So apparently php5 out of the Leopard box does not have GD or freetype support turned on. Tried a quickie rebuild of the gd.so dynamic loadlib for preinstalled PHP, but got all sorts of undefined errors when invoked.

So Mike says, get fink and install fresh packages. Well, fink for 10.5 didn’t exist a few days ago. PHP5 is in the "unstable" brach of distributions, building libraries from fink didn’t always look back to see what other libraries were already installed (e.g., fink install pnglib2 followed by fink install gd2 , gd2 continued to look for pnglib in /usr/X11 ).

So I went back to good old install from source into /usr/local. configured, maked, and installed libjpge-6, libpng, libfreetype, libgd. Then looked at the phpinfo for sample config for php. Saw something like this

/SourceCache/apache_mod_php/apache_mod_php-44/php/configure’ ‘–prefix=/usr’ ‘–mandir=/usr/share/man’ ‘–infodir=/usr/share/info’ ‘–disable-dependency-tracking’ ‘–with-apxs2=/usr/sbin/apxs’ ‘–with-ldap=/usr’ ‘–with-kerberos=/usr’ ‘–enable-cli’ ‘–with-zlib-dir=/usr’ ‘–enable-trans-sid’ ‘–with-xml’ ‘–enable-exif’ ‘–enable-ftp’ ‘–enable-mbstring’ ‘–enable-mbregex’ ‘–enable-dbx’ ‘–enable-sockets’ ‘–with-iodbc=/usr’ ‘–with-curl=/usr’ ‘–with-config-file-path=/etc’ ‘–sysconfdir=/private/etc’ ‘–with-mysql-sock=/var/mysql’ ‘–with-mysqli=/usr/bin/mysql_config’ ‘–with-mysql=/usr’ ‘–with-openssl’ ‘–with-xmlrpc’ ‘–with-xsl=/usr’ ‘–without-pear’

Wanted to be sure we had all the right compiler flags for universal builds. See http://developer.apple.com/technotes/tn2005/tn2137.html so we add

MACOSX_DEPLOYMENT_TARGET=10.5 CFLAGS="-arch ppc -arch ppc64 -arch i386 -arch x86_64 -g -Os  -pipe -no-cpp-precomp" CCFLAGS="-arch ppc -arch ppc64 -arch i386 -arch x86_64 -g -Os  -pipe" CXXFLAGS="-arch ppc -arch ppc64 -arch i386 -arch x86_64 -g -Os  -pipe" LDFLAGS="-arch ppc -arch ppc64 -arch i386 -arch x86_64 -bind_at_load" 

and I want to enable built-in true type font support, so I add –enable-gd-native-ttf

yielding

MACOSX_DEPLOYMENT_TARGET=10.5 CFLAGS="-arch ppc -arch ppc64 -arch i386 -arch x86_64 -g -Os  -pipe -no-cpp-precomp" CCFLAGS="-arch ppc -arch ppc64 -arch i386 -arch x86_64 -g -Os  -pipe" CXXFLAGS="-arch ppc -arch ppc64 -arch i386 -arch x86_64 -g -Os  -pipe" LDFLAGS="-arch ppc -arch ppc64 -arch i386 -arch x86_64 -bind_at_load" ./configure –prefix=/usr –mandir=/usr/share/man –infodir=/usr/share/info –disable-dependency-tracking –with-apxs2=/usr/sbin/apxs –with-ldap=/usr –with-kerberos=/usr –enable-cli –with-zlib-dir=/usr –enable-trans-sid –with-xml –enable-exif –enable-ftp –enable-mbstring –enable-mbregex –enable-dbx –enable-sockets –enable-gd-native-ttf –with-iodbc=/usr –with-curl=/usr –with-config-file-path=/etc –sysconfdir=/private/etc –with-mysql-sock=/var/mysql –with-mysqli=/usr/local/mysql/bin/mysql_config –with-mysql=/usr/local/mysql –with-openssl –with-xmlrpc –with-xsl=/usr –without-pear

But when it became time to compile, it failed, because the libmysql installed from the Package didn’t include the right architectures. (just i386).

Tried again, reducing choices down to just i386. Resultant php5.so now fails when apache loads it, again a bad architectures problem

So, now we download mysql source and recompile (with all the flags), and the try php build again.

This time it almost worked, but no php was looking for libmysql in /usr/local/mysql/lib/mysql , thanks to an errant –prefix= somwehere. Rather than fix it right, I just made an alias. PHP and APACHE started!

But the graphs and such still fail.

