Albrechts Blog

MHDWorld image running on EMTEC S800

January 23rd, 2011

Last year I bought an EMTEC S800 multimedia disk, that is a small MIPS based NAS including an analog and DVB-T tuner. This Linux driven device is more or less open for own modifications by default, so I installed a modified firmware image with open telnet account very soon and used it to overcome some restrictions of the default firmware image (e.g. it cannot enter NAS mode (=samba is running) automatically, but adding a start script for samba is of course easy once you have telnet access).

Community driven development is lead by the people at www.MHDWorld.de and has reached a very good state meanwile. A month ago I decided to switch to this firmware.

Installation is as easy as copying some files to an FAT32 formatted USB stick, booting into reflash mode by pluging power whith the power switch pressed for some seconds, and even keeps the recorded data on the disk.

Beside of the commandline access through telnet and ssh the most noteable additions of the MHDWorld image are

• a web interface to the device (by default it’s only accessible through SCART or HDMI) there is even an emulated remote control available through that web  interface
• web based file access as well as access to the device media db (which is much easier to edit that way)
• persistent NAS mode independent of the state of the other TV or DVR  functions
• ipkg addons, providing access to a wide range of optware stuff from the NSLU2 project
• a TV channel editor, a configuration backup option
• several streaming options, e.g. live streaming of TV programs using the “TimeShift” mode of the device.

So if you have this device (or  one of the compatible other ones, check MHDworld for available downloads) then read the installation help and give it a try.

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Drupal gotchas

February 25th, 2010

Currently I’m experimenting with Drupal as CMS. Theme adoption works much easier than in Magnolia, which I tried earlier, lots of Modules are available …

But some small glitches are hidden here and there, one such small thing is:

Howto install the CKEditor module after the FCKeditor module was already installed. It failes with some inconsistent database state, not allowing you to configure the access roles for CKEditor.

After reading th source it turned out that the settings migration from FCKEditor to CKEditor somehow fails. It leaves the SQL table ckeditor_settings with only one entry with name ‘CKEditor Global Profile’, the default entries named ‘Default’ and ‘Advanced’ are missing.

Solution: transfer them manually from the fckeditor_editor table, so (I use PostgreSQL) in your SQL commandline extract the settings field associated with Default:

select settings from fckeditor_settings where name=’Default’;

and put it into ckeditor_settings (via copy-pasting that long strange looking settings string):

insert into ckeditor_settings (name,settings) values (‘Default’,’COPY_PASTE_RESULT_FROM_ABOVE_HERE’);

Repeat this for name=’Advanced’;

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Ubuntu Karmic on FSC Lifebook P1610

December 11th, 2009

For a year or so I run Ubuntu (Hardy) on a Fujitsu Siemens P1610 convertible. Last week I updated it to Karmic and had do redo (at least partially) the special setup steps needed on this hardware.

As the P1610 has a Touchcsreen which can be converted into Tablet PC mode, obviously this part is the most crucial setup task.

Last year I found enough information on the net to complete this setup (and finally got all hardware working, including the fingerprint scanner, with Karmic simply install the fprint packages).

The touchscreen in my setup is controlled by a perl script (I think I got it from http://www.coderaptors.com/?Kubuntu_on_a_Lifebook_P1610 or http://samengstrom.com/nxl/3566/p1510_touchscreen_page.en.html) which is fired by the fsc_btn driver (http://sourceforge.net/projects/fjbtndrv/develop)

The perl script needs a special module:http://search.cpan.org/~ctrondlp/X11-GUITest-0.21/GUITest.pm and fscrotd (part of fjbtndrv) two rotation scripts. These scripts call the perl script with apropriate parameters to adjust the pen to the rotated geometry.

This time I have put all together in Ubuntu Karmic packages (you can get them at http://www.algepop.net/users/alge/p1610 or as part of our local ubuntu archive at http://ubuntu.uni-klu.ac.at/). The fjbtndrv uses DKMS, so it should compile the kernel module itself. The fsc-p1610 package contains the special scripts und depends on the needed fjbtndrv and perl package.

BTW, I use the fjbtndrv package also on my new Fujitsu T5010 (also a convertible).

