I recently came across a typo that existed in a bunch of html files on my web server. I thought it should be easy enough to change, but since it was in a number of files, editing it by hand would be time consuming. Fortunately, there is an easy, one liner command to replace the text in multiple files in a sub directory using recursion.

grep -lr -e '<oldword>' * | xargs sed -i 's/<oldword>/<newword>/g'

This command broken down:

• grep for the word in a files, use recursion (to find files in sub directories), and list only file matches
• | xargs passes the results from the grep command to sed
• sed -i uses a regular expression (regex) to evaluate the change: s (search) / search word / target word / g (global replace)

For more information, see man pages for grep, sed, and xarg. Also it is very handy to learn about regular expressions as they are a valuable tool to any command line programmer!

Came across this little maddening issue again today after fixing it a few months back. I created a directory that is password protected using a .htaccess file. However, when trying to access this folder or anything under this directory, a File Not Found 404 error from Wordpress is displayed before it even propts you for the password. The problem here lays within the main Wordpress .htaccess file

The default .htaccess file for WordPress is:

# BEGIN wordpress
<IfModule mod_rewrite.c>
RewriteEngine On
RewriteBase /
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d
RewriteRule . /index.php [L]
</IfModule>
# END wordpress

This means that if a file is requested from the server, if it is not a file that exists in the server’s folder directory (!-f) and if it is not a directory that exists in the server’s folder directories (!-d) then pass the request onto index.php. This way, Wordpress will handle both customized URLs (such as those used for SEO) and also 404 File Not Found errors.

If you set up a password protected folder in a directory included in a Wordpress install, all of a sudden Wordpress takes over that folder and returns a 404 page, like the file doesn’t exist.

This happens because of a little ‘gotcha’ in the apache configuration. Luckily it is an easy fix.

In the password protected folder’s .htaccess file, you may already have the entries to ask for password access. Before all of that, place the following line:

ErrorDocument 401 /401.html

Then create a 401.html in the main folder, with any text, for example:

PASSWORD PROTECTED FOLDER – Please enter the correct username/password.

Voila, you can now enter your password protected folder again.

There is another workaround this little error, but since it involves editing the main wordpress .htaccess file, it can be overridden during an upgrade.

Solution found on: http://www.webmasterworld.com/apache/3688208.htm

If you are running Apache for your web server, and mod_rewrite is installed (this is a pretty typicaly module on all installations) this is actually pretty easy.

RewriteEngine on
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^subdomain\.yourdomain\.com
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ http://www\.yourdomain\.com/subdomain/$1 [L]

Add this code to your apache configuration file – the easiest location is in the .htaccess file in your root web directory. This should redirect the browser with a 302 Found message.

You can do some pretty fancy things with mod_rewrite, but this is simple and gets the job done!

For many people using hosted Exchange services, password saving problems could plague you. That is mainly because Outlook doesn’t like it if the Exchange server’s domain doesn’t match your domain.

Fortunately there is a way around this, because by the default way it is set up, you would have to enter your password every time you open up Outlook.

First step is to change the registry key:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Lsa

Change lmcompatibilitylevel to “2″

Here is the meanings of these numbers (source):

0 – Clients use LM and NTLM authentication, but they never use NTLMv2 session security. Domain controllers accept LM, NTLM, and NTLMv2 authentication.
1 – Clients use LM and NTLM authentication, and they use NTLMv2 session security if the server supports it. Domain controllers accept LM, NTLM, and NTLMv2 authentication.
2 – Clients use only NTLM authentication, and they use NTLMv2 session security if the server supports it. Domain controller accepts LM, NTLM, and NTLMv2 authentication.
3 – Clients use only NTLMv2 authentication, and they use NTLMv2 session security if the server supports it. Domain controllers accept LM, NTLM, and NTLMv2 authentication.
4 – Clients use only NTLMv2 authentication, and they use NTLMv2 session security if the server supports it. Domain controller refuses LM authentication responses, but it accepts NTLM and NTLMv2.
5 – Clients use only NTLMv2 authentication, and they use NTLMv2 session security if the server supports it. Domain controller refuses LM and NTLM authentication responses, but it accepts NTLMv2.

I’ve uploaded a registry file which will automatically make the change here.

You then need to access the advanced user dialog properties (see my previous article on this if you do not see a tab in Control Panel -> Users & Accounts dialog). Click “Manage Passwords” and then add a new entry. This entry should be the Exchange server’s real name – the name that pops up in your password prompt windows. In my example, in is MAILXXX.mail.lan.

