Getting letsencrypt to run on an ancient CentOS  or Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5 system (they still tend to appear in the wild from time to time) can be a major headache. I took some notes during the setup, I hope you find the useful (you'll need some basic Unix admin skills in order to follow this recipe, so caution is advised as you go through the procedure). 

Sources: 

http://stackoverflow.com/questions/23548188/how-do-i-compile-python-3-4-with-custom-openssl



Important: You'll need to use Python 2.7.8, anything beyond that version will
die with an invalid certificate error during the certbot setup phase. 



# compile openssl from source:

mkdir -p /server/src && cd /server/src

wget https://www.openssl.org/source/openssl-1.0.1t.tar.gz


tar xvzf openssl-1.0.1t.tar.gz && cd openssl-1.0.1t

./config --prefix=/server/openssl-1.0.1t shared --openssldir=/server/openssl-1.0.1t/openssl


make depend && make && make install

# create a softlink for convenience 

ln -s /server/openssl-1.0.1t /server/openssl

# Get Python 2.7.8

cd /server/src && wget https://www.python.org/ftp/python/2.7.11/Python-2.7.8.tgz


tar xvzf Python-2.7.8.tar.gz

cd python-2.7.8

# set up compile environment

export LDFLAGS=-"Wl,-rpath=/server/openssl/lib -L/server/openssl/lib -L/server/openssl/lib64/"

export LD_LIBRARY_PATH="/server/openssl/lib/:/server/openssl/lib64"

export CPPFLAGS="-I/server/openssl/include -I/server/openssl/include/openssl"

./configure --prefix=/server/python-2.7.8

make && make install

# create softlink, adjust PATH

ln -s /server/python-2.7.8 /server/python; export PATH=/server/python/bin:$PATH

# install pip in new python version

wget --no-check-certificate https://bootstrap.pypa.io/get-pip.py

python2.7 get-pip.py

# install virtualenv, wheel

pip install virtualenv wheel

# git-clone certbot (latest version)

 cd /server/src/ ; git clone https://github.com/certbot/certbot

# Request a certificate manually (certonly)

cd certbot; ./letsencrypt-auto certonly --manual -d my.server.tld 

# configuring your webserver of choice is left as an exercise for the reader.

I really don’t like web forums all that much, I think they all suck in one way or another and I really yearn for the good old USENET days when everybody was free to use their reader of choice… well, those were the days.

With “vBulletin” being a vey prolific and widespread software for many forums / fora / forae I visit regularly, I wanted to bring some comfort back to browsing them by adding some simple keyboard navigation using some javascript I freely “borrowed” from the web sites out there.

Here’s the result:

“n” – Search for new posts

“g” – go to the first post in the list of new posts

“j/k” – navigate forward / backward in the pages of a thread and / or search results

Cut & Paste the script below and save it to a location of your choice, then you can use the  “tampermonkey” extension for Chrome and other browsers to enable these features (chrome stopped accepting non-store based extensions a year ago for whatever reasons they saw fit, tampermonkey helps to get chrome back under the user’s control)

Add the URLs of your favourite forums to the script and import it into tampermonkey (some niftier form of configuration may be on the cards, but I’m lazy so feel free to add it yourself if you want to).

I hope you find this script useful, enjoy keyboard navigation in vB! 😉

VBB “What’s new” user Script

// ==UserScript==
// @name VBB Show new posts
// @namespace http://www.schuerkamp.de/greasemonkeyhacks/
// @description Adds a "whats new" search link and some shortcuts to vbb forum pages
// @description Download URL: http://dl.dropbox.com/u/1983539/isi_whatsnew.user.js
// ##### ADD THE URL of your vB forums below ##################
// @include http*://*isiforums.net/*
// @include http*://*www.bmsforum.org/*
// 
// ==/UserScript==

var EuropeanDateFormat=1; 
var newlink = document.createElement('a');
var todays_posts = document.createElement('a');
newlink.href = 'search.php?do=getnew&contenttype=vBForum_Post';
todays_posts.href = 'search.php?do=getdaily&contenttype=vBForum_Post';
tn = document.createTextNode(' Show new posts ');
newlink.appendChild(tn);
tn2 = document.createTextNode(' Show todays posts');
todays_posts.appendChild(tn2);

var footer = document.getElementById('footer_links');

if (footer) {
 footer.appendChild(newlink);
 footer.appendChild(todays_posts); 
}

