Category Archives: Technology

Technology related blogs

Technology

Fixing the cookie problem (again)

Well, its been a bit of a while, but I think I have this one finally fixed.

The problem has been that when I moved to using SSL (ie., encrypting all traffic to and from the site) although I changed the WordPress configuration file (wp-config.php) to the new address (https://veltman.org), the underlying entry in the mySQL database still pointed to the original site (http://veltman.org).

To fix it, I had to change the following table entries:

In the table wp_options:

siteurl    https://veltman.org
home       https://veltman.org


Both needed modification as they were still pointing at the original http://veltman.org address. This was enough to confuse WordPress at the time of login

Life, Technology

Phillips funeral

Rendering Phillips funeral video on FCP. Wow that is processor intensive.

Hopefully I can put something online soon to stream out. But its a slow process.

At least I am able to do it now. Next step is to document things for the coronial investigation.

Life, Technology, Work

Optimising Mac Storage

Discovered that optimising storage is not a good thing for the server. Basically fills my SSD up for no good reason.

Recovered over 100GB of space by turning this off. Its not like I even keep anything useful on this account in terms of photos, etc.

Technology, Work

Proxy server Fix

Just worked out (yes – I’m that slow..) that all I needed to so was change the $_SERVER environment variable so that I can properly record the IP address of incoming requests.

Since I set up the proxy server a while ago to split out the websites onto different virtual machines, all my site stats recorded the proxy server as the originating site of the web page requests. Which was sort of true – everything was coming via the proxy server – but I do like to know where in the world people are coming from looking at this site.

For the record the fix just required this entry in the wp-config.php file. I basically rewrite the REMOTE_ADDR variable to look into where the proxy has forwarded it from.

/* By MGV on 20200607 - New entry to handle proxy server
     - this will allow us to see the real IP of the client
     - rather than the proxy server IP */

$_SERVER['REMOTE_ADDR']=$_SERVER['HTTP_X_FORWARDED_FOR'] ;

I guess this could blow up if the site goes to a different server, but for now, its getting the right Internet address for site stats.

Life, Technology

Weekend at Home

Can’t complain really – its been a nice weekend overall. Have enjoyed myself and relaxed.

I think its time to start getting back into the exercise again. Gyms open up in a week I think, based on the reduction in restrictions. I’ll need it.

Certainly had a good ride, even if the start had to be delayed due to the really cold weather.

Got to play with my raspberry pi’s. The new case works well without needing a fan. Definitely the way to go. Cute little critter. And really quite amazing for what it costs.

Holidays, Life, Technology, Work

Mac Mini

Just spent the weekend configuring my Mac mini that’s arrived – its a 2020 model (ie the 2018 model with the feature bump):

  • 1 TB SSD
  • 16 GB ram (I know I could have got 8GB and expanded up for less)
  • Core i7 with 6 cores/12 threads.

Its a nice little server, and not a bad desktop. So I’m ready for when/if my 2012 Mac mini server fails… Amazingly its going strong to this day.

But this is a nice desktop, with room to grow. Interestingly, I noticed that my 500 GB server is actually doing ok now that I’ve pruned the snapshots of the virtual machines. So I have enough space for a while yet despite the emails that are filling it up. Still, ready for when that time comes, which will no doubt be fairly soon.