General Failure

 There are other installation guides: CentOS 5.2/64bit, CentOS5.4 and one from Magento forum. This is another take on the matter.

1. Install 32bit  server-gui CentOS 5.4, with SELinux on permissive
2. yum update
3. yum install mysql-server, and remember set the password as instructed! Also starting the server and configuring it to start on boot might be a good idea. 
4. Install ZendServer
   1. Create a file /etc/yum.repos.d/zend.repo with*
   2. yum clean all
   3. yum install zend-server-ce-php-5.3
   4. /usr/local/zend/gui_passwd.sh
   5. /usr/local/zend/bin/zendctl.sh restart
5. create mysql-database for magento: mysqladmin -u root -p create magento
6. connect the database mysql -u root -p magento
7. create user: create user 'magento'@'localhost' identified by 'yourpasswordhere';
8. grant privileges: grant all privileges on magento.* to 'magento'@'localhost' with grant option;
9. Fetch the magento package
10. untar it to the /var/www/html
11. Set permissions: setfacl -R -m user:apache:rwx media  var app/etc/
12. Browse to your server/magento to start the installation. The only catch now is the socket, it is /var/lib/mysql/mysql.sock

*

[Zend]

name=Zend Server

baseurl=http://repos.zend.com/zend-server/rpm/$basearch

enabled=1

gpgcheck=0

[Zend_noarch]

name=Zend Server - noarch

baseurl=http://repos.zend.com/zend-server/rpm/noarch

enabled=1

gpgcheck=0

 It seems that it has become impossible to run web-services on Debian 64bit platform. The segfaults are now too frequent and repeatable on the same web page. There is something completely broken on Lenny. I even tried using Zend Server instead of regular php and the results are still:

[Sun Apr 25 11:57:37 2010] [notice] child pid 5240 exit signal Segmentation fault (11)
[Sun Apr 25 11:57:38 2010] [notice] child pid 5241 exit signal Segmentation fault (11)
[Sun Apr 25 11:57:38 2010] [notice] child pid 5242 exit signal Segmentation fault (11)
[Sun Apr 25 11:57:39 2010] [notice] child pid 5214 exit signal Segmentation fault (11)
[Sun Apr 25 11:57:40 2010] [notice] child pid 5218 exit signal Segmentation fault (11)
[Sun Apr 25 11:57:40 2010] [notice] child pid 5235 exit signal Segmentation fault (11)
[Sun Apr 25 11:57:41 2010] [notice] child pid 5216 exit signal Segmentation fault (11)

I guess I've also found this happy camper:
http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=537794 and it is the end of the road for me.

Also the second "happy happy joy joy"- moment was that with newer Zend-Framework. The old code stops working completely with "Fatal error: Unsupported operand types in /usr/local/zend/share/ZendFramework/library/Zend/Translate/Adapter.php on line 212". No trace but I guess it was caused by the very first line in the code. Downgrading and manually removing all cache-files helped with this but the segfault remains. 

The segfault also happens on CentOS as well and it is not actually related to fore mentioned Debian bug  at all, even though I have that bug as well. Somehow I had managed not to commit a change I had made and a regression bug popped up. This segfault was caused by by a method calling itself in an unending recursion. When the stack runs out, it segfaults the php which I'm actually very happy about.

 The only one thing I keep the original Asus EEEPC windows installation hanging around is the PC Suite. The only thing I do with it is to back the phone up. This means that when I do boot to the Windows the vicious cycle of rebooting starts. What makes this experience even more gratifying (for the masochists) is the Norton Security and the stability and correctness of the PC Suite, the phone and the updater software. 

I started yesterday and I am still trying to succeed.

• I have booted the laptop now seven times. And the windows is still updating.
• The PC Suite has updated itself once and required a boot
• Norton has expired and it has been uninstalled, that required a boot
• The Nokia Software updater has updated itself and required a boot
•  After three boots the computer has lost the connection with the phone and wanted to run the connection wizard and reinstall drivers that are already installed
• Seven tries for the software updater have had following results
  • 3 times no connection to the internet
  • 1 time identified the phone and found update to install but the whole thing crashed after that
  • 2 times "Service not available"
  • 1 time direct crash and windows wanting to send bug report to Microsoft

I have been thinking of buying the N900 phone to replace my current phone but if it requires use of PC Suite for anything my next phone will not be a Nokia. 

