Well, time for some more rants. It seems that pretty much everywhere I have been looking over the last month, from the arrival of .NET magazine through to searching web news sites, has been going on about how great it is that we can get all our software online as a web app instead of having to buy and install it ourselves.

For those with a memory span longer than a goldfish, you will remember this was the “next big thing” in the 1990s and fell flat on its face. However, with the widespread adoption of broadband and the advances in internet technology, the dream is now possible. For example, sites like 30boxes.com, ajaxWrite and all manner of google offerings are gaining popularity all the time.

I can see why the pundits are heralding this new wave of “next big things” (even if it is a second hand idea), as at first it does seem like a good idea. If one discounts the facts – such as dumb terminals are nothing new(30 years ago all “computers” linked into a mainframe which actually ran the software) people didnt like them and wanted their own computers – and accepts this is an old idea rebadged then there may be some reasons to go down this route.

For some, technophobic, customers there can be advantages to having all your software remotely hosted. The host can automate backups and upgrades and you can pay only for the things you use.Software manufacturers certainly like the idea, being able to keep selling you the same thing, over and over, is fantastic. It is like hiring a car instead of buying your own. No maintainence costs, no road taxes etc. Isnt that computer utopia?

Well, no. The same as hiring a car, you dont “own” anything. This is worse than it may first seem – given that the “ownership” of software is a very grey area.

Let me give you an example, you (CTO of XYZ Company) have decided to save costs and run all your company’s office-like applications on a web provider service. (Eg, ajaxWrite). Everything is great. You have saved a fortune and all the share holders are cheering. One day you log on to write a memo and the host is down. Instantly, you have lost your ability to work. Your office staff cant do anything but sit around. This can happen with an offline application, but generally you become responsible for taking protective measures to prevent it happening. Anyway, on with the example:

After the smoke has cleared, and the MD / bosses stopped trying to kill you, the descision is made to go with an expensive host which has a penalty clause in the contract. Great. Savings are down though, so people arent as happy as before, but still – this is all very Web 2.0 and the terminology has kept them quiet.

One day you come into work and there is a problem connecting to the internet. (ISP / Telco etc). The lines were eaten by a wild, rabit rat and wont be repaired for a week. All your office software – more importanly ALL YOUR DATA – is unavailable for that time. All those off site backups the host has made are worthless and the all high tech kit in your building is sitting silent.

More hell. The shareholders demand you get a leased line with even more penalty clauses. More costs. Now you are hardly making any savings (unless you previously bought new software at the drop of a hat). But at least everyone is happy and you are still “Web2.0ing.”

Another fateful day, you come into work and you web host gives you notice that due to demand, it is changing its T&C and limiting your bandwidth. In addition, because it has a virtual monopoly it is going to increase prices. Outraged you try to move to a different host, only to discover the data you have stored remotely has been stored in a proprietary format. After some furious debates the share holders accept this and allow the extra costs but demand you find a new host. Now you are on the same costs as previously.

The next hurdle appears when you discover all your data has become “intellectual property” of the host (not as far fetched as it sounds), and to make matters worse the host is being bought out by ABC company – your arch rivals. There is nothing you can do at this stage to regain control of your data. You chose to allow a third party complete and utter control over it and now will bear the consequences.

Ok – this is just a hypothetical story. But seriously, what real advantages are there to having all your data stored by an effectively unknown third party? It isnt safer – if you want to be safe, then ensure YOU are running proper security measures. 99% of people connected to the internet are less likely to get hacked than a large application service.

Bottom line – this isnt a new idea, not even an old idea whose time has come. It is stupidity all wrapped in a Web 2.0 cloak.

Just as an aside, I have been looking at changing the layout of a goodly number of the sites maintained by the web warriors at Why Dont You, and one of the things I googled was about getting rounded corners. For those who aren’t aware, this is almost the “holy grail” of current web design trends and is normally done through the excessive use of overlapped, css guided, images.

However, thanks to the mighty google, I came across this site – http://www.html.it/articoli/nifty/index.html – and it shows you how to do the trick with just plain old CSS. Excellent. Also useful is this site on colours: http://www.htmlgoodies.com/ tutorials/ colors/ article.php/ 3478961

I know it is almost heretical in todays society, but is too much choice a bad thing?

