Author: sblogadmin

My crontab has extra comments at the top that I did not add!

Question:

My crontab file has lines similiar to :

# DO NOT EDIT THIS FILE – edit the master and reinstall.
# (/tmp/crontab.31994 installed on Fri Apr 16 09:43:07 2004)
# (Cron version — $Id: crontab.c,v 2.13 1994/01/17 03:20:37 vixie Exp $)

at the top. I did not add these. How did they get there?

Answer:

Those lines are added automatically by the crontab system when you update your crontab. You can ignore them. They are comment lines and do not affect the running of your crontab.

How can I turn off php’s register_globals option?

Question:

How can I turn off register_globals ?

Answer:

The method of turning of register_globals depends upon how you are running php. If you are using the default mod_php create a .htaccess file in your www directory and add the line :

php_flag register_globals off

You can also create multiple .htaccess files inside of different directories
and change the status of register_globals for different parts of your site.

If you are using one of the php-cgi versions, .htaccess will not work. Instead, create a directory called :

etc

in your home directory

and place a custom php.ini file in it. Inside the php.ini file, set register_globals to off.

My site is showing a list of all my files! How do I control directory indexes?

Question:

My site is showing a listing of all my files. Anyone who comes to my website can see everything! Help!

Answer:

The directory index is showing because you have no index.html file. Anytime there is no index.html (or index.php, index.htm, etc.) the server will show the default index that it creates on the fly.

You can also control the automatic creation of indexes by performing the following steps :

Create (or edit your existing) .htaccess file and put it in the topmost directory that you want to control. To enable / disable for your whole site, put it in your www directory.

To disable directory listings, add the line :

Options -Indexes

To enable them, add the line :

Options +Indexes

If your site still does not list the directory after enabling and you get the error :

“Forbidden You don’t have permission to access / on this server.”

make sure the read privilege is set for the directory you have the .htaccess file in.

My CGI script is not working! It worked fine until I uploaded a new copy. What’s going on?

Question:

I have a perl cgi script that is not working. I’m sure I have the chmod settings correct and their are no syntax errors.

Answer:

Unfortunatly there can be many different reasons why a script stops working. The most common is that you made a recent edit to the file that broke it. If you are sure that you did not make any syntax (aka programming) errors in the script, the following may help:

When you upload a script (cgi, perl files, etc.) from a windows computer to a unix-based server, you need to upload them in ascii mode. If not, windows adds some extra control characters at the end of each line that cause the script to not run correctly. Normally your FTP program will switch the mode in the background for you. Sometimes it does not though.

In the future, you can just manually hit the ascii mode switch in your FTP program to make it upload the script in ascii mode. The best mode to keep your FTP program in is usally labeld as “auto”. Keep in mind that in your particular FTP program it may be labeled differently. Each FTP program uses their own terminology.

Most ftp programs in auto mode will do the right thing for each file you upload.

How do I make a web-based archive for my mailing list?

Question:

I would like to create a web page with the archived messages on our website. Is there another way to access the mailing list messages at phpwebhosting in order to set up a dynamically generated mail archive page?

Answer:

Currently there is no automatic way to create a web archive of messages for your mailing list.

However you can try installing Dada Mail from :

http://mojo.skazat.com/

and use that as your Mailing list software. It has a nice built-in web interface. We have a lot of clients who use it and like it.

I hope this helps!

weird php 4.4.0 problem

Possible php 4.4.0 update issue – Thanks to scott for this one!

Hi,

It looks like you upadted PHP to 4.4.0 on this server last night. Ever since this update has been installed (Today only) some of my site is broken.

[later on…]

FYI:

Here is the PHP bug:

I had to change:

$this->_elements[] =& $formElement; // this did work but now does not

to:

array_push($this->_elements,$formElement); // this now works

I think they broke this in the new version.

I want to do some advanced things with my incoming mail – what are the restrictions? Explain your shell mail options more.

Question:

Are you familiar with hypermail? It is an archiving program. It takes email and puts it in a convenient html archive. What hypermail purportedly does is take mail from mbox and put it in the archive. It can’t be too complicated or difficult to configure and install. Do you know anything about it? Would it work on your servers?

Answer :

I am not very familiar with hypermail, but from what you describe the biggest problem would be that our mail server software (qmail – qmail.org) puts the messages in maildirs.

Another problem is that the maildirs are only accessible by the special user vpopmail. You can forward select addresses to your Linux shell mail account (your_username@your_server.phpwebhosting.com) and have direct access to the maildirs there to convert them to mbox format. However this becomes complicated and we are unable to provide technical support for it.

I would say the bottom line would be that if you enjoy messing with things a bit, you would be able to make it work. If you want it to just work right away, I would advise against it.

Underneath the control panel we attempt to provide as pure of a Linux shell account experience as we can. If you like developing in that environment then you can probably make what you want to work happen. However you would be on your own. We only are able to provide official support for the email configuration in the control panel (having said that, I personally send all my mail to the shell and read/manage my mail in a mbox-format with a shell mail reader – so it is possible).

I hope this has helped.

Can I control php’s register globals option?

Question:

Hi there. I am taking up web design and was wondering something: Is REGISTER_GLOBALS turned on or off? I hope you can help me with this and thank you for your time!

Answer:

Hi,

Thanks for contacting us!

You can have register_globals turned on or off for your site depending upon your needs. It is best to keep it turned off, but some older applications still require it be turned on so you have that option too.

The php website has more information about register globals at :

http://www.php.net/register_globals

Please let me know if you need anything else!

Do you support the script 1-2-3 music store?

Question :

Hello,

I want to run a script called the 1-2-3 music store (http://www.easybe.com/requirements.html) on my account. This system has the following requirements:

Php version 4.1 or later
Php SAFE_MODE needs to be OFF
MySQL database version 3.23 or later
Does my account on your service meet these requirements?
Thank you.

Answer:

Yes, all those requirements are met. The script should run and install. Please note that we have not used the script ourselves and cannot provide help with the install. However all the requirements are met and the script should run fine on your account with us.