Relationships

Established 1986

Kevin Martin - PO Box 82783 - Portland, OR 97282

Relationships - alternate brandnames, partners and outside vendors

XyZZY Bank

We have exchanged PGP keys with XyZZY so that we can accept an encrypted file from them on a scheduled basis, decrypt it, and pass it to a database load script. Details TBD.

Here is the script that runs on production-10 [a utility box] to log on to the XyZZY FTP server:

kmartin@production-10:~$ cat bin/get-xyzzy
ncftpget -DD -d ftp.log -f xyzzy.cfg ./xyzzy '*'
cd xyzzy
for i in *
do
  pgp +batchmode -o ../incoming/$i $i
  echo Decrypted $i
  mv $i ../rm_old/
# so process it, already!
done

The ncftpget program is a freeware ftp program designed to be embedded in scripts and used to get files automatically. The parameters we are using are:

-DD
Delete original file after successful download - this insures we don't pull duplicate files
-d ftp.log
Save debugging information into ftp.log
-f xyzzy.cfg
The configuration file xyzzy.cfg contains the address of the XyZZY FTP server, our username and FTP password. Yes, this is hideously insecure.
./xyzzy
Save the files into the 'xyzzy' subdirectory immediately below the current one.
'*'
The single quotes are essential! Get all available files; we don't have any way to know what the filenames are ahead of time, so just get everything that is there.

Having gotten them, we simply loop over all files in the ./xyzzy directory, running them through PGP to decrypt them, saving the decrypted results into the ../incoming directory. Once processed, we move the original files to a temporary space called ../rm_old -- this name is a reminder that they should be removed eventually, once we've determined that they were processed successfully.

The actual "process" step is still to be provided. Once processed, the ../incoming directory should be emptied in time for the next run.

MyMamaWearsArmyShoes.com and YoMamaDoesToo.net*

Space has been set aside on the production servers for two virtual sites which are to be set up in the first quarter of 2001. The Apache (Stronghold) server is configured to handle them as "name-based virtual hosts" and a test has been conducted on both production-4 [staging box] and production-1 [production web server] by plugging these names into a "hosts" file -- the server handled both names properly and served up a different dummy index.html file for each.

*No, those are not their real names.

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Please Note

If a search engine dropped you directly into this document, you should go to the index page to find out what you're reading. This document is a record of a project from 1999-2000 -- it is not a current guide to installing any software product.