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Dropbear for Verbatim SOHONAS (ex SmartDisk)

December 11th, 2009

After using two of those SmartDisk SOHONAS drives for a year, I decided to add some useful stuff to its firmware.

Following the instructions e.g. on http://paul.chavent.free.fr/linux-nas.html it is easy to compile small packages, e.g. dropbear for use as small ssh server.

The result can be found at http://www.algepop.net/users/alge/sohonas/, the tar file contains ssh, sshd and scp binaries (it puts it on the disk partition at /usr/hddapps where also samba and ftpd reside). Use it at your own risk, of course you need to enable telnet support before to be able to extract it on the device (if the standard busybox tar fails, use the additionally provided gnutar).

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Installing Magnolia CMS on JBoss on Ubuntu

November 25th, 2009

I have to migrate the web site at work soon and so I’m want to try some CMS.

I will start with a Java CMS, and Magnolia seems to be a good candidate. It can run standalone with a packaged Tomcat or on an application server like JBoss, I’ll try to go the JBoss way.

For the JBoss installation part I follow the instructions at http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=652472, the Magnolia on JBoss stuff is based on http://wiki.magnolia-cms.com/display/WIKI/How+to+install+Magnolia+on+Jboss

• First  get jboss-5.1.0.GA-jdk6.zip from sourceforge.net.
• Decide where to extract it, under which user id. I choose /opt/jboss and will create a jboss user account.
  • groupadd -g 997 jboss; useradd -s /bin/bash -d /home/jboss -g 997 -u 997 -c "JBoss User" jboss
  • mkdir -p /opt; cd /opt; unzip ..../ jboss-5.1.0.GA-jdk6.zip; chown -R jboss.jboss jboss-5.1.0.GA; ln -sf jboss-5.1.0.GA/ jboss

  • copy a init script in place:
    cp /opt/jboss/bin/jboss_init_redhat.sh /etc/init.d/jboss
  • make some modifications to the init script
    • adjust JBOSS_HOME to /opt/jboss
    • adjust JAVAPTH to /usr/lib/jvm/java-6-sun/bin (I use the sun-java6-bin package on Ubuntu Jaunty)
    • decide if JBoss should only listen to port 8080 on localhost (default) or set a variable JBOSS_HOST to the public address of the server. Finally I want to route access through apache/mod_proxy so I leave the default setting.
    • and, really important: enlarge the numer of allowed open files per process!!. Put
      ulimit -n 2048
      somewhere before the real start command.

      Otherwise you will fail somewhere during the install process, I succeded with the magnolia author instance, but failed adding the public instance for this reason.

    • finally dont forget to add the init script links (I still have to learn the upstart stuff …)
      update-rc.d jboss defaults
    • edit bin/run.conf and increase memory settings for later use with magnolia:

      Change JAVA_OPTS from
      
JAVA_OPTS="-Xms128m -Xmx512m ...

      to (at least)
      
JAVA_OPTS="-Xms256m -Xmx1024m


    • Add some authentication configuration to /opt/jboss/server/default/conf/login-config.xml, later needed by magnolia:
      
<!--
magnolia JAAS login modules
-->
<application-policy name="magnolia">
<authentication>
<login-module code="info.magnolia.jaas.sp.jcr.JCRAuthenticationModule"
flag = "requisite" />
<login-module code="info.magnolia.jaas.sp.jcr.JCRAuthorizationModule"
flag = "required" />
</authentication>
</application-policy>
<!--
jackrabbit JAAS login modules
-->
<application-policy name="Jackrabbit">
<authentication>
<login-module code="org.apache.jackrabbit.core.security.SimpleLoginModule"
flag = "required" />
</authentication>
</application-policy>

    • start jboss for the first time
      /etc/init.d/jboss start

      watch /opt/jboss/server/default/log/boot.log for messages.
    • Ensure you have all ports available needed by JBoss. Just watch the log files for “Address already in use” error messages. In case of conflict search for the port specifications e.g. (if port 4444 is not free) with grep -r 4444 /opt/jboss/server/default/conf/ and find other free ports to use (4444 e.g. conflicts with a kerberos server)
• Make the necessary Apache2 configuration steps:
  • Enable some modules:
    
a2enmod proxy
a2enmod proxy_http
a2enmod proxy_balancer
a2enmod proxy_ajp

  • Add e.g. the following lines to /etc/apache2/sites-enabled/000-default:
    
