Dec/090
Ubuntu 9.10 Karmic slow Firefox
There is a bug in the IPv6 lookup in Karmic that is making any application requesting IPv6 while a NAT is not configured to respond to IPv6 respond very slowly. It is still a bug not solved at this time. Buta solution for Firefox is given here as a work around for now.
Oct/090
Sphinx Search default limit is 20
When using the sphinx api, you must use SetLimts if you want more than 20 records. Currently, it is not documented on the sphinx api doc.
Oct/090
Fatal error: Call to undefined function: curl_init in php
For some reason, my workstation with Ubuntu 9.04, php5, apache2 and php5-curl install was giving me the curl package not installed message. Well, it turns out that for some reason, my default /etc/php5/apache2/php.ini had the extension directory pointing to /usr/lib/php5/ext/ while all the extensions were in /usr/lib/php5/20060613/
I was trying to figure out why I am not seeing curl.so in the ext directory after I have apt-get installed and removed php5-curl many times. Solution is usually very simple.
Aug/090
VMware Server must be reconfigured when there is a kernel upgrade
If the linux kernel is upgraded, vmware will not load http://localhost:8222. It requires a reconfigure when this happens. Do the following.
sudo /usr/bin/vmware-config.pl
Jul/090
Forget your mysql root password?
This following line saved my butt when something happened and my root password was no longer working.
sudo dpkg-reconfigure mysql-server-5.0
It will allow you to reset your root password without messing with the data or any other configuration in my.cnf.
May/090
Ubuntu apache2 virtualhost setup problems
If you are getting error messages when starting apache2 like
“Could not reliably determine the server’s fully qualified domain name, using 127.0.1.1 for ServerName”
or
“[warn] _default_ VirtualHost overlap on port 80, the first has precedence”
you need to make sure a couple of lines are in your /etc/apache2/httpd.conf file.
ServerName localhost
NameVirtualHost *:80
Apr/090
How to do that Mysql thing in MSSql?
Ever wonder how to translate something you normally do between Mysql and MSSql?
Here is a good list of parity between the two.
Also, one section left open by that article is date formatting. After reading that, you can see why it was left out. It is quite a topic on its own.
Date Formats in MSSql
Apr/099
Ubuntu 9.04 Vmware Arrow Keys Problem
I finally found how to get all those keys working on my newly installed Ubuntu 9.04 with my XP VM. The issue is that all the arrow keys and delete key don’t work. There are others too but not listed. So a bit of googling, I found that you have to map the keys in a vmware config file to solve the problem. So this is what needs to be done.
1. Edit /usr/lib/vmware/config
2. Add the following to the end.
xkeymap.keycode.108 = 0x138 # Alt_R
xkeymap.keycode.106 = 0x135 # KP_Divide
xkeymap.keycode.104 = 0x11c # KP_Enter
xkeymap.keycode.111 = 0x148 # Up
xkeymap.keycode.116 = 0x150 # Down
xkeymap.keycode.113 = 0x14b # Left
xkeymap.keycode.114 = 0x14d # Right
xkeymap.keycode.105 = 0x11d # Control_R
xkeymap.keycode.118 = 0x152 # Insert
xkeymap.keycode.119 = 0x153 # Delete
xkeymap.keycode.110 = 0x147 # Home
xkeymap.keycode.115 = 0x14f # End
xkeymap.keycode.112 = 0x149 # Prior
xkeymap.keycode.117 = 0x151 # Next
xkeymap.keycode.78 = 0x46 # Scroll_Lock
xkeymap.keycode.127 = 0x100 # Pause
xkeymap.keycode.133 = 0x15b # Meta_L
xkeymap.keycode.134 = 0x15c # Meta_R
xkeymap.keycode.135 = 0x15d # Menu
3. Save it
4. Restart vmware
Thank goodness. What a pain this was to use with a whole bunch of keys not working.
Apr/090
GRUB Error 21 Dual Boot Raid
I was installing Ubuntu to dual boot onto a newly added drive on my workstation that already has Windows XP. After the installation, GRUB gives me error 21. I looked through all the forums and help and tried everything from reinstalling GRUB to modifying menu.lst. Nothing worked. Then I figured out what the problem was. My system before adding the new drive had three drives; one with XP OS and two in a Raid 1 array for data. The issue was the Raid 1 array. With the new drive I added for Ubuntu, the computer had four drives. During installation, Ubuntu saw four drives and when installing GRUB, it pointed Ubuntu to boot on hd3,0. However, when GRUB tried to load, the BIOS was showing only three drives and hd3 was non-existent resulting in error 21.
Then I decided to move my SATA cables around so the location of the Ubuntu install does not change no matter if we saw the Raid 1 as one drive or two. So I kept XP on hd0, moved Ubuntu to hd1, and then having the Raid 1 drives to follow with hd2 and hd3. At this point, I reinstalled GRUB and tried to boot up again with the Raid 1 configured in the BIOS. Now I get GRUB error 17! What the heck is that? I found that if I got rid of Raid on the BIOS, error 17 goes away and GRUB comes up without a problem.
I got tired of trying to debug this and decided to just go all Ubuntu and just VM XP for the few things I still need to do on Windows.
Dec/082
Update Delayed on Mysql and PHP
Wouldn’t it be nice if we could use UPDATE DELAYED in mysql just like we do use INSERT DELAYED? Unfortunately, the work around mysql created for this is to insert a record into the events table in order to separate UPDATE statement into another thread. There is a large overhead to inserting to then execute an update.
If you are using PHP with mysql, there is another work around. PHP has a function called, register_shutdown_function, which will execute a function during the shutdown of processing a script file. So if we add an UPDATE LOW_PRIORITY sql statement wrapped in a function that is passed to register_shutdown_function, we can allow the user to receive the page without delay while the UPDATE statement waits until all locks on the table has been release before proceeding.
function update_delayed()
{
$sql = "UPDATE LOW_PRIORITY table_name SET col1 = 'something'";
mysql_query($sql, $conn);
}
register_shutdown_function('update_delayed');
I wonder if there are even better ways to handle this problem.