While writing this the eight reboot has finished and the windows is still updating.  And it has now finished and requires the ninth reboot!

 Dec  7 19:12:38 vcust362 kernel: [465884.894733] php[22592]: segfault at 7fca2b160ac0 ip 7fca2b160ac0 sp 7fff2b6c4b68 error 14 in libtasn1.so.3.0.15[7fca3009d000+f000]

 Debian always fails when you need it most:

open("/usr/share/locale/en_US.UTF-8/LC_MESSAGES/libc.mo", O_RDONLY) = -1 ENOENT (No such file or directory)

open("/usr/share/locale/en_US.utf8/LC_MESSAGES/libc.mo", O_RDONLY) = -1 ENOENT (No such file or directory)

open("/usr/share/locale/en_US/LC_MESSAGES/libc.mo", O_RDONLY) = -1 ENOENT (No such file or directory)

open("/usr/share/locale/en.UTF-8/LC_MESSAGES/libc.mo", O_RDONLY) = -1 ENOENT (No such file or directory)

open("/usr/share/locale/en.utf8/LC_MESSAGES/libc.mo", O_RDONLY) = -1 ENOENT (No such file or directory)

open("/usr/share/locale/en/LC_MESSAGES/libc.mo", O_RDONLY) = -1 ENOENT (No such file or directory)

write(2, "make: "..., 6make: )                = 6

write(2, "*** [yritykset.imp] Segmentation "..., 38*** [yritykset.imp] Segmentation fault) = 38

write(2, "\n"..., 1

1. Download and untar as usual
2. Modify installer.sh and comment out architecture-checks*
3. sudo yum install gtk2-devel-2.18.3-21.fc12.i686
4. sudo yum install compat-libstdc++-33-3.2.3-68.i686
5. sudo yum install compat-expat1-1.95.8-6.i686
6. run installer.sh

In case installer complains something that is still missing apply pattern:

1. sudo yum provides '*libexpat.so.0*', where replace libexpat.so.0 between asterisk with missing thingie
2. sudo yum install compat-expat1-1.95.8-6.i686, where replace compat-expat1-1.95.8-6.i686 with result of previous step. Note that there will be several hits. Pick the most promising one with ending .i686, that is the 32bit version...
3. run installer.sh

Resulting installation may or may not work, I give no guarantees.

* Section commented out:

# Show error if we are not running on x86
#case `uname -m` in
#  i?86) ;;
#  *) echo "This installer only has x86 binaries. Sorry.";
#     exit 1;;
#esac
 

Easy. Allow users to install packages without root-password. That means that you can install trojans with root-privileges. Meanwhile add very well tested (NOT!) selinux-rules that make life terribly hard. And update the management commands so that they are not backward compatible  with previous syntax.

For example let's say that you try to install Komodo-edit to do some php-work? It will not work. Let's say that you have donwloaded ZendFramework and installed it to your own-directory. It will not work and even after the instructions given by the selinux to fix the problem you will finally run into a situation where selinux is preventing you to use the fix command given by selinux.

What is the result? You have a system that will have selinux disabled and root access for package installation without password. FAILURE!

I have CentOS 5.3 server with additional repositories, see extended entry for versions of ffmpeg and mplayer. I have written two scripts for playbacks. First one is:

#!/bin/bash

song=$1

bitrate=$2

#echo $song >> /tmp/songs.txt

/usr//bin/ffmpeg -i "$song" -f mp3 -ab $bitrate - 2>/dev/null

which I call swiss.sh. This is from  Activeobjects-forum.

And the second one called wma.ssh is:

#!/bin/bash 

song=$1 

mplayer -vo null -msglevel all=-1 -quiet -srate 44100 -channels 2 -vc dummy -ao pcm:nowaveheader:fast:file=/dev/stdout "$song" 2>/dev/null

Sorry, I've lost the original source. First one is used with just one step: "swiss.sh %s %b" and the second one requires two steps. First step: "wma.sh %s" and second "lame -r -b %b - -", the "-r" is essential!

1.  Install iReport 3.6.0
2. Do a report with it and let it compile the report and it's subreports for you. 
3. Fetch jasperreports-project 3.6.0 and uncompress it
4. Run ant jar at the root of uncompressed directory
5. Copy every jar-file from both dist- and lib-subdirectories to /var/lib/tomcat5/shared/lib 
6. Make sure that tomcat can read copied files 
7. Copy your database jdbc class to same directory
8. Restart tomcat
9. Do a directory that tomcat can write and read from
10. Copy your compiled jasper-reports (.jasper)-fiels to that directory

Here is an example that can produce pdf-report with subreports and parameters from Postgresql-database.