ProxyRequests Off
ProxyPreserveHost On
<!-- balancer not working correctly, use ajp proxy below
<Proxy balancer://mycluster>
Order deny,allow
Allow from all
BalancerMember http://localhost:8080/
</Proxy>
ProxyPass /jboss balancer://mycluster
ProxyPass /images balancer://mycluster/images
ProxyPass /admin-console balancer://mycluster/admin-console
ProxyPass /web-console balancer://mycluster/web-console
ProxyPass /jmx-console balancer://mycluster/jmx-console
ProxyPass /magnoliaAuthor balancer://mycluster/magnoliaAuthor
ProxyPass /magnoliaPublic balancer://mycluster/magnoliaPublic
ProxyPassReverse /jboss http://localhost:8080/
-->
<!-- use ajp proxy: -->
ProxyPass /jboss ajp://localhost:8009
ProxyPass /images ajp://localhost:8009/images
ProxyPass /css ajp://localhost:8009/css
ProxyPass /admin-console ajp://localhost:8009/admin-console
ProxyPass /web-console ajp://localhost:8009/web-console
ProxyPass /jmx-console ajp://localhost:8009/jmx-console
ProxyPass /status ajp://localhost:8009/status
ProxyPass /magnoliaAuthor ajp://localhost:8009/magnoliaAuthor
ProxyPass /magnoliaPublic ajp://localhost:8009/magnoliaPublic
ProxyPassReverse /jboss [***]ajp://localhost:8009/
ProxyPassReverse /admin-console [***]ajp://localhost:8009/admin-console
ProxyPassReverse /web-console [***]ajp://localhost:8009/web-console
ProxyPassReverse /jmx-console [***]ajp://localhost:8009/jmx-console
ProxyPassReverse /status [***]ajp://localhost:8009/status
ProxyPassReverse /magnoliaAuthor [***]ajp://localhost:8009/magnoliaAuthor
ProxyPassReverse /magnoliaPublic [***]ajp://localhost:8009/magnoliaPublic
<Location /jboss>
Order allow,deny
Allow from all
</Location>

    (see http://wiki.jboss.org/wiki/Wiki.jsp?page=UsingMod_proxyWithJBoss or http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=536078)

    Dont Forget later to add more ProxyPass entries for the applications you want to deploy! Here I already included the URLs for Magnolia. And do not forget to change default passwords … or restrict access to the several admin interfaces like this:
    
<Location /admin-console>
Order deny,allow
Allow from 192.168.1.0/24
</Location>

    Repeat this for web-console and jmx-console, restart Apache
    
apache2ctl graceful


• Now get Magnolia, download magnolia-bundled-webapp-4.1.1.war from sourceforge and for later use magnolia-standard-templating-kit-bundle-1.1.2-bundle.zip from Magnolia.
• From this stage on, extract all files under the user id of the jboss user:
  
su - jboss

• 
cd /opt/jboss/server/default/deploy
mkdir magnoliaAuthor.war
cd magnoliaAuthor.war/
unzip ..../magnolia-bundled-webapp-4.1.1.war

• Important !!:

  Remove the xerces jar file delivered in magnolia-bundled-webapp-4.1.1.war it conflicts with the version in JBoss:
  
rm -f WEB-INF/lib/xercesImpl-2.8.1.jar


• add a new file /opt/jboss/server/default/deploy/magnoliaAuthor.war/WEB-INF/jboss-web.xml with contents
  
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<jboss-web>
<context-root>/magnoliaAuthor</context-root>
</jboss-web>

• Now restart JBoss to deploy the extracted files.
• Watch /opt/jboss/server/default/log/server.log for possible errors.
• Ensure you have something like this (maybe more restrictive) in your apache config (/etc/apache2/sites-enabled/000-default on Ubuntu / Debian)

