this

Somehow I managed to bugger up the ColdFusion installation on my beloved laptop. Whenever I would try to start the cf server I would get the following not-very-helpful message.

Running the ColdFusion 8 connector wizard
======================================================================
Configuring the web server connector
(Launched on the first run of the ColdFusion 8 start script)
Running apache connector wizard...
=======================================
There was an error while running the connector wizard
Connector installation was not successful

I googled around enough to realize that since it didn't appear to be a common problem, that it was probably something I did. And it was.

As you may have figured out by now, I'm not a server-config kind of guy. I poked around a little bit and found an interesting looking shell script at /opt/coldfusion8/bin/connectors/apache_connector.sh. Running that gave me a much better error message:

Could not find directory /etc/apache2/apache2.conf

I opened the file and realized that the paths were all boogered up, meaning the paths I entered when installing ColdFusion where all buggered up. In any case, I fixed the incorrect paths and here's what the file looks like now:

#!/bin/sh

#
# Configure the Apache connector.
#	-dir should be the *directory* which contains httpd.conf
#	-bin should be the path to the apache *executable*
#	-script should be the path to the script which is used to
#		start/stop apache
#
../../runtime/bin/wsconfig \
	-server coldfusion \
    -ws apache \
	-dir /etc/apache2 \
	-bin /usr/sbin/apache2 \
	-script /etc/init.d/apache2 \
 	-coldfusion

exit $#

And Voila!

I wrote a little renaming utility to help me with the all too common task of file re-naming that seems to keep coming up. The class itself is pretty general; the idea is to extend it and override the "valid_file" and "format" methods for whatever specific task I'm doing.

The "valid_file" method is intended to recognize which files need to be renamed in the case you've got files you don't want to touch in the directory. By default the function just ignores the "." and ".." in the directory listing.

The "format" method is used to to specify the actual rules and routine to use when renaming your file. By default it replaces spaces and dashes with underscores.

Finally, this isn't "finished" software. No error checking, no notes. It works for me and maybe it'll work for you too.

Here's an example class I wrote using the renaming utility. It'll prepend the string "prepend_" onto all png files in the specified directory. Note that there's a "safe_mode" variable passed in the constructor. Setting the "safe_mode" to true will prevent the files from being renamed while you're working on it.

 
require 'renamer'
 
safe_mode = false
 
class Example < Renamer
 
  def format file
    file = custom_format(super(file))
    puts file
    return file
  end
 
  def valid_file file
    valid = super(file)
    valid = valid && file.include?('.png')
    return valid
  end
 
  def custom_format file
    return "prepend_#{file}"
  end
end
 
if __FILE__ == $0
  path = ARGV[0]
  r = Example.new(path,safe_mode)
  r.rename_files
end
 

Download the code: Ruby File Renaming Utility

I have a few ruby scripts that I use to make life a little easier at work. Some of said scripts utilize the clipboard. My work machine is windows and my laptop runs Ubuntu. I'm able to use the same scripts on both computers but I have a few qualms with how I'm doing it.

Right now I've got classes for gnome and windows, a clipboard wrapper class to be used by my scripts and a basic (and poorly named) OS class I use to determine which class desktop class to use.

First off, the method I'm using to determine OS is...terrible. Currently I'm doing a string comparison in my OS class, but it doesn't actually tell me which desktop application I'm actually running, so at the moment it's just a dirty hack but I'm not sure of the preferred way to do it..

 
def is_linux
  return RUBY_PLATFORM == 'i486-linux'
end
 

Second, I'm uncomfortable with how I'm importing my desktop specific code in the main clipboard class. Is there a ruby-er way of doing this, or maybe just a smarter way anyone knows of?

 
class Clipboard
  def initialize
    os = OS.new
    if(os.is_linux)
      require 'clipboard/clipboard_gtk'
      clipboard = GTKClipboard.new
    else
      require 'clipboard/clipboard_win32'
      clipboard = WinClipboard.new
    end
    #other stuff
end
 

Any help would be greatly appreciated!

Download the code: Clipboard Utility

PS: I realize there's quite a bit of other stuff I need to do to really get this usable, but you have to start somewhere!

New computer begets new blog. That's just how these things work. I intend this to mainly be a professional blog, but like all professional blogs I actually enjoy reading I'll also be smushing some personal stuff in here.

As for myself, I'm a web developer residing and working in Winter Park, Florida. I work mostly in ColdFusion and JavaScript, but I also dabble a bit in Ruby and a little bit of this and that.

I plan on re-beginning this whole blogging thing by posting solutions to some of the little problems I (and anyone else who uses a computer) run into all the friggin time.

Ta Ta for now.