CGarvey.ie - The personal website of Cathal Garvey

Sometimes you might need to dip in to the WordPress SQL database to manually manipulate passwords. Whether resetting a long-lost password, or adding a new user from the MySQL command line, better security in recent versions of WordPress have made this a bit of a chore.

In older versions (that used MD5 hashing), you could simply:

UPDATE wp_users SET user_pass=MD5('my_password') WHERE ID=1;

Now, however, that’s not longer possible. That is a good thing™, because passwords are a whole lot more secure now (even if database access is compromised). Now you’ll need WordPress to generate the hashed password for you (at least, that’s by far the easiest approach because password hashing now uses salting as well). I’ve written a simple PHP file that uses WordPress’ own password utility methods to return a hashed password equivalent of the plain text password you typed. You can then use that hash in your direct MySQL manipulation. E.g.:

UPDATE wp_users SET user_pass='$P$BFuCvolvRyjUHu099Nc3PmupPqU6es.') WHERE ID=1;

Usage:

1. Download this GitHub Gist of the pwd.php file
2. Save/move it to your base WordPress install directory (the directory that contains wp-admin/, index.php, wp-config.php, etc.)
3. Visit the page, type your desired password, and submit.
4. Use the returned hashed/salted password in your SQL.

Indefero is an open-source Git hosting web app, built on PHP (using the PLUF framework) and MySQL. I use it for some clients because it is shared hosting friendly (no need to set up Ruby on Rails or daemons, as with Gitorious). Here’s a quick guide to installing it on the latest (as of time of writing) Ubuntu release, Precise Pangolin v12.04 LTS.

Conveniently, someone (shockflash) has packaged Indefero for Ubuntu installation. As of time of writing, these packages were limited to Ubuntu Lucid Lynx v10.04, so there’s a couple of extra steps, but the install process is still relatively painless.

On a basic Ubuntu 12.04 install, I opted to enable the LAMP package set (which installs MySQL, PHP, and Apache web server all needed by Indefero). If you are installing on an existing Ubuntu server machine, you just need to install apache2, mysql-server, and various php5 packages.

1. Install Indefero package
   • Make sure to have MySQL (server) installed in advance, along with apache2.
   • As per the instructions on this Launchpad page, you add their repository: sudo add-apt-repository ppa:shockflash/indefero
   • A quick edit of /etc/apt/sources.list.d/shockflash-indefero-precise.list and change the precise to lucid. This hack just tells apt to use the packages for the older lucid install (as these are the most recent packages available at the moment.
   • Update your repository cache by using apt-get update, or “u” within aptitude
   • Finally, install the packages added by this new repository. If your software was fully up to date, then you should see 5 new packages available to install. These packages are indefero, pluf, and any/all of the 3 other scm-specific packages indefero-git, indefero-hg, indefero-svn, as needed.
2. Configuration
   • As noted during the install, the default admin login details are admin / pass
   • These packages automatically install at <your_server_hostname>/indefero/, though you may want to set up a more specific arrangement using virtual hosts, etc.
3. Potential Apache config issue
   • There’s one slight issue that I found on a few installs. That is that the Indefero CRON script for synchronising Git keys breaks because it can’t determine the hostname (correctly, or at all). This means that after adding valid user SSH keys in Indefero, these keys won’t work because the cron script never gets to add them to the git user’s authorised keys. This problem also surfaces when you start/restart/configtest apache2 and get the message apache2: Could not reliably determine the server's fully qualified domain name, using 127.0.1.1 for ServerName. To fix this, simply fix your apache configuration! If you are not using virtual hosts, you can fix the base Ubuntu install by just adding ServerName <your server hostname> (or even ServerName <localhost>) at the start of the /etc/apache2/apache2.conf
4. First steps using Indefero (Git)
   • Login as the default admin user
   • Create a new user, and add an SSH (private) key for that user. Of course, you can have that new user login and provide their own SSH key.
   • Create a new project, and add your new user to the team
   • You can follow the instructions on the project page for creating a new repository, or you can upload an existing repository as follows:# You probably want to remove any existing 'remote' (like GitHub,
     # Gitorious, or your own SCM hosting). If so...

     # List any existing remotes
     git remote
     # Remove any remote. Likely called 'origin', or whatever
     # is listed above.
     git remote rm origin

     # Now add your Indefero project as a remote
     git remote add origin git@<your server hostname>:<your project name>.git
     # For example, if your server is 'scm' and your new project is 'test'...
     git remote add origin git@scm:test.git

     # Push your repository to its new origin, or home, on Indefero
     # in the 'master' branch.
     git push origin master

     # Thereafter, you can simply push any changes with
git push


TL;DR Update your icalendar module to the latest (beta) build.

As the title suggests, if you’re having the same issue I had where Google Calendar seemingly deleted random spaces between words, on an imported calendar (iCal/.ics file) generated by the python icalendar module, then read on!

