Archive for June, 2009

For various reasons, I’ve found myself needing to decode email file attachments in base64. (It’s ugly and involves mailx. You don’t want to know.)

Here’s how to do it:


openssl base64 -d -in infilename -out outfilename

from macosxhints.com

More stuff documented so I don’t forget it. Also, this is my manual upgrade process for WordPress. In this case, I’m going from 2.5 to 2.8.

Backup my hacked akismet. I modified it to write a logfile, so I’ll put the old version back in after the upgrade. One of these days I’ll hack up a newer version.

Back up the database for the target site:
mysqldump –add-drop-table -h localhost -u username -p feorlen_org > /my/backup/location/28jun09backup.feorlen_org.sql

Back up everything on the site, just because. (Instead of only the WordPress directory.)

Disable plug-ins from the admin interface.

Copy the install package to the top level directory. Copy to a safe location wp-config.php. Delete the following:

the contents of my wordpress directory
wordpress/include
wordpress/admin

(I have no cache or widgets directories this time.)

Restore the saved wp-config.php.

Temporarily rename my custom named directory to “wordpress” and untar the archive over it. Then put it back. (Because I’m lazy.)

Go to the admin page and follow the directions. Replace new akismet with my old hacked one. Delete that crazy Dolly thing. Re-enable plugins.

Test.

I’ve suddenly found myself running out of fds, which brings things to a screeching halt. For future reference, here are some helpful things to remember.

Check the current settings with launchctl:

www.feorlen.org[feorlen]:/etc$ launchctl limit
cpu unlimited unlimited
filesize unlimited unlimited
data 6291456 unlimited
stack 8388608 67104768
core 0 unlimited
rss unlimited unlimited
memlock unlimited unlimited
maxproc 1000 2500
maxfiles 256 unlimited

change for this shell only:

www.feorlen.org[feorlen]:/etc$ launchctl limit maxfiles 1024 unlimited

Make systemwide changes in launchd.conf:
http://support.apple.com/kb/TS1659

WWDC is come and gone and I’m home with shiny new goodies. I installed Snow Leopard on my laptop during the week and that went well. Exchange support seems to be working and various glitches are (mostly) minor. So I started plotting to upgrade my server.

Talking to some folks in the IT lab, what I got was they have been working on upgrade and migration. That’s nice to hear as I’m always skeptical. Tiger->Leopard was new hardware for me so I just started from scratch, but this time I’d rather not. With the mess that my email has been lately I decided to jump in and give it a try. I was ready for some wonderful automagical upgrade goodness, and to be rid of cyrus forever.

After getting a good, bootable backup I put the DVD in and let it go. I got to the second reboot and there it sat: The cheerful Welcome screen, staring at me for 90 minutes until I finally power cycled the box. On reboot I got more of the same. It’s basically sitting there continuously flushing the firewall rules. So far, I’ve filed the bug and they are looking at some logfiles. And in the meantime, imapd is still crashing.