<?php

require_once('java/Java.inc');


// Get the database connection

$drv = new Java('org.postgresql.Driver');

$objDbm = java("java.sql.DriverManager");

$objDbConnect = $objDbm->getConnection("jdbc:postgresql://host/databasename", "user", "passwords");


// My report has one subreport and requires five parameters

// they are all STRINGS! I tried dates and timestamps but something chokes 

$company='1105366-9';

$toimpiste='kaikki';

$startDay="2009-08-01"

$endDay="2009-09-01"

//

// This is the directory tomcat needs to be able to write and read from

// it contains the compiled reports (.jasper-files)

//

$reportPath="/web/Pikkusisko2/raporttimallit/";

// Parameters are passed in java hashmap, one way to generate one is

// like this

$parameters=new Java("java.util.HashMap");

$parameters->put('pYritys',$company);

$parameters->put('pToimipiste',$toimipiste);

$parameters->put('SUBREPORT_DIR',$reportPath);

$parameters->put('pAlkupaiva',$startday);

$parameters->put('pLoppupaiva',$endday);

// Generate report pdf

$jasperRunManager = new Java("net.sf.jasperreports.engine.JasperRunManager");

$rep=$jasperRunManager->runReportToPdfFile("$reportPath/projektit2.jasper", $parameters, $objDbConnect); 

?>

Ubuntuporukoilla on oikein hyvät ohjeet. KPPP:tä en löytänyt ja NetworkManglerilla/graafisella kilkkeellä ei tullut suoraa voittoa, joten loin ohjeen kolme tiedostoa: elisa, elisa-connect-chat ja elisa-disconnect-chat tiedostot. Otin suoraan Elisan mallitiedostot ja vaihdoin bluetoothista kaapeliin. Fedorassa pon- ja poff-skriptat ovat saatavilla, mutta eivät ole polussa joten tein pari apuskriptaa:

#!/bin/bash
sudo service NetworkManager stop
base=/usr/share/doc/ppp-2.4.4/scripts
sudo cp /etc/resolv.conf.elisa /etc/resolv.conf
sudo $base/pon elisa

ja

#!/bin/bash
base=/usr/share/doc/ppp-2.4.4/scripts
sudo $base/poff
sudo service NetworkManager start

resolv.conf.elisaan kävin lätkimässä skriptan testiajon palauttamat nimipalvelimet:

nameserver 193.229.0.4
nameserver 193.229.0.42

Tuntuu toimivan.

There is a thing called java-bridge that allows you, if I understood it correctly, to talk to either java runtime or mono runtime from php. And it also provides methods of doing that the otherway around. And if I understood it correctly there are two ways the php application can access the jvm, either by socket or by using application server. The access method is configured in /etc/php.d/java.ini.

Of course to get to configure anything you have to have java-bridge installed. In my case it meant downloading the latest source, yum installing tomcat and rpmbuilding the java-bridge package from the tarball with sudo rpmbuild -tb php-java-bridge_5.4.4.2.tar.gz. Build might require some additional packages to be installed, in my case everything was already in place. Build produced four rpm-packages:

php-java-bridge-5.4.4.2-1.i386.rpm
php-java-bridge-debuginfo-5.4.4.2-1.i386.rpm
php-java-bridge-devel-5.4.4.2-1.i386.rpm
php-java-bridge-mono-5.4.4.2-1.i386.rpm
 

I have so far installed php-java-bridge and php-java-bridge-mono. I have also run the java-bridge examples from tomcat and found out...

Update: 02-September-2009, this entry was interrupted by something probably related to leaking dishwasher which stopped this work for whole two months.

I was about to play a quick game of Ticket to Ride but alas after last evening's update the applet did not work. What was even more evil was to find out that nothing related to java functioned reliable.

After stracing I found that java hung on futex() and on read(). That was very warming and cozy but got me nowhere expect to Red Hat's bugzilla. And there the salvation was on comment 7. Now I just kill the applet before gaming and wait for next update which fixes imsettings applet.

After couple of updates this issue has gone away...

