phpEclipse

I have been look at PHP IDEs for a while now. I'm quite happy playing around with gEdit and having some rudimentary code colouring, but it get confused with PHP and HTML at times and doesn't really work too well when you add in Javascript.

I did use the trial version of Zend Studio 5 for while on a previous incarnation of my system, but an upgrade came and I didn't want to shell out a significant amount of money for an IDE. I'd love to find an open source alternative...

I have tried BlueFish (2/5) and nuSphere (a lot of cash for not as good as Zend) along with other not so impressive alternatives.

Finally I stumbled across phpEclipse and thought I'd give it a go. It seems though, that from other blogs and forums, installation on Ubuntu Edgy is no mean feat. So, armed with google, I set off on another intrepid adventure.

After installing Eclipse and phpEclipse, finding some bugs and searching the internet to find solutions, I became more aware of another project: EasyEclipse.

EasyEclipse:
It does extactly what it says on the tin and a simple download will give you a working copy for Windows, Linux or Mac. I chose EasyEclipse for PHP, but if you have a LAMP server, there is a version for LAMP control too Basically, the different distributions comes with different pre-loaded modules. The PHP one has PHP, SVN, HTMLTidy and many more.

The download is about 130Mb, so takes a wee while, but there is no "install": just run the app and it works. You'll need Java installed and it works with Blackwater (the opensource version) as well as the official Java from Sun.

SVN:
Once downloaded and running, "change perspective" using the menu or the top right button and choose 'SVN repository'. Using the left hand side taskbar, add a new repository (http://www.carrubbers.org/svn/ccc/www) and check out. You'll be asked if you want to create a new project (yes) and asked for the location. For me, with the current apache config the way it was, this was '/home/ccc/'. Once the checkout was compelete, I just needed non-SVN files: images, xml and dbf, along with .ht*, postgres login and symlinks (see the previous post).

PHP browser:
There is a build in browser which seems to work pretty well. You'll need to specify the document_root and localhost vars first:

Window->Preferences:
PHPeclipse...->Project Defaults ->
localhost and document root

If the document_root is wrong, Eclipse seems to think that files that are included by the PHP files are not within the current project and gives errors.

NB: I couldn't find how to use SVN for a while. It's under the Navigator context menu under "Team".

Now I just need to work out how to use the build in apache controls, get SVN icons rather than CVS ones on the navigation pane and see about Postgres control too.

Then there is the task of getting debugging working: DBG is allegedly a good tool to use and natively supported (client side) in eclipse. It's just a case of installing the software server side - I'll try it locally first!

Plesk and Courier IMAP

Seeing "Unable to connect to your IMAP server. You may have exceeded the maximum number of connections to this server" has been driving me insane!

Whenever I add another account to Thunderbird, I have to specify that it can only have one connection to the server per account and even then, if my wife switches on her machine, we have more than the prespecified Plesk maximum of 4 IMAP connections and we start getting errors.

I devided that enough was enough and went in search of a solution. I found it too :o)

perl -p -i -e 's/^MAXDAEMONS=40/MAXDAEMONS=80/g' /etc/courier-imap/imapd
perl -p -i -e 's/^MAXPERIP=4/MAXPERIP=40/g' /etc/courier-imap/imapd

Then a quick restart of the service and all should be working.

/etc/init.d/courier-imap stop
/etc/init.d/courier-imap start

These changes increase the maximum daemons to 80 and Maximum connections per IP to 40. Should be enought for us at the momnet, but may need altered in the future.

Local CCC

Getting a local copy of our website on my Ubuntu box for development purposes:


Local files:
We use svn on our church website as a versioning system and I need a local version for testing and development. First thing is to get a local copy of the repro and then add non-repro files (images etc).

sudo apt-get install subversion subversion-tools

The problem I have is remembering the repro address. Make sure that you're in /home/ccc

svn checkout http://www.carrubbers.org/svn/ccc/www/htdocs
svn checkout http://www.carrubbers.org/svn/ccc/www/userdb

The checkout happens and the path /home/ccc/htdocs/ should be correct. SVN doesn't cope with symbolic links at present - need to add them for pgadmin and lib/v1/

Get the postgres login details for the local filesystem.
Get a copy of the htpwd and htusergroup files.
Get a copy of the /image directory
Get a copy of all the xml and dbf files - they aren't in svn

~$ find -name *.xml | xargs tar rvf xml.tar
~$ find -name *.dbf | xargs tar rvf xml.tar

Apache:
Then comes the setup of apache.

sudo apt-get install apache2

Move the previously saved apache config to /etc/apache2/sites-available/ and enable the setup.

sudo a2dissite 000-default
sudo a2ensite ccc
sudo /etc/init.d/apache2 restart

Then we need to install PHP with dbase.

