Tech Blog

Selenium IDE Firefox extension for testing web applications

frank — Fri, 08 Jan 2010 01:42:00 +0000

just came across this tool while researching testing frameworks. Selenium IDE for Firefox is essential for testing a website or web application on an actual browser. It records your actions on the browser and stores them as a test. Then the test can be run everything you want to verify the site still works correctly.

Ubuntu 9.10 Karmic slow Firefox

frank — Tue, 08 Dec 2009 18:54:38 +0000

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.

Setup mod rewrite on apache

frank — Fri, 30 Oct 2009 21:01:59 +0000

Three places need to change to do this.

sudo a2enmod rewrite
Add AllowOverride All to virtual host file
Add RewriteEngine On to .htaccess

Sphinx Search default limit is 20

frank — Sat, 03 Oct 2009 04:30:09 +0000

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.

Fatal error: Call to undefined function: curl_init in php

frank — Sat, 03 Oct 2009 02:50:01 +0000

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.

VMware Server must be reconfigured when there is a kernel upgrade

frank — Tue, 18 Aug 2009 16:42:09 +0000

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

Forget your mysql root password?

frank — Tue, 07 Jul 2009 05:33:59 +0000

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.

Google maps info window size problem with images

frank — Tue, 09 Jun 2009 03:02:12 +0000

One strange thing when using Google Maps API with pictures in the info window is that sometimes the window is not tall enough to enclose all the content. It overflows the white info window background. The problems is because Google maps API tries to calculate the height of all the content while the photos are being pulled by other http requests. They are asynchronous and the photos might take longer to load than it takes for Google Maps API to determine what the height of the info window should be. It has been said that setting the height of the element would give Gmaps a hint as to how tall the photos might be and adjust accordingly. So doing something like the following would help.

Also, if you are using any sort of table or div containers for the image, it would also help to specify the height of the container element to make sure Gmaps knows to account for it.

Hope that helps you solve this little problem.

Ubuntu apache2 virtualhost setup problems

frank — Tue, 05 May 2009 05:44:35 +0000

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.confÂ file.

ServerName localhost
NameVirtualHost *:80

VMware bridged network Ubuntu and Windows

frank — Wed, 29 Apr 2009 22:28:35 +0000

Setting up a Windows guest to serve to the LAN that the host Ubuntu is on is simple but a few gotchas to look out for.

My Setup:
1. Host VM Ubuntu withd 2 NICs
2. Guest VM XP Pro serving http through IIS
3. Lan with DHCP exist at Host VM level
4. Host VM uses eth0
5. VMware Server

Getting it to work:

For the Network Adapter config for the guest VM select the Bridged Network created during install of VMware server (eth1 in my case since eth0 is assigned to host VM)
On host VM Ubuntu, goto System>Preferences>Network Connections
Edit eth1
Uncheck Available to all users
Goto IPv4 Settings tab
Change method to Link-Local Only
Apply and close
Refresh NICs
Make sure ifconfig does not show an IP address from the subnet of your LAN on eth1
Since guest VM XP is to serve http, it should have a static IP
Goto guest VM
Set TCP/IP for the Local Area Connection to a static IP within the subnet of the LAN
Run ipconfig /refresh in command line
Make sure ipconfig shows the correct IP info just set
Make sure it can connect to internet
Make sure Windows Firewall is not blocking http or port 80 (obvious step but it threw me for a loop for a little while)
Now just check from host VM to see if a test webpage shows up