Turns out, I missed these two important points

1. Using modified php.ini file that forced load og a gd.so built (incorrectly) days ago, and so newly compiled GD support was ignored
2. Didn’t actually have built-in GD support turned on anyway. Need to specify –with-gd , And with-jpeg-dir=/usr/locak and with-freetype-dir=/usr local

 So, final config for php is

MACOSX_DEPLOYMENT_TARGET=10.5 CFLAGS="-arch ppc -arch ppc64 -arch i386 -arch x86_64 -g -Os  -pipe -no-cpp-precomp" CCFLAGS="-arch ppc -arch ppc64 -arch i386 -arch x86_64 -g -Os  -pipe" CXXFLAGS="-arch ppc -arch ppc64 -arch i386 -arch x86_64 -g -Os  -pipe" LDFLAGS="-arch ppc -arch ppc64 -arch i386 -arch x86_64 -bind_at_load" ./configure –prefix=/usr –mandir=/usr/share/man –infodir=/usr/share/info –disable-dependency-tracking –with-apxs2=/usr/sbin/apxs –with-ldap=/usr –with-kerberos=/usr –enable-cli –with-zlib-dir=/usr –enable-trans-sid –with-xml –enable-exif –enable-ftp –enable-mbstring –enable-mbregex –enable-dbx –enable-sockets –enable-gd-native-ttf –with-iodbc=/usr –with-curl=/usr –with-config-file-path=/etc –sysconfdir=/private/etc –with-mysql-sock=/var/mysql –with-mysqli=/usr/local/mysql/bin/mysql_config –with-mysql=/usr/local/mysql –with-openssl –with-xmlrpc –with-xsl=/usr –without-pear –with-gd –with-jpeg-dir=/usr/local –with-freetype-dir=/usr/local

 And by golly, it all works!

 On paper, this seems easy. Just move 70 GB of images and a dozen database tables to a brand new mac, and we’re done.

Well, not quite…

Step 1: prepare the mac out of the box

This was mostly straight-forward; however, I did a couple of things a little different hoping it would minimize problems down the road.

First, run Setup Assistant and create admin account. called it glcp, just to match what was on original host site. Since all the original files were owned by this user, it seemed a nice convention.

Now tricky part: files will be transferred by rsyc, which preserves UIDs and GIDs. So, I needed to create a new group (glcp) and give it and the glcp user the same numeric IDs found on the original host (uid=56774, gid=199976).

Changing the UID for glcp was easy, using System Preferences=>Accounts=>Advanced, as was assigning the primary group ID. But I still needed to create a group that matched. So, open terminal and type

sudo dscl . -create /Groups/glcp gid 199976

Step 2: Reconfigure web services, part 1

The Mac will run Apache and php right out of the box; however, not quite the way we want it.

First, create new top level folder /landscape . Everything (code, HTML, data) will go here. Set owner and group to glcp:glcp

Now, edit /etc/apache2/httpd.conf:

• uncomment #LoadModule php5_module        libexec/apache2/libphp5.so
• change document root to  DocumentRoot "/landscape"
• change <Directory "/Library/WebServer/Documents"> to <Directory "/landscape">
• change     AllowOverride All
• change     DirectoryIndex index.html index.php

Step 3: Set up and populate mySQL

First, download mySQL OS X install package. Install the server and the Startup package.

Out of the box, will only index words >=4 characters. So create a little file /usr/local/mysql/my.cnf and insert these lines

[mysqld]
ft_min_word_len=3

Step 4: Get the code and other files

We can suck up the code from zoo using rsync, but we can’t get everything in one bite, nor do we want everything. Create a text file /Users/glcp/rsync_excludes.txt  of stuff we don’t want

CVS/
INTERNS/
Jamie/
WORKING_FOLDER/
bak/
maintenance/
old_learn/
temp_store/
asset_store/
Archived Images tif/
bulk_store/
learn_dev/

rsync -av –delete –rsh=ssh –exclude-from=/Users/glcp/rsync_excludes.txt –progress glcp@zoo.uvm.edu:/…/uvm.edu/fs/geology/landscape /

Cool, so we’ve got the code. Now the asset_store. Turns out it is too big to get all at once, so we do it folder by folder

rsync -av –delete –rsh=ssh  –progress glcp@zoo.uvm.edu:/…/uvm.edu/fs/geology/landscape/asset_store/00 /landscape/asset_store

It would be nice to script this, but alas, each iteration requires a password, unless one employs SSL keys. But alas, SSL keys don’t work when connecting to zoo, so we need to make the connection from zoo to the mac Mini.

