aj’s blog

In case someone needs it (I do): I wrote a small web interface that quickly crypt()’s a string, e.g. when you need to write a .htaccess file and don’t have htpasswd available. It outputs DES, MD5 and SHA1 with random salts and salt-less md4, md5, sha1 and sha256. Maybe I’ll add MySQL password hashing too.. at least when I first need it 😉

Oh, and remember.. the password gets sent to my server without any encryption at all (and no, it’s not being saved here) 🙂

With the release of PHP 4.4.6 on March 1st PHP developers updated the PCRE version that’s included in the PHP4 tarball from PCRE 6.7 to PCRE 7.0. Unfortunately PCRE 7.0 has “some issues” with certain regular expressions – if you have recently upgraded to PHP 4.4.6, use regular expression functions such as preg_match and are wondering about strange “Internal Server Error” messages or empty pages – stop wondering. It’s a more or less documented “bogus” bug at php.net (Bugtracker, ID 40706) that they won’t fix because it’s within PCRE and not within PHP. Their solution? Upgrade to PHP 5.
You can’t? Well you can use PCRE 6.7 of the “old” PHP 4.4.5 version with PHP 4.4.6. Just follow the steps below. 🙂

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It’s been quiet around here for the last few months – sorry.
I just got around to update the blog software and moved it to a “better” URL; expect some updates and new posts soon 😉

What has happened recently? Well I was quite busy with the “LAN @ FH JOANNEUM 6 – the 6th sense!” at the FH Joanneum Kapfenberg where I was responsible for running the whole LAN network and the important servers (DHCP, DNS, Internet-Gateway, etc). Expect a blog entry covering that story soon 🙂 Pics are already available in the gallery btw.
Then again I’ve been playing around with a small VIA based embedded system based on a CV860A LexSystem mainboard in a fanless case with a VIA C3 533MHz CPU, a 20GB 2.5″ HD, 128MB of RAM and three onboard NICs. All for 1 EUR at eBay – and now it’s running Debian Etch 🙂

I’ve already mentioned the Asus WL500G premium wireless lan router in previous posts. Now I finally found some time to write about a few nice tips&tricks for the device: Reacting to button actions, turning the LED on/off by software, configuring VLANs on the different LAN interfaces, using an USB WLan stick with it and switching to a better web interface.

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Opera recently released version 3.0 of their Opera Mini Browser for mobile devices. Playing around with it I decided to try to access a SquirrelMail webmail interface with it. It works great, but.. don’t try to use it with HTTP Basic Authentication.

I have a setup where the SquirrelMail interface is reachable via https and protected by HTTP Basic Auth. With Opera Mini one has to enter the Basic Auth user data every time one clicks on a link within the protected area. Solution: Add the userdata in the format of https://user:pass@host – this way you can even bookmark it. But then Opera Mini suddenly stops accepting the SquirrelMail cookie – rendering it completely useless, as one can’t even view a single message 🙁

Solution: No HTTP Basic Auth if you want OperaMini to work with (SquirrelMail-)Cookies. Without this type of additional authentication it works like a charm and the webmail interface is accessible while being on the road.

Opera Mini is a very cool browser and I do hope they’ll fix this issue in one of the next releases. Oh, did I mention MovaMail yet? (but that’s $$) 😉