The Ubuntu 6.06 installation I am using to write this took about 20 minutes to install and set up. Today I went through the package manager and spent nearly 90 minutes finding packages to install. The choice of packages is almost endless (well it appears that way).

One of the wonderful things in Linux is the amount of software available – but is this always a good thing? Will productivity be improved when people spend a third of their day installing software they will probably never use?

Well, this is an interesting one. Following on from the CoFaud problems mentioned in the last post here, where I was trying to search Google for a Windows service called CoFaud – but got no hits at all, I tried the search again today (after the web server reported Google had indexed the page) and still no hits.

Out of curiousity, I did a technorati search for the word CoFaud. Now, I know that the blog entry was in Technorati as it was there at the top of the list.

However, the search produced no hits. Even when I searched through my favourite blogs only, I still go no hits on CoFaud. When I went to the Why Dont You Blog entry page though, the CoFaud article is there at the top. It seems that for some reason, Technorati is not showing the proper results. Either it’s search engine is broken or they are manipulating the results in an underhand manner.

Whichever it is, it is wrong and it goes along way to reinforcing my beliefs that this obsession people seem to have with Web 2.0 and the “social net” is not a good thing.

I have been looking through the services tab on a Windows XP machine and I came across a reference to a serice called “CoFaud” (currently disabled). There were no clues as to the path for this service or what is function was.

Out of curiousity (and obviously to make sure it wasnt a trojan/virus etc), I ran a google search – http://www.google.co.uk/search?hl=en&q=Cofaud+windows+service but this returns exactly ZERO hits.

Even a search for the term “cofaud” only returns 30 hits – almost all names and nothing to do (as far as I could) with a potentially rogue windows service. Does anyone have any idea what this service is?

Well, blow me down. As mentioned previously I have had all manner of issues with ColdFusion. I thought I had tried everything. I upgraded Apache. Downloaded the latest versions of the CF software etc. All to no avail.

As I was reading through the last post I made, I noticed that I had missed a vital step. I never tried the manual configuration methods on the 2.0.58 version of the server. I upgraded to 2.2 first. Would this do the trick?

Suffice to say after a 2 minute download, 5 minute install and 5 minute manual tweaking I now have a fully running ColdFusion system at last!

Well, as reported previously (see last post crying about this), getting apache, php, python etc up and running on an intranet server has turned into a whole world of problems.

Currently, the problems getting the webserver to talk to python have proven to be insurmountable and I have decided to give up on that. Now the system has been “upgraded” to apache 2.2 and I will try again with Mod_Python when the 3.3 version is out (which claims it can work with apache 2.2!).

Next on the hit list was Cold Fusion. Following the unmitigated sucess getting Ubuntu 6.06 running on one of the linux boxes, I suspect there was the “air” of determined optimisim :). Sadly, things rarely turn out so well. Since the previous problems getting this nightmare bit of software running, repeated google searches had produced some possbile helpfull links:

• http://www.adobe.com/cfusion/knowledgebase/ index.cfm?id=tn_18675
• http://www.adobe.com/cfusion/knowledgebase/ index.cfm?id=tn_19575
• http://store1.adobe.com/cfusion/webforums/ forum/ messageview.cfm?catid=2&threadid=1157424&enterthread=y
• http://livedocs.macromedia.com/coldfusion/7/ htmldocs/00000049.htm

Sadly, as with the python debacle, there is a lack of actual help on the net. The URL adobe techhelp point to still isnt working. Generally speaking the Macromedia Livedocs run rings round the Adobe “help” pages (which surely should be taken to court for false advertising!).

Anyway, this is the offending line which the CF Installer adds to httpd.conf

LoadModule jrun_module “Z:/CFusionMX7/runtime/lib/wsconfig/1/mod_jrun20.so”

Now, I have checked and the mod_jrun20.so is where the path implies it should be. The installer thinks everything is working and nothing I can do shows any errors. However when httpd.exe is run this is the error message:

Cannot load Z:/CFusionMX7/runtime/lib/wsconfig/1/mod_jrun20.so into server: The specified procedure could not be found.

