i should be working (but i'm fixing my computer).

Another all-nighter lost for nothing good whatsoever.  Why do I always start the Really Big Programming (Meltdown) Projects after midnight???

...

So, I headed in two separate directions.  One, I upgraded my main computer to OpenSUSE 11.2.  And, two, I worked on the proverbial iFolders.

OpSu 11.2 needed to download 4.9 gigs, so that was going to take awhile.  Separately, I have been trying to puzzle through the world of iFolders for some time.  Wouldn't it be great if it worked?

The problem there is setting up an SSL server, which has been elusive.  And remained so continuing throughout the night and into the morning.

Oh, after awhile I managed to create a non-SSL Apache server to which I could upload documents and retrieve them anywhere.  Oh, big deal.  They were not encrypted.  This is nothing I can't do on my hosted website already.

The real key here is to get the real time file synchronization software running.  It's cross-platform and has an awesome architecture.  At least on ... wait, we can't say "on paper," anymore.  What?  On PDF?  On webpage?

Morning arrived.  OpSu 11.2 had stolen my wallpaper that I use on all of my computers.  Are you kidding me?  A little more stressful was the fact that Skrooge, a financial management program that I just spent a good deal of time setting up, is now non-functional.*  I'm unsure whether this is a function of OpSu 11.2 or my upgrade to KDE 4.3.3.  My Blackberry tethering seems to have borked and whatever else, I am too bleary-eyed to figure out what does and does not work.

Back to iFolders.  There is a point at which you have soooo much time invested in a project, you have no choice but to solve the problem, even if it will take, say, the rest of one's life (which arguably is becoming substantially shorter by virtue of non-sleep.)  But, as mumbled about here occasionally, I have had defective back up for a long time.  What I really want is to get something similar to PowerFolder working, but a solution that does not require ongoing annual and per-computer license fees.  PowerFolder is allegedly opensource (Javascript), but I can't hack it sufficiently to make it useful without simply paying the license fees, which I wouldn't mind except I can't afford it.  (But, I do have it running on some clients' computers, btw.  Which was another nightmare for yesterday, but I digress ...)

Novell has really put some thought into iFolders and the architecture looks great.  I think.

The problem there is I have never been able to actually get it to work.

Which all starts at the fact that I was not able to get my OpSu 11.1 apache2 server to run SSL.  And, all of the helpful websites that walk you through it and explain it can be done in 15 minutes failed to enlighten me.  For hours on end.

Ultimately, I killed my apache server altogether and had to strip it out AND delete all of the residual files just to arrive at a point to try again.

Because, I kept getting a particular error, which I should post here but at the moment my ability to write a FAQ to explain how to do this would involve reproducing 24 hours of lunacy ... and actually, I don't right at the moment remember the error message I have been looking at all night.  Error, certificate too long, or some such nonsense that fails to explain at all what the problem is.

But ... I write this now to mention I now what the problem is.  The thing that I was not grasping is that when we take the vhosts_ssl.template and make "myvhost_ssl.conf", what do we actually name it?  I went with (okay, I know, stupid) vhost_ssl.conf, which sort of ignores the prompt, doesn't it?

When I finally figured out that I needed to name it with the computer hostname (found, oddly enough, in /etc/hostname), problem solved rather easily.  So, I've got "linux-basd008.daltrey.org-ssl.conf" in the /etc/apache2/vhosts directory-- which simply reflects what I gave as the host name in the networks file.  And then in that file, the only thing I had to change from the template was to give the same fully qualified host name as the "server name".

Then, I ran gensslcert and presto! an ssl connection with https://[local.ip.address].  It does complain that it is not a verified certificate (there's a newsflash), but the connection is encrypted.

So, this would seem to mean we are on are way to iFolders heaven, because I did previously have a non-SSL web connection where I could upload and retrieve files.

That, of course, does not solve the iFolders client problem -- I am hoping that the client issue will be solved by an actual SSL connection.  In any event, I have to reinstall simias and iFolders again, but I imagine I can accomplish reinventing the wheel.

Then, I need to figure out whether I can put the "data store" on my USB drive, or not, since that is the largest drive connected to my server.  In my effort to achieve the simplest result, I had finally given up and done a default install.

So, it would seem I am yet a few sleepless nights away from iFolder functionality, but the ability to synchronize (and share) files across multiple computers and platforms sounds like a major win if I can get this to work.

Not to mention allowing me to trash my main OpSu install without fear of data loss, because the "upgrade" to 11.2 did not cure the defects I was hoping to solve.  When I installed 11.1 I encrypted the /home partition.  And, something went awry, because I cannot mount /home unless I first go into a root account and re-mount the partition.  Do not ask me why, some things are simply a mystery -- and this same problem did not occur on my other OpSu 11.1 install.

The second mystery -- that did not resolve with a the new 11.2 operating system -- is that ever since OpSu 11.1 when I run the software package manager I get a "parse" error at the end of the package updates.  This does not seem to have impeded actual operation of the software system, but it's a bit disturbing.  You would have thought -- well, anyway, I would have thought -- that installing an upgraded version of YAST and replacing all of the respositories would cure this defect.

But, alas, no.  So, if I want to fix these major annoyances that have plagued me since my 11.1 install, I will have to do a clean install -- and that means re-doing a lot of software, such as the blackberry tethering and other items I have documented in these pages.

And, oh, btw, my beloved kde 3.5 kicker with it's nice kima applet is seemingly gone forever.

Waaaahhh.

______________

*Later update -- skrooge now refunctional.  It appears that we need a link from /usr/lib64/kde4/plugins/designer/libskgbankgui.s0.0.5.3 to /usr/lib64/libskgbankgui.s0.1 and another /usr/lib64/kde4/plugins/designer/libskgbasegui.s0.0.5.3 to /usr/lib64/libskgbasegui.s0.1

So, a quick drag'n'drop (link here) and name change of the link file will solve the problem.  Or you could drag'n'drop the .so.1 link files, but then you have to drag'n'drop a link to the 0.5.3 files, since the links just relate back to their own directory rather than to the files' actual locations.