CSIS Blogs - OpenSource

Drupal installation - Database configuration failed

nospam@example.com (Victor Raj) — Thu, 17 Sep 2009 16:44:44 -0500

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 Joomla site to another host in 10 easy steps

nospam@example.com (Victor Raj) — Sat, 12 Sep 2009 18:19:30 -0500

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

In the Host A installation, get Joomlapack and install it like any joomla component [Note: New name is "Akeeba Backup"]

open the component and choose "configuration"

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

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

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!)

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

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

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

Provide the new database name, database user, password etc

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 [Note: "Joomlapack" is now "Akeeba Backup Core"; it is still free.]

Good luck!

Malware - urlseek20.vmn.net

nospam@example.com (Victor Raj) — Tue, 17 Mar 2009 08:44:48 -0500

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.

The List - Open Source apps to try

nospam@example.com (Victor Raj) — Thu, 12 Feb 2009 09:12:32 -0600

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.
Continue reading "The List - Open Source apps to try"

Your first CMS - Content Management System

nospam@example.com (Victor Raj) — Fri, 06 Feb 2009 12:50:29 -0600

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.

Pick one you like
Go to the web site and review the requirements
Download the file
Extract it to the "www" folder
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!

WAMP - web server on a stick

nospam@example.com (Victor Raj) — Sun, 25 Jan 2009 21:39:15 -0600

Earlier this semester, I was suggesting some changes to the STARRS lab (BB454) for Dr. Lyle to implement. I was wanting students to be able to explore web servers and their configuration in a safe setting. Dr Lyle responded to my quick demo of one such product - WAMP server - by saying, "Rather than making this available in the lab, why not let students carry their own web server in thumb drives?"

I had not tried this and so began my adventure with portable web servers.

A google search for "portable web server" retrieves numerous excellent candidates. After trying (links at end) uniserver, pampa, XAMPP,vertrigo, easyPhp and WAMP server, I settled on EasyPhP and VertrigoServ. All of the suites installed without problems. They differed in the amount of space they needed and the sophistication of their user interface. Later, I ran into other "nice" suites that give flexibility in "rolling your own" suite (MoWeS portable)

Vertrigo tray menu

In this post, I document my experience with Vertrigo (in the lab, we checked out EasyPhP). The installed package takes up roughly 75MB of disk space. Once launched, a Vertrigo icon appears in the windows tray to facilitate easy management. From here, the user can launch various components/tools, stop/restart the web server, edit configuration files and get help easily. Users can also go to the home page (localhost) directly.

Continue reading "WAMP - web server on a stick"

Connection string: Eclipse to SQL server 2005

nospam@example.com (Victor Raj) — Thu, 13 Nov 2008 22:17:20 -0600

Just a quick note to add to my previous post on connecting to SQL server data from within eclipse. All semester I have been having trouble connecting to an instance of SQL server. Today, I had to work on a machine that had Eclipse but did not have SQL server Management Studio. SQL Explorer plugin to the rescue.
Continue reading "Connection string: Eclipse to SQL server 2005"

Using Eclipse to connect to MySQL

nospam@example.com (Victor Raj) — Tue, 02 Sep 2008 19:56:36 -0500

This post assumes you are using Eclipse with the SQL Explorer plugin.

To test if my instructions to connect to SQL server 2005 are correct I attempted the same with MySQL. Here's the procedure in 10 easy steps:

Download jdbc driver from MySQL
Unzip the file to a recognizable location
Create a new connection
Click on Add/edit drivers button
Select MySQL sdriver from list of jdbc drivers and press "edit"
Give the driver a name, click on "Add" and locate the jar file unzipped in step (2)
Press "List Drivers" and you will see "com.mysql.jdbc.Driver" in the driver class name drop down
Press "OK" and you will be returned to the list in (5) with a tick-mark beside MySQL
Select OK and provide a valid user name and password
The URL should point to a legitimate MySQL location (mine says: "jdbc:mysql://127.0.0.1:3306")

Hope this helps someone out.

Using Eclipse to connect to SQL server 2005

nospam@example.com (Victor Raj) — Tue, 02 Sep 2008 19:02:47 -0500

This term we are going to use Eclipse almost exclusively to develop ColdFusion templates for my CIS420 class. After downloading all the (large) files, I discovered that the ColdFusion plugin does not work with the latest release (3.4) of Eclipse. But that's for a different post

I was a bit disappointed when I could not get the SQL server connection to work right last year. So this year I wanted to do it all right. That's when my troubles with Eclipse began.
Continue reading "Using Eclipse to connect to SQL server 2005"

Merging users - Serendipity

nospam@example.com (Victor Raj) — Tue, 02 Sep 2008 17:40:03 -0500

After experimenting with serendipity under my own account I moved the install to the root so I can open it up to all faculty and students to play with. So far so good. However, after importing my posts, I discovered that all the articles I wrote under the old account ended up under a new user account without an author name - a blank user was created!

Problem: Merge these two "authors"
Continue reading "Merging users - Serendipity"

Serendipity: Share codebase?!

nospam@example.com (Victor Raj) — Tue, 02 Sep 2008 16:59:04 -0500

In reviewing various blogging tools I was looking for one that allowed multiple users to use the same codebase (and database) and yet have separate blogs. Hence my choice of Serendipity. According to the documentation:

"You can install ONE s9y distribution and manage multiple users on it by sharing the core files and then deploying specially crafted files in each user's directory."

Seems like it is possible (but "experimental"). There is some Apache tweaking involved. .. best left to my server admin!

Serendipity: Lost admin site styling

nospam@example.com (Victor Raj) — Tue, 02 Sep 2008 16:59:04 -0500

I ran into this very early in my experimentation. Apparently I made a change in my config that resulted in an ugly admin site. Searching the forum wasn't much help - too much information. So I reviewed the options in my config and discovered that I had tweaked a default (auto configured) option in the "Appearance and Options" block.

I changed the "URL Rewriting " parameter to say "Use Apache mod_rewrite". The default was, "disable URL rewriting"