Kev's Development Toolbox

March 7, 2011

Jobs promotes iPad2 in ‘post PC era’

Jobs used the phrase ‘post-PC’ a lot last week during the press conference for the iPad2. I completely get the idea of the iPad as a content consumption device, in the respect that if you have a device like the iPad you can easily browse your favorite websites, check the weather, the news etc from the comfort of your sofa without getting up and going to whatever room the desktop PC lives in. The trouble is, the iPad is incredibly (and quite unbelievably) good at content consumption, but is rather rubbish at anything else.

Until there is a technological advancement in computer interaction we’re still dependent on the keyboard and mouse for doing anything that involves more than clicking images with a finger. In that respect, I think we’re more like in an ‘in-between’ era – the iPad has shown us that there are far more easier ways to consume content, but we’re still tied to the desk with the PC for doing other more complex content creation tasks.

March 4, 2011

Windows 7 updates failing for most users

Second attempt to get this Windows 7 update out, and it’s still failing:

http://news.cnet.com/8301-1035_3-20039227-94.html?tag=mncol

February 17, 2011

Enabling chrooted sftp access for WordPress automatic upgrades

Create wordpress user specifically for the auto update and add the user to the www-data group:

sudo adduser wordpress
sudo adduser wordpress www-data

chgroup the wordpress dir to the www-data group:

sudo chgrp -R www-data /var/www/wordpress

Add the following to /etc/ssh/ssd_config to chroot the wordpress user to the wordpress directory:

Match User wordpress

ChrootDirectory /var/www/wordpress

AllowTCPForwarding no

X11Forwarding no

ForceCommand /usr/lib/openssh/sftp-server

Restart the sshd service:

sudo /etc/init.d/ssh restart

Setup the sftp userid and password in the wordpress settings and select sftp.

February 17, 2011

Linux servers running your gadgets

I love the fact that so many consumer gadgets are increasingly Linux based and for the so inclined you can ssh or telnet into them to fiddle around with their settings 🙂

Tivo is probably the most common of all consumer devices running Linux. We love our Tivo box. We still have a Series 1 and it’s run continuously 24×7 since approx 2002 when we first bought it. It’s only been powered down a couple of times during power outages, and from memory I can only remember once or twice when it hung and had to be restarted. It’s hands down the most stable, most reliable piece of consumer electronics I’ve ever owned, by far.

The Iomgea ix2 NAS boxes run on Linux (as do most NAS boxes) – you can enable ssh from the ‘hidden page’ at /support.html and then ssh into it using id=root and password=soho+[your admin user password]

A lot of DSL and cable modems, and Wifi routers also run Linux. Most Actiontec DSL modems have a telnet port open on the internal network, and you can telnet into them using your web admin interface userid and password.