Installing Oracle OCI8 and PHP

I will describe here the steps I needed to install oracle connectivity for php. It's supposed you have php installed, in my case
I had php 5.1.6 throught RPM:

# rpm -qa | grep php
php-5.1.6-20.el5_2.1
php-adodb-4.81-1.el5.rf
php-pecl-mailparse-2.1.1-1.el5.rf
phpmyadmin-2.11.8.1-1.el5.rf
php-odbc-5.1.6-20.el5_2.1
php-pecl-fileinfo-1.0.4-1.el5.rf
php-cli-5.1.6-20.el5_2.1
php-pear-file-1.2.2-1.el5.rf
php-eaccelerator-5.1.6_0.9.5.2-4.el5.rf
php-pecl-memcache-2.1.2-1.el5.rf
php-pear-db-1.7.13-2.el5.rf
php-common-5.1.6-20.el5_2.1


Distro:

# cat /etc/redhat-release
Red Hat Enterprise Linux Server release 5 (Tikanga)

1. Download and install the Instant Client rpms from oracle which you can get here http://www.oracle.com/technology/tech/oci/instantclient/instantclient.html.

This are the two files needed in my case:

# rpm -ivh oracle-instantclient11.1-basic-11.1.0.7.0-1.x86_64.rpm

# rpm -ivh oracle-instantclient11.1-devel-11.1.0.7.0-1.x86_64.rpm


2. Compile and install the oci8 extension:

Make sure you have the proper packages to compile a script like: php-devel, gcc,etc.


# pear install pecl/oci8

I used pear install pecl/oci8 instead of pear install oci8 because for some reason the second one returns an out of memory error and ignores the memory limit variable (memory_limit = XX ) from the
php.ini file.


When asked about this:

Please provide the path to the ORACLE_HOME directory. Use 'instantclient,/path/to/instant/client/lib' if you're compiling with Oracle Instant Client : autodetect

If you have oracle installed in the same server just hit enter. If not (you just want to connect to another server) type:

instantclient and enter or the path to the oracle libraries e.g: /usr/lib/oracle/11.1/client64/lib/.


3. Finally, edit your php.ini file (/etc/php.ini) and add the extension=oci8.so in the Dynamic extensions section. Don't forget to restart apache so the changes take effect in apache.


Additional information can be found here: http://www.oracle.com/technology/pub/notes/technote_php_instant.html.

How to solve no sound in flash videos ( fedora )

After installing flash-plugin-9.0.124.0-release.i386 rpm I just got the flash plugin in my firefox but didn't get any sound. Googling about it I found a solution that worked, you need to install libflashsupport rpm, restart firefox and that's it:

just type this:

yum install libflashsupport


I guess this may work in other red hat based distros.

PHP Fatal error: Class 'DomDocument' not found in ...

After running symfony propel-build-all on a new symfony installation got this error. The solution is to install the php-xml rpm (deb).

[root@devel2 cms]# symfony propel-build-all
>> schema converting "/home/sfprojects/cm...lugin/config/schema.yml" to XML
>> schema putting /home/sfprojects/cms/pl...erated-sfGuardPlugin-schema.xml
>> file+ config/generated-sfGuardPlugin-schema.xml
>> file- /home/sfprojects/cms/plugins/sf...erated-sfGuardPlugin-schema.xml
Buildfile: /usr/share/pear/symfony/vendor/propel-generator/build.xml
[resolvepath] Resolved /home/sfprojects/cms/config to /home/sfprojects/cms/config

propel-project-builder > check-project-or-dir-set:

propel-project-builder > check-project-set:

propel-project-builder > set-project-dir:

propel-project-builder > check-buildprops-exists:

propel-project-builder > check-buildprops-for-propel-gen:

propel-project-builder > check-buildprops:

propel-project-builder > configure:
[echo] Loading project-specific props from /home/sfprojects/cms/config/propel.ini
[property] Loading /home/sfprojects/cms/config/propel.ini