Creating the keys and what-not was gleaned from this document, which hopefully will remain on the web for a while. When following the recipe, consider zoo as the local machine and the mini as the remote machine. Now, we can create a script with commands like this

rsync -av –delete -e "ssh -i /users/g/l/glcp/.ssh/glcp-zoo-key" –progress /:/geology/landscape/asset_store/00 glcp@132.198.xxx.yyy:/landscape/asset_store

I need to work on that script a bit, make it iterate over all exiting asset_store folders.

Took maybe 17 hours to send the 70+ GB of data

Step 5: Edit code

Most of the editing is in global.h.php, changing master paths and URLs. Also, many references the $GLOBALS[’SERVER_NAME’] apparently need to be changed to $_SERVER[’SERVER_NAME’]. Also, need to change path for parser.php in those .htaccess files that contain that reference.

Step 6: test and explore dead-ends

Now we can test, and see what we missed.

The first thing missing was GD graphics support in PHP. Apparently, this doesn’t come with the php distributed with Leopard. We need it to draw maos and graphs. I tried following these instructions (for 64 bit CPUs), which enabled GD support, but the Freetype libraries don’t seem to work, causing severe server errors when drawing text on images.

Another issue is Google Maps interface: complains that the key used is not registered, but probably doesn’t matter since it won’t work without real network connection

And that’s where we sit today. Will try getting a whole new php package using Fink, or maybe even rebuild from source, and try again. 

It is pretty simple — still, it might be worth me writing some documentation.

And too simple, for some: I see two folders there from non-UVM “contributors.” Apparently, I had the default permissions set such that “Everyone” could create folders. I have rescinded that permission, so you may want to try creating yet another new test folder, and then deleting it, just to be sure.

I’m trying to decide how best to manage this server in a sustainable, scalable fashion. Options:

o current method: use a single “admin” username and password (uvcmaps:spamcmvu), and hand that out to designated departmental coordinators to manage their own stuff

o create admin accounts (jbellum, jhenry, pbierman, etc.) for designated departmental coordinators to manage their own stuff

o Appoint a CMAP server czar (me or some TechCat or Account Services) who keeps a single “admin” username and password and creates folders for designated departmental coordinators to manage their own stuff

Current method is simplest, but has a small security concern in that too many people have super powers. If, say, designated departmental coordinator Pat Q Taireristt is fired and leaves UVM in a Huff, Pat could maliciously delete everyones folders unless we change the password and tell all the other designated departmental coordinators.

Creating admin accounts for all designated departmental coordinators allows us to delete Pat’s account, and everyone else is unaffected

But having either one shared or multiple personal accounts, all with root access to the UVM Public CMAP server, could create a “too many cooks” situation: should Academic Computing and the Center for Teaching and Learning each have folders at the top level, or should ACS and CTL have folders inside a top level folder called “Learning Resources?”

Thoughts? Does it really matter?

Like this, for instance…

I also need a link to a movie here, too.

a client asks asked

Cold fusion — well, probably not, since those would require blog.uvm.edu to support ColdFusion, and it does not. But PHP — sure. here’s a link to some examples

http://www.scriptygoddess.com/archives/2002/10/14/individual-entry-and-trackback/

- - - - - -

Sometimes this stuff is easier to do with Wordpress as a blog tool. Pros: it lives in your own public_html folder, which you can access in multiple way, you can hack the php code left and right and write your own functions. Cons: you need to install and configure it yourself, code hacks and modifications require php programming skills.

Script problems and solutions discussed with Sean Dempsey.

Camera 1 knocked out by lightning, zapped all configuration parameters. Reset them, camera back in action.

on July 24, Kurt Schaberg wrote :

The "video server" has about 84 gigabytes free space, so we have plenty of room

UVM NetID "kschaber" has been authorized to create folders and upload files to the video server

There is already a "nursing" folder on the video server, created around Nov 2001 for a previous exercise in on-line nursing videos; however, you may wish to create your own. Call it anything you like, but we prefer names  that help us track down the owners/purpose

You can use the "Secure Shell File Transfer" program to upload your videos (see http://www.uvm.edu/cit/ssh/?Page=./SFTP_Win_SSH.html) to upload your videos (unless, of course, you are using a Macintosh). Connect to zoo.uvm.edu using your kschaber NetID and associated password.

Once connected, go to the "Operation" menu, select "Go To Folder", and go to folder

    /:/video/realserver/videos/

Look for and open the nursing folder, or chose "New Folder" from the Operation. Now find your video on the left-hand window, and drag them to the right-hand window. Also, change the permissions as described in the above referenced URL

If you get stuck, any of the "Dr is In" staff ought to be able to help.

