How to install Mono on RedHat/Plesk 8.6.x

Posted on December 12, 2010 by admin

Mono is a savior if you’re migrating Windows sites to Linux/Apache stack. I had to do this just recently and had to setup Mono on RHEL box with Plesk 8.6. It was relatively straighforward process and here is quick log as to how installed Apache Mono on Plesk:

1. Add Mono repository to yum:


wget -O /etc/yum.repos.d/mono.repo http://ftp.novell.com/pub/mono/download-stable/rhel-4-i386/mono.repo

2. Install Mono:

yum install mono-core mono-web mono-data mod_mono xsp

Note: You may get missing dependency notice.

Missing Dependency: libexif.so.9 is needed by package libgdiplus0-1.9-1.rhel4.novell.i386 (mono)
Error: Missing Dependency: libexif.so.9 is needed by package libgdiplus0-1.9-1.rhel4.novell.i386 (mono)
You could try using --skip-broken to work around the problem
You could try running: package-cleanup --problems
package-cleanup --dupes
rpm -Va --nofiles --nodigest

If that’ the case you’ll need to take a different route. Remove that /etc/yum.repos.d/mono.repo and create a new file centos-5-extras.repo and put the folloging content in there:

[centos-5-extras]
name=CentOS-5 - $basearch - Extras
#baseurl=http://mirror.centos.org/centos/5/extras/$basearch/
mirrorlist=http://mirrorlist.centos.org/?release=5&arch=$basearch&repo=extras
gpgcheck=1
gpgkey=http://mirror.centos.org/centos/RPM-GPG-KEY-CentOS-5
enabled=0

Then run this:

yum --enablerepo=centos-5-extras install mono-core mono-web mono-data mod_mono xsp

This should do it. Just make sure mono is installed afterwards:

mono -V

3. Check & configure mod_mono
Install process should’ve created the configuration file for mod_mono. Check if it exists here: /etc/httpd/conf.d/mod_mono.conf
If it doesn’t exist there create it and put the following contents:

# mod_mono.conf
<IfModule !mod_mono.c>
LoadModule mono_module /usr/lib/httpd/modules/mod_mono.so
AddType application/x-asp-net .aspx
AddType application/x-asp-net .asmx
AddType application/x-asp-net .ashx
AddType application/x-asp-net .asax
AddType application/x-asp-net .ascx
AddType application/x-asp-net .soap
AddType application/x-asp-net .rem
AddType application/x-asp-net .axd
AddType application/x-asp-net .cs
AddType application/x-asp-net .config
AddType application/x-asp-net .Config
AddType application/x-asp-net .dll
DirectoryIndex index.aspx
DirectoryIndex Default.aspx
DirectoryIndex default.aspx
</IfModule>

4. Restart Apache

/usr/local/psa/admin/sbin/websrvmng -r

This did it for me. Along the way I encountered few issues, looking closesly at /var/log/httpd/error_log helped to find solutions(in my case it was missing mono-web package, that brings in System.Web library I guess).

Posted in Linux/UNIX, System Administration | Tagged , , | Leave a comment

How to move MySQL storage to RamFS or TmpFS partition

Posted on November 2, 2010 by admin

Whether moving all MySQL storage to a tmpfs helps with speeding it up or not is questionable but I needed to do for some testing purposes, so this is a short overview of how I did that hopefully will be useful:

First mount tmpfs to a folder:

sudo mkdir /var/ramfs
sudo mount -t ramfs -o size=1G ramfs /var/ramfs/

Here I mounted ramfs to /var/ramfs. I am using ramfs in oppose to tmpfs mainly because:

  • ramfs grows dynamically(tmpfs doens’t)
  • ramfs doesn’t use swap(while tmpfs does)

RAM-backed file system is mounted, so now I need to populate it with MySQL files for processing.
To do that I will need to stop mysql, copy it’s database files over to ramfs, adjust AppArmor and MySQL settings and start mysql server again. Here is the chain of commands to do that:

Copying files:

sudo /etc/init.d/mysql stop
sudo cp -R /var/lib/mysql /var/ramfs/
sudo chown -R mysql:mysql /var/ramfs/mysql

Tweaking MySQL config:

sudo cp /etc/mysql/my.cnf /etc/mysql/original-my.cnf
sudo vim /etc/mysql/my.cnf

Find line with ‘datadir‘ definition(it will look something like datadir = /var/lib/mysql) and change it to

datadir = /var/ramfs/mysql

Next step is to tune apparmor settings:

sudo vim /etc/apparmor.d/usr.sbin.mysqld

Add the following few lines just before the closing curly braces:


