Stillnet Studios

Unless you’ve been living on a desert island for the last year, you’ve probably heard that you’ll need to upgrade ColdFusion’s JVM (java virtual machine) before March 11th 2007. Thats when daylight savings time takes effect this year. Since the dates have shifted in 2007, anything that is aware of daylight savings time will require an update. This includes your operating system (Windows, Linux, OSX, etc.), and Java since it has its own internal timezone tables.

And if you use NTP (network time protocol) to set the time on your servers from an internet time server, don’t think you’re immune. NTP simply syncs your internal UTC (universal time) clock with a UTC clock on the internet. Your timezone tables then determine your actual local time, based on your UTC offset, which changes during daylight savings time.

Updating ColdFusion’s JVM is very easy. The version of java that ColdFusion ships with is 1.4.2_09. You can see this if you login to your CF Administrator, then click on SYSTEM INFORMATION at the top of the page.

Continue reading ‘Upgrading the ColdFusion JVM – on Linux and Windows’ »

Usually to setup an SSL-enabled website (a website available via the secure, https protocol), you purchase a certificate from a trusted authority such as Verisign or Thawte. This costs anywhere from $150-400 per year. But this cost is not always necessary.
Continue reading ‘Self-signing your secure certificate – SSL for free’ »

I’ve been wanting a way to easily recover a file that is accidentally deleted from one of our websites, either by us or by a client. Also, it would be useful to be able to get back to the state your code was in X number of days ago. For example when the client changes his mind about the current direction you’ve been developing. Source control can offer a solution to some degree, but won’t help you if the client has access to the website and they’ve changed a file. And some shops just don’t use source control for all their projects.

Tape backups also offer a partial solution, I’ve had to pull a file off yesterday’s tape several times. But restoring from tape is a hassle, especially if its stored off site (which it should be!).

Enter rsnapshot. Continue reading ‘Snapshot backups’ »