propel-project-builder > om:
[phing] Calling Buildfile '/usr/share/pear/symfony/vendor/propel-generator/build-propel.xml' with target 'om'
[property] Loading /usr/share/pear/symfony/vendor/propel-generator/./default.properties

propel > check-run-only-on-schema-change:

propel > om-check:

propel > om:
[echo] +------------------------------------------+
[echo] | |
[echo] | Generating Peer-based Object Model for |
[echo] | YOUR Propel project! (NEW OM BUILDERS)! |
[echo] | |
[echo] +------------------------------------------+
[phingcall] Calling Buildfile '/usr/share/pear/symfony/vendor/propel-generator/build-propel.xml' with target 'om-template'
[property] Loading /usr/share/pear/symfony/vendor/propel-generator/./default.properties

propel > om-template:
[propel-om] Target database type: mysql
[propel-om] Target package: lib.model
[propel-om] Using template path: /usr/share/pear/symfony/vendor/propel-generator/templates
[propel-om] Output directory: /home/sfprojects/cms
[propel-om] Processing: schema.xml
PHP Fatal error: Class 'DomDocument' not found in /usr/share/pear/symfony/vendor/propel-generator/classes/propel/phing/AbstractPropelDataModelTask.php on line 406

Mplayer crashes using beryl compiz-fusion

When you start to use compiz-fusion and all the fancy desktop effects you will notice a little problem, you can't watch videos!. There's a bug that crashes mplayer, totem and all your video players. Hopefully there's a workaround for mplayer (not sure how to solve the problem with totem).

1. Open mplayer.
2. Right click over the window.
3. Click on preferences.
4. Click on the Video tab .
5. Change the video driver from Xv to X11 and click Ok.

You may have to restart mplayer to see the changes.

Vista Blue Screen of Death: STOP: 0x0000008E

The famous blue screen of death attacked me again (previous bsod), this time on Vista, on my Dell inspiron 1520. It's very annoying that you have to deal with this kind of errors on a laptop recently bought. This error started to display a few seconds after logging in to the user account and with no clear reason of what could be the trigger of the error.

The solution this time actually had nothing to do (directly) with Windows Vista but with the laptop BIOS, and the solution came from the dell support site support.dell.com, the error itself suggested to update the BIOS , but I don't pay too much attention to this general error messages. If you're having this same problem you could go and follow this check list from dell, the BIOS upgrade was the second suggestion for a BSOF error and this was the one that worked for me, the file to do this is in the "Drivers and Downloads" section and you can select between all the different models.

Subversion: MKCOL of '...' 405 Method Not Allowed

I was messing with the .svn/entries file in one of my local working copy folders, also I rm -rf a folder and regenerated again (I'm using symfony admin generator) , long story, but the fact is that I think I screwed up something and started to get this error when trying to commit:

# svn commit -m "backend modifications"
Adding apps/backend/modules/comment
svn: Commit failed (details follow):
svn: MKCOL of '/projects/cms/!svn/wrk/5ca09002-f34f-0410-890e-9511925f86a5/trunk/apps/backend/modules/comment': 405 Method Not Allowed (http://svn.calipso.com.co)

After some googling, I found it could be some proxy problem, but I wasn't using a proxy. Later I found that this error could mean that
the directory already existed in the repository and couldn't be recreated again, so my next step was to delete the folder from the repository (svn del ...) and try to do a fresh commit after recreating the folder and files included in it, and this worked ;).

I hope this helps some lost soul out there.

Unable to write config cache for "config/config_handlers.yml"

After upgrading to symfony version 1.0.16 from 1.0.8 I started to get this error:

Unable to write config cache for "config/config_handlers.yml"

I tried to chmod 777 the cache and it didn't work. The solution for me was to disable SELinux.

