Website Update

Why I have finally updated this website

After years of not touching it, I have updated this website. When I first created it in 2005, I wanted a space to publish short technical how-to articles and to share photos with my family.

The online world has changed beyond recognition since then, and the content on my website was thoroughly outdated. This is why I decided to remove all the old content and create a minimal web presence.

The trigger for finally tackling this task was a recent article in the ct magazine about pelican, a website generator which lets you write all the content in markdown notation and generates static web pages. Having only static web pages vastly reduces the attack surface of the website and eliminates the need to constantly having to worry about updates for a content management system.

For the time being, I'm not planning to regularly publish anything on this website, but this might change in the future.

Other articles

  1. WebDAV File System Setup

    Setting up a WebDAV File System

    One of the websites I'm responsible for changed the upload area of its live server to a secured WebDAV share.

    At first I thought, OK, no problem, I'll just choose WebDAV in Dreamweaver's Remote Site dialog, and I'm done. Not quite so, as it turned out. The WebDAV share I wanted to connect to was only accessible via https using a certificate. And even though the documentation didn't say so, Dreamweaver 8 only seems to support WebDAV uploads via http.

    So I had to look for other ways to access the WebDAV share. I …

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  2. GNOME Desktop Restore

    Restoring Your GNOME Desktop

    I have lost my GNOME Desktop environment twice now, so I thought it's time to write down how I managed to get it back. It happened like this: On my old computer, which I primarily use for backups, I decided to remove all the applications I didn't really need.

    I thought that by using the GNOME Add/Remove Software menu function and only removing optional packages from the GNOME Package Manager's Applications section, I'd be on the safe side. GNOME Package Manager

    This turned out to be wrong: after removing all the unused applications in, I …

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  3. Fedora Update

    Upgrading Fedora Core 5 to Fedora Core 6

    This time I decided to really heed the good advice and think about what needs backing up before starting the upgrade:

    • I backed up my home directory and my subversion repositories using rsync to my second computer.
    • I backed up my pictures to CDs.
    • I updated my subversion working directory on my laptop using svn update.

    Also, I decided to do the upgrade when I had enough time, meaning not after work late at night.

    Procedure

    1. Download all the iso images of the FC6 release (including the rescue CD) and check the …
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  4. Yum Errors - Remove Old Kernels

    How to Get Rid of yum Errors by Removing Old Kernels

    Occasionally, I have encountered a yum unpacking error when trying to install a new kernel on my Fedora computer:

    Running Transaction error: unpacking of archive failed on file /boot/System.map-2.6.16-1.2111_FC5; 44730661: cpio: write

    This error can occur when the /boot partition gets too full.

    Solution

    1. Open a root shell.
    2. Check which kernels are installed on your computer:
        rpm -qa | grep kernel
    kernel-2.6.16-1.2122_FC5
    kernel-2.6.16-1.2111_FC5
    kernel-2.6.16-1.2080_FC5
    kernel-2.6.16-1.2133_FC5
    kernel-2.6.17-1.2139_FC5
    kernel-2.6.16-1.2096_FC5 …
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