Dan Hart

Git show the conflicting commit during a rebase

Dan Hart — Wed, 12 Dec 2012 18:26:18 +0000

To view the failed patch’s commit you can use the following bash function:

function show_patch() {
  git show $(head -1 .git/rebase-apply/${1} | awk '{ print $2 }')
}

Put it in your .bash_profile or similar.

Example useage:

show_patch 0001

Copy the patch number from git’s output message e.g. “Patch failed at 0001″

My first chef cookbook to add locales to a Debian Vagrant VM

Dan Hart — Mon, 28 Nov 2011 05:46:01 +0000

My Vagrant VM base box only has en_US.UTF-8 installed by default and I recently required en_GB.UTF-8. So I created this chef cookbook to install the locale automatically. It has the ability to take an array of locales via the default[:localegen][:lang] attribute.

You can get a copy of it here:
https://github.com/danhart/locale-gen

Or here:
http://community.opscode.com/cookbooks/locale-gen

Vagrant and VirtualBox, modified files do not update when viewed in either NGINX or Apache

Dan Hart — Tue, 15 Nov 2011 19:53:06 +0000

I recently got to grips with using Vagrant for web development. The VM environment I was able to create mirrors the one I created on our production servers at work. I also decided to go the whole-hog and create my own Debian Squeeze base box from scratch with the latest versions of VirtualBox Guest Additions, Ruby, OS updates etc. For a copy of it feel free to email me.

However, at the end of the process I encountered one problem. When I modified a file locally in the VirtualBox Shared Folder (/vagrant in the VM) and then loaded it through the web server (e.g. http://localhost:1337/css/styles.css) it would not show the changes I had made to the file. Instead I would just receive the old version of the file.

After some investigation and googling I discovered the problem is that VirtualBox’s Shared Folders do not fully support sendfile(). At the time of writing VirtualBox is on version 4.1.6.

The problem is easily fixed by disabling sendfile support in your HTTP server.
Apache:

EnableSendfile off

NGINX:

sendfile off;

sendfile() is an optimisation for reading and transmitting file contents. Disabling it within a development environment will not cause any compatibility issues and will only cause a completely negligible performance decrease. More information here.

Modern NGINX default server definition, with hostname automatically mapped to a directory

Dan Hart — Wed, 02 Nov 2011 21:11:52 +0000

When I first decided to switch my primary web server from Lighttpd to NGINX I attempted to mimic the setup I had achieved in Lighttpd. As such, one of my first initial gripes with NGINX is that I had to create a new Virtual Host server definition for every new site I wished to add. What I really wanted was a default catch-all definition that mapped the hostname (without the www.) to a directory, while also retaining the ability to have additional site-specific definitions when needed. However, after spending a significant amount of time trying to find an existing solution, I found none that were perfect. So here is what I finally came up with myself:

server {
  listen 80 default;

  # Requires NGINX >= 0.8.25
  server_name ~^(www\.)?(?.+)$;

  root /var/www/vhosts/$domain;

  access_log /var/log/nginx/default.access.log;

  index index.php index.html index.htm;

  server_name_in_redirect off;

  # Enable rewrites for WordPress (only works if WordPress is in the site's root directory)
  try_files $uri $uri/ /index.php?q=$uri&$args;

  # Serve static files directly
  location ~* \.(jpg|jpeg|gif|css|png|js|ico|html|mp3|wav|swf|zip|pdf|htc|flv|f4v|mov|mp4|wmv|avi|mpg|woff)$ {
    access_log off;
    expires max;
    add_header Cache-Control public;
  }

  # Pass to php
  location ~ \.php$ {
    include fastcgi_params;
    fastcgi_index index.php;
    fastcgi_param SCRIPT_FILENAME $document_root$fastcgi_script_name;
    fastcgi_pass unix:/tmp/php.socket;
  }

  location ~ /\.ht {
    deny all;
  }

}

It should be noted that this config requires an NGINX version >= 0.8.25.

Also, since NGINX loads its virtual host files alphabetically, I suggest inserting this code into a file named 000-default.