Posts Tagged ‘show’

Solving “Cannot redeclare show_subscription_checkbox() (previously declared in .. wp-content/plugins/subscribe-to-comments/subscribe-to-comments.php”

Monday, March 21st, 2011

I’m trying to install subscribe-to-comments wordpress plugin in order to make my users to easily set a tick and receive new emails if somebody replies to their comments in my blog. Pitily downloading and trying to install the subscribe-to-comments wordpress plugin was failing after it’s activation with an error message:

PHP Fatal error: Cannot redeclare show_subscription_checkbox() (previously declared in /var/www/blog/wp-content/plugins/subscribe-to-comments/subscribe-to-comments.php:12) in /var/www/blog/wp-content/plugins/subscribe-to-comments.php on line 58"

I did my best to edit the subscribe-to-comments.php to fix up the fatal error but it was no go, so after a bunch of research I’ve found out somebody created a new version of the plugin under the name subscribe-to-comments-reloaded .

I’ve proceeded and gave a try to subscribe-to-comments-reloaded as a substitute to the old broken subscribe-to-comments .

Enabling the subscribe-to-commets-reloaded worked out of the box and the plugin now works perfectly fine and even better is enabling all the functionaity of the subscribe-to-comments
Cheers 🙂

How to fix clock on Slackware / Slackware and this old incorrect BIOS time troubles

Friday, February 24th, 2012

There two main reasons which cause incorrect clock settings on Slackware Linux.
One common reason for incorrectly set time is improper clock and timezone settings during Slackware install.

On install, one of the ncruses install menus asks an ambigious dialog question reading

HARDWARE CLOCK SET TO UTC?
Is the hardware clock set to Coordinated Universal Time (UTC/GMT)?

Some newbie Slackware users make the mistake to choose YES here, resulting in incorrectly set clock.

Second possibility for improper time is incorrect time on BIOS level. This is not so common among laptop and modern desktop PCs. However in the past impoper system BIOS hardware clock was usual.
In any case it is a good practice to check the system PC BIOS clock settings.

To check BIOS battery hardware clock from command line use:

bash-4.1# hwclock --show
Fri 24 Feb 2012 01:24:18 AM EET -0.469279 seconds

The system clock on Slackware is set via a script called timeconfig. To fix slack's incorrect host time run:

bash-4.1# timeconfig

Slackware Linux timeconfig set to UTC ncurses dialog clock setting

Slackware Linux timeConfig Country Selection dialog

Running timeconfig once should configure a proper timezone to be set on next system reboot, however the system time will probably still be not ok.
To manually set time to right time, use date command. To set manually the system wide time to 12:00:00 with date:

bash-4.1# date -s "12:00:00"

Anyways for time accuracy the ntpdate should be used to feth time from NTP internet time server:

bash-4.1# ntpdate time.nist.gov
...

Finally to make the new set right time permanent also for the BIOS battery clock issue:

bash-4.1# hwclock --systohc

By the way its curious fact Slackware Linux is the oldest still existent GNU / Linux based distribution. Its up and running since the very day GNU and Linux came to merge at one Free OS 😉

How to set custom page titles in Joomla 1.5 manually for better SEO

Thursday, June 2nd, 2011

he Joomla CMS default behaviour is that Page titles of the Joomla Articles created are always set to the page Title assigned to each of the articles.

This is not very good behaviour in terms of SEO, as the page title of each link on the main page is different and there is no continuous repeating pattern in all of the joomla pages.
Everyone that has even basic idea of SEO knows that page titles are very important weight factor to make indexing inside Search Engines succesful.

There is a well know SEO rule which is the more reoccuring pattern one has in his page titles, more is stressed on the keywords contained in the title.
As I said for some weird reason Joomla has no common page Title for all my the created Article pages linked via the Main Menu*

Thus in order to improve this bad default Joomla SEO behaviour one has to change the default auto assigned titles for created pages, manually.

Two things are necessery to change each of the joomla already existing TITLES.

