2016-11-27

ln -s on Windows? Use mklink for symbolic links !

I needed to make Apache server seeing a folder via a symbolic link - on MS Windows. The standard Windows' shortcuts look like links, but Apache does not see them...

Apparently, there is a way to make REAL symbolic links under Windows. (Must run command prompt as administrator).

For example:

mklink C:\etc\hosts C:\Windows\System32\Drivers\etc\hosts

results in

C:\>dir c:\etc

2013-01-02  21:37    <DIR>          .
2013-01-02  21:37    <DIR>          ..
2013-01-02  21:37    <SYMLINK>      hosts [C:\Windows\System32\Drivers\etc\hosts]


The syntax for folders is:

mklink /D linkName target



Note: do not forget the drive letter (C:), or the link may not work in some situations.

Read more:



2016-09-06

"Disallow ia_archiver" does not remove pages from archive.org

The experiment (September 2016):

- A site exists since 2008 and has many snapshots on archive.org.

- The FAQ says:
You can exclude your site from display in the Wayback Machine by placing a robots.txt file on your web server that is set to disallow User-Agent: ia_archiver.
- Made the robots.txt as follows:

User-agent: ia_archiver
Disallow: /

- In a couple of days, indeed, instead of the site snapshots, a message saying that the archive is not available because of the robots.txt instruction. Success!

- Removed the robots.txt.

My expectations:

The old pages had disappeared from the archive completely, but the current one is now being crawled and included into the archive.

The reality:

All the old pages are back!

The bottom line:

Using the robots.txt, one can instruct Wayback Machine to stop displaying the site (which is exactly what the FAQ says!) but not to remove the pages from the  archive.

2016-07-14

Cygwin and ANSI terminal

Problem

I see ANSI color sequences on Cygwin.

Explanation

The default Cygwin.bat runs bash in a Window terminal, which does not support ANSI sequences, so you'll see the color codes instead of actual colors:

$ codecept selfupdate

[37;41m                                                                   [39;49m
[37;41m  [Symfony\Component\Console\Exception\CommandNotFoundException]   [39;49m

Solution

Edit the Cygwin.bat and make it look like:

@echo off

C:
chdir C:\cygwin64\bin

mintty -

Now, it will run "mintty", which is a different terminal, and it will show the colors correctly.
(Be prepared for the possible changes in copy/paste with mouse clicks).

2016-05-31

A curious case of "you are not allowed" in WordPress

Register a custom taxonomy. Everything looks great, except for one "tiny" problem: any attempt to Add New results in immediate "You are not allowed" message!

Blame Yoast, of course! :)
He suggested "is_admin, but not DOING_AJAX". So, the "register taxonomy" was hooked on "not AJAX". Oooooopsi!

Re-hooked. Ta-da!

2016-05-19

debug_backtrace and call_user_func in PHP 7

Before PHP 7, functions call_user_func() and call_user_func_array() appeared in debug_backtrace() as separate entries. Since the version 7, they do not.

Demonstration code Gist