5Valleys Blog

Upgrading to Rails 2.3

jsgarvin — Sat, 28 Feb 2009 10:28:00 -0700

I've been working on upgrading a personal project from Rails 2.2.2 to 2.3RC1. Things were working swell in development, but when I tried to push it up to production, there were strange errors. Finally got it working, and here's what I figured out... continue...

GateKeeper, CrossSiteSniper, ARID move to Github

jsgarvin — Tue, 17 Feb 2009 23:03:00 -0700

Just a quick FYI to anyone interested. I've officially moved GateKeeper, CrossSiteSniper, and ARID all over to Github. continue...

Branches on Github

jsgarvin — Sat, 10 Jan 2009 01:03:00 -0700

I've been slowly trying out git and Github and doing some experimenting. Tonight I tested the 'branch' waters. There seems to be some confusion on some blogs regarding managing branches on Github. I think I've got it figured out (at least for my purposes), so for future reference and to maybe help out someone else, here are my notes. This post and this one have some tips that helped me a lot, but they're still a bit confusing and I'm not convinced the authors were very sure what they were doing when they wrote those. (caveat: I'm not really sure what I'm doing either.) continue...

Encrypting and Auto Mounting Ubuntu Partition

jsgarvin — Fri, 02 Jan 2009 20:01:00 -0700

If you've got a laptop computer, it's not a bad idea to encrypt a data partition and keep all your personal data there. That way if your laptop gets lost or stolen, then the thief may have your computer, but they won't be able to steal your identity, too. And, doing so in linux is absurdly easy. Here's how I did it on Ubuntu. Also note that, if you've been here before and already have the encrypted partition, but are trying to access it from a new install of Ubuntu, you should *skip* steps 2, 4 & 6 Step 1) Use Synaptic to install the 'cryptsetup' and 'pam-mount' packages. Step 2) Create a new primary partition that will be your encrypted partition (I recommend using gparted to do this). Step 3) Restart your computer. This is a step I frequently forget, but is absolutely necessary for the right encryption modules to be loaded into your kernel. Step 4) Run 'sudo cryptsetup luksFormat /dev/sdXX' where 'sdXX' is the name of the new partition you created in step 2 (eg, sda4). When asked for a passphrase, use the exact same password you use to login to the computer (you'll see why in step 9). Notice and heed the warning "This will overwrite data on /dev/sdXX irrevocably." Step 5) Run 'sudo cryptsetup luksOpen /dev/sdXX sdXX' Step 6) Run 'sudo mkfs.ext3 /dev/mapper/sdXX' Step 7) Create a folder to mount your partition to. I like to use /mnt/sdXX, but you could just as easily put it right in your home directory, such as '~/encrypted'. Note the all instructions below assume you chose '/mnt/sdXX', so adjust accordingly. Step 8) Run 'sudo mount /dev/mapper/sdXX /mnt/sdXX' Ok, now your partition is created and mounted. But, next time (and every time) you restart your computer you'll need to run step 8 again. If you forget, you'll find that /mnt/sdXX is empty, and panic. Wouldn't it be nice if you could just mount that partition automatically whenever you log in? Well, as long as you used the same passphrase for the for the partition as your password when you log in, you can. Step 9) As root, open /etc/security/pam_mount.conf.xml and add or uncomment the line that says '' Step 10) Create a file named .pam_mount.conf.xml in your home directory and fill it with the following... Step 11) As root, edit /etc/pam.d/gdm and add '@include common-pammount' to the end of the list. Step 12) Reboot and you should find that the encrypted partition gets mounted for you. One final word of warning. If an UNencrypted partition fails or gets corrupted, there are still some very crude methods to *try* and recover anything that wasn't properly backed up. When an ENcrypted partition fails like this, you can probably throw most or all of those tools and techniques out the window. So, keep your encrypted partition frequently backed up to a different *physical* drive, probably external, probably also encrypted. continue...

ICandy

jsgarvin — Sat, 10 May 2008 16:19:04 -0600

At my day job we have several Rails apps that we've built and continue to maintain and enhance. We often add features that are usable in all of our applications, so although they're often initially developed in one app or another, they quickly get turned into plugins that we can share across all of our apps. continue...

GateKeeper + attachment_fu

jsgarvin — Sat, 03 May 2008 00:20:00 -0600

I recently added attachment_fu to a personal Rails project that was already using GateKeeper and ran into some stumbling blocks. It took me some time to dig into attachment_fu's inner workings and some experimentation to figure out the best way to get to the two plugins to play nice together, so here's some tips for anyone else who might try this themselves someday. continue...

Missoula BarCamp 2008

jsgarvin — Sat, 26 Apr 2008 19:01:00 -0600

I just got back from the first Misoula BarCamp, and I think it was a success. We had about 18 people show up, which I think is very good for the first one. One attendee ( a fellow Rails developer ) came all the way from Helena. continue...

Getting Started with GateKeeper

jsgarvin — Sat, 19 Apr 2008 07:41:00 -0600

I've noticed in my site logs people are searching the Interweb Tubes for "GateKeeper" combined with other keywords that suggest they're looking for some better examples on how to use it, so I figured maybe I'd write something up to try to help. continue...

ARID 0.5 Released

jsgarvin — Sun, 13 Apr 2008 19:07:00 -0600

I've just released ARID 0.5. This is a minor update with some small bug fixes and optimizations. continue...

Cross Site Sniper 0.3.1

jsgarvin — Fri, 11 Apr 2008 10:43:00 -0600

I've just release version 0.3.1 of Cross Site Sniper. This is a minor bug fix update. continue...