// block access to .svn dirs
// should be done server-wide if you can (another snippet)

<IfModule mod_rewrite.c>
  RewriteRule ^(.*/)?\.svn/ - [F,L]
  ErrorDocument 403 "Access Forbidden"
IfModule>

// protect ".svn" and "CVS" dirs (could add more)
// for server-wide protection; goes in httpd.conf
// there's a separate snippet for .htaccess-based code

<DirectoryMatch "^/.*/(\.svn|CVS)/">
  Order deny,allow
  Deny from all 
DirectoryMatch>

// get started with ubuntu 7.1
// e.g. on a new slice from http://slicehost.com !

# 1) make yrself a user and stop being root

# 2) main web stack + ruby
sudo aptitude install -y make screen
sudo aptitude install -y apache2 php5 mysql-server
sudo aptitude install -y subversion postfix
sudo aptitude install -y ruby1.8 ruby1.8-dev rubygems irb
sudo aptitude install -y imagemagick librmagick-ruby1.8 librmagick-ruby-doc libfreetype6-dev xml-core

# 3) gemz
# rubygems appears to be broken as hell. 
# gem update --system does squat
# had to manually d/l rubygems 1.0.1, ruby setup.rb
wget http://rubyforge.org/frs/download.php/29548/rubygems-1.0.1.tgz
tar xzvf rubygems-1.0.1.tgz
cd rubygems-1.0.1
sudo ruby setup.rb
sudo gem install rails mongrel merb map_by_method

// i have shared a directory and in this directory is one
// which i dont want to share! how can i exclude this?

[myshare]
  path = /var/test
  veto files = /var/test/private

// where /var/test/private can be a file or directory.

// Path MTU Discovery Black Hole (PPPoE)

iptables -I FORWARD -p tcp --tcp-flags SYN,RST SYN \
        -j TCPMSS --clamp-mss-to-pmtu  

This daedalus config as well as my previous snippet is meant to supplement chapter 5 of "Lighttpd the painless way".

This config is dependent on having a ~/lighttpd directory setup as described in that manual. Also, you must have the restart.rb script (again from my previous snippet) in the lighttpd folder.

As before, remember to swap out your USERNAME, DOMAIN, and PORT.

The first check here is that a lighttpd process is running. If not then it calls restart.rb which will kill any zombie dispatchers and restart lighttpd.

The second check is more of a departure from the original suggestion. Rather than checking that a specific file is generating the expected output, I go right to the source and verify that lighttpd is responding with an HTTP header on the port you were assigned. This is a pure indication of whether lighttpd is responsive on the correct port. It won't be fouled up by application errors or apache forwarding misconfiguration. More importantly, it won't generate a flood of restarts due to an unrelated code error.

Also, you will notice I set the checkinterval to 10 minutes. I felt this was a good compromise between keeping lighttpd up and saturating the server with unnecessary processing.

name: lighttpd
checkcommand: /bin/ps axww
checkregex: /lighttpd/
onfailcommand: /home/USERNAME/lighttpd/restart.rb
checkinterval: 600 
aftercommandwait: 120

name: lighttpd-external
checkcommand: /usr/local/bin/curl -I http://YOURDOMAIN.com:YOURPORT
checkregex: /^HTTP/s
onfailcommand: /usr/bin/killall -9 lighttpd; /home/USERNAME/lighttpd/restart.rb
checkinterval: 600 
aftercommandwait: 120

Has anyone been able to do this? My ActionMailer works fine when it's on barclay, but for developing locally I can't make a connection. I get:

Errno::ECONNREFUSED in Contact#index

Connection refused - connect(2)

/app/controllers/contact_controller.rb:6:in `index'

My isp doesn't block port 25:

[] % telnet barclay.textdrive.com 25
Trying 207.7.108.37...
Connected to barclay.textdrive.com.
Escape character is '^]'.
220 barclay.textdrive.com ESMTP Postfix
^]

And my ActionMailer config in config/environments/development.rb is this:

ActionMailer::Base.server_settings = {
  :address  => "barclay.textdrive.com",
  :port  => 25, 
  :domain  => 'http://station11.net/',
  :user_name  => "#{username}", # without @domain
  :password  => "#{password}",
  :authentication  => :plain
}