Category: Webserver

You can’t find a complete mobile user-agent list ?
You’re too lazy to search hours for the right syntax ?
Regex give you nightmares ?

Relax, you’re lucky. Somebody already have done it for you: detectmobilebrowsers.com.

When adding a new domain name to an eZPublish website, the site.ini file must be modify to assign the domain to an existing siteaccess.

Simply add a new entry into the HostMatchMapItems array:

vi settings/override/site.ini.append.php
HostMatchMapItems[]=<domain_one><siteaccess_fr>
HostMatchMapItems[]=<domain_two><siteaccess_en>

To clear eZPublish cache you can use the ezcache.php script, inside the /bin directory.

php bin/ezcache.php --clear-all

For ez4.X add the --purge option too.

To delete only a portion of the cache, use the --clear-tag option:

php bin/ezcache.php --clear-tag=template

You can list all the tags with the --list-tags option.

It’s also possible to delete the cache of a single siteaccess:

php bin/ezcache.php --clear-tag -s automobile_magazine

Apache_mod_rewrite is a lot of fun but sometime it syntax is very “twisted”. For example let say you want to make a conditional rewrite on the url, query string included. You will probably write something like this:

RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^www.foobar.com$
RewriteCond %{QUERY_STRING}  ^queryType=3&item=services&itemId=47$
RewriteRule ^/initial/cms/php/workflow.php?$ http://www.foobar.com/Home/Our-services/Business [NC,R=301,L]

Now problem right ? Yep except as the destination url doesn’t have it own query string mod_rewrite will keep the original query string ! Damned. To prevent this, write instead this:

RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^www.foobar.com$
RewriteCond %{QUERY_STRING}  ^queryType=3&item=services&itemId=47$
RewriteRule ^/initial/cms/php/workflow.php?$ http://www.foobar.com/Home/Our-services/Business? [NC,R=301,L]

or append the QSD flag.

The Debian’s default apache.conf is quite good, but there is some parameters i like to redefine in order to improve security a little:

Disable apache signature

ServerSignature Off
ServerTokens Prod

Disable HTTP trace request

TraceEnable Off

Disable Unnecessary Modules

Look for lines that begin with LoadModule. To disable the module just comment them. Here are some modules that are typically enabled by default but often not needed: mod_imap, mod_include, mod_info, mod_userdir, mod_status, mod_cgi, mod_autoindex.

If you use apache behind a reverse-proxy you need to modify the combined log format to use the X-forwarded-For header. Simply replace:

LogFormat "%h %l %u %t \"%r\" %>s %b \"%{Referer}i\" \"%{User-Agent}i\"" combined

by

LogFormat "%{X-Forwarded-For}i %l %u %t \"%r\" %>s %b \"%{Referer}i\" \"%{User-Agent}i\"" combined

APC is a PHP accelerator (like eAccelerator or XCache) but dedicated for PHP5. It can reduce PHP script runtime by a factor 5 to 10. Unfortunately it’s not packaged in Debian Etch but you can still install it easily using pear’s repositories.

Install PEAR

aptitude install php-pear
aptitude install php5-dev apache2-prefork-dev build-essential

Install APC module

pecl install apc

PEAR configuration

vi /etc/php5/conf.d/apc.ini
extension=apc.so
apc.enabled=1
apc.shm_size=30

Adapt the values depending your applications requirements. Then restart apache. You can check if apc is correctly loaded by creating a page with a phpinfo(); call.