<Location /magnoliaAuthor>
Order allow,deny
Allow from all
</Location>

• Go to http://YOURHOST/magnoliaAuthor and complete the initial update.
• Watch /opt/jboss/server/default/log/server.log for possible errors.
• Login to the Magnolia admin site, change default passwords.
• Extract magnolia-standard-templating-kit-bundle-1.1.2-bundle.zip to a temporary place, move the extracted *.jar files to /opt/jboss/server/default/deploy/magnoliaAuthor.war/WEB-INF/lib
• Restart JBoss once more to deploy the changes, watch /opt/jboss/server/default/log/server.log for possible errors.
• Again, perform an initial update at http://YOURHOST/magnoliaAuthor.
• Possible errors (happened several times to me):

  Extract/create files with wrong permissions (root instead of jboss).

  Evereything below /opt/jboss/server/default/deploy/magnoliaAuthor has to belong to jboss!!!

• Repeat all steps done for magnoliaAuthor for magnoliaPublic
• Setup relationship between magnoliaAuthor and magnoliaPublic (see http://documentation.magnolia-cms.com/cookbook/changing-an-author-instance-into-a-public-instance.html):

  Changes in magnoliaAuthor:

  • Access rights should per default be ok
  • If you use magnoliaPublic as name of the public site the subscription will also work immediately, other wise change names.

  Changes in magnoliaPublic:

  • set Admin mode to false
  • change the anonymous role to have Read access to the website and GET and POST access to the base URL, but leave /.magnolia/* protected.
• Finally add some RewriteRule to your apache config to direct traffic to your magnoliaPublic URL:
  
<IfModule mod_rewrite.c>
RewriteEngine On
RewriteLog /var/log/apache2/rewrite.log
RewriteLogLevel 1
RewriteRule ^/magnolia$ /magnolia/ [R]
RewriteRule ^/magnolia/(.*)$ http://YOUR.ADD.RESS/magnoliaPublic/$1 [L]
</IfModule>
<Location /magnolia>
Order allow,deny
Allow from all
</Location&gt

• Last step: Enable access over HTTPS
  • Add to /etc/apache2/sites-enabled/default-ssl:
    
RewriteEngine on
RewriteLog /var/log/apache2/sslproxy.log
RewriteLogLevel 1
RewriteMap domaindb txt:/etc/apache2/ssldomains
RewriteRule ^/www\.([^/]+)/(.*) /${domaindb:$1|%{HTTP_HOST}/$1}/$2 [S=2]
RewriteRule ^/([^/]+)/(.*) /${domaindb:$1|%{HTTP_HOST}/$1}/$2 [S=1]
RewriteRule ^/(.+) /$1/ [R,L]
RewriteRule ^/(.*) http://$1 [P,L]

  • create /etc/apache2/ssldomains with:
    
jboss YOUR.ADD.RESS/jboss
magnolia YOUR.ADD.RESS/magnolia
magnoliaAuthor YOUR.ADD.RESS/magnoliaAuthor
magnoliaPublic YOUR.ADD.RESS/magnoliaPublic
web-console YOUR.ADD.RESS/web-console
admin-console YOUR.ADD.RESS/admin-console
jmx-console YOUR.ADD.RESS/jmx-console

  • Restrict / allow access in /etc/apache2/sites-enabled/default-ssl, e.g.:
    
<Location /jboss>
Order allow,deny
Allow from All
</Location>
<Location /images>
Order allow,deny
Allow from All
</Location>
<Location /css>
Order allow,deny
Allow from All
</Location>
<Location /magnolia>
Order allow,deny
Allow from All
</Location>
<Location /magnoliaPublic>
Order allow,deny
Allow from All
</Location>
<Location /magnoliaAuthor>
Order deny,allow
Allow from 192.168.1.
</Location>
<Location /admin-console>
Order deny,allow
Allow from 192.168.1.
</Location>
<Location /web-console>
Order deny,allow
Allow from 192.168.1.
</Location>
<Location /jmx-console>
Order deny,allow
Allow from 192.168.1.
</Location>


    Again, decide what should be accessible from which addresses and what not.