Postgres:
Finally, comes the addition of postgres - make sure the correct version is installed!

sudo aptitude search postgres
sudo apt-get install postgresql-8.1
sudo apt-get install phppgadmin pgadmin3

The other option would be to get the latest version of phppgadmin and install it in /usr/share/phadmin with a symbolic link from /admin/pgadmin.

Remote:
Connect to the CCC postgres db. Post 5432 is the standard port for postgres communication, but is closed on the CCC server. Set up a tunnel to it, but don't use port 5432 because we'll be running a local server on that port. SSH keys should be in place for passwordless login.

ssh -L5431:localhost:5432 carrubbers.org

Setup pgAdminIII to connect to the remote server using localhost:5431

Local:
Start to setup the local postgres server. First thing is to create a user.

~$ sudo su postgres -c createuser yourusername
~$ sudo su postgres -c psql yourusername
=# ALTER USER yourusername WITH PASSWORD 'yourpassword';
=# \q

Setup pgAdminIII to connect to the local server using localhost:5432


Get a local copy of the postgres database.

~$ pg_dump database_name > database
~$ tar -cf database.tar database
~$ scp database local_machine:

~$ createdb master
~$ tar -xf database.tar
~$ psql -d master

Or, if you need to get the data from the entire server, use:

~$ pg_dumpall -d > pg_server
~$ psql -f pg_server postgres

Irritatingly, it will ask for your password for every transaction. ie., for every database that is dumped!

That should be us done... have a quick test.

Plesk 8.1 and awstats

The new version of Plesk (8.1) does seem much nicer to use than 8.01 and has a couple of extra features. One such feature is the inclusion of awstats as standard. Domains are still assigned webalizer by default, but getting awstats is just a drop down box away on the domain setup page.

Once this is done, the stats are available at: www.domain.com/webstat and are viewable using the domain's ftp username and password.

This didn't work for me initially and I just got an error that the system hadn't run the statistics cron and if it didn't work within 24h, to check with my domain admin... that's me! Well, 24h passed and nothing had changed:

/usr/local/psa/admin/sbin/statistics --calculate-one --domain-name=domain.com

After a short wait, the process was complete and a pretty awststa page appeared where it should have been all along. I'll just have to wait and see if a) it updates and b) whether this needs to be done for other domains.

Plesk and migration

Migrating accounts between plesk servers is very simple. In most cases I just want to migrate a client with all their accounts and all their settings:

sudo -s
echo 'client_name' | /opt/psa/bin/pleskbackup --clients backup_file -list -
exit
scp backup_file_name username@remote_host:

That takes care of the backup and transfer, so all that is needed is a quick mapping of IP addresses on the new host and a restore. Disable the client on the initial server to ensure that mail doesn't get delivered and lost.

ssh username@remote_host
sudo -s
/opt/psa/bin/pleskrestore --create-map backup_file -map map_name
/opt/psa/bin/pleskrestore --restore backup_file -level clients -map map_name
exit

You'll need to ensure that the mapping of the domains for the client is done correctly if there are multiple IP addresses on both systems. Most of the time, Plesk gets it correct.

Flick the DNS and all is done with minimal downtime.

Skype and Ubuntu

I know that Skype isn't maintained within the Ubuntu repositories and there is good reason for that. I did however want it - mainly because we have good friends who will, from next week be in Mexico and they'll be using Skype on their Mac.

It's a simple process to get skype working on a Ubuntu Edgy box:

add the repository to the /etc/apt/sources.list

## Official Skype Repository
deb http://download.skype.com/linux/repos/debian/ stable non-free

then its a simple apt-get away

sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install skype

you'll find it under Applications > Internet > Skype

Unison and Plesk

I've been trying to optimise backups so that in the event of a catastrophic disaster on one of my servers, I'd be able to quickly and easily get them abck up and running - especially the ones that are hosting domains that are heavily email dependent or have shops. The last thing I need is people getting stressed about loosing email or money!

I've got total backup and think that it should be sufficient for performing incremental backups every day on a weekly rotation. What I'd prefer though is a mirror on a different server which could allow me to simply flick a big red DNS switch and let everything continue as if nothing had ever happened.

I'd need to work out what total backup actually backs up and sync those directories across two plesk servers... sounds complex and graught with potential disasters... and, if it's such a great idea, why can't I find somebody who's done it before?