The most common problem developers have run into is caused by they ssh keys not forwarding.  It seems that this is not set by default pretty much everywhere, which I find confusing.  So here are the first steps to ensure your ssh key is forwarding correctly:

1. Make sure you are using an ssh agent to store and forward your keys.  This seems obvious if you understand ssh forwarding, but it is surprising that this doesn't happen automatically on some systems (like Mac OS X).  So you need to check to see if your ssh agent has your ssh key loaded.  Do this with this command:

   ssh-add -l

2. You should see your ssh key(s) listed.  If not, then run:

   ssh-add

3. Create or edit the file $HOME/.ssh/config on your workstation and make sure this line is present:

   ForwardAgent yes

This should get you forwarding your ssh key.  If you want to just forward your key on one connection only and not for all, then you can use the command line option to ssh to temporarily turn on forwarding, -A.  Like this:

ssh -A user@somehost.com

They are located in $HOME/.local/share/tomboy/ where each note is in an xml file with a name like 74ce8803-d17a-4537-b502-2a792567828e.note.

If you want to send Apache logs to syslog, it really is simple.  I'm talking about RHEL/CentOS/Fedora servers with standard packages installed.  Follow these simple steps:

In your Apache config where you set CustomLog, make that line look something like this:


CustomLog "|/bin/logger -p local1.info -t apache" combined
ErrorLog syslog:local1


Let's break this down and explain it....

The secret is a program on your server /bin/logger which allows you to pipe anything to syslog.  You just need to define a which facility to log.  In my example I'm using local1.

The other step is to make sure that /etc/syslog.conf (or whatever your syslog program config is), is handling the right facility as apache.

Here is what I add to my syslog.conf

# apache
local1.info             /var/log/httpd/apache.log
local1.!info            /var/log/httpd/error.log

That should be it. Restart httpd and syslog and you should see your apache logs coming through.

You can no longer purchase Sagetv or any of its products, as the entire store on their site is gone. The only part of their site that is still operational is the forums, but I've always felt that their forums weren't that helpful.

They did say that for those who own Sagetv can expect the program guide (the tv schedule for upcoming shows and what is on what channel) to still be functional until next Summer. So that means that either they need to provide a new solution for my DVR/PVR/Media center/streaming center/music/photos/etc server or I'm going to have to abandon Sagetv and go find something else.

This really has me worried. I expect good things out of Google, but Sagetv has been as very good product and solution. The next best thing out there is probably MythTV, but the best thing that Sagetv had over Mythtv was the custom made, prebuilt hardware, at an affordable price. There aren't good hardware solutions for Myth that pass the "significant other test", but Sagetv did as soon as I set it up.

Hurumph.

Becky and me Zorbing in Rotorua, NZ

Ah... good times! It makes me want to go again. I just checked out http://www.zorb.com/zorb/locations/ and found that they have a location in the US! We'll need to plan a trip to Tennessee soon.

If you aren't familiar with Zorbing, the basic idea is that you climb inside a gigantic plastic ball and then roll down a hill.  It is a blast.

I'm thinking that you will be able to configure the queue system to look at your currently checked out movies and the currently on hold movies and then will only move things from in queue to hold when there is "room" for it.  Meaning, if I set a limit to "Number of movies checked out or on hold" to 10, then I can only have 10 movies in checkout status or on hold.  As soon as I return a checked out movie or cancel a hold on a movie that will open up a spot and the system will automatically take the next movie in my queue and place a hold on it for me.

Then I am free to browse and search for all the movies I want to watch and throw them all in a queue.  The system will work through the queue and track everything.

That's the basic idea.  I've started working on prototyping it and building tests for portions of the code.  But it's still a long way from being functional.  I hope to have something usable for myself in the next month or so.  If I can get some help (or enough time) to make the UI decent then I might open it up for anyone to use.  Right now, I'm building this with the SLC city library, but also plan to support the SL county library too.  I've designed it so I should be able to add more libraries in the future.

Last year I read probably 3 or 4 books.  So far this year I've read two and am almost finished with a third:

• The Fellowship of the Ring (first book in the Lord of the Rings trilogy)
• Johnathan Livingston Seagull
• Eragon (almost finished with this one)

They've all been enjoyable.  While these are the ones I've finished (or nearly), here are some that I'm still in the midst of:

• The Art of Scalability (about scalable system and business architecture)
• Learning Groovy and Grails
• Myths of Innovation
• 97 Things Every Software Architect Should Know
• Oracle Essentials

So, I've imported everything from my MT blog over here and think this will be a better long-term blog platform.

Oh- p.s.  I changed the name of the blog.  Different name, but same concept.