Cygwin setup.exe fails during upgrade

Like Ruben, who provided the clues, I discovered that a corrupt/incompatible alternatives.lst.bz file in the C:\cygwin\etc\setup directory caused Cywin setup.exe to fail.

A few clues pointed to this file as the culprit:

1. First time through, the installer complained that some other Cygwin process had locked the readme file


2. the installer just looped indefinitely on extracting the README file from alternatives.lst.bz until I killed it


3. The only .bz file in C:\cygwin\etc\setup with today's date was alternatives.lst.bz.

Here's what the log file recorded, for several thousand lines:

2009/05/04 11:01:23 io_stream_cygfile: 
fopen(/etc/alternatives/README) failed 13 Permission denied
2009/05/04 11:01:23 Failed to open 
cygfile:///etc/alternatives/README for writing.

I renamed the file to alternatives.lst.bz.bak , then reran setup.exe to successfully upgrade Cygwin.

Now I suppose I should log a bug report...

Moved hosting DreamHost -> WebFaction

Following in Douglass Clem's footsteps (and thanks for the tip about scp), I migrated my domain hosting and this blog from DreamHost to WebFaction, for many of the same reasons. I wasn't unhappy with DreamHost, I just want to try out Pylons and WebFaction seems to be the place to be for that.

Monotype font for Wordpress "Write Post" text area

I like to use a monotype font (e.g. Courier) when I edit my blog posts in HTML mode. Wordpress seems to default to a proportional font. Try as I might, I couldn't find an easy way to change this from the WP admin pages, so I resorted to hacking the responsible stylesheet, /wp-admin/wp-admin.css, adding the font-family declaration for the #content text area:

editorcontainer #content {
    font-family: Courier New, Courier, sans-serif;
    padding: 0;
    line-height: 150%;
    border: 0 none;
    outline: none;
}

Secure your Wordpress Blog! Now!

Took some time last night to read through Miss 604's WordCamp Fraser Valley Liveblog to see what I'd missed. When I read Kulpreet's question, "... how many people with websites can go to www.theirwebsite.com/wp-content/plugins and actually see the list of plugins", I thought, Okay, I'll give that a try. Whoops! Lookit that! There they are! Plain as day!

First I read and applied many of the tips in the WordPress Security Whitepaper which Kulpreet mentioned in his talk. I also installed and ran the WordPress Scanner, a WP plugin (from the same guys who wrote the whitepaper) that performs a number of security checks of the site.

I also had a read through the 9 easy ways to secure your Wordpress blog.

So I am feeling a lot better now that no-one can browse my plugins directory, guess my admin user name, or any number of other nasty hacks.

You should do this too. Go. Do it now.

WordCamping in the Fraser Valley

Thanks to a tip from my co-worker Bernie, I will be attending WordCamp in Fraser Valley | BlueFur.com to get some tips and ideas for this ol' blog. Good roster of speakers lined up, too!
[Edit: didn't make it to the meeting, but Miss 604's liveblog of the event is almost as good as being there]

It was SOOOO easy...

Man, I saw the link to the WordPress Automatic Upgrade Plugin, and I thought "Yeah, right, like this is really gonna work". But WP's been bugging me to upgrade from version 2.3.something every time I log in, and it's a Friday night, and I can't be bothered fishing around on the WordPress site to read up on how to do the upgrade, and it's a pain to do the backups, so I went for it.

And you know what? It Just Worked. Migrated all my stuff, kept all my plugins (although, it didn't reactivate them, maybe it wasn't supposed to, I don't remember). Otherwise, it was killer - good feedback, lotsa hand holding and reassurance along the way. Fetched, unpacked and installed the whole thing. Click, click click. And now I have a spiffy new WordPress 2.5.1 install.

Best part? It's free. I made a donation to Keith nonetheless, because he made the upgrade so easy, and to encourage him to keep up the good work. If you've been putting off a WP, hop on over to Keith's site, grab the plugin and try it. I think you'll be happy, and support him, too.

Markdown and Code Highlighting

Added a couple of WordPress plugins:

1. PHP Markdown: because the default WordPress HTML editor mangled my code examples, and


2. Dean's Source Code Highlighting Plugin: because I wanted my code snippets to look nice (obscures the lack of quality in my code examples :).

Hats off to Dean and Michel