Archive for the 'Linux' Category

Enabling mod_rewrite in Apache2

Published
by
Ish
on October 27, 2007
in Linux
. 0 Comments

Oh my gosh, was I having the worst time ever. Apparently, Apache has restructured their configuration files in version 2. To enable a module, you no longer edit the httpd.conf file. Although I had very little experience with the old way of things, most resources on the web were misleading or useless to me. I did eventually find a forum posting with the answers I needed.

In Ubuntu, run the command a2enmod rewrite to enable the rewrite module. It handles everything for you, and then tells you to restart Apache.

Well, even with this module enabled (as well as proxy, which I read was needed to use RewriteRule in an .htaccess file), things still weren’t working.

The fix was editing the file /etc/apache2/sites-enabled/000-default, changing both instances of AllowOverride None to AllowOverride All.

I haven’t had time yet to consider security risks, but at the moment, I’m just running things locally, so getting it working is my only priority.

Linux Audio Player - Audacious

Published
by
Ish
on October 14, 2007
in Linux and Software
. 0 Comments

I have a PC which dual boots Xubuntu and Windows XP. The Windows drive has music on it, while the other I use to run a local server and learn PHP. Xubuntu doesn’t come with a media player that can open .mp3 and .wma files, so I went in search of one.

I started with VLC, because I rely on that for playing most of my videos in Windows, but in Xubuntu, I was getting really poor quality audio quality. I have cheap speakers and the computer has old hardware, so I wasn’t looking for perfection. However, it was making scratching noises, and sounding distorted, so I moved on to a player that was geared more toward audio, and not video.

After reading some reviews and comparisons, I settled with Audacious (not to be confused with Audacity, which is a free Audio Editor). I wanted something lightweight (which is why I’m using Xubuntu after all), and this is exactly what I got. I wasn’t required to get any GNOME or KDE libraries, because it worked fine on XFCE. It reminds me of WinAmp, which I liked, but without the media management feature. My music is already sorted out by artist and album, so I don’t mind only having one playlist (although I can save and load them as I please).

So far, no complaints, except that the equalizer doesn’t come with built-in presets, like WinAmp did. It does let you load and save your own, including WinAmp ones, but I wasn’t able to find  a list of the WinAmp presets for download online. I haven’t tried messing with the skins, but I believe I can use XMMS and WinAmp “Classic”  skins.

I know this isn’t much of a review, but I just wanted a program that loaded fast and played my music, which this does, so I’m happy.