How to do that? edit your /etc/sysconfig/selinux file, and set SELINUX=disabled:


# This file controls the state of SELinux on the system.
# SELINUX= can take one of these three values:
# enforcinfg - SELinux security policy is enforced.
# permissive - SELinux prints warnings instead of enforcing.
# disabled - No SELinux policy is loaded.
SELINUX=disabled


Page redirection in php with header('Location...') : Blank page vs Working redirection

This kind of errors are what make debugging sometimes a very frustrating part of the developement, if you're suffering a blank page when trying to make a header('Location..'), give this a try:



This is a good redirection:

header('Location: http://www.example.com/');
exit();
?>

And this is a wrong redirection:


header('Location : http://www.example.com/');
exit();
?>


Notice a space between 'Location' and ':' this makes the redirection not to work!!!!

Simple errors likes this consume a lot of time :( , hope helps someone else...

.htaccess: order not allowed here

I was getting an 500 Internal Server Error when trying to access Drupal after installing it, when I checked the http error log it said : .htaccess: order not allowed here.


After adding this to the httpd.conf and restarted apache it worked:


< directory "/home/httpd/html/drupal" >
AllowOverride FileInfo Limit Options Indexes
< /directory >


change "/home/httpd/html/drupal" to wherever your document root is.

Apache Error: No space left on device

Apache doesn't start and the error log contains:

[emerg] (28)No space left on device: Couldn't create accept lock
or
[crit] (28)No space left on device: mod_rewrite: could not create rewrite_log_lock Configuration Failed

After checking your disk it shows that you have plenty of space. The problem is that apache didn't shut down properly, and it's left myriads of semaphore-arrays left, owned by 'apache' user.

Run:

ipcs -s | grep apache

Removing these semaphores immediately should solve the problem and allow apache to start.

ipcs -s | grep apache | perl -e 'while () { @a=split(/\s+/); print `ipcrm sem $a[1]`}'


where 'apache' is the owner of the apache process, if that's not the name of the user on your server change it.

How to check running queries and stats in postgres ?

You want to know what query is slowing the database or want to check what's going on with a query you
just run, well in mysql just need to type 'show processlist;', but in postgres you must enable two variables
to check this and other stats.

Edit your postgres.conf which should be on /var/lib/pgsql/data/postgresql.conf for *nix installations and add or change this:

stats_start_collector = true

This must be set to true for the statistics collector to be launched at all.

stats_command_string = true

This enables monitoring of the current command being executed by any server process. The statistics collector subprocess need not be running to enable this feature.


After restarting postgres the following query will show currently running queries

/etc/init.d/postgresql restart


psql -U postgres template1 -c "select * from pg_stat_activity"

only as user "postgres"

How to create a DSL connection on ubuntu

If your router/modem is set in bridge mode and you need to dial to make a connection you must use pppoE (Point to Point Protocol Over Ethernet) it's similar to the usual modem dial-up connection, but the difference is that you use the network an not the land line to connect.

In ubuntu you can run a little script called:


# pppoeconf




Just accept the defaults an make sure you give the right username/password.

it will edit this file:


# cat /etc/ppp/peers/dsl-provider

# Minimalistic default options file for DSL/PPPoE connections

noipdefault
defaultroute
replacedefaultroute
hide-password
#lcp-echo-interval 30
#lcp-echo-failure 4
noauth
persist
#mtu 1492
usepeerdns
plugin rp-pppoe.so
nic-ath0
user "xxxxxxxxxxx"



Now to create a connection use:

# pon dsl-provider

Plugin rp-pppoe.so loaded.


"dsl-provider" is name I chose for the connection which is the default

And to stop a connection use:

# poff



To stop all processes:

# poff -a




You can check the log using this commmand:

# plog
pppd[3928] : pppd 2.4.4 started by root, uid 0



My Firefox Toolbars are blank !

