Peter Boughton's questions

Apache 2.2 (on a server running cPanel) seems to be ignoring instructions to return a 410 status.

This happens for both mod_alias's Redirect (using 410 or gone) and mod_rewrite's RewriteRule (using [G]), being used inside a .htaccess file.

This works:

Redirect 302 /somewhere /gone

But this doesn't:

Redirect 410 /somewhere

That line is ignored (as if it had been commented) and the request falls through to other rules (which direct it to an unrelated generic error handling script).

Similarly, trying to use a RewriteRule with a [G] flag doesn't work, but the same rule rewriting to a script that generates a 410 does - so the rules aren't the problem and it seems instead to be something about 410/gone that isn't behaving.

I can workaround it by having a script sending the 410, but that's annoying and I don't get why it's not working.

Any ideas?

I want to password protect a directory. I'm running Apache 2 with cPanel on Centos.

For the sake of this post, the directory is /home/user/my-secret-dir

I used cPanel's "Password Protect Directories" to create the login details, which it stored in a new /home/user/.htpasswds/my-secret-dir/passwd file.

What it didn't do is create the AuthType configuration anywhere - I could simply access the directory without prompts (it's just got a generic index.html whilst I get this working).

So I created /home/user/my-secret-dir/.htaccess myself, with the following contents:

AuthType Basic
AuthName "My Secret Directory"
AuthUserFile "/home/user/.htpasswds/my-secret-dir/passwd"
require valid-user

This now causes the browser to prompt for login details, but upon entering the correct username and password it behaves as if they were wrong and re-prompts for the details.

The details I'm entering are definitely correct.

I've previously setup a password protected directory on this same server (though for different account/domain) and that worked fine (and still works), and I've compared the two and can't see any significant differences.

Any ideas what might be causing the continual prompts, and how I can fix it?

If I view properties for a service, I can see the "Dependencies" tab, but I can't assign other services to this tab.

I have two services that start on startup, a server and a database. The server depends on the database - if the db hasn't started, the server doesn't work. (However, it does actually fail as a service, so I can't use the Recovery tab.)

How do I make the second service dependent on the first service, so that they always start up in the correct order?

So lets assume I've just done:

mv ./myfile /to/some/other/place/

And I now decide I want to follow the file, and go into that directory.

Whilst I could head for the mouse, select the text, type 'cd ', then right-click to paste - I'd prefer a faster keyboard-based directory.

So, what's the best way to do that?
(In general, and if different, Centos+Bash specifically)

SPF (Sender Policy Framework) seems like a good way to combat spammers/spoofing.

However, despite reading the explanations several times, I'm not quite understanding how to configure it correctly.

Let's say I have my server at a.x.com which hosts www.x.com and b.x.com and c.x.com and so on.

I also have a.co.uk b.net c.info and so on, each of these with an assortment of sub-domains, all hosted on x.com

For all of these domains and sub-domains, I want to permit mail to be sent from a.x.com

How do I set this up with SPF?

Can I set one SPF record for x.com (or a.x.com) and then for everything else just have a simple include/pointer to x.com's record, or would it need to be done differently?

Can anyone provide some SPF records for the above example?

Note: The second part of my question has been answered (use "v=spf1 include:x.com -all" to include/point at x.com's record), but the key part of what to set on x.com remains unanswered...