update: I just realize that after enabling the port 443 for the Zimbra administration, Zimbra itself becomes no more accessible through https. An automatic redirection resdirects everything to the Zimbra administration application.

It seems that the only way to combine https access to both Zimbra and Zimbra administration applications is to use Apache in front of Tomcat.

The default port of the Zimbra administration is 7071. To enable it to 443, you need to perform the following modifications:

1. Enable SSL Connector on Tomcat

In /opt/zimbra/<tomcat_dir>/conf directory, check that the SSL connector is enabled. If it is not, change server.xml.in and remove the HTML comments.

2. Allow 443 port for Zimbra administration

In /opt/zimbra/<tomcat_dir>/conf/zimbraAdmin.web.xml.in change the following lines:

<param-name>admin.allowed.ports</param-name><param-value>7071</param-value>

by

<param-name>admin-allowed-ports</param-name><param-value>443, 7071</param-value>

Also edit /opt/zimbra/<tomcat_dir>/conf/zimbra.web.xml.in and change the 2 occurrences of the following lines:

<param-name>admin.allowed.ports</param-name><param-value>7071</param-value>

by

<param-name>admin-allowed-ports</param-name><param-value>443, 7071</param-value>

Restart zimbra and you should be able to access Zimbra administration using: https://<your mail server>/zimbraAdmin

During the lunch today, we were discussing about the possibility to handle variable depth hierarchy within a data warehouse.

This didn’t seem to be really obvious. The depth of a dimension is usually fixed in a data warehouse.
After some googling, one of us found “Help for Hierarchies“.

This seems to be a solution for depth variable hierarchies. Something I should try once in a while.

Sometimes ago, I try to install an Ubuntu Dapper on my VmWare server runing on Dapper as well. I spend a lot of time finding the right way to do it. Here are the steps I followed.

I first tried the normal process. I created the virtual machine and boot it up with the standard Ubuntu 6.06 Live CD. It didn’t succeed, the startup process was freezing at the “Adding live CD user …”. Then I tried the alternate install CD but in the middle of the installation process I got a message telling me that some file was corrupted. The check CD process from the install menu confirmed me that the CD was corrupted.

After having burned the alternate CD three times, and having always had the same corruption alert, I came to the conclusion that it couldn’t be the CD but the way the CD was read.

I then decided to boot the virtual machine with a ISO image of the CD (it’s an option in the VM settings) and … everything went smoothly.

I’m now ready to build a complete demo environment on a Ubuntu Virtua machine.

I use to work with ERP databases and in every ERP database, you have a customer table and a vendor table. Quite often, people were telling me that it would be nice to be able to use those tables to centralize the customer and vendor information.

One of the main reason for this centralization was the sharing of information concerning contact address. Quite often, people have those details located in there local address book. Sometimes, this is saved in a central adress book independent from the ERP databases or other databases.

Recently, I discover Penrose. Penrose let you wrap your relational database with an ldap layer (In fact, it does more than that but let’s keep simple).

Using Penrose studio, you can map your relational database fields with ldap attributes. You upload the configuration to the Penrose server. Then you can add an additional LDAP address book to your favorite email client by connecting it to the Penrose Server and it’s done. You have access to the detail contact information located in your central database.

Using BlogGTK with RollerWeblogger and the MetaWeblog API, I could’nt find a way to edit a posted entry.

So I have the choice. Or I use BlogGTK and I can’t edit a posted entry, or I use Drivel and I can’t place a title.

I’m not a regular blogger and usually when I decide to post something, I’m disconnected. So I looked for a linux offline blog editor. I found two editors:

• BloGTK
• Drivel

I’m just posting this with BloGTK to see the result. BloGTK let you select different API and I used the MetaWeblog API. I tried the Blogger API but then I can’t edit the title. I also tried Drivel it doesn’t offer the MetaWeblog API (apparently) and the Blogger API does not allow to enter the title of the blog (It’s probably a setting issue but I can’t figure out how to fix it).

By the way, I will test BloGTK for a while.

Recently, I tested Ruby on Rails. By testing, I means I decided to use Rails to develop the administration tools the backend of a web site (mainly a CRUD application). I wanted to compare Rails to Tapestry in term of development time for such a thing.

Even if Rails is a nice framework and allow to quickly develop web application, I’m not sure I will switch over from Tapestry to Rails. In fact, with my actual Tapestry knowledge, there are things I found easier to do with Tapestry compare Rails (but I admit it, my Rails knowledge was very limited).

It’s true that Tapestry as it is, is missing some of the facilities existing in Rails for developing CRUD application (like the scaffold generation). Although, tools like Trails or cognition are solving part of this issue.

Of course, helper methods like dynamic find_by in Rails are really helpfull and eliminate repetitive coding and Rails is plenty of such “tricks”. I think that if Trails had a set of such helper methods (and it probably has already some of them), it would really compete with Rails.

I didn’t test the Ajax integration between in Rails and again it’s probably a point where it’s really simple with Rails and where it should be really simple with Tapestry once you’ve found the right components (Tacos, XTile).

The scripting aspect of Rails, of course, helps the agile development approach. There isn’t any deployment issue, the modifications are immediately accessible. With Tapestry (as we most of the Java web application framework), there is always a deployment phase (by the way, the dynamic class reloading foreseen in Tapestry 5 should facilitate such a development approach).

In conclusion, I’m really willing to learn from Rails and implement around Tapestry a set of equivalent features. By implementing such feature in Tapestry, we could still improve its productivity.

Durant une des nuits entre le 15 et le 17 juillet, un “CropCircle” est apparu dans un champs.

Je me suis rendu sur place et je dois dire que c’est assez impressionnant. Quelles sont les origines d’un tel phénomène? La taille et la régularité du motif m’intrigue. Si c’est l’oeuvre d’un artiste, je me demande comment il arrive à un tel résultat.

En faisant une recherche sur le Net, je suis tombé sur la page de Anne Marie et François Godet. Apparemment, dans la nuit du 17 juin, un premier agroglyphe était déjà apparu au pied du lion de Waterloo.

I was recently looking at the referencing of http://www.audaxis.com and specially at the page ranking of the home page.

There is a lot of litterature on the web concerning page ranking and I’m not intend to rewrite all this here. The basic principle is the more you have links pointing to your pages, the better will be the page rank.

I just came accros a Page Rank calculator and I found that the page rank of http://www.audaxis.com was 5. In order to see if it will have any impact, I decide to add a link to the Audaxis home page on this blog. It will probably have a invisible effect, but that was just for the fun

I just install the new Roller 2.1.1 version, and it’s really nice.

In the coming weeks, I plan to use it as the basement for a local webblog farm.

I guess it’s the right choice.