I am yelling, can you hear me?

window.open in IE6/7

Chris — Fri, 11 Jul 2008 14:25:01 +0000

While working with a client, we noticed that a JS pop-up was not popping in IE6/7 but was in FF. After some searching, it seems that IE doesn’t like space in the window name field (or dashes for that matter). I am surprised that this is still an issue in IE7. Thanks to Let’s Start Again.

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Simple Beauty

Chris — Mon, 23 Jun 2008 23:13:08 +0000

Sometimes its the little things that make a site. *via

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What?!?

Chris — Mon, 09 Jun 2008 23:22:03 +0000

This is quite the error message from Quicktime. Apparently, my network appears to be online. What now?

Error - Your computer appears to functioning perfectly.

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Your own gems on AOS Shared Hosting

Chris — Sat, 24 May 2008 02:43:21 +0000

After not having great success with RoR on MT, I decided to try another host. I had looked at ASO before and their small packages fit the bill. After requesting shell access I was adding my repo and ready to go. However, I needed certain gems added and as with most shared hosting couldn’t just gem install xxx and be on my way. So I set out to try a Site5 method of using my local gems.

Here are the gems installed locally on my AOS server:

*** LOCAL GEMS ***
 
actionmailer (2.0.2, 1.3.6, 1.3.3)
actionpack (2.0.2, 1.13.6, 1.13.3)
actionwebservice (1.2.6, 1.2.3)
activerecord (2.0.2, 1.15.6, 1.15.3)
activeresource (2.0.2)
activesupport (2.0.2, 1.4.4, 1.4.2)
acts_as_ferret (0.4.3)
avatar (0.0.5)
builder (2.1.2)
colored (1.1)
fcgi (0.8.7)
feedtools (0.2.26)
ferret (0.11.6)
hoe (1.5.1)
hpricot (0.6)
mime-types (1.15)
mysql (2.7)
rails (2.0.2, 1.2.6, 1.2.3)
rake (0.8.1, 0.7.3)
RedCloth (3.0.4)
redgreen (1.2.2)
rflickr (2006.02.01)
rmagick (1.15.10)
rubyforge (0.4.5)
rubygems-update (1.1.1, 1.0.1)
sources (0.0.1)
tzinfo (0.3.8)
uuidtools (1.0.3, 1.0.1)
youtube-g (0.4.1)

I needed, to start, sqlite3-ruby. Here’s the steps I took.
Create your gems directory.

cd
mkdir gems

Now you need to find out your home path and local gem installation path:

pwd
gem environment

Note the values, you’ll need them for the next step. Create a .gemrc file in your home directory.

nano .gemrc

# Add what is below
gemhome: /home/yourusername/gems
gempath:
- /home/yourusername/gems
- /usr/local/lib/ruby/gems/1.8

Verify that gem environment has changed.

gem environment

Should yield:

RubyGems Environment:
  - RUBYGEMS VERSION: 1.1.1
  - RUBY VERSION: 1.8.6 (2007-09-24 patchlevel 111) [x86_64-linux]
  - INSTALLATION DIRECTORY: /home/yourusername/gems
  - RUBY EXECUTABLE: /usr/local/bin/ruby
  - RUBYGEMS PLATFORMS:
    - ruby
    - x86_64-linux
  - GEM PATHS:
     - /home/yourusername/gems
     - /usr/local/lib/ruby/gems/1.8
 
...

Edit your .bash_profile to reflect the changes.

nano .bash_profile

# Add the following
export GEM_PATH=/home/yourusername/gems:/usr/local/lib/ruby/gems/1.8
export GEM_HOME=/home/yourusername/gems

Then from the console, type:

export GEM_PATH=/home/yourusername/gems:/usr/local/lib/ruby/gems/1.8
export GEM_HOME=/home/yourusername/gems

Verify it:

echo $GEM_PATH
echo $GEM_HOME

Install gem*:

gem install sqlite3-ruby

Watch the server barf:

Building native extensions.  This could take a while...
ERROR:  Error installing sqlite3-ruby:
	ERROR: Failed to build gem native extension.
 
/usr/local/bin/ruby extconf.rb install sqlite3-ruby -y
checking for sqlite3.h... no
 
make
make: *** No rule to make target `ruby.h', needed by `sqlite3_api_wrap.o'.  Stop.

Install another gem:

gem install RedCloth

No problem.

STATUS: Works for me.

* Tech support added the sqlite3-ruby gem for me. They rock!.

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Capistrano, Rails 2.0 and MT

Chris — Thu, 15 May 2008 12:42:13 +0000

In order to prepare for the up-coming bug fixes etc of the beta release of Pieshop Invoice, I decided to set-up Capistrano with my rails app on MT. (Well, DonC suggested it.) So a quick search in MT forums brought up this How-To. After fixing some of my typos, I still was stuck. I kept getting sudo: command not found when I tried cap deploy:setup. Back to DonC, and an updated deploy.rb with the added line set :use_sudo, false. And I was running again.

Until I got to cap deploy:migrate which breaks due to my app being a Rails 2.0 app. So after following the advice of gecko (a MT engineer), I did a SVN check out of Rails and set it as an external. So after all that and more tweaks to my deploy.rb, everything is running smooth.

Here’s the code:

require "mt-capistrano"
 
# Your site number is right after the 's' in your access domain
set :site,         ""
# The name for your app within /containers/rails/
set :application,  ""
# The destination domain for you app
set :webpath,      ""
# The primary domain for your server
set :domain,       ""
# Your SSH user (serveradmin@mt-example.com)
set :user,         ""
# set up ssh keys so you don't need a password here
set :password,     ""
 
# repository on (gs)
set :repository, "svn+ssh://#{user}@#{domain}/home/#{site}/data/repo/app1/trunk"
 
# offsite repository
#set :repository, ""
 
set :deploy_via, :copy
set :copy_cache, true
set :copy_strategy, :export
 
set :use_sudo,     false
 
# which environment to work in
set :rails_env,    "production"
 
# necessary for functioning on the (gs)
default_run_options[:pty] = true
 
# these shouldn't be changed
role :web, "#{domain}"
role :app, "#{domain}"
role :db,  "#{domain}", :primary => true
set :deploy_to,    "/home/#{site}/containers/rails/#{application}"
 
# uncomment if desired
#after "deploy:update_code".to_sym do
#  put File.read("deploy/database.yml.mt"), "#{release_path}/config/database.yml", :mode => 0444
#end
 
# update .htaccess rules after new version is deployed
after "deploy:symlink".to_sym, "mt:generate_htaccess".to_sym

Download deploy.rb.

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