The madness continues. It appears that nothing I have changed (after masses of manual tweaks) is improving anything at all. It is genuinely insane. This is a demo version. The idea is, that I try this Cold Fusion out, if I like it I buy it. Or better still, if I like it, I buy it and I program in it – causing other server owners to buy it as well. Sadly, given the amount of effort it is taking to install I very much doubt this will ever be the case. I could understand if this was some backstreet coder’s work but this is a major product shipped by a major software company. It should be able to work. Seriously. If I bought a car and when I got it home I had to rewire the electrics for four days to get it to function I would not be keeping it!

Still, the goal is to get it working – not complain about how bad it is (and it is bad). Commenting out the LoadModule line in httpd.conf, gets the webserver (Apache) started – but when you browse to a *.cfm page it tries to make you download this weird thing. Blatantly things arent working.

This quote comes from one of the links listed above: (http://www.adobe.com/cfusion/ knowledgebase/ index.cfm?id=tn_19575)

Macromedia ColdFusion MX comes with a webserver configuration tool for connecting to external web servers. There may be occasions, however, when the tool doesn’t work properly. Should this happen, the connector can still be configured manually. This TechNote demonstrates the steps required for manually configuring connections to Apache 2, IIS and iPlanet websites.

As you can see, even Adobe – Macromedia appreciate that this software of theirs is not working properly. The next stage of my master plan was to follow the advice given on this page.

Now step 1 went fine. Step 2 was a bit pointless (there folder it wants is already there, no point creating it!)

Steps three and four seemed very critical, as the apparently important file it was talking about was not there. (wsconfig.properties and jrunserver.store). I was going to extract the mod_jrun20.so from the JAR file but the one there was the same size as the current but an hour older. As it stands, I left the current one (which was extracted by the system) to see how it went. The changes to httpd.conf were already in place, so I left them.

Well then came the time to try and start apache!

Nothing.

Exact same problem. I extracted the mod_jrun20.so from the JAR as requested, but still nothing. There is the hint, at the bottom of the page that another article may help (and points to the article) but that is nothing other than a copy of this one (or vice versa).

Still “The specified procedure can not be found.”

Does anyone have an answer to this?

Well, despite my (ahem) reservations regarding Ubuntu I finally cracked and installed the Dapper Drake version (6.06) today.

So far it has been a breeze to install and configure. I have to admit that despite the restrictive admin settings this is a very good and simple distro.

I may even grow to like it one day.

Well, as I have said in the past (see previous article) there are numerous problems in the Apache/CF/PHP/MySQL set up I am trying to rebuild. The goal was for a system to develop applications on – using the most recent versions of the software and following the dire performance of SuSE10 I thought trying others would be worthwhile…. How wrong was I?
Apache was easy. Infact really easy. It just worked. (Remember I am currently working on a Win XP box). All you do is download the .msi file and run it. Once it finishes you have a server on localhost.

Perl was also easy (used ActiveState ActivePerl). Just run the .msi and it all works. PHP was harder but with the assitance of google and apachelounge.com that was quickly sorted.

Python and ColdFusion MX7 were next. Urgh is all I can say. Python was easy to install on Windows (ActivePython) howeve the “LoadModule mod_python (blah)” bit has gone terminally wrong. Same problem with ColdFusion in that the following error message appears “The specified procedure could not be found.” Nothing I have done so far will rectify this and websearches are far from helpful.

The best I found was a link to a blog Django on Windows but that was just a comment which hasnt been replied to yet. Macromedia / Adobe had some hope on their support forums but that provided the solution on a URL which doesnt work. All in all – not a successful evening.

In the last rant about this, I speculated about how the problem may be related to Macromedia (instead of the OS) as I was unable to get it running properly on all manner of configurations (Mostly XP and Linux). Now, today I have become even more sure of this conclusion.

By messing around with the command line (in windows XP of all places), the problems with Cold Fusion MX 7 became much more obvious. Now I dont think I have to explain to any one how strange it is that the WinXP command line gave a better idea of the problem than Linux terminal window but it still happened like that.

