Remove permanent redirect (HTTP 301) cache in Firefox

As a web developer configuring SSL certificates on websites you deliver, as we do, you might be faced, one day, with a small issue about configuring a 301 redirect from HTTP to HTTPS that has to be reverted. It so happens that browsers *really* take it to heart to cache an HTTP 301 (permanent redirect) message seriously and deeply. So much so that it might become very difficult to remove this redirect and ever be able to access the site in HTTP again.

SSL certificates for multiple virtual hosts: problem on IE for Windows XP

Using a single server for multiple virtual hosts is something that comes naturally nowadays for any web server sysadmin. Using SSL certificates is also common (particularly so since the infamous Blacksheep extension for Firefox as published a few years back). However, the mixing of SSL and virtual hosts might not be as easy as you might think.

Renew expired self-signed SSL certificate

For some reason, it might be very difficult to find information on how to renew a self-signed certificate. This is a nice (and short) explanation: http://linux.togaware.com/survivor/Renew_SSL.html. Please note that a .pem file is in fact (as you can guess from the small guide) a combined .key and .crt. In short and only for the purpose of not loosing this reference (as has happened many times before with sites referenced on this blog), here is the procedure (just adapt to your case, i.e.

Debunking error (OS 10054) core_output_filter: writing data to the network

One of our customers has Apache logs (Xampp-based) full of this line:
[Tue Mar 02 16:21:41 2010] [info] [client 172.20.99.16] (OS 10054)Une connexion existante a dû être fermée par l'hôte distant.  : core_output_filter: writing data to the network
Sometimes (OS10053) is used as a variant, but the Apache error seems to be the same (core_output_filter: writing data to the network) Apparently, the error is widespread and only occurs on Windows operating system (that's where OS10054 error code comes from) and a few useful references for this are:
  • http://httpd.apac

PHP

"PHP (recursive acronym for "PHP: Hypertext Preprocessor") is a widely-used Open Source general-purpose scripting language that is especially suited for Web development and can be embedded into HTML." See www.php.net. Using PHP is a matter of precision. ASP can be used to reach the same objectives but ASP has proven to us to be less interesting (see some of the reasons below, one of them being the licensing scheme).

How to configure HTTPS on Apache 2

Introduction

Setting up several VirtualHost's on an Apache2 server is easy. Setting up several VirtualHost's on an Apache 2 server, some of them using SSL (HTTPS) is considerably less easy. The main problem is the documentation, not really easy to find, with examples of such configurations. Here, we will intend to give all the steps to get there, remaining at a minimal level of complexity. If you want more details, I suggest you have a look at this nice article by Artur Maj.

HOWTO Authenticate access to parts of webserver using PAM and Apache 

This article is incomplete and was first written in June 2006
for the BeezNest technical website (http://glasnost.beeznest.org/articles/337).
To require authentication of parts of a webserver using PAM and Apache. That way, you can require a user or users of a group to enter a valid username and password to access some parts of your website using PAM, the default authentication infrastructure on most Unices. To do this, you need first to install the appropriate PAM authentication module for Apache.
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