Bits and bites from PÃ¥l Brattberg

I got asked by Tim at Perfect Fools to help out with a problem of including an ASP-file into an XSL/XML-generated output from a closed program.

He had access to an XSL-file that he could modify, and he needed his ASP-file parsed and included.

We tried a few different strokes, and I just thought I’d share my finds. This was done on IIS to the best of my knowledge.

The first version we tried was

but that failed with the following in the logs:

0b04 050128 10:00:23 Error 150, pIXSLTemplate putref_stylesheet method failed
0b04 050128 10:00:23 XML Error (150) : pIXSLTemplate putref_stylesheet method failed
0b04 050128 10:00:23 Error 150, pStyleSheet load xsl failed

Ok, next try:

But lo and behold, that failed as well. The code was not even processed (probably because this was in an XSL file, and the code in question ought to be in an XML-file).

So, that left us to try the weird and desparate, and there it was. We decided to include the file using JavaScript like this:

Well, almost anyhow. This solution requires the included file to be a JavaScript, so I made a little hack in Java/JSP to help him out. The following code reads an URL and generates a simple JavaScript to echo the code to the page:

<%@ page import="java.net.*" %>
<%@ page import="java.io.*" %>
<%!
public String getUrlAsString(String url_) throws Exception {
    URL url = new URL(url_);
    BufferedReader reader = new BufferedReader(new InputStreamReader(url.openStream()));
    StringBuffer buffer = new StringBuffer();
    String readLine = null;
    while ((readLine = reader.readLine()) != null) {
        buffer.append(readLine);
    }
    reader.close();
    return buffer.toString();
}
%><%!
public String getParam(String parameterName, String defaultValue, HttpServletRequest request) {
    if ((request.getParameter(parameterName) == null) || (request.getParameter(parameterName).equals(""))) {
        return defaultValue;
    } else {
        return request.getParameter(parameterName).toString();
    }
}
%><%
String url = getParam("url","http://www.cnn.com",request);
String resultString = getUrlAsString(url).replaceAll(""", """);
%>

Now it’s just a simple matter of including any page like this:

This was kind of a weird solution, but it works out, so we’re pleased for the moment!

I’m wrestling with an internal server at Eminds that will run the new version of Horde.

Thing is, this server will only answer on HTTPS (port 443) and will act as the backend for another server doing reverse-proxy requests to this server.

Thing is, directory browsing is on, but all I see are the folders, no files yet. If I give the URL to a single file, I get a 403 like this

Forbidden
You don't have permission to access /test.txt on this server.
Additionally, a 403 Forbidden error was encountered while trying to use an ErrorDocument to handle the request.


This was a real twister! The file even had chmod 777 for testing, but I still got the error. All folders were 777 as well.

Then my friend Johan Ekblad set me free! We are running SELinux on this server (a Fedora Core 3 box), and since the file was not created by teh apache user, the ownership was not ok. No matter that I set apache as owner using chown.

The solution was a one-liner:
chcon -R -h -t httpd_sys_content_t /path/to/htdocs

Restart httpd, and … voilá! It works again!
Thanks a bunch to Johan for this one!

I had some troubles with getting the right screen resolution on my Dell X300 laptop after a recent reinstall, and had to do some xorg.conf surgery.

In case you also get stuck using 800×600, I’m enclosing the following to activate 1024×768 which the monitor is capable of. I also have a section that I use when I dock the laptop, and use my Dell 2001 FP digital flat screen at work.

Section "Device"
        Identifier  "Card0"
        Driver      "i810"
        VendorName  "Videocard vendor"
        BoardName   "Intel 852"
EndSection

Section "Monitor"
        Identifier   "Monitor0"
        VendorName   "Monitor Vendor"
        ModelName    "DELL3200MP"
        HorizSync    30.0 - 60.0
        VertRefresh  48.0 - 75.0
        Option      "dpms"
EndSection

Section "Screen"
        Identifier "Screen0"
        Device     "Card0"
        Monitor    "Monitor0"
        DefaultDepth     16
        SubSection "Display"
                Depth     16
                Modes    "1024x768" "800x600" "640x480"
        EndSubSection
        SubSection "Display"
                Depth     8
                Modes    "1024x768" "800x600" "640x480"
        EndSubSection
EndSection

As an added bonus, here’s how to setup a mouse and the Synaptics touchpad:

Section "InputDevice"
        Identifier  "Mouse0"
        Driver      "mouse"
        Option      "Protocol" "IMPS/2"
        Option      "Device" "/dev/input/mice"
        Option      "ZAxisMapping" "4 5"
        Option      "Emulate3Buttons" "yes"
EndSection

Section "InputDevice"
        Identifier  "Synaptics"
        Driver      "synaptics"
        Option      "Device" "/dev/input/mice"
        Option      "Protocol" "auto-dev"
        Option      "Emulate3Buttons" "yes"
EndSection

For the flat screen:

Section "Monitor"
        Identifier   "Monitor0"
        VendorName   "DELL"
        ModelName    "Dell 2001FP (Digital)"
        HorizSync    31.0 - 80.0
        VertRefresh  56.0 - 76.0
        Option      "dpms"
EndSection

Section "Screen"
        Identifier "Screen0"
        Device     "Card0"
        Monitor    "Monitor0"
        DefaultDepth     24
        SubSection "Display"
                Viewport   0 0
                Depth     24
                Modes    "1600x1200" "1400x1050" "1280x1024" "1280x960" "1152x864" "1024x768" "800x600" "640x480"
        EndSubSection
EndSection