New toy – almost done – FluxEngine – stand-alone

Hello all.

Yes, I know. It’s been a long time since my last post, but I have a good reason. I have been busy, very very busy with a new 3D project.

Base on the fantastic work of David Given (https://cowlark.com) on FluxEngine I am in the process of developing a stand-alone device to read/write floppydisks (both 5,25 and 3,5 inch) to/from disk images. Please see David’s website on FluxEngine for more information on this part of the project.

You would say that the FluxEngine is the most difficult part made easy by David, and yes, that is true. What I am bringing to the party is the housing, fully 3D printed, the electronics to make it stand-alone, power supply, cooling etc. Interested? Please read on :)

Continue reading “New toy – almost done – FluxEngine – stand-alone”

This just in: Contact-Form-7 (WordPress) Vulnerability – 5 million websites at risk – CVE-2020-35489

A vulnerability has been discovered in Contact Form 7 that allows an attacker to upload malicious scripts. The publishers of Contact Form 7 have released an update to fix the vulnerability.

Unrestricted File Upload Vulnerability…

Noooo, I’m not going to steal/copy/plagiarize this article, just read the article on CVE 2020 35489 on searchenginejournal.com.

But I do have something to add. Continue reading “This just in: Contact-Form-7 (WordPress) Vulnerability – 5 million websites at risk – CVE-2020-35489”

Migrating from SVN to GIT. It has been done before, …, but has it?

Recent changes in policy re-ignited our quest to migrate away from Subversion to GIT, as GIT is much more powerful for branching and merging e.t.c.

Migrating from Subversion is not very hard; you just start over, right? So you want to lose all the project history? I don’t think so.

The migrated GIT-repository should include all history, all commit messages, all tags, all branches. How do you do that? Continue reading “Migrating from SVN to GIT. It has been done before, …, but has it?”

Handy script: lbf

[Edit: This script is defunct since Local rebuilt the application and ditched the virtual machine. This script works only with the old “Local by Flywheel”  and not with the “Local Lightning” app. For the latter, see my lbl script]

Local (by Flywheel) is great, but for a terminal type of person as I am, I find it way more convenient to SSH into a VM and use the WP-CLI to perform WordPress tasks. With a platform like Vagrant, one has the

vagrant ssh
command to shell into the virtual environment.

With Local, you can do this with the push of a button in Local, but as said, I like the terminal better.

lbf ssh
is waaaaay faster than going to the Local app, find the site, click the SSH button.

But wait, there is much more ;) Continue reading “Handy script: lbf”

macOS High Sierra, the magnificent update that killed the development environment.

[UPDATED sep 26]
[UPDATED again on oct 27th, see tags UPDATE2]

macOS High Sierra is awesome, but unfortunately, it killed my “old style” development environment. It was not just High Sierra; brew upgrade also had a big part in the failing of the development setup, if not ALL of it. I brew upgraded my set-up on Sierra (not High yet) and it got F’ed up as well. My guess; 95% Brew’s fault, 5% High Sierra (and only because High Sierra sort of forced me to brew upgrade)

If you are still using the “old” way for development websites (a.k.a., using macOSs own apache2 and brew php), you might want to wait with upgrading to High Sierra; I don’t have a working solution yet.

[UPDATE2] I think I might have a solution :)

Continue reading “macOS High Sierra, the magnificent update that killed the development environment.”

Synology NAS software on non-Synology hardware

I am the proud owner of a Synology DS1512+. She’s getting old but she’s still one of my more sensible purchases. The hardware quality and ease-of-use of the Synology Disk Manager (DSM) still pleases me every day.

I need my NAS to be operational. I use it for all my important stuff but I also have the “urge” to develop my own tools for it. I need a platform to develop software on, without the risk of losing any of my data.

Recently I found XPEnology. Is it a Synology DSM clone? No. It IS the original Synology DSM, without alterations. You just need something to boot it with; a bootloader. Is it legal???? I’m not sure. And when in doubt, go for safe; consider it illegal.

In retrospect, setting-up a XPEnology NAS is surprisingly easy. But for most tutorials you need a Windows computer (windows-only software is used). But on a Mac, you don’t need (most of this) 3rd party software. You have a Mac! A Mac comes with tools, but what tool to use and how?

Continue reading “Synology NAS software on non-Synology hardware”

Out with the old, in with the new — Switching from built-in software to one awesome piece of engineering: Local (by Flywheel)

A multitude of recent developments have aided me to make a choice. Some of them are

  • Apple going for thinner, lighter instead of stronger performance, and
  • Microsoft integrating Bash into Windows 10 with WSL (Windows Subsystem for Linux)

While the new Macbook Pro is quite a feet of engineering, it is hardly Pro”. Surely intel graphics are enough for typing letters and calculating spreadsheets, it’s not Pro. A 16GB memory limit (which with the compression tech used is like 24GB for any other OS) is great for battery life, but it’s not “Pro”. The keyboard is ultra thin and has good tactile feedback, but the keys need a firm press, and travel almost nothing. Great for thinning the device, but again, not “Pro”. For the same amount of money you can buy a portable powerhouse like the Asus ROG G752vy (seen in my post about this). This one has other issues, but at least it has got awesome graphics (nVidia 980), max 64 GB RAM and a “normal” laptop keyboard.

(Yeah, I know, I KNOW, I don’t need ‘awesome graphics’ for web development, but I like to game also, and to be honest; my favorite IDE – phpStorm – DOES prefer a sturdy GPU. Don’t know why, but it runs so much better on a discrete GPU than it does on intel Graphics)

Reasons to stay with macOS are rapidly diminishing, and reasons to start using Windows again are gaining support. Since the Windows 10 Anniversary Update, Windows offers Bash and all goodness that comes with Ubuntu linux, right at your fingertips. Well, not ALL goodness, but most of it.

Continue reading “Out with the old, in with the new — Switching from built-in software to one awesome piece of engineering: Local (by Flywheel)”

Hey Siri, what do I need to do to get my development environment working again after upgrading to macOS Sierra?

Hello, macOS Sierra!

macOS… that name… so… long… ago…

It has been, what?, 11 years? 12? … System 9, that was the last OS to be called macOS. The name change does not change anything regarding the update cycle, although on one of my macs, the upgrade went horrifically bad! I ended up rebooting in Recovery mode and installing macOS from there.

For getting the development enviroment back up, not much to be done!

Apache could not find the default server certificates in

/private/etc/apache2/server.crt
so after correcting those paths in
/etc/apache2/extra/httpd-ssl.conf
and restarting Apache, all’s well!

Shell commandsudo nano /etc/apache2/extra/httpd-ssl.conf
Shell commandsudo apachectl restart

As always; feel free to comment or ask questions :)

OSX 10.10 Yosemite and iOS 8 announced

Last monday – everybody who cares knows – Apple announced the latest OS versions of OSX and iOS.

For a 10 minute breakdown, visit The Verge.

You can expect updates on all posts of the series ‘The Ultimate Development Webserver’ and ‘Handy Scripts’ where needed in the next few months (time permitting and if the beta will run stable enough inside VMWare Fusion)

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