Nick Carroll

I came across this forum thread on how to add a subversion repository to your StrongSpace account. This means you are able to use StrongSpace as your subversion repository, instead of having to use up precious disk space in TextDrive. The following is a rehash of what was covered in that forum thread.

Start by creating a subversion repository locally.

$ svnadmin create ./repos

Then secure copy the repository to your StrongSpace account.

$ scp -r ./repos ss_user@ss_user.strongspace.com:/home/ss_user/repos

From your local computer, you can access your subversion repository on StrongSpace using the svn+ssh URL schema. For example:

$ svn list svn+ssh://ss_user@ss_user.strongspace.com/home/ss_user/repos

This little tip allows you to store your public ssh key on StrongSpace, which means you can use sftp and scp to access StrongSpace without having to type in your password each time.

From the command line, enter the following:

Generate your public and private key. You can accept the default settings, or enter a passphrase to secure your private key.

$ ssh-keygen -t dsa
$ chmod 400 ~/.ssh/id_dsa

SFTP to StrongSpace to create a .ssh directory.

$ sftp ss_user@ss_user.strongspace.com
$ mkdir .ssh
$ exit

Secure copy your public key over to StrongSpace.

$ cat .ssh/id_dsa.pub >> authorized_keys
$ scp ~/authorized_keys ss_user@ss_user.strongspace.com:.ssh/authorized_keys

We now need to CHMOD the authorized_keys file on StrongSpace so that only the user has read/write privileges. Note that when we SFTP in the following, we should no longer need to type our password in.

$ sftp ss_user@ss_user.strongspace.com
$ cd .ssh
$ chmod 600 authorized_keys
$ exit

If you want to add more keys to the authorized_keys file on StrongSpace, you’ll need to first copy it to your local computer, then concatenate the new public key to the file and copy it back to StrongSpace.

$ scp ss_user@ss_user.strongspace.com:.ssh/authorized_keys ~/
$ cat .ssh/id_dsa.pub >> authorized_keys
$ scp ~/authorized_keys ss_user@ss_user.strongspace.com:.ssh/authorized_keys

I now have a StrongSpace account that came with my Mixed Grill special from TextDrive. StrongSpace is a secure file repository that is accessible either through SFTP or StrongSpace’s web application.

You can also use rsync to sync with a folder on StrongSpace. If you use a Mac, then the rsync command would be:

rsync -rltvz /Users/user/BackUp user@user.strongspace.com:/strongspace/user/home

You’ll need to change user with your respective local and remote accounts.

Kimmy and I did the Sydney Harbour circle walk over the weekend. It is suppose to be a 23km walk, but it felt like 30km… probably because we left the trail a few times in search for a place to eat. We started off in Darling Harbour, then followed the track clockwise around the map. If I were to do it again I would follow the track anti-clockwise, so that I could stop off at Leichardt or Balmain for a meal towards the end of the walk. However, I won’t be doing that walk anytime soon, especially now that we are well into Spring and experiencing temeratures in the high 20s!

Mephisto is a rails based blogging system. It is the blogging system that powers the rails blog. In its current state it is just a blog, but the developers are designing it to be much more than a blog. I think their goal is for Mephisto to be a full-blown CMS. They are already including a few new features like “Asset Management” that will enable more CMS-like features down the track.

It is certainly a project worth keeping an eye on, which is why I’m noting it down in this posting. I might even consider using it instead of WordPress some day. Although WordPress has so far served me well, so in the meantime I will wait and see how Mephisto matures.

This posting gives some reasons for using it over other blogging systems.