AA Design

After half a day of googling, reading tutorials, man pages, references, source code files, configuring my router, running shell commands, installing software on both ends, modifying various plain text config files, writing shell scripts, and usually having between 3 and 5 terminal windows open at all times, plus 7 to 10 tabs open in my browser, I finally managed to get an svn repository working to sync files between my development machine and the live server, without touching ftp!

Of course, one day I’m going to need to repeat all of the above, so I’m writing it down here. Fortunately for anyone wishing to repeat the task, most of the stuff I did wasn’t necessary in the end. Here’s what you need to do:

Step 1: Install svn on the client machine and the server. I used fink and FinkCommander to install the svn package on my mac (this is an easier way), and your host will probably need to do the installing on his end.

Step 2: Get host to enable ssh access on the server, my host is run by a mate of mine, so this was pretty easy. Your milage may vary.

Step 3: Configure ssh to use a non-standard port when connecting to the server. For security reasons, my host doesn’t use the default port 22 for ssh, so we need to tell ssh what port to use when connecting to this host. For that you need to add the following code to the end of ~/.ssh/config:

Host myhost.com
Port ###

As instructed in the man page for ssh_config.

Step 4: Unless you enjoy entering your password several times for each action you perform, you’ll need to set up rsa public key authentication for your account. This basically involves generating a public/private key, then copying the pubic key into a specific location on the server. I followed this tutorial to achieve that, however they rely on a the ssh-copy-id command, which doesn’t exist under MacOS X, so I had to modify this script to complete that section (note: that script doesn’t work out of the box with rsa authentication, It has to be slightly modified).

Step 4: Follow instructions in this if you don’t know how to use svn. When they talk about file or http url’s, you need to use this format instead “svn+ssh://username@hostname/home/username/repository/path”.

Step 5: There isn’t a step 5… Wow! A whole day to figure out 4 simple steps… reminds me why I’m glad I don’t have to deal with linux every day.

Sooooo…..here’s a little fun story… I’m in Uk still.. and was meant to go to Paris at 7pm but the train to the airport was cancelled and so we missed the plane. Unfortunately the next plane wasn’t gonig to leave til 10:40 am the next day. What the hell to do for the next 15 hrs??!!!

Well this is one thing you could do. There is an internet cafe in the airport with about 7 PCS running some custom software which is designed to make you pay first b4 you can surf the net….unless you’re me.

The dumb thing they did was have a few pages available for free to look at. Not smart. One link is info about the airport. Next found a link regarding accessibility of the site. Next is a link to W3C, the site that sets all the standards for websites and other internet based content. Then followed a link to their home page which had a google search box.

Bingo!!!

So now that I have a way to surf the net without paying £1 for 10 minutes

Anyway thats my little story for the moment. Might write more stuff later seeing as I still have 12 hrs to go.

Over and out

To um er ease the silence..well my silence…yes I am actually in the UK, not London, but Nottingham. Not for long however. Heading down to Paris on the 10th. The second stop of my 8 month gallivant around Europe.

Regarding the rumor of me picking up a MacBook…lets add the word ‘Pro’ to that. Unfortunately not white, however, the aluminium works very nicely for me.

Anywho…gotta get back to working on another new website.

Over and out

Just a quick note incase our huge (cough) readersip is wondering where we are. I’ve been crazy busy all week, but have some interesting stuff to post once I have the time. So hang in there.

As for Ben… well he’s missing! Seriously, I haven’t heard from him, but I beleive he’s in london and have heard rumors he bought a (probably white) MacBook on the way to the airport…