Colovic Vladan » PHP

Logitech Revolution Mouse models and Firefox

cvladan — Tue, 23 Sep 2008 00:48:55 +0000

Type in address bar: about:config .

Then, after the warning screen, start typing in “Filter” field: mousewheel.withcontrolkey.action

The value of this field was, by default 3 (look at the explanation ), and you should set it to -1 to disable any functionality. This “Disable” value was not so obvious at first look. SO, to summarize:

Oh. I just found out that someone is having the same problem . Their solution is not really exact, but it will do the job.

array(&amp;$this, 'SetVariables');
array(&amp;$this, 'SetVariables');

Hide versions from port and services scan (NMAP)

cvladan — Thu, 11 Sep 2008 05:32:49 +0000

I stumbled on some posts about scanning a site and detecting a server services versions. Someone pointed out a nmap tool, and I checked it against my own server. The result was not so good – Apache and ProFTPD reveled its versions. So, I was determined to change that – I want the least version information. The NMAP command is:

nmap -sS -sV -O www.yourserver.com

Secure and hide version information:

Apache, configuration file, usually at /etc/httpd/conf/httpd.conf
ServerTokens ProductOnlyServerSignature Off

ProFTPD, in configuration file, usually at /etc/proftpd.conf
ServerName "My FTP Server"
ServerIdent on "ProFTPD [version] Server (server name) [hostname]"

This means, enough is to set, but in Global section:
ServerIdent on "Generic FTP Server"And you can change the port, if you want.

OpenSSH, tcp/22, not possible to change banner but yous should change the port, disable root login, etc.

Telnet, tcp/23, I prefer to disable Telnet. If not, use this (change file /etc/issue.net)
mv /etc/issue.net /etc/issue.net-original echo "Windows Server 2008 (Microsoft)" > /etc/issue.net

PHP, disable expose_php for security reasons in /etc/php.ini
expose_php = 'off'

That’s about it. I believe there is more, and if someone wants to add something, just comment on this post.

The effects of CSS minifying

cvladan — Sat, 22 Dec 2007 05:43:13 +0000

I needed to implement some CSS compression, and minification, so I made some tests regarding the improvements. The content is delivered by Apache’s GZIP deflate, so the only thing to check was the effect of putting all CSS in one file, and packing it afterwards. For me, the results were surprising.

Original file, after GZIP (19 CSS files) – 22Kb
Just included into one big file – 17Kb
In one file, removed comments and newlines -11kb
One file, PHP cssTidy-ed – low compression – 10Kb
One file, PHP cssTidy-ed – high compression – 10Kb
One file, PHP cssTidy-ed – highest compression – 10Kb

The most interesting part was a difference between 1. and 2. I’m not sure why this happened. The other curious thing is that basically cssTidy compression does not improve much (besides it does changed some margin that I noticed, and did not wanted).

My conclusion: packing all CSS in one file and removing comments and newlines is quite enough.

Return values from included files

cvladan — Sat, 22 Dec 2007 01:41:52 +0000

Something I did not know, but when I found it on this post, then I just realized that is include somewhere in PHP manual, so I quote from original manual entry.

“If called from the global scope, then execution of the current script file is ended. If the current script file was include()-ed or require()-ed, then control is passed back to the calling file. Furthermore, if the current script file was include()-ed, then the value given to return() will be returned as the value of the include() call. If return() is called from within the main script file, then script execution ends.”