For some unknown reason my web developer and delicious firefox toobars disappeared, I could see the space where they used to be but no icons or anything was there. I tried with the view toolbars menu , checking and unchecking to hide and show them, but that didn't work. Finally I found the solution, firefox have an option called firefox safemode http://kb.mozillazine.org/Safe_mode which allows us to troubleshoot some problems (like this one), all you have to do is:

1. Close any running intance of firefox.
2. Type this command :


firefox -safe-mode


For more info for different OSs check here
3. Then check the box for "Reset toolbars and controls"

4. Click on "Make changes and restart"


That's it... your toolbar icons should appear again.

Oditt.com: web 2.0 for podcast episodes

Oditt it's a community-based site focused on ranking podcast episodes. It's very useful if you want to find specific podcast episodes about very narrow subjects, you can use tags, categories, or just keywords. Also, you can find RSS feeds for tags, categories, popular and recent episodes.

Check some oracle episodes here: http://www.oditt.com/tag/oracle.

Beryl keyboard and mouse shortcuts

Here are some default beryl shortcuts:

Ctrl + Alt + Drag the mouse : rotate the cube to any direction in the space.

Ctrl + left/right arrow key : rotate the cube to the left or right direction

Windows key + Pause : shows the window thumbnails or also called window picker , you can also place the mouse in the top right corner for the same action.

Remember that any shortcut can be changed in the beryl manager.

Fatal error installing symfony using PEAR

A memory error occurred when I was trying to install symfony using the "pear install" command:

root@cam-desktop:/home/cam# pear install symfony/symfony-beta
downloading symfony-1.0.2.tgz ...
Starting to download symfony-1.0.2.tgz (1,903,264 bytes)
......................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................done: 1,903,264 bytes

Fatal error: Allowed memory size of 8388608 bytes exhausted (tried to allocate 8192 bytes) in /usr/share/php/PEAR/Installer.php on line 518


The solution was to increase the memory to allocate for php to 32Mb:


root@cam-desktop:/home/cam# PHP_PEAR_PHP_BIN='/usr/bin/php5 -d memory_limit=32M export PHP_PEAR_PHP_BIN

root@cam# export PHP_PEAR_PHP_BIN
root@cam# pear install symfony/symfony-betadownloading symfony-1.0.2.tgz ...
Starting to download symfony-1.0.2.tgz (1,903,264 bytes)
......................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................done: 1,903,264 bytes
install ok: channel://pear.symfony-project.com/symfony-1.0.2


Enable vim syntax color highlightning in Ubuntu

Syntax color highlighting enables parts of text (tags, functions, etc) to be shown in a different color to ease the visualization of the text file, this is done based on the file extension (.php,.sql,.html,etc).

To enable this function in Ubuntu or other distros edit or create the file .vimrc which must be located in the user home directory:


vi /root/.vimrc


add this line:

:syntax enable


That's it.

Ubuntu Feisty doesn't support php4 anymore

Ubuntu Feisty Fawn (7.04) release, doesn't include php4 in their repositories, php5 is the default version for php. If you want to use php4 applications you better install Ubuntu Dapper Drake (6.06).

Firefox keybord shortcuts for urls

Here are some useful firefox keyboard shorcuts for urls:


Ctrl + enter : to complete a .com url . You can type "google" in the url bar and then ctrl + enter to complete the "www.google.com".

Ctrl + shift + enter : to complete a .org url . You can type "mysql" in the url bar and then ctrl + shift + enter to complete the "www.mysql.org".

F6: to select or move the cursor to the address in the url bar.

Ctrl + k : to move the cursor to the search box.

ll alias (ls -l) is not in ubuntu

If you come from a red-hat based distro and are using ubuntu for the first time (just like me) one thing you may have noticed is that ll alias is not set by default, to do that just edit your ~/.bashrc and uncomment or add the line "alias ll='ls -l'" now the next time you start a shell window that alias will be loaded.


# some more ls aliases
alias ll='ls -l'
#alias la='ls -A'
#alias l='ls -CF'