1. Go to each of the pages (.e.g. Home etc.) and change the Parameters System Page Title settings

After logging in with administrator in Joomla, navigate to Menus -> Main Menu*

Further on choose a menu item from all your existing items, let’s say Home and click on it.

On the left side below the Save, Apply, Close and Help buttons you will notice the menus:

Parameters (Basic), Parameters (Component), Parameters (System)

When clicked on Parameters (System) a submenu will appear:
Joomla Main Menu Parameters System Page Title better SEO

Above is a screenshot of the up-described Parameters (System) [Page Title] location

You need to change where it reads on the screenshot CHANGE THE TITLE HERE !!!!!! 😉

After entering your own desired page title go and save the article via the Apply or Save button (also visible in the screenshot).

Now as the custom Page Title is set, next step is to enable the custom Page Title for the respective Article in Article Manager

2. Enable custom Page Title for created pages in Joomla

Go to the Article Manager by following the menus:

Content -> Article Manager

Select the Article of which you want to change the Page Title to some custom text and click over it.

As the article opens for edit in an html editor, navigate to Parameters (Advanced) tab and therein change the Show Title from default setting value:
Use Global
to
Yes

Once again use the Save or Apply button to confirm the new settings and open your website in a new tab, try to browse and check the title of the articles parameters just edited. It should show up in the Title (page heading) the custom input Title.

Now repeat the same procedure for all pages (Articles), existing in Joomla to attune the Page Titles to some Google friendly strings and enjoy the better Search engine indexing which should likely follow.

Adding a nice advanced text editor to make wordpress wp-admin have Microsoft Word like edit functionality

Friday, September 16th, 2011

By the default wordpress does not have support for changing the exact font, therefore copying and pasting a text made in Open Office or MS Word often places in the Post or Page wp edit fonts different from the default one set for articles.
Hence some articles after being published on a wordpress blog show up with improper font and the only way to fix that is to change the font first in Open Office and then copy back to wordpress instead of simply being able to change the font from within the wordpress article.

To get around this problem, there is a nice plugin fckeditor-for-wordpress-plugin which aids wordpress with an awesome Word like edit functionalities.
, downhload location for FCKEdit for WordPress is here

Here is a screenshot of the extra nice functionality the FCKEditor for wordpress providces.

FCKEDitor for wordpress extra functionality screenshot

Installing the plugin is like installing any other wordpress plugin and comes easily to:

debian:/~# cd /var/www/blog/wp-content/plugins
debian:/plugins# wget http://downloads.wordpress.org/plugin/fckeditor-for-wordpress-plugin.3.3.1.zip
...
debian:/plugins# unzip fckeditor-for-wordpress-plugin.3.3.1.zip
...
debian:/plugins# cd fckeditor-for-wordpress-plugin/

And further enabling the plugin from:

Plugins -> Inactive -> (Dean's FCKEditor For WordPress) Enable

fckeditor for wordpress will replace the default wordpress editor TinyMCE straight after being enabled.
 I’ve done also a mirror of the current version as of time of writting of this article, one can  download the fckeditor for wordpress mirrored here 
Now really file editting inside wordpress admin panel is way easier and convenient 😉 Cheers

How to fix upside-down / inverted web camera laptop Asus K51AC issue on Ubuntu Linux and Debian GNU / Linux

Monday, February 13th, 2012

Skype Video Inverted bat like linux screenshot

Does your camera show video correctly in cheese but shows captured video upside-down (inverted) in skype ?
This is an issue a friend of mine experienced on his Asus K51AC-SX037D laptop on both Ubuntu and Debian Linux.
As you can see in the picture above it is funny as with this bug the person looks like a batman 😉
As the webcam upside-down issue was present on both latest Ubuntu 11.10 and latest stable Debian Squeeze 6.02, my guess was other GNU / Linux rpm based distro like Fedora might have applied a fix to this weird Skype inverted video (bat human like) issue.
Unfortunately testing the webcam with Skype on latest both Fedora 16 and Linux Mint 12 appeared to produce the same webcam bug.