The short answer is "fdisk -l -u" and "losetup" are your friends.

1. Find out what is your xen device , it doesn't matter if it is lvm-volume, physical disk or a file. configuration
2. Find out the start byte of the partition you wish to operate, this is done with fdisk -l -u and multiplying the result with sector size
3. Find out what is first free loop-device
4. Setup loop-device with losetup with offset of you calculated on step 2
5. If the partition is "physical" then just mount it through to loop-dev if it is lvm-volume then do vgscan to see what volume groups it contains and then activate them and you will have mountable devices.

For example. This morning I noticed that one of the virtuals was down and attempt to start it always resulted a hang on "Detecting new hardware". I don't know what causes it but I knew that if disable Kudzu the machine will probably boot.

Looking through /etc/xen/web I found that the disk was phy:/dev/host/web with xvda. fdisk -l -u gave

Levy /dev/host/web: 10.7 Gt, 10737418240 tavua
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 1305 cylinders, yhteensä 20971520 sektoria
Yksiköt = 1 * 512 = 512 -tavuiset sektorit
         Laite Käynn     Alku          Loppu    Lohkot   Id  Järjestelmä
/dev/host/web1   *          63      208844      104391   83  Linux
/dev/host/web2          208845    20964824    10377990   8e  Linux LVM
 

From that three things are apparent: 1) Partition 1 is boot and partition 2 has root inside it. 2) The beginning offset for partition 2 is 208845 * 512 = 106928640 3) the root file system is inside lvm

Next step is to see which loop-device is free with "sudo losetup -f". This gives loop0. Then I set it up with: "sudo losetup /dev/loop0 -o 106928640 /dev/host/web". As it is lvm-volume I don't try to mount it directly but instead do "sudo lvm" to get into lvm. Inside lvm I run two commands "vgscan" to see that LogVolGroup00 is what contains the logical volumes I'm after and "vgchange -a y LogVolGroup00" to activate that volgroup. After that /dev/LogVolGroup00/ has mountable devices for the volumes.

Reverse steps are after unmounting devices: "vgchange -a n LogVolGroup00" and sudo losetup -d /dev/loop0.

This is not by means the best way to do this and if you have a better solution I am very happy to hear about it. I have had no training in the use of this application and I purchased a copy two months ago, so I am probably doing things more complicated way than it is necessary.

Anyway, I printed this out and left it as quiz for two days to our break room with question: "What is this/what it does?". After two days of silence I got an alternative solution without "multiply" but with one more "subract" after I explained what this is. Can you answer the question?

Solution on the following link.

No Microsoft SQL Server support on Linux

I have spent three hours trying to get Microsoft SQL server connection working. That included recompiling php-extensions and lot's of googling before it was obvious that it is not possible because the framework is actually broken. There is no way you can access Microsoft SQL server from linux-server with Zend Frameworks 1.7.4 without fixing the framework itself! There is no dblib-adapter and you can not have mssql-adapter with linux-server^*.

File-element probably does not work correctly with Zend_Dojo_Form

I have spent at least three hours trying to get file uploads to function with Zend_Dojo_Form and now I am quite sure that it is not possible because Zend_Dojo_Form is broken and kills the form element and validation of the form^**.

Probably bad placement of call for view helper kills server

[Thu Feb 19 16:29:36 2009] [notice] child pid 11847 exit signal Segmentation fault (11)
 I added a view helper, called it from the form view script and voilâ, server crashed. Probably somewhere hidden in documentation is that this is bad idea and should not be done as child calls parent and parent recalls and ....  Now my form view script has function F instead. Same code, different place and it works.

Disabling Form elements on creation does not work with plain Zend_Form_Elements

With "Zend_Dojo_Form_Elements" you can use "disabled" to disable the elements and with "Zend_Form_Elements you can not". The latter creates code 'disabled=""' which is wrong. ^***

There are a lot good things in Zend Frameworks but now I am seriously starting to doubt if it is worth of it. The learning curve (requires reading the framework code to find out if it is your bug or theirs that kills the day) is very steep. Fixing something that other people constantly fix and polish is also a very bad idea. 

* I use PDO-directly with dblib.

^** I gave up and do not use form's validator and use standard php mechanisms for moving uploaded files

^*** I added function F($string) which replaces html-tags with other html-tags and also deletes 'disabled=""' from the form-element output.