I recently was required to install BlackBerry Enterprise Server (BES) on our corporate network. I did the usual configuration following the step that I found on the BB site here.
I then proceeded to make an ISA Firewall Rule that enabled outbound acccess from the bes server (a computer object) to external on port 3101. I also created the corresponding inbound rule on port 3101 as well just to be extra sure.
I followed the steps word for word (or so I thought), and tried syncing a BlackBerry to the servers, and it just timed out on me. So then I went back to the drawing board, and realized that I didn’t setup my permissions on the Active Directory (AD) user accounts properly. So I uninstalled the server, followed the following steps:

1. Local Administrator rights on the BlackBerry Enterprise Server
2. Local Security Policy permissions for the BlackBerry Enterprise Server service account
3. Microsoft Exchange permissions at the Administrative Group level
4. Microsoft Exchange permissions at the Microsoft Exchange Server level
5. Send As permission at the Domain level
6. Database permissions for managing the BlackBerry Configuration Database

And reinstalled the server. Still no avail. I looked into the logs and noticed this line in the BES_DISP logfile:

IPPa] {User Name} Forwarding status to BES Agent (S61887304_001), intTag=5, extTag=1
[30222] (03/20 16:20:19.482):{0×898} {User Name} MTH: contentType=OTAKEYGEN, sizeOTA=216, sizeOTW=216, TransactionId=-941432706, Tag=2
[30310] (03/20 16:20:19.482):{0×898} {User Name} Forwarding internal data to device, contentType=OTAKEYGEN, routing=S61887304, device=301D4AC4, size=258, cmd=0×3, ack=0, TransactionId=-941432706, intTag=8, Tag=2, Submit=1
[30375] (03/20 16:20:19.576):{0×8A0} {User Name} Packet returned as FAILED – could not be delivered to device, Tag=2

After doing some research, I found out that you NEED to have the BES option on your phone which can only be set by your carrier. To find out if you have this or not, just go to options -> advanced settings and see if theres an option for Enterprise Activation anywhere. If there isn’t, that means that you do not have the BES package. To get this, just phone your carrier, and ask them to add BlackBerry Enterprise Services (BES or pronounced B’ezz) to your account and you should be good to go!
Brennan

I recently was coding in PHP, and needed to get just the fully qualified domain name from the (FQDN) $_SERVER[’HTTP_REFERER’] variable. So I whipped a quick function up that may help some of you beginners out there looking to parse a URL:

function domainviaurl($url){
$parsed_url=parse_url($url);
$fqdn = $parsed_url['host'];
return $fqdn;
}

This will just spit out the domain name. The next one will take it one step further, and actually get the IP address of the referrer via the domain name.

function ipviaurl($url{
$parsed_url=parse_url($url);
$tld = $parsed_url['host'];
$ip = gethostbyname($tld);
return $ip;
}

Hope this helps out!

Brennan

I’ve recently upgraded to Wordpress 2.5 and realized that WP-Cache has stopped working. I decided to search for alternative solutions for Wordpress caching, and on a comment for WP-Cache, I discovered WP-Super-Cache. It seems a lot better than WP-Cache from my preliminary analysis. Wp-Super-Cache can handle nearly 2500 requests per second (as opposed to 4 without any caching). I do notice a faster load speed even by using my browser (I have 5 static IPs, and since my switch isn’t working correctly, all my network traffic is getting routed to my ISP and back).

To install the plugin, just download it from here,install it as usual by putting into your wp-content/plugins folder, activate it using the Plugins menu. Now, before configuring the plugin, you must put the following code in your .htaccess in the ROOT of your web server:

—————–.htaccess—————–
RewriteEngine On
RewriteBase /
RewriteCond %{QUERY_STRING} !.*s=.*
RewriteCond %{HTTP_COOKIE} !^.*(comment_author_|wordpress|wp-postpass_).*$
RewriteCond %{HTTP:Accept-Encoding} gzip
RewriteCond %{DOCUMENT_ROOT}/wp-content/cache/supercache/%{HTTP_HOST}/$1/index.html.gz -f
RewriteRule ^(.*) /wp-content/cache/supercache/%{HTTP_HOST}/$1/index.html.gz [L]
RewriteCond %{QUERY_STRING} !.*s=.*
RewriteCond %{HTTP_COOKIE} !^.*(comment_author_|wordpress|wp-postpass_).*$
RewriteCond %{DOCUMENT_ROOT}/wp-content/cache/supercache/%{HTTP_HOST}/$1/index.html -f
RewriteRule ^(.*) /wp-content/cache/supercache/%{HTTP_HOST}/$1/index.html [L]
# BEGIN WordPress
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d
RewriteRule . /index.php [L]
# END WordPress
—————–.htaccess—————–

After you have done that, you should be able to configure all the features in WP-Super-Cache.
By the way, if anyone is wondering, and/or anybody wants a GREAT PuTTY mod to use, use PiETTY. I have been using this client for over a year now. It has full UTF-8 Asian language support, and alphablend transparency. It looks sweet when used together with Vista’s Aero.
Brennan