Author: luke

Query a domain name using a specific DNS server

Usually when checking DNS results a command like the following can be used: dig yourdomainname.com The above will check which DNS servers to query, and then ask those servers to change the name to an IP address.  However sometimes there are situations where it should be working but doesn’t appear as you expect.  So the roundabout… Continue reading Query a domain name using a specific DNS server

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xorg not able to start correctly

This is where X respawns constantly, then gives up for 5 minutes.  Usually this is a driver issue however I recently had this problem happen out of the blue where it previously worked.   The error I was presented with was: waiting for X server to shut down error setting MTRR After digging around the… Continue reading xorg not able to start correctly

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Generating a pleasing colour palette

What this does is randomly choose RGB values that are bright and colourful, while not being primary colours.  It gives the application a much nicer look than standard colours.  Below is the code to choose the random colour: // figure out a pleasing colour // adapted from http://martin.ankerl.com/2009/12/09/how-to-create-random-colors-programmatically/ $grc = M_PI / 3; $h =… Continue reading Generating a pleasing colour palette

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Configuring phpmyadmin with nginx

Install the php dependencies apt-get install phpmyadmin php5-fpm Modify /etc/nginx/sites-available/default and add the following at the end of the server section location ^~ /phpmyadmin { alias /usr/share/phpmyadmin/; index index.php index.html index.htm; location ~ \.php$ { fastcgi_split_path_info ^(.+\.php)(/.+)$; fastcgi_pass unix:/var/run/php5-fpm.sock; fastcgi_index index.php; include fastcgi_params; } } To restrict access to a certain IP, add the following… Continue reading Configuring phpmyadmin with nginx

Hosting multiple sites/domains on nginx

Create a folder for your new domain within nginx mkdir -p /var/www/yourdomain.com/public_html Fix up the permissions chown -R www-data:www-data /var/www/yourdomain.com/public_html chmod 755 /var/www Create a simple page to serve Add the following to /var/www/yourdomain.com/public_html/index.html <html> <head> <title>www.yourdomain.com</title> </head> <body> <h1>Success: You Have Set Up a Virtual Host</h1> </body> </html> Create and modify the new virtual… Continue reading Hosting multiple sites/domains on nginx

Enable cross-origin resource sharing for AJAX

A common problem when dealing with AJAX scripts is that the server script (or API) which javascript is calling is required to be on exactly the same domain (subdomain included).  To open up your server script / API to all domains the following headers are required to be sent before any content: Access-Control-Allow-Origin: * Access-Control-Allow-Headers:… Continue reading Enable cross-origin resource sharing for AJAX