Simply put, Macromedia ColdFusion MX & adds a “LoadModule” line to the httpd.conf file which calls the jrun_module. Seems simple, apache is driven by all these modules (see the Apache website for more) and the LoadModule line is the main part of it.

Sadly, when you run from the console in XP you see the error message. The “.so” file called by the module is trying something “unsupported” by Apache. This is causing all manner of fatal errors – most not showing up in the logs or the x-term windows. So it seems it is actually Macromedia’s fault. Looks like it is time to visit the reference documentation and see what I can learn.

Alun Salt (of archeoastronomy fame), has written an interesting and well presented article on the history news network, which opens the discussion on the way that historical “facts” can easily be misrepresented (even completely made) up to suit the prevailing needs of the speaker.

It is not just history which suffers from this, although the “woolly” nature of the subject lends itself readily to pseudo-ist ideas. (Should I copyright that phrase?). People are bad enough when it comes to talking about things which happened in recent memory so there should be no surprise at how atrocious people are when it comes to things even further back in time.

Common examples of this are the “it was never like that in my day” conversation. This becomes exponentially more common as you get older and is certainly a sign of aging. Every day I hear people bemoaning how “standards” have dropped and people aren’t getting as “good an education nowadays.” Generally nonsense.

Add to this the “golden times” from beyond possible memories and it gets much wierder. Thanks to the crackpots in the 19th century we are now burdened with all manner of myths and legends which have been shoe horned into a new status as “real.” (For example, King Arthur, Robin Hood etc.).

Combine this with recent trends in media and education which appear to give people an incentive to jump on what ever uban myth bandwagon passess by (I suspect this is more to do with the amount of information people are given today, not any decline of standards or the like) and you can see that sites like Badscience are unlikely to run out of content any time soon. Good examples of the way myths become real are things like the media hyped reaction to the MMR “scare story” (which was mostly the media re-interpreting the published data…) and things like Glass windows “Sagging.” With the increased penetration of the internet, things can only get worse.

I suspect that given the limited amount of data a person can process each day, there has to be a point at which you think “ok, I dont have the time / facilites to investigate this, I will take it on the authority of Person X.” The problem is, often the cranks and crackpots in our society now manage to demonstrate Status. In the UK we suffer people who are famous for all manner of reasons sounding out on issues of climate change and global politics. Really. Our media-driven obsessions with fame have created all manner of insane “Authority Figures” who are so desperate to get another few minutes of TV time, they will spout out nonsense on anything.

A couple of days ago, I was idly watching a chat-type show and some soap star is going on about issues of global politics as if he was the Professor of International Affairs at St Andrews. However, from his comments it was obvious he could barely point to a foreign country on a map – let alone discuss their geo-power related desires. Pure madness.

The scary thing is the number of people I interact with daily who think that these “self educated” (For want of a less flattering term), self appointed heroes of the cause actually know what they are talking about. Shame on everyone.

All I can say is “urgh.”

Despite my best wishes, Ubuntu has actually trumped both SuSE and WinXP for once. The shock is liable to bring me to my knees and make me contemplate suicide. Seriously. I never thought I would say this but Ubuntu actually has an advantage.

Now, fortunately, it is not a massive advantage. It raises its ugly head when it comes to installing MySQL. (So, not exactly something you do every day!).

With the other operating systems there is a combination of lengthy downloads, messing about with sockets (and in the case of windows ensuring you have working connectors etc), and so on. Based on Ubuntu’s normal difficulty with letting you install things, you would be reasonable to consider this the same.

But no. With Ubuntu the process is:

sudo apt-get install mysql-server (enter)

That is it. Seriously. It works. (Tested just now). I need to go and have a lie down.

Well, with a somewhat embarrased look on my face, I have to provide a follow up to my blog on getting Cold Fusion MX7 running on Linux vs Windows. Sadly, upon booting up the Windows box today this was proven to not be the case.

For some reason, Coldfusion MX 7 has totally embuggerated (is that trademarked word…?) my Apache installation – which completely refuses to run, rendering the Coldfusion installation somewhat pointless (as it wont run without apache). This is starting to degenerate into a farce.

