Setting up Hardy Heron with Apache2 and multiple Domains

Finally cracked setting up multiple domains on my shiny new Ubuntu server. In case it helps anyone else out of a hold, here are my tips for easy domain management.

1. Use GoDaddy and their total DNS option (google for instructions) This means you don't have to worry about a name server. Just setup your domains and subdomains with an A record that points to your IP address. If your domain is currently pointing to a nameserver other than GoDaddy's change the nameserver option to Forwarding - wait a few mins, then you use Total DNS.


2. in /etc/apache2/site-available, create one file for each domain, I just used the domain name for the filename, eg. mydomain.com This should contain something like:

ServerName mydomain.com
ServerAlias www. mydomain.com
DocumentRoot /home/django/mydomain

...and all the other usual stuff ...

3. in /etc/apache2/sites-enabled create a dynamic link to the file you just created in sites-available. Ordering is import so add a sequence number to the beginning of the name. Ensure sub-domains come before main domain entry.

eg.

ln -s /etc/apache2/sites-available/blog.mydomain.com 010-blog.mydomain.com
ln -s /etc/apache2/sites-available/mydomain.com 011-mydomain.com

4. And this is what I had missed. Ensure there is a default file in your sites-available that includes this line:

NameVirtualHost *:80

That's all I have in mine. And have a dynamic link in sites-enabled so that DEFAULT IS RUN FIRST.

eg, ln -s /etc/apache2/sites-available/default 000-default

5. restart apache eg. /etc/init.d/apache2 restart

6. Cross fingers and enter domain in the browser.

If you are doing this all at once, it takes a while for the changes to propogate through from godaddy, so be patient.

Dead Cat Bounce

I'm not filled with optimism by the 'green shoots' spotted here and there. I think this is the dead cat bounce phase, or put even better in the Editorial of the FT this weekend "... unexploded ordinance still litters the financial landscape".

Have a nice day...

Travelled up to Dublin on the new intercity trains last week. The toilets have these huge curved doors that you open and close with a button. There is another large button to press once you are inside to lock it and when you do the door says "Thank you"!? Whatever next. Reminded of the doors and drinks machines in Hitch Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy... "Have a nice day!"

Catchup

Got out of the blogging habit with the long (wet) summer days so going to try and get going again with a number of small blogets. Items of note in the last months?

Christophe and Jérôme, two french wwoofers, have just left after a month that has transformed the farm. Everything is strimmed, the fencing is not only repaired but has handles to open on every field and a bank of switches from which I can turn each field on and off. (You probably have no idea how great this is!).

Great multicultural BBQ Polish, Irish, French, German, Brits and Americans. Great pics here: web4u.ie/phoebehouse/

Managed to make haylage after 7 weeks trying but never a gap of 3 dry days. Started raining as we were baling so not sure how good it's going to be.

Had a great Jumpstart with Fish Publishing and came up with a raft of new ideas on how to get more entries to their competitions.
Recession much in evidence, but life and showjumping go on...

Can you teach old dogs new tricks?

I am trying to learn a new programming language, Python, the new 'it' language. I taught myself PHP 10 years ago and it's interesting comparing the two experiences. 10 years ago I bought a couple of books on PHP and immersed myself in the language. I had many, many frustrating days trying to do seemingly obvious things with no success. But after six months I was pretty competant and after 18 months I was pretty good. For the last nine months, I have been working on and off with Python and I'd still class myself as a beginner. So what's the difference? Is it just that I'm 10 years older and finding it harder to learn new tricks?

Firstly there's the attention thing. Sometimes I can't remember if I brushed my teeth or not, but when I was a child with only a few hundred brushes behind me I was still a novice, and paid close attention to my brushing. Now with many thousands of brushes behind me I pay little attention, the brain focused on what to do today or tomorrow or what I should have done. So it's hardly surprising, given my lack of attention, that sometimes I can't find the memory of brushing my teeth. So while I've been learning Python for nine months, very little of that time was actually spent concentrating on learning. I have far more distractions than I did 10 years ago, far more different areas of work, and far more horses! So I don't put my attention into learning I put my attention into solving the immediate problems at hand as quickly as I can.

And this is the second point. Youth is for learning, and once we grow up, we are expected to get on with it. Until I moved back to Ireland, I attended evening classes took up new interest and was always learning new skills and new subjects. But there are fewer opportunities here, and seemingly less time every year, so I don't expect to have the time to learn, I just fix. So rather than sitting down and trying to learn Python, I've created websites in Python and fixed problems as they arise. I didn't even buy a book until a month ago! With Google, fixing rather than learning is so easy. You type in the kind of problem you're trying to solve,"python difference between two dates", for example and up comes the solution. You didn't have to work it out you just copy and paste and move onto the next problem. So in a months time you find myself again googling "difference between to dates".

So I don't think that is a problem in teaching old dogs new tricks, as long as the old dogs recognize that they're going to have to pay attention and commit their energy to learning, a skill which may be a bit rusty. I need to bring a different mind to the table, sit down with a different intention and probably uses a different part of my brain. I need to stop being so pragmatic and remember the joy of mastering a new skill and finding a whole new view on the world.

Feelings vs. Thinking and Tidy Towns

Listening to a discussion at the Transition Towns get together for Cork groups at Cork Institute of Technology last week reminded me of a field trip at Shumacher College back in September 2001. The discussion was something like, we are working with the Tidy Towns committees to try and get them to understand the benefits of not spraying the road sides. "They could poison us" said the road side food gatherers.

As part of a course in Business and Sustainability run at Schumacher College (and if you ever get the chance to go there it is a wonderful experience) we did a field trip with a deep ecologist. We agreed the green fields of grass were deserts of monoculture, admired the cattle in the ancient water meadow (as I scoffed some very tasty blackberries. Nobody else would eat them and I wondered if I had missed a part of the lecture where we were told to leave the fruit to the birds.) After a bit of experiencing the wonder of trees we came to a field which had clearly not been touched for some years, with a wide mix of plants up to four feet high. Our tutor asked us how this field made us feel. The class expressed their appreciation of the wide mix of ecology, the animal and plant systems dependent on each other. At last I could hold my tongue no longer, "It makes me feel awful" I said. It's uncared for, unloved. It makes me want to get in there with a mower and tidy it up!". The tutor could not understand me. "But don't you see how the mix of plants and insects and animals create an ecosystem?". I couldn't explain to him that I was simply answering his question. How the field made me feel had little relation to what I thought about the field. While I like to think I have strong sustainability leanings and try to run my small farm as organically as possible, some fundamental part of me believes farmers have a responsibility to tend their fields, keep the grass grazed, the ground fertilised and hedges trimmed. No amount of logic is likely to change that feeling.

I think it will be a long, long time before you could convince a Tidy Towns committee or the judges (or me) that the verges should be left to run wild. No amount of explaining the benefits of sustainability are likely to have much impact on our own feelings about what cared for or tidy looks like. It says something about our culture that we assume that if we can simply explain logically our thinking, that this will change someone else's feelings about something. Do other cultures suffer under the same beliefs?

Tidy Towns at Work:

Dolores in Foal!

Dolores (broken pelvis horse) scanned in foal today to French Buffet (TB) standing at Kylemore Stud in Co. Galway (b. miles away). 10 months to go but with a bit of luck there should be a foal next april! So excited.

<-- The mother

The father

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