Category Archives: Web

Forward Emails to Multiple Addresses with cPanel

I had an email address that was set up for a group of users in my organization.  I wanted forward incoming email that was sent to that address to all of the individuals in the group.  I initially logged into cPanel (11.30.6),  browsed to the Mail section, and chose Forwarders.  I chose Add Forwarder, but the Destination only provides a single-line text box for input.  Because of that, I assumed that I could only forward from a single address to a single email address.  To accomplish the task, I chose to create a mailing list in cPanel, which did the job, but also required all of the issues of maintaining a mailing list.

Recently I needed to create another group email address and I was determined to find a more elegant approach than using a mailing list.  I dove back into cPanel and just began adding forwarders using the same Address to Forward, but changing the Destination for all of the individuals in a group.  I sent some test emails to ensure that it worked, and it did.  The problem was solved, but it sure seemed like an odd implementation in the cPanel interface.  Subsequently I Googled this situation, and came across a blog post stating that in the background cPanel actually creates a single forward entry within the operating system.  So it doesn’t look pretty, but it is efficient.  Maybe in the next version of cPanel they will provide a multi-line text box for the forwarding destination to make forwarding to multiple email addresses more straightforward.

Report Events in the SAS Key User Action Log

saslogofrom the SAS 9.2 Intelligence Platform Web Application Administration Guide,
Third Edition, located at:

http://support.sas.com/documentation/cdl/en/biwaag/63536/PDF/default/biwaag.pdf

The information in the Key User Action Log can be imported into SAS data sets and presented in reports. To report the data, follow these steps:

  1. Import the WebReportStudio_KeyActions.log data into a SAS data set. Here are the main steps:
    1. Assign a libref to an XML file that contains log data, and specify the XML engine.  In the following example, MyFile.xml is a copy of a Key User Action Log file:
      libname myxml xml ’C:\My Files\XML\MyFile.xml’;
    2. Use the SAS data sets procedure to import the XML file into a SAS data set.
      Here is an example:
      proc data sets library=myxml;
      This code creates a data set named EVENT in the MYXML library.
      For more information, see SAS online Help and documentation.
  2. In SAS Information Map Studio, create an information map based on the data set that you created in the preceding step. For the information map, you might want to provide the ability to filter based on the event code (<code> tag), the user name (<user> tag), the report name (<report> tag), or the date (<date> tag). For information about using SAS Information Map Studio, see the product Help.
  3. 3 In SAS Web Report Studio, define a report based on the information map that you created in the previous step. You can define the report to be refreshed manually, and then schedule the report to run at regular intervals.

WordPress and bbPress Integration

imageWordPress is a great blogging tool and does an adequate job handling comments, but if you want to provide enhanced discussion capability among your sites users, you must install additional software.  The WordPress developers have created bbPress to fill this purpose, and in doing so also added the ability to integrate the two tools on one web site.  The key components that are integrated include users, cookies, and the back-end database.

Integration the two products was amazing easy – except for three items needed by bbPress installation.  bbPress asked for WordPress "auth" cookie salt (AUTH_KEY), WordPress "secure auth" cookie salt (SECURE_AUTH_KEY), and WordPress "logged in" cookie salt (LOGGED_IN_KEY).  The scant documentation insisted that these values were located in my wp-config.php file located in the root of my WordPress installation directory.  Since my initial WordPress installation was at version 2.6 or so and has been upgraded many times to version 2.91, these values were never added to my wp-config.php file.

My bbPress installation was halted essentially because these values were required to proceed.  Fortunately, I found a tool at wordpress.org that generates these values for you: https://api.wordpress.org/secret-key/1.1/.  Just use this link, copy the four lines of keys, and paste them into your wp-config.php.  Save your updated wp-config.php file, then go back to your bbPress installation page and paste the keys into the appropriate text boxes and the remaining portion of the installation should go smoothly.

More information about this process can be found here.

ActiveX Graphs not Active in SAS Information Delivery Portal when Viewed with Internet Explorer

SAS Institute Inc.We are still running Internet Explorer version 6.0 in our organization.  When we open our dashboards that we have built in SAS Information Delivery Portal 1.1, the ActiveX graphs do not display detail information when we mouse over them.  The dashboards are running stored processes that output the graphs.  The easy solution is to left-click on the graph to activate it.  This is easy enough if you have one or two graphs on a page, but some of our dashboards include six or seven graphs, which isn’t hard either, it just leaves you thinking that you shouldn’t have to be doing it.  The graphs work perfectly when using Mozilla Firefox, which unfortunately is not our organization standard.  The problem is caused by one or more security patches that Microsoft has made available for Internet Explorer.  SAS Usage Note 17565 explains this in more detail:

Usage Note 17565: ACTIVEX, JAVA, and JAVAMETA graphs may not be active by default when displayed via Internet Explorer

After application of one or more Microsoft security patches/updates, ACTIVEX, JAVA, and JAVAMETA graphs are no longer active by default when displayed via Internet Explorer. This means that the pop-up options menu will not display when you right-mouse button on the graph.

