noel alanguilan

nielsen
makati

this is nielsen, the cat that hangs around the filipinas heritage library (fhl). he was named after the restaurant that occupied the place previously.

nielsen died recently—a victim of ondoy. after the storm he sauntered to fhl looking all tired and wet. they tried to save him but he was too weak.

when i would visit the library, nielsen was always outside the front door staring in like the way he is in the photo. it was as if he saw spirits walking about doing what spirits do and him always waiting and watching.

for php development i use a local php/mysql web server to make dev work a bit faster. these are the steps we followed for a workstation running linux.

download xampp from apache friends. the version available was 1.7.2.

extract the downloaded archive with:

sudo tar xvfz xampp-linux-1.7.2.tar.gz -C /opt

note: if you have xampp already installed, the above command will overwrite it. careful.

xampp is now installed in /opt/lampp

to start xampp:

sudo /opt/lampp/lampp start

you should see something like this:

Starting XAMPP for Linux 1.7.2...
XAMPP: Starting Apache with SSL (and PHP5)...
XAMPP: Starting MySQL...
XAMPP: Starting ProFTPD...
XAMPP for Linux started.

which means the server is ready. i don’t need an ftp server for dev work so i decided to stop proftpd:

sudo /opt/lampp/lampp stopftp

note: issuing the above command will deactivate the proftpd server permanently–it will not start when you start xampp. see the command cheatsheet somewhere below to find out how to reactivate it.

to test our setup fire up your favorite browser and type:

http://localhost

you should see something like this:

you’ll be able to see the status of the installed components, the status of the security of the system, links to documentation and most importantly, detailed information about the server system via phpinfo() as well as database administration panels–phpmyadmin and phpsqliteadmin.

at this point, we have an apache webserver running with php and mysql support.

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some issues came up with my web development setup when i did a clean install of ubuntu 9.10 (karmic koala) and migrated my data from backups.

i have a web/php server running off my workstation on localhost being used to test html and php pages i develop. i have apache serving up name-based virtual hosts–one for each client website. accessing http://client1 would give me the local index page of client1, accessing http://client2 would give me the local index page of client2 and so on. this little webdev symphony got messed up when i performed a clean install of ubuntu 9.10. all i could get was a “403 forbidden” error message which i eventually attributed to a permission problem rather than to my server setup.

click to enlarge

the not-so-elegant solution i found is to move all of my development files inside the public folder in my home directory, edit the httpd-vhosts.conf file to reflect the move and changed the base directory in bluefish. i also propagated the permissions from the public folder to all the files and folders it contains by right-clicking on the public folder, click on properties, choose the permissions tab, and clicking on the “apply permission to enclosed files”.

and you’re done. hopefully. i consider this a temporary solution and it worked for me. it may not work for you. your mileage might vary. don’t do this without a proper backup.

painful. not a lot but painful nonetheless. it was mostly because if grub–ubuntu’s boot loader. after going through the install process and restarting my workstation grub had other plans and didn’t load up the filesystem and therefore could not start linux and most of everything else. its apparently an issue with karmic koala as i found out from the forums. this ubuntu version is painful.

on first boot after the install, i got a message from the bootloader saying it couldn’t load … something named after a bunch of numbers with dashes in between. restart. on second boot it gave me the grub menu with the option of editing the boot commands before booting. i took the opportunity and tried editing the commands. after some why-the-heck-not deliberations i took out the line that started with the word “search” and proceeded to boot. and it did! now, i wanted to see if the settings stuck so i restarted the computer. i was presented with the grub menu again which means the initialization file (menu.lst) of grub is messed up or non-existent (it was the latter ). after a couple of hours of axious searching in the ubuntu forums i was able to reinstall grub and had a proper menu.lst file.

the rest of the installation went fine. restoring my settings from backup was easier.

admitedly, there are really nice changes to the system but it is not the best ubuntu released mostly because the grub bootloader gave a lot of people headaches, me included. i later found out that the bootloader is a beta version that was included in the final release. bad idea. and then i get an occasional “pause”—application windows start to dim as if in deep thought and couldn’t be disturbed and after a few seconds wakes up again. i still have to find out what causes that. but at the moment i’m just glad my workstation is up and running again.

yosi
slang for cigARETTE
san miguel, manila

i used to smoke. i stopped about 19 months ago. sometimes i miss it. sometimes i miss the slow drag, the deep breath after and the ensuing temporary haze of dizziness. its a deceptive vice. deathly simple. but time and money would be well spent on something else.

part of the lost rolls

sa poste
at the lamp post
san miguel, manila

these were the houses located behind the place where i used to live. it was a crazy neighborhood but each respected the other’s space. under the lamp post was a corner of the street used to meet up, or to gather and tell stories, or part ways.

part of the lost rolls