/var/ramfs/mysql/ r,
/var/ramfs/mysql/*.pid rw,
/var/ramfs/mysql/** rwk,

Looks like we’re done with settings, let’s see if it will work:


sudo /etc/init.d/apparmor restart
sudo /etc/init.d/mysql start

If mysql daemon starts(double check /var/log/mysql.err for any errors) and you can connect to it, mostlikely now we’re running fully off of a RAM device. To double check it, run this from mysql client:

mysql> show variables where Variable_name = 'datadir' \G
*************************** 1. row ***************************
Variable_name: datadir
Value: /var/ramfs/mysql/
1 row in set (0.00 sec)

That’s pretty much it :)

Posted in 4QuickLookUp, Just messing..., Linux/UNIX | Tagged , , , | 1 Comment

Apache 2 and HTTP Authentication with PAM

Posted on August 26, 2010 by admin

There are 2 ways(at least that I know of) to get Apache 2 to use PAM for http auth:

  • Old mod_auth_pam, which I believe is not developed anymore and also posses some security risks
  • Newer mod_authnz_external and pwauth

This little write up shows how to get Apache and PAM going on Ubuntu using the mod_authnz_external.
To get started, let’s install some packages:

sudo apt-get install libapache2-mod-authnz-external pwauth
sudo apt-get install libapache2-mod-authz-unixgroup
sudo a2enmod authnz_external authz_unixgroup

Edit config file for the Virtual Host you’d like to get them PAM-based HTTP Authentication going, such that it contains the following clause:


<IfModule mod_authnz_external.c>
AddExternalAuth pwauth /usr/sbin/pwauth
SetExternalAuthMethod pwauth pipe
</IfModule>

And the final bit of configuration goes to your Directory definition inside of vhost block:

<Directory /var/www/yourlocation>
AuthType Basic
AuthName "Restricted Area"
AuthBasicProvider external
AuthExternal pwauth
Require user john

# some other configuration statements
</Directory>

This will allow user john to access the resource.

Now if you also want to have PAM authentication by users group you’ll need to make few extra steps. Missing bit of puzzle here is called ‘unixgroup’ script and for some reason it is not in Ubuntu’s pwauth package where it ought to be. You will need to grab it from here and copy it over to /usr/sbin/unixgroup and make it executable. Here is a quick snippet to do that:


wget "http://pwauth.googlecode.com/files/pwauth-2.3.9.tar.gz"
tar xzvf ./pwauth-2.3.9.tar.gz
sudo cp pwauth-2.3.9/unixgroup /usr/sbin/
sudo chmod a+x /usr/sbin/unixgroup

Once that’s done, you’ll need to few more lines to you Virtual Host config, so it will look something like this:

<IfModule mod_authnz_external.c>
AddExternalAuth pwauth /usr/sbin/pwauth
SetExternalAuthMethod pwauth pipe
AddExternalGroup unixgroup /usr/sbin/unixgroup
SetExternalGroupMethod unixgroup environment
</IfModule>

<Directory /var/www/yourlocation>
AuthType Basic
AuthName "Restricted Area"
AuthBasicProvider external
AuthExternal pwauth
GroupExternal unixgroup
Require user john# some other configuration statements
</Directory>

Hopefully this is helpful to someone besides myself :) Let me know if you got stock somewhere along the way.

Posted in 4QuickLookUp, Linux/UNIX | Tagged , , | 1 Comment

How to play a .ogv file

Posted on August 2, 2010 by admin

Lately I’ve been putting together a lot of videos and all of them in OGV format(for obvious reasons ). Sharing those with my ‘Windows’ friends often raises the same question – “How do I play those ogv files?”

Here is how you do it:

1. Go to http://www.videolan.org/vlc/

2. Download and install VLC player( Quick Links: Windows, Mac OS X )

3. Done.

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Installing Mercurial 1.5, 1.6 or 1.7 on Ubuntu Lucid Lynx 10.04

Posted on July 23, 2010 by admin

Lycid Lynx’ repository by default set to install Mercurial 1.4.x, which is great, but as of today that’s already 3 major releases behind :( To get yourself on the latest and greatest version of Mercurial there are 2 options: build from the source or just add mercurial-releases repository like this:

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:mercurial-ppa/releases
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install mercurial

Make sure it did the right thing:

$ hg --version
Mercurial Distributed SCM (version 1.6)

Copyright (C) 2005-2010 Matt Mackall and others
This is free software; see the source for copying conditions. There is NO
warranty; not even for MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE.