Finally, make sure that the Exchange server’s local name, MAILXXX.mail.lan, is in your hosts file. For most Windows XP folks, this is C:\WINDOWS\system32\drivers\etc\hosts.

The format is:

69.x.x.x MAILXXX.mail.lan

where the real accessible IP address is the first part, and the real Exchange server name is the section part. This allows your PC to locate the “Real” Exchange server name over the internet, even though it is not a real exchange server’s hostname on the internet.

I use MediaCoder for most of my encoding/transcoding of video for playback on my PC and other devices. The N800 has a peculiar set of parameters for it’s video – if it doesn’t match up then it either won’t play back or will be very choppy.

I ended up selling the N800 but I thought I would pass this profile along to anyone who might use it.

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<MediaCoderPrefs>
  <node key="overall">
    <node key="generic">
      <node key="autoRevert">
        <value>Never</value>
      </node>
    </node>
    <node key="ui">
      <node key="optionTab">
        <value>3</value>
      </node>
      <node key="param">
        <value>1069,767,47,50</value>
      </node>
      <node key="noWelcome">
        <value>4068</value>
      </node>
    </node>
    <node key="task"/>
    <node key="output"/>
    <node key="tagging"/>
    <node key="subtitle"/>
    <node key="decoding"/>
    <node key="audio"/>
    <node key="video">
      <node key="format">
        <value>XviD</value>
      </node>
    </node>
    <node key="container">
      <node key="format">
        <value>AVI</value>
      </node>
    </node>
    <node key="mplayer"/>
    <node key="preview"/>
    <node key="plugin"/>
    <node key="presets"/>
    <node key="httpd"/>
    <node key="server"/>
  </node>
  <node key="audiosrc">
    <node key="mplayer"/>
    <node key="winamp"/>
    <node key="lame"/>
    <node key="wavefile"/>
  </node>
  <node key="audioenc">
    <node key="lame"/>
    <node key="vorbis"/>
    <node key="faac"/>
    <node key="aacplus"/>
    <node key="nero"/>
    <node key="helix"/>
    <node key="helixmp3"/>
    <node key="fraunhofer"/>
    <node key="speex"/>
    <node key="musepack"/>
    <node key="ffmpeg"/>
    <node key="aac3gpp"/>
    <node key="amr"/>
    <node key="wavpack"/>
    <node key="flac"/>
    <node key="ape"/>
    <node key="tta"/>
    <node key="als"/>
    <node key="ofr"/>
    <node key="pcm"/>
    <node key="cli"/>
  </node>
  <node key="videosrc">
    <node key="mplayer"/>
    <node key="avisynth"/>
  </node>
  <node key="videoenc">
    <node key="xvid"/>
    <node key="x264"/>
    <node key="mencoder"/>
    <node key="ffmpeg"/>
    <node key="theora"/>
    <node key="dirac"/>
    <node key="amv"/>
    <node key="vfw"/>
    <node key="dumper"/>
    <node key="wm"/>
    <node key="remote"/>
  </node>
  <node key="container">
    <node key="mp4box"/>
    <node key="matroska"/>
    <node key="mencoder"/>
    <node key="mp4creator"/>
    <node key="atom"/>
    <node key="pmp"/>
    <node key="vcd"/>
  </node>
  <node key="audiofilter">
    <node key="resample"/>
    <node key="equalizer"/>
    <node key="channels"/>
    <node key="volume"/>
    <node key="surround"/>
    <node key="compressor"/>
    <node key="delay"/>
    <node key="extraStereo"/>
    <node key="extra"/>
    <node key="shibatch"/>
  </node>
  <node key="videofilter">
    <node key="scale">
      <node key="enabled">
        <value>true</value>
      </node>
      <node key="width">
        <value>352</value>
      </node>
      <node key="height">
        <value>288</value>
      </node>
    </node>
    <node key="crop"/>
    <node key="expand"/>
    <node key="frame"/>
    <node key="eq"/>
    <node key="postproc"/>
    <node key="rotate"/>
    <node key="itf"/>
    <node key="denoise"/>
    <node key="unsharp"/>
    <node key="delogo"/>
    <node key="screenshot"/>
    <node key="thumb"/>
    <node key="extra"/>
  </node>
</MediaCoderPrefs>

You can also download the file here: N800.xml