The original solution was to modify /etc/exim.conf, but today I discovered that there is a specific file (/etc/mailips) where IPs can be specified per-domain or globally.

To get this working, just setup /etc/mailips as follows:


[domain]: [ip]
[domain2]: [ip]


Obviously, you need to replace [domain] and [ip] with the appropriate entries. In my case, this wasn’t ideal as I wanted to use a single IP globally. Luckily, that’s easily done by using an asterisk (*) for [domain]. I believe it even works alongside specific domain entries, so you could have certain domains sending mail out on unique IPs, and then globally route everything else through another.

Once that file has been edited, you need to modify the cPanel exim configuration by going to Exim Configuration Editor within WHM. If you search for mailips on that page, you’ll see which box you need to check (don’t forget to save afterwards).

The script recurses through each process and displays the process ID, memory usage (in megabytes) and the command that it’s executing. It then displays the total memory usage at the end.

Download
memusage.rb ( — RB file)

The other day, I found an article on Google with another way to get keep-alives working – luckily this seems to have worked.

You need to edit ~/.ssh/config (create it if it doesn’t exist), and add the following lines:

ServerAliveInterval 300
ServerAliveCountMax 3

I quit Terminal.app just for completeness and it now keeps my sessions alive

Find a process and kill it

ps -u <username> -o pid,command
kill <process_id>

Memory usage (outputs in Kilobytes)

ps -u <username> -o rss,command

Cron Setup
If you’re not familiar with vi, you can change the default editor to something easier such as nano by typing: export VISUAL='nano'.

You can add/modify/remove your cron-jobs by typing: crontab -e

Software

• Install Redmine

It’s taken me about a day of fiddling about to finally get Redmine to work with my Bazaar repositories.

This is the first time I’ve ever used Redmine (as well as Rails), so much Googling was required.

The Problem
I was trying to add a Bazaar shared repository (consisting of “trunk” and “branches”). This failed as it appears that Redmine does not yet support Bazaar shared repositories. Because of this, I have only been able to setup “trunk” (which isn’t a problem really, as I’m not using “branches” yet).

This worked fine for a while – I could view the revision history and view the files themselves.

Then – the next day – it stopped working. The revision history was gone, and so were the file listings.

I tried creating test Bazaar repositories and changing the path in the Redmine project settings, but to no avail.

Today I discovered I needed to run ruby script/runner "Repository.fetch_changesets" -e production which thankfully restored the revision history, but not the file listings. I was under the impression that the “Autofetch commits” administrative setting would have done this whenever the repository was viewed.

After much Googling and a brief moment of hopelessness, I stumbled upon the solution.

The Solution
I had to add the following lines to config/environment.rb (and restart redmine):

ENV['PYTHONPATH'] = '/home/vxnick/lib/python2.5'
ENV['PATH'] = "#{ENV['PATH']}:/home/vxnick/bin"

Note that I am using WebFaction, so the paths above may vary based on your server environment.

At the moment, everything is working as it should – revision history is there, and I can view my source files. Hopefully everything will stay as-is, however I may have to setup the ruby script/runner ... line as a cron-job if it breaks or doesn’t update when I commit to the repository.

Apart from that problem (and the lack of built-in TLS support for mail), Redmine is a nice system for managing projects.

There are a couple of different techniques there, but I personally use the following:

find . -type f -name '*.php' | xargs wc -l

Whenever I see informal communication between the company and user (i.e. a message displayed on their website), it conjures up images of long-haired hippies, sitting around an office full of children’s toys, shrugging their shoulders, saying “meh” a lot, and generally pretending that they are 10 years younger (on the basis that they’re likely to be in their twenties).

Why do these companies think it’s all cool and new-age (or whatever) to communicate in such a juvenile manner? It all seems to emanate from this abundance of start-ups (including more established start-ups). It’s all down to this web 2.0 nonsense. I predict another dot-com bubble is soon to burst.

I understand that companies should want to appear more “open” with their customers, but does that mean that professionalism should be forgotten or disregarded?

Don’t get me wrong, I admire what most of these companies are trying to achieve, but if they’re in a position where they’re trying to make money or a (positive) reputation, it doesn’t particularly give a good impression to the customer if the communication they receive is informal, vague or suchlike.

Then again, maybe nobody else cares

Credit is due, but I don’t remember where I originally found it (possibly the PHP documentation site).

function filesize_format ($bytes)
{
    if ($bytes > 0)
    {
        $suffixes = array('B', 'KB', 'MB', 'GB', 'TB');
        $bytes = (int) $bytes;
 
        $bits = 1024;
        $result = (int) (log($bytes, $bits));
 
        return round($bytes / pow($bits, $result)).' '.$suffixes[$result];
    }
    else
    {
        return '0 B';
    }
}

As an added bonus, you can also download a collection of flag images, with each image filename renamed to match the corresponding array key. The original images can be found at famfamfam.

Note: there may be a couple of countries in the array that don’t have a corresponding flag image, and vice-versa.

Downloads

Country Flags ( — ZIP file)
Country Array ( — ZIP file)

function country_array ($id = null)
{
    $list = array
    (
        0 => "Afghanistan",
        1 => "Albania",
        2 => "Algeria",
        3 => "American Samoa",
        4 => "Andorra",
        5 => "Angola",
        6 => "Anguilla",
        7 => "Antarctica",
        // ... snip ...
        230 => "Venezuela",
        231 => "Vietnam",
        232 => "Virgin Islands, British",
        233 => "Virgin Islands, U.S.",
        234 => "Wallis and Futuna",
        235 => "Western Sahara",
        236 => "Yemen",
        237 => "Zambia",
        238 => "Zimbabwe"
    );
 
    if (is_null($id))
    {
        return $list;
    }
    else
    {
        return $list[$id];
    }
}

Usage:

country_list(); // returns the entire array
country_list(224); // returns "United Kingdom"

I spent a while Googling for a suitable template aimed at UK-based websites, and managed to stumble upon this, which I have modified for use on this website.

Hopefully this will save somebody the effort of finding a suitable template for their own site!