'
alias jj5='cd /var/www/www.jj5.net/'
alias profile='cd /var/www/www.jj5.net/profile/'
alias chomsky='vim /var/www/www.jj5.net/profile/chomsky/index.html'
alias henney='vim /var/www/www.jj5.net/profile/henney/index.html'
alias lakoff='vim /var/www/www.jj5.net/profile/lakoff/index.html'
alias norvig='vim /var/www/www.jj5.net/profile/norvig/index.html'

This is my basic “CMS” system for http://www.jj5.net/profile/.

Failed To Read Auto-Increment Value From Storage Engine – MySQL

Posted on by
Reply

Recently after my hosting provider hard-booted one of my machines the MySQL service started to complain “Failed To Read Auto-Increment Value From Storage Engine” when an insert was issued to any table with an auto increment field. I found the solution here, and it basically requires you to reset the auto increment key on the table, like this:

ALTER TABLE `table_name`  AUTO_INCREMENT =1

I had to do that on all of my tables that had auto increment keys to resolve the issue.

phpMyAdmin $cfg[‘Servers’][$i][‘tracking_version_auto_create’]

Posted on by
Reply

I found the configuration setting in the documentation that will force phpMyAdmin to automatically track tables during and after creation. It is:

 $cfg['Servers'][$i]['tracking_version_auto_create'] boolean

And the default value is ‘false’. I updated:

 /var/www/www.progclub.org/pcma/config.inc.php

With the line:

  // JE: 2011-09-07: force tracking
  $cfg['Servers'][$i]['tracking_version_auto_create'] = true;

Programmers’ Club

Posted on by
27

Due to my blatant SEO hacking ProgClub has finally made it to page 3 of search results for programmers’ club. Go team! :)

ProgClub aspires to be *the* Programmers’ Club. So first we get page 3, then we get page 1, then we get first result. Sound like a good plan?

You can help by blogging about ProgClub or linking to our Programmers’ Club page from your blog or your web-site. The text of your link should be “Programmers’ Club”, and you should link to the http://www.progclub.org/wiki/Programmers’_Club page.

p.s. We’re on page 2 for good programmers’ club and we’re on page 2 for the programmers’ club (page 1 in Australia: the programmers’ club).

p.p.s. I posted some more information on how I went about the SEO process.

p.p.p.s. I followed up with some more commentary about the best way to link to ProgClub.

MediaWiki templates, revisited

Posted on by
Reply

After spending the afternoon investigating MediaWiki templates, I’ve decided that for the most part they are more trouble than they’re worth for any of my applications. I tried to create a ‘done’ template, that took username, user initials, date and ‘done note’ parameters, but really the code to call the template was just as long as not using the template, and the template broke when the ‘done note’ included a link that included an equals sign, which is just too shoddy. I’m giving up on templates until I find I actually have a use for them where the technology solves a problem that I actually have. At the moment that’s nothing.

MediaWiki templates

Posted on by
39

Today, after a long time, I am finally ready to learn about MediaWiki templates. After having put that off for weeks since I’d first heard of them, I found that it only took about five minutes to learn just about everything there is to know about them from the MediaWiki templates documentation. I think there are a few areas of the ProgClub wiki that could do with the use of templates, might go and see to that now.