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Month: May 2012

Now With IPv6 and SSL (but no SPDY)

Published May 8, 2012

Since moving to a new server running Apache for hosting websites I’ve been able to make quite a few changes that just weren’t quite possible with lighttpd. One major change is the use of IPv6. Ever since the move I’ve set up all hosted sites with AAAA records and made them available via IPv6, and it’s been working great. While I don’t see much traffic on this yet, I’m happy to know that the sites are all able to be reached this way. For reference:

;; ANSWER SECTION:
nuxx.net.               300     IN      AAAA    2607:f4b8:5:2:e611:5bff:feac:3a60

I’ve also been wanting to move my personal site, nuxx.net, to be HTTPS-only. While not particularly important for most public content, this does protect session cookies for various admin functions that I may host under this domain, along with keeping any private content from prying eyes. Thanks to an SSL certificate from the new-to-me registrar gandi.net it was pretty easy to get this set up. I was then able to take the old non-HTTPS vhost and permanently redirect it over to the secure one, and all content simply moved over to the secure side:

<VirtualHost *:80>
    ServerName nuxx.net
    ServerAlias www.nuxx.net
    ServerAdmin c0nsumer@nuxx.net
    Redirect permanent / https://nuxx.net/
</VirtualHost>

The browser test screenshot seen above from Qualys SSL Labs SSL Server Test (live results here) shows that HTTPS is pretty well set up on nuxx.net. I’m sure it could be better, but for now I think it’s pretty good.

Thanks to the magic of this bit of SQL I was able to update all http://nuxx.net links in nuxx.net blog posts to https://nuxx.net, allowing most pages to validate as fully secure. I’ll have to do something similar on the other apps to bring them up to snuff:

UPDATE wp_posts SET post_content = REPLACE(post_content, 'http://nuxx.net', 'https://nuxx.net');

Amusingly, the use of HTTPS seems to dramatically cut down on automated SPAM. Perhaps some of the link spamming tools don’t want to deal with the overhead (or cert validation?) of HTTPS? I’d figure they could just ignore them, though…

Anyway, with all of this in place, I got to thinking about SPDY, Google’s shiny new protocol. An Apache module for implementing it, mod-spdy has been released and there is a FreeBSD Port for it, so I decided to give it a go. While the installation worked and Chrome showed it working (as seen via chrome://net-internals/#spdy). Unfortunately, I ran into a couple bugs. Most notable was that a number of httpd processes failed, and I ran into documented issues #36 and #39 which left me with an odd taste for this module. I’ve since disabled it, but once a new version is released I’ll probably try it again.

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Deuter Race Air Lite Pack Leak and Replacement

Published May 8, 2012

When riding I almost always carry a Deuter Race Air Lite hydration pack (photo) containing stuff I may need during the ride. I’ve had the bag for less than a year and recently a leak developed at the bottom of the bladder, right at the base of the outlet’s weld. Deuter bags carry a lifetime warranty, so I submitted a warranty request.

A few days later I had a new bladder in my possession, and instead of sending the old one back Deuter just asked for a photo of the bladder and where it’s leaking. That’s what can be seen above. This leak wasn’t huge, but it was enough that with each ride the bottom of my bag would be wet, occasionally dripping on me. I was more concerned that it would grow, resulting in an unexpected failure leaving me stuck without water.

I’ve been really happy with the Deuter pack thus far, and good warranty support when it failed was a nice bonus.

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Satan Can’t Punctuate

Published May 3, 2012

Lunch time today found me taking a quick ride at River Bends, and while there I came across this dumpster. Graffiti reading “Satan Was Here” on a dumpster doesn’t really surprise me, but the quotation marks surrounding the upside down cross do. Has the moronic use of quotation marks purely for emphasis really gone this far?

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Fox Float RP23 Seal Replacement

Published May 2, 2012

This evening, as part of doing a bunch of needed maintenance on the Titus (cables, bottom bracket, shock, etc) I replaced the seals on the Fox Float RP23 rear shock. Using the ~$15 OEM seal kit this was surprisingly easy to do. I followed along with this video from Fox and the actual work took less time than watching the video.

The most difficult part was removing the bottom bushings, but this was pretty easily done by holding them using a bench vise and some neoprene to keep the parts from being marred and gently rotating them while lifting on the shock. Pressing the bushings back into place was even easier, done just using the vise jaws and some more padding.

There is still another evening’s worth of work to go on the bike before I’ll be able to put the shock back on, but everything went well enough that I expect it’ll work fine. I’m more concerned about getting all the drivetrain bits put together and working right.

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