Author: Anton Khitrenovich

Initial Tuning of MediaWiki Installation

~ Anton Khitrenovich ~ Leave a comment

Just found another old notes on the initial tuning of MediaWiki installation. Note sure if they are outdated or not, but maybe somebody will find them useful. The notes are not really detailed, so some minimal technical understanding of MediaWiki software is required.

Permissions

Disable self-registration and anonymous editing:

$wgGroupPermissions['*']['createaccount'] = false;
$wgGroupPermissions['*']['edit'] = false;

Appearance

Change the name of the site (shown in browser window title):

$wgSitename = "My private Wiki";

Change the main page:

  1. Go to “MediaWiki:Mainpage” page
  2. Click on “Create” or “Edit” tab
  3. Enter the name of new main page
  4. Save changes

Files Upload

Change allowed upload types:

$wgFileExtensions[] = 'zip';

Icons for file types are located under skins/common/images/icons directory.

Site Name in OpenSearch Box

To edit site name that is displayed in search boxes of popular browsers:

  1. Go to “Special:Allmessages” page
  2. Find opensearch-desc message
  3. Click on the message name
  4. On the edit page, set the new message text
  5. Save the page

 

For non-US people: How to Avoid Wikipedia Blackout

~ Anton Khitrenovich ~ Leave a comment

For all non-US people, that have no U.S.Congress representative to contact about SOPA and PIPA – here is the simple recipe  to avoid the blackout.

First of all, you need Google Chrome with AdBlock extension. Now, open the AdBlock options, go to the Customize tab, click on ‘Edit’ button and add the following two lines to the filters:

http://meta.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special:BannerLoader&banner=blackout*
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/9/98/WP_SOPA_Splash_Full.jpg

Don’t forget to click ‘Save’ and enjoy the Wikipedia again!

Deployment of New VM from Template Fails with VMDK Locked Error

~ Anton Khitrenovich ~ 32 Comments

Some time ago I managed to isolate an ugly vSphere 5 bug that caused me some unpleasant moments. Today I finally reproduced this behavior in a clean lab environment, so I feel confident enough to describe it in public. Don’t worry, the way to recover is described also!

Take a vSphere 5 environment with a template (say, “MyTemplate”) that you want to deploy a virtual machine from. Step through a regular deployment wizard and select “Edit Virtual Hardware” on the last page. In the VM properties, choose the hard disk and change its size. The new VM (say, “MyVM”) will be created successfully, but the next time you’ll go through the deployment process it will fail with a strange message: “Unable to access file ‘MyTemplate/MyTemplate.vmdk’ since it is locked”…

A quick search in VMware KB (or just in Google) will tell you that the vmdk (the virtual disk of the VM) is usually locked when some other VM uses the same disk. Hey, this is a template! No other VMs are supposed to use the template disk, right? Well, the truth is that this disk is now attached to MyVM – yes, that one with different disk size… But let the lock alone. Your lovely template is now gone, since the disk that belonged to the template is now owned by the running virtual machine – with new name, settings and maybe even software!

Well, how do you recover from this situation? The good news are that the original disk from MyTemplate is not gone. In fact, vSphere really cloned a new vmdk file for MyVM and placed it where it should usually reside – in ‘MyVM/MyVM.vmdk’ – but for some reason set the MyVM to use a template file instead. At this moment you can take a deep breath, shut down MyVM, point it to the right virtual disk and physically swap the files in the datastore… Continue reading “Deployment of New VM from Template Fails with VMDK Locked Error” →

IBM Tivoli Access Manager for e-business and WebSEAL Resources

~ Anton Khitrenovich ~ Leave a comment

After posting another WebSEAL HOWTO recently, I feel it is the right time to post my collection of WebSEAL-related resources and forget about the WebSEAL for a while.

IBM Tivoli Access Manager (TAM) for e-business is positioned by IBM as an end-to-end security solution for e-business, focused on providing robust, policy-based security to a corporate web environment. The web security components of TAMeb are WebSEAL (reverse proxy web server that performs authentication and authorizations; typically used for DMZ external access to backend content servers) and Plug-in for Web Servers (plug-in that secures web servers; typically used for internal access). Continue reading “IBM Tivoli Access Manager for e-business and WebSEAL Resources” →

Gmail App for iOS – Pros and Cons

~ Anton Khitrenovich ~ Leave a comment

[ This mini-review was originally written in mid-November 2011, when Gmail App for iOS was back to AppStore, and published on Google+. Today Google released an update for Google Sync (ability to easily delete messages instead of archive them – something I was missing in the native email client), so I recalled this text and reposted it here also. ]

I decided to try the new Gmail App over this weekend. Here is a short summary:

Pros:
1. The Gmail App has Gmail-style threaded view that I really miss in native iOS client. Also, the UI look and feel is synced with the new style of the browser version of Gmail.
2. The Gmail App allows me to do a clear separation between corporate and private mailboxes – work Exchange goes to native client, Gmail – well, to Gmail. For me, it is very convenient to see if it is personal of work-related email before I run to check it out. Also, with this separation I can disable notification sounds on any specific email account (the work one, i my case).
3. Other reviews report that search here is much better. I had no chance to test this on my own today, but native search was sometimes… say, frustrating.

Cons:
1. The main concern about Gmail App is that it is not fully integrated in all the applications on iOS like the native client – and there is no hope for such integration. Of course, you can compose emails using native address book or browse for picture attachments, but other apps the utilize sharing via default email client (for example, Genius Scan) obviously are out of scope here.
2. It seems that Gmail App is not so fast in getting emails as Gmail account defined in the native client via Google Sync with Push. I have no reliable idea what is the reason for this behavior…
3. There are no modern-style banner notifications in the Gmail App for some reason. Yet, I hope this is something to be added in the future versions.

As you may see, there are both pros and cons of using new Gmail App instead of the native email client, and I’m still not sure if it will survive on my iPhone. But I will test it for few more days…

Update (January 2012): Still using Gmail App. It is definitely slower that native client, but the threaded view and the ability to easily archive, delete and star messages keeps it alive for me.