Cleaning the /tmp partition

If you have a server running Centos or most other flavours of Linux or you use cPanel/WHM for your box, you will often find that the /tmp partition slowly gets full over time and will eventually get clogged up. The net result of this is a reduction in the performance of your sites and in some cases, the server will grind to a halt.

It is good practice then to keep on top of this usage on a regular basis. Now before you dive in and just bin everything in the /tmp partition, be careful as often the mysql.sock file is in there if you run MySQL on the box and deleting that can cause you some fun.

The command below will safely clean your /tmp partition:

find /tmp -type f -mtime +5 -exec rm -f {} \;

Now just to break this down, the command is basically looking at the /tmp partition for files that are older than 5 days. The rm -f section means to force the removal of the file/directory (in this instance the file).

Stick the above command in a cron and run it say once a week and your /tmp partition should behave itself.

We would like to give you £60

Yep that’s right, we would like to give you up to £60 for every sale you refer to us though the Open Mind Commerce affiliate scheme. Sound good to you? Then read on…

The Program
Dead simple this one, we will give you 10% of the excluding VAT value of all sales generated by you referring customers to our site. This could result in up to £60 in commission for customers who purchase a license from us along with our bespoke design service.

At the the very least you would earn £8.90 if they just bought a single license so your commission could quickly add up to quite a bit!

Because we’re lovely people we’ll not only also give you £20 as a thank you for signing up but if you refer a new affiliate to us through your link, you will get 20% of their earnings as well!

The program is completely free of charge to join and you can start adding a range of banners and text links to your site straight away…

So to summarise:

1. You earn 10% for every completed sale
2. We give you £20 just for signing up
3. We also give you 20% of all earnings that your referred affiliates generate

Signing up is very simple, click the link, fill out the form and you’re done…

The Nitty Gritty
Just a couple of points to make things clear…

1. Commissions are based on the ex. VAT value of the sale
2. Payments are made on the 1st of the month via PayPal or cheque as long as you have at least £100 “in the bank”
3. You earn commission on referrals up to 90 days after they click the link even if the customer visits via another affiliate
4. You may not refer yourself for purchases, sorry!

So you’ve read about the program now do something about it. Join today, earn yourself £20 for five minutes work and start driving money out of our pocket and into yours!

Open Mind Commerce Featured as Cart of the Week by Practical eCommerce

For Immediate Release

Open Mind Commerce, an established eCommerce solution provider based in the UK, today announced that the product has been featured as “Cart of the Week” by Practical eCommerce. (http://www.practicalecommerce.com/articles/1449-Cart-of-the-Week-Open-Mind-Commerce)

During an in-depth interview, MD Phil Williams gives an insight into the system as well as describes plans for the future of the software.

Phil Williams commented “Being featured on Practical eCommerce is big news for us as they are a highly respected organisation and it gave us a perfect platform to talk about our product as well as spread the word about the system.”

In addition, the company also announced that v1.4.1 of it’s software is released today and advanced development is in place for v2.0, codenamed The Novus Project, which will feature a complete rewrite of the system making it one of the most flexible and powerful commercial eCommerce platforms on the market.

About Open Mind Commerce
Open Mind Commerce is a trading division of Open Minded Solutions Limited. We are a full service ISP established since 2004 and we are based in Edinburgh, Scotland. Open Mind Commerce is our flagship product and allows SMEs to quickly and easily trade online.

Web: http://www.openmindcommerce.co.uk
Tel: 08456 445 789

About Practical eCommerce
Practical eCommerce was launched in July 2005 by Kerry and Joy Murdock in Grand Junction, Colorado, USA. Its mission from the start has been to provide down-to-earth articles and advice to help smaller businesses succeed online.