A websearch provided a guide to installing Coldfusion (http://www.sitepoint.com/article/install-coldfusion-mx-windows), granted for version 6.1, which was very detailed and should have been helpfull. Sadly it wasn’t. The instructions here were followed step by step but Apache still gave up the ghost. I have tried default installs of Apache, along with bundled installs (XAMPP etc), and each time it dies on the reboot.

Maybe I was too harsh in my critique of Linux. Maybe it is actually Macromedia’s fault. Needless to say, my interests in developing CF applications is rapidly diminishing…

The Register reported that David Blunkett had given the game away about the true purpooses of ID cards.See  http://www.theregister.co.uk/2006/06/15/blunkett_on_id_immigrant_tracking/

The Home Office has been busy denying that the ID card will be used for tracking people. However the former Home Secretary- who was responsible for introducing the mad plan – has shown this claim is as absurd as some of us believe.

Well, loathe though I am to lose the normal linux evangelicalism we like here at “Why Dont You,” but after a nightlong drama at the hands of SuSE10.1, my revolutionary fervour towards Linux is somewhat deflated.

Basically, I spent last night trying to install and configure Macromedia Coldfusion MX 7, under Apache 2.0.54 on SuSE. Should have been easy. On windows it was geniuinely the work of about ten clicks and ten minutes of my life. The linux experience was vastly different.

Overall, after four hours, I still dont have cold fusion up and running on linux. This is madness. It is a server operating system and should find running services like this as easy as displaying a window.

The background. I have a fully running, default, installation of Apache and I downloaded the .bin version of CF MX7 from the Macromedia website. I burned this to disk and got ready to install. As part of the general housekeeping I got rid of all the excess files and ensured there was about 7GB of free space on / (and 1.8GB on /home). All well and good.

Next, the bin file was copied to /tmp so it could be run from the HDD (faster and more reliable than running from CD), and I switched to root to start the install. Install was from the command line in a gnome terminal.

Then everything went down hill. After what seemed an eternity of questions and configuration options, accepting the defaults, everything appeard to be working. I closed the window and tried to connect to local host.

Nothing.

I tried all manner of combinations, different strings and the like. Still nothing. Despite the apache processes running, there is no way on Earth it would let me open localhost. In the end, I cracked, uninstalled ColdFusion and by magic Apache worked again. Sadly, even now, I have no idea what the fault was.

Next time, I paid a bit more attention to the messages and questions. It turns out that SuSE are far from standard in the location of its server binaries and appears (on my system at least) to have three locations for the supposed Apache executable file. SuSE seemed to want to run a file called apache2 (which lives in rc.d), yet despite this identifing it self as “Apache 2.0.54,” ColdFusion refused as it had to be version 2.0.46 or higher. (Madness…) Eventually I found some versions of Apache living under /etc/ calling themselves httpd2. When I pointed CF at these, it was more than happy and the installation went fine.

When all was finished, I edited the required config files (SuSE has its own way of using the httpd.conf file to load modules. It is insane) and tried to start the httpd2 server executable. It appeared like things had worked. YaST wasn’t overly happy and this is not a trivial thing to do. YaST seems to want you to use apache2 and nothing else. Eventually, everything seemed to be running and I braved Cold Fusion.

This is where the problems really started. Numerous error messages scrolled past the console window at light speed. Sometimes making sense, sometimes implying things were working, other times warning of dire problems. In the process of trying to correct the problems I tried to FTP a config file from an different machine, only to discover I had no diskspace remaining on /home.

1.8GB gone in about 3 minutes. Frantically I started deleting files from the Cache and temporary files. Each time, df would report some diskspace returned, only for it to vanish a second later. Nothing I did either found the source of the lost space (piped the output of ls to a file on /root, searched, no large files found) or managed to recover any. A shutdown, followed by a reboot restored a working system (with the 1.8GB /home restored to normal) but ColdFusion was a total non-starter.

This is compared to the effort involved on Windows. Less than a dozen mouse clicks, two passwords and there it was. A working WAMP plus ColdFusion MX 7 system. What is the world coming to…?