I ran into a bit of an issue while setting up a new subversion server today. On that box we’re running mod_security on all vhosts to add another layer of security to our web apps. I got everything configured with the the security, but when I was testing, I kept getting 403 errors when I attempted to get the files in anything other than a web browser.

After scratching my head for a while, I looked at the Apache logs, and noticed that mod_rewrite was causing the issue with lines like this:

I stumbled on Charl van Niekerk’s entry on this. One of the comments suggested that the following is the bare minimum to run mod_security on a vhost running subversion:

This should be in the first directives in your mod_security call:

If you run a Subversion repository and have run into this issue, these security filters should help!

We recently made the move from an IIS Windows web server to an Apache *nix based web server as part of our efforts to consolidate our library’s server infrastructure. And for reasons I won’t expound upon, we had one MS Access DSN that didn’t get migrated to MSSQL and that needed to be used still. Since ColdFusion uses a Windows only driver for MS Access, I needed to figure out a way around this. I found a couple of JDBC drivers for Access (Easysoft’s JDBC-ODBC Bridge and HXTT’s Access Pure Java JDBC Drivers), but these seemed to be a bit on the expensive side for the short amount of time that I’d need to keep Access in production.

I did notice on Easysoft’s website that they were using the JdbcOdbc bridge, so after a little bit more digging, I found the syntax to use configure ColdFusion to use MS Access through the JdbcOdbc Bridge; the JDBC URL is

and the Driver Class

For the very basic inserting of data from a seldom-used web form into a single table, this band aid fix has been doing pretty good!

It’s been a while since I’ve posted anything, so I figured this would be a good point to start on…

To start the process of standardizing our server platform in the library, we recently purchased a couple of servers to run RedHat on. I was going through the process yesterday of activating the subscriptions, and a funny thing happened…the second subscription got appended to the first as an extension instead of a new subscription.

I looked all over the place trying to figure out where the subscription had gone to, and read, and reread the directions (there’s not really that much to it). I had deleted and re-added the system (in an effort to clear the entitlements) so many times I lost count.

I finally broke down and decided to give RedHat a call. I have to say this was perhaps one of the best service calls I’ve ever had with a software vendor. After my last several experiences with software vendors (we just put in a new media center for college students), I had pretty low expectations. I figured I’d be on the phone for most of the morning trying to convince someone that I did in fact have two, three-year subscriptions and not one, three-year with a three-year extension.

Things started off normal enough for these things…a labyrinth of options to choose from. After I got the options to get to technical support, someone actually picked up the phone on the second ring! After I explained what I had done, he looked at my account and immediately knew what had happened. He said that he wasn’t able to help, but would transfer me to someone who could. Now this is what surprised me, instead of me getting transferred to the folks that could help me, he actually talked to those people, explained what the problem was, and then connected me so I could talk to those people. By the time I actually spoke with the account rep, she already knew what the problem was and what needed to be done to fix the problem instead of me rehashing my story over and over again.

I wish more companies handled issues like this…my five minute problem literally took five minutes to resolve. Too many times in the recent past I’ve gotten the run-around for what I believed a rather straight-forward issue. It’s very refreshing to have this kind of experience with a software vendor!