Plesk - Checking the Mail Log

Do you need to check the mail logs on a Plesk server? Then here's an article on how to: http://www.hosting.com/support/plesk/check-the-mail-log-on-plesk-server

You can get access to it here:
/usr/local/psa/var/log/maillog

How to Validate a UK Postcode using JavaScript

Here's a great link for the RegEx that is needed to validate a UK postcode using JavaScript.

In case the link doesn't work, here it is:

var regPostcode = /^([a-zA-Z]){1}([0-9][0-9]|[0-9]|[a-zA-Z][0-9][a-zA-Z]|[a-zA-Z][0-9][0-9]|[a-zA-Z][0-9]){1}([ ])([0-9][a-zA-z][a-zA-z]){1}$/;

The accepted formats are:
A9 9AA
A99 9AA
AA9 9AA 
AA99 9AA 
AA9A 9AA

Installing libmcrypt / mcrypt Module on Plesk

Had a major ball ache today getting the mcrypt module working on a plesk hosted VPS. This article was a god send!!

http://www.kelvinwong.ca/2009/12/06/install-libmcrypt-and-php-mcrypt-on-centos-5-3-without-losing-too-much-hair/

A lot less hair was lost :)

The crux of it is the that from the shell do the following:

> yum install libmcrypt-devel

If 32 bit do:

> yum install php-mcrypt

If 64 bit do:

> yum install php-mcrypt.x86_64

Using vi and Commands

A useful resource for using the vi editor and it's commands :)

http://www.cs.colostate.edu/helpdocs/vi.html

Process Different File Types with PHP in IIS7

A slight follow on from an earlier post I made about custom error pages in IIS7, I needed to get IIS to process JavaScript files in PHP. This is really useful if you need to do some pre-processing before the JS hits the browser. In order to get this to work I added the following to the Web.config file in the root of the site:

Note that I am using PHP in FastCGI mode.

Also, make sure you set scriptProcessor to the path of your php-cgi.exe. The other thing I had to do, as Chrome was reporting a Resource interpreted as Script but transferred with MIME type text/html warning when the JavaScript file was loaded, was to add header("Content-type: text/javascript; charset: UTF-8"); to the js file.

One thing you can do to speed things up is specify a specific file in the path parameter of the Web.config. For example to only process my_js_file.js use path="my_js_file.js". And of course, you can add Web.config files in sub-folders so only certain files types are processed with PHP in those folders.

Windows 7 Telnet is not Recognised

This is so annoying! You go to use telnet on Windows 7, via the command prompt, and you get 'telnet' is not recognized as an internal or external command. There are loads of articles on how to enable telnet on Windows 7 (here's one of many!).

But after having enabled it in programs and features, I was still getting the not recognised error. I checked that I had the telnet.exe file in the C:\Windows\System32 and I did. So I double clicked it and sure enough it pops up and works.

The only other difference is that I need to remember to use the o command to open a connection:

Telnet> o my_domain

Configure IIS7 for Custom Error Pages

I've recently (and finally!) moved to Windows 7 and with it IIS 7. I got PHP installed (using FastCGI) all fine, but was having major issues getting my custom 404 handlers to work with PHP. I found loads of articles all over the web that directed me in the right direction. But no one single article worked for me so this is what worked for me...

All the following settings can be done via the IIS Manager (Control Panel > Administrative Tools), but for me, I created the following Web.config file and put that in the root of the site that I wanted the 404 handler to be working on.

Note the use of errorMode="Custom" and existingResponse="Replace". Hope this works out for you :)

Test an IMAP Connection (Telnet)

Following on from post about how to test a POP3 connection using telnet, I thought I'd add a quick one about testing an IMAP connection. It's pretty much the same, but you use the 143 port number instead:

> telnet mail.mydomain.com 143
> login my_user_name my_password

Happy days :)


Update:
Recently I started getting an error when using the login command. Turns out I needed to do the following:


> 10 login my_user_name my_password


All subsequent commands needed to use 20, 30, etc. This is a good resource for more commands.