The Microsoft security patches related to this issue include KB912812 and KB912945.

To activate the graph, left-mouse click on the graph. This will activate the current graph and enable use of the right-mouse button. Once the graph is active, flyover data tips will also now display correctly.

SAS Web Report Studio in a Headless Configuration

saslogo We ran into a problem recently in SAS Web Report Studio 3.1 where our web reports that contained graphs produced java errors while our table-only reports did not.  Our platform is SAS Enterprise Business Intelligence Server 9.1.3 Service Pack 4 running Solaris 10 on Sun SPARC Servers.  Our web server is Apache Tomcat 4.1.18.  The error we received looked like this:

Error messages:There is a problem with the current page. Error Rendering the Report
 
Root Cause: java.lang.NoClassDefFoundError
  at com.sas.servlet.tbeans.graphics.BaseBarChart.(BaseBarChart.java:23)
  at com.sas.servlet.tbeans.olapgraphics.html.OLAPBarChart.(OLAPBarChart.java:83)
  at com.sas.servlet.tbeans.olapgraphics.html.OLAPBarChart.(OLAPBarChart.java:74)
  at com.sas.servlet.tbeans.olapgraphics.html.OLAPBarChartComposite.(OLAPBarChartComposite.java:57)
  at com.sas.servlet.tbeans.olapgraphics.html.OLAPBarChartComposite.(OLAPBarChartComposite.java:43)

 

I contacted SAS tech support and they had the answer instantly.  When running in a headless environment (a server that does not have a display (monitor) attached to it), Tomcat requires the following option in its startup script:

Djava.awt.headless=true

 

Once I added the option to the Tomcat startup script and restarted Tomcat and SAS Remote Services, no more errors and we were getting our graph output in Web Report Studio again.

A Google Earth Plus Update

index-free I received yet another update from Google yesterday regarding the demise of Google Earth Plus.  I appreciate that they are going through the trouble of reiterating my options.  I’m going with the free route right now, having installed Google Earth 5.0 but that’s it.  Here is how Google summarized my options:

As a valued Google Earth customer, we want you to be the first to know that Google will no longer offer Google Earth Plus. With new enhancements to Google Earth released this week, we believe the needs of many Google Earth Plus customers will be met with Google Earth 5.0, which is freely available to all our customers. For those customers who require additional capabilities and faster speeds, we have a special offer to try Google Earth Pro free of charge for two months. If you like it, you can buy it with a limited-time discount only available to our Google Earth Plus customers.

The latest version of Google Earth lets customers import and track global positioning system (GPS) data. Our Google Earth Plus customers told us GPS tracking is one of the main reasons they choose Google Earth Plus. Now, since you can use this feature for free in Google Earth 5.0, there’s little separation between Plus and the free product. In order to simplify the decision of which version of Google Earth best meets our customers’ needs, we decided it no longer made sense to continue Google Earth Plus.

As a current user of Google Earth Plus, you have several options:

  • Stay with Google Earth Plus. You can continue using Google Earth Plus for the time being, until either your license expires or until we come out with a new version of Google Earth. Learn more
  • Use the standard version of Google Earth. You can now import and track GPS data in Google Earth 5.0 without having to pay an annual fee. Learn more
  • Try Google Earth Pro. Google Earth Pro includes additional features to let you to do even more with Google Earth. For example, print and save images with 3x higher resolution for your documents and presentations, import GIS data, and import up to 2,500 rows of spreadsheet data. As a loyal Google Earth customer, we are offering you a two-month free trial of Google Earth Pro and the opportunity to purchase a one-year subscription for $99 (regular price of $400).

Helllloooo Chrome!

chromiconFor some reason I must have had too much time on my hands, and I decided to download Google Chrome and give it a try.  Previously I used Internet Explorer and Firefox about 50/50, depending on which one I saw first in the quick launch toolbar.  Chrome installed easily and instantly, and the first web page I browsed to came up so fast I didn’t think I was finished typing the URL.  It renders pages FAST!   Others have criticized the lack of customization and features.  I find it very refreshing, and I’m sure third party plugins will flood the Internet soon.

I like Chrome so much I have made it my default browser.  I have grown to like the most visited pages on the home page, but the recent bookmarks box is useless for me, especially when I just imported bookmarks from Firefox and favorites from Internet Explorer.

I’m not a person that lives in a browser, so I haven’t collected a lot of Firefox plugins or tweaked my browsers.  I just want a slick, clean, and lean browser to render my pages fast.  Chrome does it!