Hacking

How to forward email from your VPS to an external email provider

I use Linode to host my domains. I had a need to have an official looking email, and found this post by Jesse Lau. However he is missing a crucial line which I found in this Linode forum post:

virtual_alias_domains = ducklington.org

So the entire correct recipe is:

  1. Install postfix
    apt-get update
    apt-get upgrade
    apt-get install postfix
  2. /etc/postfix/main.cf download and edit
    virtual_alias_domains = ducklington.org
    virtual_alias_maps = hash:/etc/postfix/virtual
  3. /etc/postfix/virtual
    jim@ducklington.org jim@gmail.com
    ted@ducklington.org ted@gmail.com
  4. postmap /etc/postfix/virtual to build database
  5. /etc/init.d/postfix reload

Some of the chat from the helpful people in the Linode IRC channel may prove of use:

 

Push-style templating systems catalog

Terence Parr wrote a seminal article entitled “Enforcing Strict Model View Separation in Template Engines”. In this article he states:

The mantra of every experienced web application developer is the same: thou shalt separate business logic from display. Ironically, almost all template engines allow violation of this separation principle, which is the very impetus for HTML template engine development.

After living at Perlmonks for the longest, I finally stuck the list of Push-style templating systems into a Google doc.

This list, and his paper, were developed before 100% server-side javascript rendering existed. Now, things such as UrWeb,  Vaadin and ScalaJS represent the cutting edge of dynamic HTML generation, being highly interactive yet typesafe and driven by a full computer programming language. Those language both compile to JS or make use of js without having the type-weakness and error-proneness of Javascript itself, yet offering rich highly interactive user experiences.

 

Solved: “Unpacking the package… Could not create directory.” wordpress error

I ran into this beauty with my latest attempt to install a WordPress theme:

Unpacking the package…

Could not create directory.

After a brief “wtf?!” and nothing in the Apache error log or a quick search, I did the following from the root of my wordpress install to save the day:

mkdir wp-content/upload
chmod 777 wp-content/upload

AND THAT FAILED too!

To the rescue… edit your wp-config.php file and put this line at the bottom:

define('FS_METHOD', 'direct');

so that instead of trying to use FTP or FTPS to transfer files, they are directly transferred.