Web: http://www.practicalecommerce.com

Very chuffed…

Well last week I shot my first full Portsmouth round using my new(ish) compound bow. For the non-archers, the Portsmouth round is 60 arrows at a range of 20 yards onto a 60cm face. The thing is that compound archers, to score a 10, have a smaller inner gold to go for which is about 2 inches across. Everything else in the gold is a nine and then down from there…

Now I managed to score a very reasonable I thought 496 out of a possible 600 which for my first full round I felt was quite an achievement! Plenty of room for improvement (as in the 104 points I didn’t get) but it gives me a base to work from.

As Billy (my compound compatriot and unofficial coach) pointed out, get all 60 in at least the gold and you score 540 with the 10’s being bonus. Seeing as the 9 zone is a good 6 inches across, hopefully it won’t be too long before I get to that stage…

At least when I shoot in the Scotland Eastern championships held in Jan. 2010 I shouldn’t get the wooden spoon and make myself look a tit at this rate 😉

Exporting SSL certificates from cPanel/Apache

I was quite surprised today to find that there is no built in facility to export a SSL certificate through WHM/cPanel. We needed to move the certificate to our Windows network from our Linux box and it wasn’t as straightforward as you may think.

Still after a bot of googling we came up with the following steps to create a pfx file which is simple to import into IIS on Windows:

Step 1 – Get the key/crt files
You can grab these two files by going to cPanel > Manage SSL hosts. Just select the domain you are exporting and cPanel will then display the key and certificate (crt) files

Step 2 – Create the files through SSH
Now this part may be un-required but I couldn’t locate the path to the files so I simply logged into SSH as root and entered the following:

[root@host ~]#nano domain.key

Save and exit (CTRL+X confirm save)

Now you need to repeat this for the certificate file as well.

Step 3 – Create the PFX file for export
OK now you have your crt and key files you need to create a pfx file for the export. For this we just use OpenSSL with the command:

[root@host ~]#openssl pkcs12 -export -out /home/pathtodomain/yourdomain.pfx -inkey yourdomain.key -in yourdomain.crt

You will be asked to set a password and also confirm that password. This will create the pfx file in the domain root.

You can download the generated pfx file and import into IIS.

First and most likey last “Robin Hood”

Well on Wednesday after returning to the sport after a break of 18 years, I shot my very first and most likely last robin hood at 20 yards using a club bow and arrows! 🙂

Robin Hood

It was definitely more luck than judgement and after being informed I could keep the arrows as long as I shoot my own equipment from now on, the club were dead chuffed for me!

Personally I couldn’t quite grasp the significance of the event as the other guys gathered round with jaws agape but I guess it’s quite cool!

Oi! UPS! Where’s me flipping stuff!!

OK getting impatient now, UPS are supposed to be making a delivery to me today. Their site tracker says it’s currently on a van somewhere in Edinburgh.

What it won’t tell me that “Bob the driver” is currently on an extended lunch break, smoking copious amounts of nicotine and supping tea. So Bob if you are reading this, remove your thumb from where it shouldn’t be, get your arse in gear and deliver my stuff!!!

Granted he has until 7pm to deliver so knowing my luck he will roll up at 6:59:59 with a grin on his smug face. At this point I shall have to resist the urge to show him a new use for a 30″ carbon arrow (he’s delivering archery bits n bibs you see)

Calm…

Patience…

Etc….

Hello Mum

Well I suppose I’d better say hello as I recently found out that my mum reads the blog. This worries me slightly as I can no longer swear, post rude cartoons or do anything else that might offend “she who must be obeyed” so I’d better keep this clean from now on 😉

Noce to know that I have more than one blog reader though!

Installing ColdFusion MX7 on Windows 7 Professional

OK this stumped me for a while but if you are trying to install ColdFusion MX7 on Windows 7 Professional and the installer is constantly quitting with the error “javaw.exe has stopped working” then try the following:

1) Extra all the content of the CF MX7 installation to a spare folder on your drive
2) Right-click the CFMX7Installer.exe file
3) Select “Troubleshoot Compatibility” from the context menu
3) Select “Try recommended settings” on the next screen

This should force the installer to run in Windows XP mode and will allow it to continue.