Drupal Self-Help Group meets again, Thursday, December 15, 2011. NOTE CHANGED ROOM.

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MBR's picture
Start: 
2011-12-15 18:45 - 21:00 America/New_York
Organizers: 
MBR
Event type: 
User group meeting

The Drupal Self-Help Group will meet again on Thursday, December 15, 2011. (NOTE CHANGED ROOM)
This week we'll be meeting in the Community Room in the basement of Robbins Library.

We'll share our questions and help one another figure out our problems.

  • Location: (NOTE CHANGED ROOM)
    Robbins Library (Click here for a map)
    700 Mass. Av., Arlington
    In the Community Room, downstairs in the library's basement.
  • Dates: Alternate Thursdays
  • Time: 6:45 PM to 9:00 PM
  • Public Transit:
    Take the Red Line to Harvard Square Station.
    Transfer to the 77 bus to Arlington Center (Mass. Ave. and Pleasant St.).
    Robbins Library is on Mass. Ave. 1/2 block past Pleasant St.
  • Driving Directions:
    Take Route 2 to Route 60/Pleasant St. (exit 59).
    Turn onto Pleasant St. toward Arlington.
    Go one mile to Mass. Ave.
    Turn left onto Mass. Ave.
    Go half a block. Library is on the left.
  • Parking options:

    1. Parking lot behind the library.
    2. Street parking on Mass. Av.
    3. Parking lot about a block away on Water St. (see green arrow here).
    4. Parking lot about two blocks away on Mystic St. (see green arrow here).

Comments

Mobile Dev Environment

NobuT's picture

I'm just posting this so that I can ask questions at the meeting (but if anyone know anything about the topic, I appreciate that too!)

Basically, I'm having difficulty setting up my develop environment for Drupal mobile website. I have configured D6 with multi-sites with desktop version (mysite) and mobile version (m.mysite), and they are working fine as multisites configuration.

Mobile Tools module properly redirects access from mobile devices to m.mysite. So, as long as I can access to the D6 using http://mysite or http://m.mysite, I can properly see desktop/mobile theme respectively. On my PC, the hosts file is configured so that both mysite and m.mysite to point 192.168.1.100, which is the D6 server. Everything is fine so far.

When I try to access from Android and iPhone, I can't modify the hosts file (unless I root/jailbreak the device, which I won't). If I access using http://192.168.1.100, the Mobile Tools redirect the connection to http://m.mysite, but the phone doesn't know the IP address of m.mysite and get stuck.

So, instead of the hosts file, I need somehow resolve m.mysite to 192.168.1.100. The following is the list of issues doing so.

  • Mobile devices use WiFi. My WiFi router acts as the DNS server. My router D-Link DIR-655 doesn't have the option to change the DNS server to my own. Does anyone know a router (With gigabit ports) that allows setting DNS server other than the router itself?
  • Is there any way to configure Drupal so that access via IP address (only) is automatically recognized as an access to m.mysite, without redirect response (so that the mobile device doesn't need to know m.mysite)?
  • On Android (HTC Incredible), setting static IP with my own DNS server doesn't work reliably. Also, I need to change from static IP to DHCP whenever I connect to other WiFi networks. Is there any way to configure static IP for only the specified WiFi network?

These are too specific to my dev environment, but I guess there are many developers who have the same difficulty.

DNS configuration for devel environment

gbirch's picture

My Verizon-supplied router actually has a little DNS server of its own. I simply add an entry into the list of addresses that it maintains, and then any device that uses my router (and is configured to get DNS from the gateway, which is the default for most devices using DHCP) is directed as desired.
My router is an ActionTec MI424WR, but I think most Linksys routers will do this as well. And if not, you could always use dd-WRT.

That's I want, but...

NobuT's picture

Thank you. That's exactly what I want! I wish I had FiOS. Your router is ideal to solve my solution, but I have Comcast... My D-Link router doesn't support dd-WRT.

So, I think my question comes down to "Is there any router that have a little DNS server (or can add an entry on top of ones from the real DNS server), with reasonable price and gigabit?" I'll try Amazon but if anyone knows, please let me know.

It sounds like what you want

Richard Damon's picture

It sounds like what you want is for requests for http://mysite to go to one site and request for http://m.mysite and http://192.168.1.100 to go to the other.

If you are using apache virtual domains to do the selection, then just put m.mysite as the "default" site in apache, and mysite as a virtual domain. m.mysite will NOT match mysite and fall over to the default.

If you are using drupal multi-site to do this, then put the mobile site in the "default" site directory, create a mysite directory, and then symlink a m.mysite site directory to the default.

Drupal part is fine

NobuT's picture

Thank you, Richard. The Drupal portion is working fine (apache configuration, etc.) Simply, the mobile devices can't access the server using domain name (mysite or m.mysite). So, this is an IT question rather than Drupal question, I realized...

dnsmasq as DNS server

NobuT's picture

I've researched more, and found that dnsmasq may be the solution. So far, I only see tar ball, but if there's any Mac OS X installer, it would be nice.

My plan is
1. Disabled the router's DHCP functionality. The router's DHCP server doesn't allow to customize DNS server.
2. I happen to have a Mac Mini using as a file server. I'll install dnsmasq to it.
3. Make dnsmasq to work as a DHCP server first. That way, DHCP server specifies the DNS server (which happens to be the same Mac Mini).
4. Configure dnsmasq to resolve my own host names (mysite and m.mysite).

The mobile device should not need any changes in configuration, because, if I do it right, it gets the same IP from the new DHCP server, plus pointing the DNS server to dnsmasq, and dnsmasq resolves both internal host names and outer servers (through ISP's DNS server).

The only thing is that, I don't have any experience in installing X-Code, port or homebrew, not to say dnsmasq. But I'll try.

Boston

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