A bit of research for the issue online and try outs of a number of suggested methods to resolve the issue led finally to a work around, thanks to this post
Here is few steps to follow to make the webcam show video like it should:

1. Install libv4l-0 package

root@linux:~# apt-get --yes install libv4-0
...

Onwards to start skype directly from terminal and test the camera type:

hipo@linux:~$ LD_PRELOAD=/usr/lib/libv4l/v4l1compat.so skype

This is the work around for 32 bit Linux install, most people however will probably have installed 64 bit Linux, for 64bit Linux installs the above command should be little different:

hipo@linux:~$ LD_PRELOAD=/usr/lib32/libv4l/v4l1compat.so skype

Once skype is launched test the camera and see if the camera capture is now uninverted, through menus:

S -> Options -> Video Devices -> Test

Skype Options Video devices screenshot

2. Create a skype Wrapper script Launcher

To make skype launch everytime with exported shell variable:
LD_PRELOAD=/usr/lib32/libv4l/v4l1compat.so

A new skype wrapper bash shell script should be created in /usr/local/bin/skype , the file should contain:

#!/bin/sh
LD_PRELOAD=/usr/lib32/libv4l/v4l1compat.so
/usr/bin/skype

To create the script with echo in a root terminal issue;

root@linux:~# echo '#!/bin/sh' >> /usr/local/bin/skype
root@linux:~# echo 'LD_PRELOAD=/usr/lib32/libv4l/v4l1compat.so' >> /usr/local/bin/skype
root@linux:~# echo '/usr/bin/skype' >> /usr/local/bin/skype
root@linux:~# chmod +x /usr/local/bin/skype

3. Edit the Skype gnome menu to substitute /usr/bin/skype Skype Launcher with /usr/local/bin/skype

Gnome 2 has a handy menu launcher, allowing to edit and add new menus and submenus (menus and items) to the Application menu, to launch the editor one has to click over Applications with last mouse button (right button) and choose Edit Menus

GNOME Edit menus screenshot

The menu editor like the one in the below screenshot will appear:

GNOME 2 Menu Editor Screenshot

In the preceeding Launcher properties window, Command: skype has to be substituted with:

GNOME2 Skype screenshot Launcher properties

Command: /usr/local/bin/skype

For console freaks who doesn't want to bother in editting Skype Launcher via GUI /usr/share/applications/skype.desktop file can be editted in terminal. Inside skype.desktop substitute:

Exec=skype

with

Exec=/usr/local/bin/skype

Skype fixed inverted bat like screenshot

As one can imagine the upside-down video image in Skype is not a problem because of Linux, but rather another bug in Skype (non-free) software program.
By the way everyone, who is using his computer with Free Software operating system FreeBSD, Linux etc. knows pretty well by experience, that Skype is a very problematic software; It is often a cause for system unexpected increased system loads, problems with (microphone not capturing), camera issues, issues with pulseaudio, problem with audio playbacks … Besides the long list of bugs there are unexpected display bugs in skype tray icon, bugs in skype messanger windows and at some rare occasions the program completely hangs and had to be killed with kill command and re-launched again.

Another worrying fact is Skype's versions available for GNU / Linux and BSD is completely out of date with its "competitor" operating systems MS Windows, MacOS X etc.
For people like me and my friend who want to use free operating system the latest available skype version is not even stable … current version fod download from skype's website is (Skype 2.2Beta)!

On FreeBSD the skype situation is even worser, freebsd have only option to run Skype ver 1.3 or v. 2.0 at best, as far as I know skype 2.2 and 2.2beta is not there.

Just as matter of comparison the latest Skype version on Windows is 5.x. Windows release is ages ahead its Linux and BSD ver. From a functional point of view the difference between Linux's 2.x and Windows 5.x is not that much different, what makes difference is is the amount of bugs which Linux and BSD skype versions contain…
Skype was about 6 months ago bought by Microsoft, therefore the prognosis for Skype Linux support in future is probably even darker. Microsoft will not probably bother to release new version of Skype for their competitor free as in freedom OSes.

