Semantic MediaWiki By Example – A Datacenter IP Network Manager

Decision Support Systems / SMW / sysadminOne Comment
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One of the most common tasks on one datacenter, is the management of the IP Network: assigning IP addresses, creating networks (and subnetworks), creating hosts and setting hostnames. On smaller scale, having a spreadsheet may do the trick, but as datacenters grow (both physical and virtual), both in number as in complexity it quickly underperforms. Even, with all virtualization, this task won’t get any simpler, it will actually get more and mode complicated, because at least, it needs to be performed twice: at the physical hardware level, and at guest level. So, there is the need to create a tool …

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SMW’s Semantic Result Formats – Jqplotchart/Jqplotseries format – A guide

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One of the most interesting aspects of Semantic Mediawiki is the data to chart integration, done though the Semantic Result Formats extension, and using the Jqplotchart and Jqplotseries formats, which in itself are based on jqPlot. However, it’s documentation and code examples are not as thorough as one can expect. Requirements To start with, just make sure you have all the proper extensions installed, namelly: Mediawiki version prior to 1.21(*) (1.20.6 is OK) Semantic Mediawiki 1.8 – Both SWM and SRF are undergoing some changes, so it’s better to keep a specific version. Semantic Results Formats 1.8 (*) There are some reports …

Bugzilla access control – Allowing one group to create and access all bugs and another only to access it’s own bugs

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Now, something completely different: Bugzilla. Bugzilla is one of the most used bug tracking systems worldwide. It’s stable, somewhat customizable, and suits most possible uses, where software development is concerned, and sometimes, also outside the software world. Now, one of the aspects where is falters the most is on user access control. It isn’t because it doesn’t work, but because it is awkward and counter intuitive, until you get used to it… Let’s look at 3 scenarios: All users can create and edit bugs. Please make sure there is at least some kind of access control at network level. To …

LDAP and Apache Basic Auth – how it works and how it doesn’t work

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Let’s imagine you work on an organization which uses Active Directory (just kidding, is there anyone who doesn’t …?) and on which people are forced to comply with draconian security policies, such as changing you strong password every N days (replace N for any number less than 30… why don’t people understand that it is harder for people to memorize a new strong password, than machines to brake them). Anyways, having a central location for all authentication purposes is, from any point of view, a good idea, even if coming from Microsoft :). If your organization already has in place …

MediaWiki as a Document Driven decision support system: a Memex Project

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This is the first article from the Semantic Web series. Not all of them are already available, but on the works: MediaWiki as a Document Driven decision support system: a Memex Project (this one) Building an enterprise wiki (Pending) A small business knowledge manager – The advanced Mediawiki (Pending) Companies are literally spending billions each year with huge and complex decision support systems, which chew tens of gigs worth of data. However, on most of them you cannot publish a link to a web service, without putting it on a Microsoft Word file. This is as companies’ fault at it …

Installing and using ownCloud on QNAP hardware. EDIT1

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Editor’s note: There is an issue with ownCloud 6 on QNAP. There is a new post with the extra steps here. As of lately, services such as Dropbox and Google Drive, are getting more and more attention, both on the cloud storage front and on file sharing and synchronization. For personal and non critical purposes, those are just fine, specially if you don’t mind the 5GB free capacity. Once you get used to it, either the 5GB storage limit, or the fact that the files are not hosted by a trusted 3rd party, might get on you nerves. On my …

User-agent adventures: flipboard

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Flipboardis one of the most talked about apps of the last fewmonths. It presents itself as a social magazine, where users are to access portions of websites without having to access them on the browser, and instead get all the topics of a number of websites on one single place. Let’s call it a RSS reader on steroids. Also, there is an alternative from Google called Google Currents, which does mostly the same. Both exist for both Andoid and IOS, but Flipboard is the incumbent as is was launched earlier. From the websites’ point of view, both apps are a new …

Facebook bot ( facebookexternalhit ) can be a bandwidth hog

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Recently I started paying a lot more attention to usage of Facebook on make some content more accessible to users. At the same time, I starting making sure that each link on Facebook has the right thumbnail on it. After doing it, some side effects were apparent: 1. Facebook doesn’t keep the processed images for long after the page was shared. So, every so often, you get a request for each of the images you ( or someone ) shared on Facebook. 2. It also makes a poor job at making sure that each server doesn’t needs to get the …

Problems with WordPress Like Plugin and Polylang

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Sometimes, drugs interact with each other, and the same happens to WordPress Plugins. The following example demonstrates one of such interactions. Both Polylang and Facebook Like plugins work completely as expected on themselves, however, when used together somethings get broken. Facebook Like plugin does somewhat what it’s name implies: add the facebook button to your wordpress blog. It’s also possible to share the page directly to facebook. Both features work flawlessly on its own. Polylang it’s one of most useful plugins you can find if you need to post stuff on two or more languages. It checks the configured language …

The state of openID third party login integration on WordPress

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Last week a friend of mine asked me why count’t I simply do the same authentication scheme as on Blogger? From a user’s point of view, it made some sense: why have one more login, in as many sites. Well, from a security point of view, it may also make sense. On the aftermath of the Linkedinscandal, where around 9 million hashed passwords were disclosed, and about 2 million passwords were recovered, I wouldn’t feel confortable having another unprotected database containing sensitive user data, even if that database was mine. It’s far better to have Google, Facebook or Microsoft handle …