Translation: The WAR file in question had permissions of 600 instead of 644 so the Tomcat user couldn’t load it. A nice gotcha for an early morning upgrade BEFORE I’ve even had coffee .

My work for the Australian Access Federation on developing the Virtual Home since 2012.

My work for the Australian Access Federation on developing the Federation Registry tool since 2009.

https://github.com/ausaccessfed/federationregistry

grails-app/domain/aaf/vhr/switch/vho/DeprecatedSubject.groovy: 1: expecting an identifier, found 'switch' @ line 1, column 17.
   package aaf.vhr.switch.vho
                   ^

1 error

Can you spot the reason why?

It took me a few minutes to figure out this cryptic error…

Part of the package space contains the reserved word “switch” hence the error. Change that to something else, in my case aaf.vhr.switchch.vho after the lovely folks over at the SWITCH federation and everything is happy again.

The content of a box dictates its width. It is the minimum width of adjacent containers that create break points (a size at which we can display boxes next to each other).

Decisions are made keeping these points in mind:

• The width of a box should be as small or as wide as possible without impairing readability.
• The max-width of a box should take into consideration the importance of following boxes. This is because the wider the box, the wider the viewport must be to reveal subsequent boxes.
• The goal is not to bring everything above the fold (we don’t want to fill the viewport with clutter).

Be sure to read the full article at smashing magazine by Thierry Koblentz.

Today I’ve been adding a new machine to that mix to run a Shibboleth 2.3 SP within Apache to front up some work I’m doing in the rails space. All was up and running in an hour. I’m using Ubuntu 11.04 server.

1. Start with a base Ubuntu 11.04 server image
2. Ensure the VM has guest additions installed to manage time sync and other interactions with the host.

   sudo apt-get update
   sudo apt-get install virtualbox-ose-guest-utils
   sudo /etc/init.d/virtualbox-ose-guest-utils start
       

3. Install the Shibboleth SP packages

   sudo apt-get install shibboleth-sp2-schemas libshibsp-dev
   sudo apt-get install libshibsp-doc libapache2-mod-shib2 opensaml2-tools
   

4. Generate your host certificate (replace the -h value with your server address)

   cd /etc/shibboleth
   sudo shib-keygen -h aaf.dev.bradleybeddoes.com
   

5. Register your service and crypto with your Federation. In my case I can do this using the Federation Registry deployed by the AAF
6. Modify your local Shibboleth and Apache configuration as per your Federations local requirements. Below is a copy of my VirtualHost as an example (using lazy sessions):

   <VirtualHost 10.0.0.1:80>
   	ServerAdmin bradleybeddoes@gmail.com
   	ServerName aaf.dev.bradleybeddoes.com
   
   	ErrorLog ${APACHE_LOG_DIR}/aaf.dev.error.log
           LogLevel warn
   
           CustomLog ${APACHE_LOG_DIR}/aaf.dev.access.log combined
   
   	DocumentRoot /var/www/aaf.dev
   	<Directory /var/www/aaf.dev>
   		Options Indexes FollowSymLinks MultiViews
   		AllowOverride None
   		Order allow,deny
   		allow from all
   	</Directory>
   
           <Location />
                   AuthType shibboleth
                   ShibRequestSetting requireSession false
                   ShibUseHeaders On
                   Require shibboleth
           </Location>
   
   </VirtualHost>
   

7. Enable the shibboleth SP module and your site

   sudo a2enmod proxy
   sudo a2enmod proxy_http
   sudo a2enmod shib2
   sudo a2ensite aaf.dev.bradleybeddoes.com
   

8. Restart Apache and you’re ready to go. Navigating to /secure as a test should have you directed off to the federation and all working nicely. If problems persist please see your friendly local log files

Now simply integrate your rails infrastructure with Apache and your ready to go. Be sure to turn on ShibUseHeaders within your app space if you’re using ProxyPass through to Unicorn like me.

Some digging online didn’t really locate to much so I started poking around myself, solution ended up being:

1. Using File > Virtual Media Manager – Delete reference to the failed hard drive located on your NAS.
2. In the settings for your VM remove the failed disk
3. Click on sata and the little ‘Add HDD’ icon to the right – you can now select your remote disk image
4. Restart – all is well.

Hope that helps!

DRY – Don’t repeat yourself – This is probably the single most fundamental tenet in programming is to avoid repetition. Many programming constructs exist solely for that purpose (e.g. loops, functions, classes, and more). As soon as you start repeating yourself (e.g. a long expression, a series of statements, same concept) create a new abstraction.

View the full post at: http://www.artima.com/weblogs/viewpost.jsp?thread=331531

// Logging configuration
log4j = {
appenders {
appender new DailyRollingFileAppender(name:"fr-app", layout:pattern(conversionPattern: "%d{[ dd.MM.yy HH:mm:ss.SSS]} %-5p %c %x - %m%n"), file:"/tmp/fr-app.log", datePattern:"'.'yyyy-MM-dd")
appender new DailyRollingFileAppender(name:"fr-md", layout:pattern(conversionPattern: "%d{[ dd.MM.yy HH:mm:ss.SSS]} %-5p %c %x - %m%n"), file:"/tmp/fr-md.log", datePattern:"'.'yyyy-MM-dd")
appender new DailyRollingFileAppender(name:"stacktrace", layout:pattern(conversionPattern: "%d{[ dd.MM.yy HH:mm:ss.SSS]} %-5p %c %x - %m%n"), file:"/tmp/stacktrace.log", datePattern:"'.'yyyy-MM-dd")
}

info 'fr-md': [ 'grails.app.controller.fedreg.metadata.MetadataController',
'grails.app.service.fedreg.metadata.MetadataService'], additivity: false

warn 'fr-app': ['org.codehaus.groovy.grails.web.servlet',
'org.codehaus.groovy.grails.web.pages',
'org.codehaus.groovy.grails.web.sitemesh',
'org.codehaus.groovy.grails.web.mapping.filter',
'org.codehaus.groovy.grails.web.mapping',
'org.codehaus.groovy.grails.commons',
'org.codehaus.groovy.grails.plugins',
'org.apache.shiro']

info 'fr-app': ['grails.plugins.nimble',
'grails.app.controller',
'grails.app.domain',
'grails.app.service',
'grails.app.realm']
}