Versions 3.0 (which is, in itself, recent), and older, of this module correctly wrapped long lines in the generated iCal file. However, they also incorrectly stripped whitespace from the end of lines in that wrapping, or folding, process. The iCal spec does call for wrapping of long lines, and specifically sets out that the next line should start with a space.

So, whilst it looks line a wrapped line has the correct whitespace between words, the first space character of the second/subsequent line isn’t part of the text. The previous line (assuming the wrapping has been performed nicely between two words) should end with a space; which, crucially, was being deleted in error. The result is Google Calendar correctly removes the space at the start of the second line (it being part of the protocol), leaving the last word on line 1 and the first word on line 2 to now be joined. The raw iCal file can be deceiving in that case, trust me!

To fix this, simply update to the latest version (a v3.1.x, or directly from source). If you can’t do that (for reasons other than file permissions!), you can also edit the offending line in icalendar/parser.py. Search for drop_whitespace and change it from True to False. A simple fix, when you know how! If that still doesn’t work, make sure to remove any older/conflicting versions of the module, and to restart the server/script that’s using it.

Update: Of course you were not using the original, and now obsolete, codespeak.net/icalendar/ page, were you? Of course not, but do note it’s now under active development again (with the blessing of original authors) at GitHub.

This post serves to highlight just how awkward my setup is, and as a guide to help with anyone with a similar setup (all 3 of you, worldwide).

I’ve recently started using Synergy to control my Macbook from my Ubuntu (10.04, if that turns out to matter!) desktop. However, I use the slim Apple USB keyboard on my Ubuntu desktop (a subject of previous posts here). They key mappings for Alt and Command on my Mac were reversed when I was controlling the Macbook. I.e. the Apple keyboard wasn’t being reported as such to the operating system. Here’s a snippet from the synergy configuration file showing the swap to make the Apple keyboard work as expected on a Mac Synergy client. If you use QuickSynergy, the config file is in ~/.quicksynergy/synergy.conf.

section: screens
ubuntu-synserver:
macbook-synclient:
alt = super
super = alt
end


By default, Ubuntu has plenty of Irish keyboard layouts which will let you type a fada on your vowels. However, if you’re using an Apple aluminium USB keyboard, like me, you’re layout options are restricted. I have the UK variant of the keyboard, which does have a corresponding layout in Ubuntu (under United Kingdom > Macintosh), but that doesn’t provide support fadas (acute accents).

My goal was to have Shift+2 give me @, AltGr+2 give me €, Shift+3 give me # and AltGr+3 give me £. Also, of course, the fadas to work on any vowel (including Shift support for upper case). To do this I appended a variant to the end of the existing Ireland “symbols” file, as follows:

1. As root, edit /usr/share/X11/xkb/symbols/ie. Older versions of Ubuntu (earlier than 8, I think), has a different file path.
2. At the end of the file, append the following: partial alphanumeric_keys
xkb_symbols "macie" {
// Fix currency symbols, # symbol and 'fada' support.
include "latin"
name[Group1]= "Ireland - Macintosh";
// Numeric Row 123456789
key <AE02> { [ 2, at, EuroSign ] };
//key <AE03> { [ 3, sterling, numbersign ] };
key <AE03> { [ 3, numbersign, sterling ] };
// Top Row QWERTYUIOP
key <AD03> { [ e, E, eacute, Eacute ] };
key <AD07> { [ u, U, uacute, Uacute ] };
key <AD08> { [ i, I, iacute, Iacute ] };
key <AD09> { [ o, O, oacute, Oacute ] };
// Middle Row ASDFGHJKL
key <AC01> { [ a, A, aacute, Aacute ] };
include "level3(ralt_switch)"
};

   You’ll see a comment line for the more accurate keyboard mapping of Shift+3 giving the £ symbol (to closer match the printing on the keys of a UK Apple keyboard). However, I prefer Shift+3 to give # as I’m a programmer; feel free to choose whichever you want (and comment/uncomment as appropriate). Save the file.
3. Then, you edit /usr/share/X11/xkb/rules/evdev.xml to configure your new variant. Search for Ireland, and you’ll see it has a <variantList> with a bunch of <variant> nodes. You want to add the following XML as a new <variant> node at the end of the others, and before the closing </variantList> tag. <variant>
<configItem>
<name>macie</name>
<description>Macintosh</description>
</configItem>
</variant>

4. Finally, to start using your new custom layout, go to System > Preferences > Keyboard (on a Gnome desktop) and, on the Layouts tab, you can add your new custom layout. Select “Ireland” as the country and you should see the new “Ireland Macintosh” layout. You can set the layout priority by moving the new layout up/down the list, or remove any others if you just want the one layout.

So there’s a quick way to get fadas and currency symbols working for your Apple UK USB keyboard on Ubuntu.

UPDATE: Added missing closing XML tags for name/description in snippet above, and fix tag angle bracket mushing by WordPress.