CSIS Blogs

Dr. Brenda Wilson, associate professor in Murray State University’s department of computer science and information systems, will present a program on the Alice computer-science teaching tool at the Oct. 21 Girls’ STEM (science, technology, engineering and math) Day on campus.

Read the whole story here

I tried installing Drupal on our Linux box to see why some of my students were having all kinds of problems. The database was created, the user had adequate privileges and yet the installation script never went past asking for the database information. So I went back to first principles (that is, "read the directions"!).

The documentation had instructed that I "make a copy of the default.settings.php file" and name it "settings.php" or create an empty file with that name. I simply renamed it. Big mistake! Apparently the "installer uses this file as a template to create your settings file using the details you provide through the install process"

Moving a complex web-site (especially after you configured it with all fancy extensions) can seem foreboding to the average newbie. With the right set of tools, this can be accomplished quite easily. I moved my Joomla 1.5 site from host A (source) to host B (destination) with very little trouble

1. In the Host A installation, get Joomlapack and install it like any joomla component


2. open the component and choose "configuration"


3. Enter the output directory location and press apply at the top right


4. Click "Backup now" link (above "common settings")


5. Use your control panel or FTP client to go to the saved location and download the ZIP to your local computer (note where you saved it!)


6. Use a suitable tool (FTP client, host B's file manager etc) to upload and unzip the file downloaded in previous step. For simplicity, do this in the ROOT location


7. Create a new MySQL Database and database user through HOST B's control panel (Need this for next step). Be sure to associate the new user to the new database


8. Open the installation folder in HOST B site (www.hostb.com/installation/index.php)


9. Provide the new database name, database user, password etc


10. The wizard will help you complete the process and you are done

I was able to move the entire installation to a different folder through Host B's file manager (to a sub folder from root). All I had to change was the paths to the new location in configuration.php

If you need more detailed information, please check out the authors' user manual

Good luck!

There are many ways to copy and distribute a SQL server database to multiple users. In an academic setting, you have to constrain the students' access to just their database. That is, they usually don't have enough privileges to create databases. So, they cannot attach databases. In such cases, you have to jump through some hoops to make the distribution of the sample database possible. Some of these are listed here

1. Import the database into an empty Microsoft Access database through ODBC and share the Access DB with the class. The students can import it back into their SQL server database
2. Use the Publishing Wizard. I found this tool VERY handy as it creates the SQL you need to create all the tables and data. This blog post at Systems Engineering and RDBMS details how you can get this tool (in case you don't already have it) and call it from the command line to script just the data, just the schema or both

Due to Campus Security policy, we are required to change our domain passwords periodically. This killed my access to the local instance of SQL server 2005 because the server does not start if the password (stored locally) does not match the domain password. So..

1. Go to SQL Server 2005 service (through Configuration Manager)
2. Select the "Properties" of the SQL server instance (rt-click teh instance)
3. Change the login password to the (new) domain password and press apply
4. Now start the service.
   ... and all will be well

Over the years I have used PDF creator to create PDF documents on-the-fly. Since then other similar products would appear higher on the google searches (cute PDF, primo pdf etc) that essentially delivered similar results for the same price - free (of course!) - and I switched to different products on different computers. However, PDFForge was myfavorite.

About 6 months after buying a new computer, I decided to track down and install PDF Creator. This time it came with a search toolbar that I chose not to install. Shortly thereafter, when using a tabbed flash form, I was taken to urlseek20.vmn.net with a "404" error every time I clicked a tab. Interestingly this happened only in Firefox (I have 3.0.7) and not in IE.

Given that it had never happened before, I started killing processes that seemed suspicious. I also downloaded and installed Spybot, AdAware and some other tools recommended for removing malware. Running these programs did not reveal any infection.

Removal: Out of desperation I started removing programs that I wasn't using starting with the newest installs. Removing the PDFforge toolbar (from Add/remove programs) seems to fix this instantly. I hope it does not reinstall itself again. It remains to be seen! If this is indeed the case, I hope they will identify and fix it ASAP. Their website assures me that their software is "100% clean" as certified by "soft82.com". Who knows?!

Hopefully this post helps others in the same boat. Removing malware is cumbersome to say the least.

Environment: IIS and Coldfusion 8.

How do you direct the user to a specific tab if the data (logically) requires you to?

I was assigning students to a competition event, but if the student pool was empty, the user should be taken directly to the "Add Student" tab. The underlying principle: "When possible, minimize the user's keystrokes/mouseclicks."

Since this was a flash form, I searched the asfusion site, but came away empty. After some frustrating experimentation, I came up with this 2-step solution.. (there may be better ones out there)

• Create a textbox to store the record count ("records")
• Use a regular expression to update the selectedIndex attribute of the CFFORMGROUP for the tabnavigator

<cfformgroup type="tabnavigator" id="tabs" selectedIndex = "{records.text==0?2:0}">

Note: (1) The "type" for the input box ("records") cannot be "hidden". However, if you use CFINPUT, you can change the "visible" attribute to "false" (2) Tab numbering starts at 0. So the second tab will be "1".

Environment: Coldfusion 8, IIS

While working with Coldfusion on an internal project, I found that Flash forms can be your wonderful friend as well as a scary nightmare. The students love it for the ease-of-use part. But the obstacles are sometimes hard to cross without a decent understanding of JavaScript and/or Action Script. One of these is the ability to link from a row/cell in a grid to display a dynamically filtered page. My google searches with the above title as search terms took me to a lot of posts that simply said, "it cannot be done directly". The trick is to use some ActionScript in the onChange Event of CFGRID

In the last couple of weeks we have been experimenting with a variety of open source products that will introduce interested members of the department to building and using web applications on the cheap. We started with identifying and installing a suitable "WAMP suite". This was further expanded with the installation of a simple CMS - one that I hadn't even tried before. In that sense it was a good test for ease-of-installation.

At this point, I will recommend switching to a regular shared host provider as you should have enough experience working with MySQL and PhpMyAdmin - a pre-requisite for anything you do with a W/LAMP environment. Or, you can install the WAMP suite on your local hard-drive and experiment away. My hope was to prime the participant(s) for further exploration. Dr. Lyle will help you get set up with an account on our Linux server that can now be used to try the products I am going to list below.

Trying to cram an application into a 500MB "stick" is proving to be a bit challenging! During the first seminar - before the ice storm hit us - we successfully implemented a "webserver-on-a-stick". The tested suite was "EasyPhP". I have since tried a few more, fixed (understood?) some issues and have settled on "Vertrigo".

One of these was:
Warning: require(Smarty.class.php) [function.require]: failed to open stream:

Turns out that the drive letter for my USB had changed from G to F. Changing a few config files solved this. There were others that have been briefly documented in my previous post.

Today, we will create our first CMS. A good place to start is: http://cmsmatrix.org/ . This site lists quite a few CMS products - both free and commercial - that are available. It even rates these along several dimensions.

1. Pick one you like
   
2. Go to the web site and review the requirements
   
3. Download the file
   
4. Extract it to the "www" folder
   
5. Locate the readme and install directions and follow them
   

The rest is trouble shooting! I chose "Jaws" because it was rated well and seems reasonable small. But it comes as a tar.gz file. You will need 7-zip to extract this.

Good luck!