// quick hack to set a default email address
from = document.getElementById('it_from_3');
if (from) {
 from.value="beta-applications@imagespaceinc.com"; 
}

if (EuropeanDateFormat == 1) {
 var dates = document.getElementsByClassName('date');
 for (var i = 0 ; i < dates.length ; i++) {
 var post_date = dates[i].innerText;
 // check if there's a year string in the -2012 notation (will stop working in 2100 ;-) 
 if (post_date.indexOf("-20") != -1 ) {
 year = post_date.substring(6, 10);
 month = post_date.substring(0, 2);
 day = post_date.substring(3, 5);
 var new_date = ""; 
 dates[i].innerText = year + "/" + month + "/" + day; 
 }
 } 
}

// stolen shamelessly from userscript.org's facebook key navigation
// Thanks to Droll Troll

function OnKeyUp(e)
{
 var anchors = document.getElementsByTagName('a');
 for (var i = 0 ; i < anchors.length ; i++) {
 var href = anchors[i].getAttribute('href'); 
 if (href) {
 if(href.match(/goto=newpost/)) {
 break ; 
 }
 }
 } 

 // do a search if we cannot find the "next page" link
 next_page_or_new ="search.php?do=getnew&contenttype=vBForum_Post"
 for (var i = 0 ; i < anchors.length ; i++) {
 var next_page_href = anchors[i].getAttribute('href'); 
 var title01 = anchors[i].getAttribute('title'); 
 if (title01) {
 if(title01.match(/Next Page/)) {
 next_page_or_new = next_page_href
 break ; 
 }
 }
 } 

 prev_page_or_new ="search.php?do=getnew&contenttype=vBForum_Post"
 for (var i = 0 ; i < anchors.length ; i++) {
 var prev_page_href = anchors[i].getAttribute('href'); 
 var title01 = anchors[i].getAttribute('title'); 
 if (title01) {
 if(title01.match(/Prev Page/)) {
 prev_page_or_new = prev_page_href
 break ; 
 }
 }
 } 

 key_map = {
 "N" : "search.php?do=getnew&contenttype=vBForum_Post",
 "G" : href,
 "K" : next_page_or_new, 
 "J" : prev_page_or_new, 
 "T" : 'search.php?do=getdaily&contenttype=vBForum_Post'
 }

 if (String.fromCharCode(e.keyCode) in key_map && 
 (typeof e.target.type == "undefined" || (e.target.type != "text" && e.target.type != "textarea")) && 
 !e.altKey && !e.ctrlKey && e.keyCode <= 90)
 {
 window.location.replace(key_map[String.fromCharCode(e.keyCode)])
 }
}

window.addEventListener("keyup",function(event) { OnKeyUp(event); },false)

As you may have heard, the NetHack Devteam blessed us with an update to everyone’s favourite roguelike game “Nethack” a few months ago. As I was unable to track down a precompiled version, I compiled this version from source on my Ubuntu LTS machine.

The package isn’t signed and it might break on your system (hopefully not “your system”), but I’ve decided to put it out there anyway.

nethack360_3.6.0-1_amd64.deb for 64bit systems, Ubuntu LTS 12.04 (may also work on 14.04)

nethack360_3.6.0-1_i386.deb for 32bit systems Ubuntu LTS 12.04 (may also work on 14.04,)

UPDATE:

nethack360_3.6.0-1_amd64.deb for 64bit systems Ubuntu LTS 14.04

Use these debs at your own risk, if they break, you get to keep both parts 😉

Feel free to comment here if you come across any problems and I’ll do my best to fix them.