Another thing that will go nicely with Mercurial 1.6.x or 1.7.x is up-to-date TortoiseHg. To install TortoiseHg on Ubuntu 10.04 you’ll need to run the following:

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:tortoisehg-ppa/releases
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install tortoisehg-nautilus

Posted in 4QuickLookUp, Linux/UNIX | Tagged , | 12 Comments

XDebug doesn’t show local variables in Komodo, NetBeans or Eclipse PDT

Posted on May 23, 2010 by admin

Lovely surprise that came sometime after upgrading Lucid Lynx(and thus to PHP 5.3.2) – Xdebug doesn’t show local variables. Fortunately that’s a known issue that is fixed in Xdebug 2.1.0RC, but since it’s not released, it is not yet in Ubuntu’s repository. This should be pretty easy to fix though :) let’s try this:

sudo apt-get install php5-dev php-pear

That’ll get us ready for manual xdebug building. Then we need to get the sources. Gotta tell you, Xdebug guys are pretty awesome – they put together this nice little tool that helps you find and build the right version: http://xdebug.org/find-binary.php

It requires output of phpinfo() or in ‘php -i’ command and based on that gives you set by step instructions.

For standard Lucid Lynx install it boils down to the following commands:

wget http://xdebug.org/files/xdebug-2.1.0RC1.tgz
tar -xvzf xdebug-2.1.0RC1.tgz
cd xdebug-2.1.0RC1
phpize
./configure
make
sudo cp modules/xdebug.so /usr/lib/php5/20090626
sudo /etc/init.d/apache2 restart

Before restarting the server though(last command) you may want to double check the the following line exists in either /etc/php5/apache2/php.ini or in /etc/php5/apache2/conf.d/xdebug.ini

zend_extension = /usr/lib/php5/20090626/xdebug.so

Posted in Linux/UNIX, PHP | Tagged , , | 12 Comments

Advanced Web Ranking on Ubuntu: Fixing “SQLite Could Not Be Found” Issue

Posted on May 18, 2010 by admin

“SQLite Could Not Be Found Issue” that you see when running AWR on 64bit Linux(in my case Ubuntu 10.04 ) is caused by the fact that AWR relies on 32bit JRE(you can read about this on AWR’s forum). Problem could be fixed by installing 32bit JRE on the system.This short step by step guide cheat sheet will help:

If you’re on earlier version of Ubuntu this will generally do the trick:

sudo apt-get install ia32-sun-java6-bin

However if you’re on 10.04, then it’s a bit longer process, since you need to add partner repository first:

sudo add-apt-repository "deb http://archive.canonical.com/ lucid partner"
sudo apt-get install ia32-sun-java6-bin

That’s not all though. Now you need to edit launch script(AdvancedWebRanking.sh). Line #4 needs to be updated to contain path to proper JRE. Your final file should look something like:
#!/bin/sh
cd "Advanced Web Ranking"
export LD_LIBRARY_PATH=.:$LD_LIBRARY_PATH
/usr/lib/jvm/ia32-java-6-sun/bin/java -Xmx512M -classpath awr.jar com.caphyon.awebrank.Splash

Posted in 4QuickLookUp, Linux/UNIX | 3 Comments

TypePad to WordPress MU: Moving content with Technorati links, images, video and all that good stuff.

Posted on April 4, 2009 by admin

Getting content out of TypePad ain’t fun at fall. Getting content with images, technorati tags, videos is even more painful.

With default TypePad ‘export’ feature you’ll just get partial content(some limited number of posts AFAIR), no technorati tags, no images. Youtube videos are going to be there since that stuff is just an html that embed remote flash video player. So to make my life a bit easier I came up with few simple tricks/scripts of how to get everything out of TypePad and process it to import into WordPress with no pain.

Here is how it goes:

Continue reading →

Posted in Just messing... | Tagged , , | 1 Comment

Moving TypePad blogs to WordPress MU: TypeLists

Posted on March 13, 2009 by admin

TypePad suck, no two ways about it. Why, in your right mind, would you want to use something so limited in functionality on the platform that you have no control over, when there are tons of open source solutions that are way better…

Strangely enough, TypePad being the way it is, made a lot of people wanting to switch to things like WordPress(well at least from what I hear :) . Moving a blog onto WordPress with 0-broken links, no missing images, while keeping all embedded things, such as YouTube videos and Technorati Tags fully functional with 0-downtime ain’t a simple task. Small blogs may not really care about everything I’ve mentioned, but some serious blogs out there however need all that done, done fast and done right the first time.

Continue reading →

Posted in Just messing... | Tagged , , | Leave a comment

MySQL5 TINYINT, SMALLINT, MEDUIMINT, INT, BIGINT boundaries

Posted on October 7, 2008 by admin

From MySQL Documentation, boundaries of the numerical types are as follows:

Type Min Value Max Value Bytes
TINYINT -128 127 1
TINYINT UNSIGNED 0 255 1
SMALLINT -32,768 32,767 2
SMALLINT UNSIGNED 0 65,535 2
MEDIUMINT -8,388,608 8,388,607 3
MEDIUMINT UNSIGNED 0 16,777,215 3
INT -2,147,483,648 2147483647 4
INT UNSIGNED 0 4,294,967,295 4
BIGINT -9223372036854775808 9223372036854775807 8
BIGINT UNSIGNED 0 18446744073709551615 8
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