I would like to thank my friend and brother in Christ Stelian for supplying me with the Skype screenshots, as well as for being kind to share how he fixed his camera with me.

Linux then and Now statistics diagram on GNU/Linux use grow 1994 – 2011

Tuesday, January 31st, 2012

Linux then and now developers line of code top 500 super computers and GNU / Linux 1994 - 2011, Kernel source code lines

 

In above graphics you see development of GNU/Linux through the years startingfrom 1992 to 2010.  You see for the past 18 years the number of kernel developers has rasised from 100 to 1000 (10 times). The number of super computers based on GNU / Linux operating system was only 1, while in 2011 they were already 413. Just for information Top 10 Super computers in terms of CPU power are running on top of some Linux + GNU environment based operating system.

Cell Phones baed on Linux or GNU sold worldwide, Internet users growth, PCs with linux shipped worldwide

You see the number of Patented software increased approximate 3 times for 16 years … PC shipped with Linux all oer the world increased almost 10 times.

GNU / Linux user habits then and now pie, Where Linux is used most survey results

A survey was run among the biggest Linux convention LinuxCon aiming to find out the share difference between users using different distros, as well as a survey to answer the question where is Linux mostly used. Obviously even though the Ubuntu desktop boom this years Linux is still mostly used in work location, home desktop / notebook users are almost 3 times less.
The survey show the sad results,  the Linux in school and academic communities is less used than for professional purposes. On the desktop things has slightly changed, for the last 5-7 years. From the position of being a Linux Desktop leading OS, Fedora went into the shadows in favour of  the "less free" (in terms of Freedom) Ubuntu.

Linux users then and now, biggest successes and challenges for Linux and free software use and adoption

All system administrators knows well Linux is a very common choice for building small or middle enterprise business information systems. Hugest platforms which are the web backbone today like Google, Facebook, Twitter, Stock Exchanges,  Mail services, various technical equipment etc. runs on top of Linux. Even though the huge number of adoption Linux and free software is though to not be legally assured this is well known among free software and open source evangelist under the term FUD.

Android found its way also in Samsung Galaxy and a number of tablet devices running Linux based kernel OS was shipped in 2011.

With the raise of Android which (base is mostly Linux kernel and less GNU tools based). The spread of Linux has seen a huge raise on the mobile (smart phones) market as well. You see in above chart as of 2011 Android sells had the highest market share  with 37%.
The year 2011 was not among the best Linux users anywas, as Unity does turned away many users to become Linux converts. The big GNOME 3 mess, which was called by Linus Toravlds a "holy mess" , along with the kernel.org's security break in does also contributed that year 2011 ended up as a bad one for free software.

Linux, Windows 7, Vista, XP, MacOS X, iOS market share chart

As of August 2011, the global Linux market approximate market share is about 3% of all the installed OSes currently existing in the world. And compared to 5 years ago there is a little decline in the share. I believe the 2012 will be a better year for both development and adoption of free software and Linux.

 

How to block IP address with pf on FreeBSD, NetBSD and OpenBSD

Wednesday, July 27th, 2011

Pf Firewall BSD logo

I’ve noticed some IPs which had a kind of too agressive behaviour towards my Apache webserver and thus decided to filter them out with the Firewall.
As the server is running FreeBSD and my firewall choise is bsd’s pf I added the following lines to my /etc/pf.conf to filter up the abiser IP:

table persist file "/etc/pf.blocked.ip.conf"
EXT_NIC="ml0" # interface connected to internet
block drop in log (all) quick on $EXT_NIC from to any
echo '123.123.123.123' >> /etc/pf.blocked.ip.conf

As you see I’m adding the malicious IP to /etc/pf.blocked.ip.conf, if I later decide to filter some other IPs I can add them up there and they will be loaded and filtered by pf on next pf restart.

Next I restarted my pf firewall definitions to make the newly added rules in pf.conf to load up.

freebsd# pfctl -d
freebsd# pfctl -e -f /etc/pf.conf

To show all IPs which will be inside the blockips filtering tables, later on I used:

pfctl -t blockips -T show

I can also later use pf to add later on new IPs to be blocked without bothering to restart the firewall with cmd:

freebsd# pfctl -t blockedips -T add 111.222.333.444

Deleting an IP is analogous and can be achieved with:

freebsd# pfctl -t blockedips -T delete 111.222.333.444

There are also logs stored about pf IP blocking as well as the other configured firewall rules in /var/log/pflog file.
Hope this is helpful to somebody.

St. Maximus The Confessor Holy Relics (incorruptable right hand) is for veneration in Varna

Friday, July 1st, 2011

St. Maximus the Confessor Orthodox Christian icon

Today by God’s gracy I was blessed to go to Varna’s Cathedral Church (“Dorminion of the Theotokos”) on a small pilgrimage trip to venerate the Holy Relics of Saint Maximus the Confessor.

The saint relics which are there for veneration today 30/Jun and 01 of July are the saint’s right hand which was slaughtered in the 7th century. Today 14 centuries later, the saint right hand holy relic is still intact (the skin of the hand is dried but it’s intact!).
This is a great miracle of God who does clearly show the truthfulness of Orthodox Christian faith. The saint’s holy relics are temporary moved from Holy Mount Athos monastery St. Apostol Paul, where kept.
As one can read in saint Maximus biography, st. Maximus is one of the biggest Orthodox Christian martyr from the time before the great Church Schizm.

St. Maximus the Confessor was a Christian monk and a great Church scholar. He became a monk choosing willingly to abandon his great richness and political life because of Christ.

The Saint’s title The Confessor is given because of his great suffering for Christian faith.

Sv. Maxim Izpovednik many miracles icon

Because of the saint’s firm staying in faith during an icon fighting heresy emperor Hiraclious (Iraklii) slandered the saint and he was send to a trial where he was immediately vilified as a state traitor.
A severe beating was ordered to be done on the saint and the whole ground was sprinkled with his blood, the saint’s torturers also cut his tongue and his right hand was chopped off.
The heretical torturers were ordered to slay down his right hand and his tongue in order to prevent the saint to confess/preach and write down about the Orthodox Christian faith.

The descpile of the saint Anasthasius has also faced the same faith. After the butchery the two saints were walked around the city streets to mock them publicly behind the shocked crowds eyes.

Even though the sadistic torments by God’s providence saint Maximus the Confessor did not died immediately but was sent to exile in today’s Dobrudja (Dobrich) region in Bulgaria.

Saint Maximus has died in his old age, aged 82 in August 680 A.D. Even though being a disabled because of the martyrdom, during his exile the saint was able to write a lot of treatise books against heresies and especially against Monotheistic Christian heresy, and a lot of other writting concerning the proper spiritual christian life. The saint’s major works are titled, Ambigua An exploration of difficult passages in the work of Pseudo-Dionysius and Gregory of Nazianzus, focusing on Christological issues and Mystagogy – A commentary and reasoning on the Eucharistic liturgy.

According to Church tradition after the saint’s tongue was cut in order to prevent him to preach the Christian faith correctly, God did a miracle where even without a tongue he preached the Gospel to the masses and he heretical emperor who ordered his suffering and the saint tormentors were publicly disgraced.

Saint Maximus the Confessor is considered a saint also in the Roman Catholic Church.

The saint was canonized officially about 22 years after his death on the oecumenical Church saints assembly in year 682.
After Saint Maximus’s death on his tomb many healing miracles occured.
On the place where he was buried three bright lights looking like candlesticks could be seen burning (a clear miracle atteting of the Holy Trinity) as the thrurthful one God.
God’s great omen on his tomb is also a clear sign that Maximus the Confessor has been accepted in the eternal paradise with God with all the rightous.

Let God always strenthen us and help us, to all us who does venerate the saint. Let God by his Holy prayers deliver us from all heresies and grant us grace to stay firm in the true Orthodox Christian faith now and forever.
Amen!