Once the videos are uploaded, you need to create links to them in you WebCT pages. For a given video, say

    "Nurse2be-OBClinical1Reflections493.wmv"

in the folder, say

    "nursing",

the URL (address, link) for the video is then

    http://real.uvm.edu:554/asxgen/nursing/Nurse2be-OBClinical1Reflections493.wmv

Camera hit by lightning, tried to find image that showed strike

Finished LDAP-mediawiki configuration, taught it how to authorize based on LDAP ou, added documentation o same to wiki project log

Script consulting for Rob@CTL (perl and php issues)

Configured image, FTP, admin settings for newest Davis center construction cam location. Reinstated cron scripts to archive images, etc. Added link from Davis Center cameras page

Did a little research on wikis, to see if anything looked much better (criteruim being does it allow people to quickly create "personal" wikis on the fly like wikispaces does). Didn’t find anything notably better.

So, Installed Mediawiki 1.68 on LRG website. 

Then worked on making it use  LDAP  for authentication.

another hour or two wasted over the week filling in these blanks

Got deeper into queries, using both raw SQL and MS Access. MS Access is not fully SQL compliant!!

Worked with Numa and printers and httpd.cong and IP issues

discussed how sharing iTunes at UVM works with karl from library. He’s wondering about narrowcasting podcasts using iTunes sharing technoogy

Web research, watch some Scala promo videos, talked to Kate to clarify options

Checked out the big screens in teh recreation center i the athletic complex. Apparenly

• they contract with outside venor (Matt was going to send me the name, but didn’t)
• Vendor pays them
• vendor inserts ads and other content
• they send content to vendor
• I’m not sure what the ratio of UVM to Vendor content is
• all comes down voa ethernet to black box behind the screen

client asked

Best to use absolute path, so there is no ambiguity

Best to use alias of your script’s folder. In general, any users alias is formed using the convention

    /users/x/y/xyzzzzz

where x is the first letter of the use’rs NetID, y is the second letter of the user’s NetID, and xyzzzzz is the user’s netid.

here’s an example. No issues for me running this in my home directory

#!/usr/local/bin/php
<?
passthru("/users/w/a/waw/mysqltest.pl");
$dog=exec("/usr/bin/date");
print "dog=$dog";
?>

except he meant to run it via http://www.uvm.edu/

I sugegsted he try cgi.uvm.edu — no SAFE mode there

Student asked about 

Long reply:

‘"virtual directory value relative from the root" of my website. ‘ may have several interpretations, and may have different values and meanings depending upon the context and the server environment.

For example, you could use the PHP Magic Constant

    __FILE__

as in

    $virtual_directory_value = dirname( __FILE__ );

Which, in the case say of this script

    http://www.uvm.edu/~waw/archives/dog.php

has the value of

    /…/uvm.edu/fs/rack1e/u/staff/waw/public_html/archives

Which isn’t so much the "virtual directory value relative from the root" as it is the absolute path of the directory containing the script. And, on www.uvm.edu, at least, a value that may change, since sometimes CIT Technical Resources groups shifts users from one physical disk (rack1e above) to another without warning — so beware if you ever hard-code this value in a script as opposed to obtaining it from the Magic Constant.

We have the following other $HTTP_SERVER_VARS

    [SCRIPT_FILENAME] => /users/w/a/waw/public_html/archives/dog.php

    [SCRIPT_URI] => http://www.uvm.edu/~waw/archives/dog.php

    [SCRIPT_URL] => /~waw/archives/dog.php

    [REQUEST_URI] => /~waw/archives/dog.php

    [SCRIPT_NAME] => /~waw/archives/dog.php

$HTTP_SERVER_VARS[SCRIPT_FILENAME] is a preferred alternative to Magic Constant __FILE__, as it returns a fixed alias for the absolute path name of the script. In general, any users alias is formed using the convention

    /users/x/y/xyzzzzz

where x is the first letter of the use’rs NetID, y is the second letter of the user’s NetID, and xyzzzzz is the user’s netid. But again, such conventions are only needed if and when you have to hard-code such a value in a script (usually when you are using some package like older versions of phpBB or wordpress or mediawiki that cat figure it out themselves).

I expect SCRIPT_FILENAME is what you think you are looking for. Then

$spaw_dir = '/spaw/';

$spaw_root = $HTTP_SERVER_VARS['DOCUMENT_ROOT'].$spaw_dir;

Becomes

$spaw_dir = '/spaw/';

$spaw_root = dirname($HTTP_SERVER_VARS['SCRIPT_FILENAME ']).$spaw_dir;

But now let’s put that in the context of the uvmsnow site. If your spaw code lives here

    /users/u/v/uvmsnow/public_html/spaw

and the code you want to have USE spaw is here

    /users/u/v/uvmsnow/public_html/admin

Then the code in, say, admin/demo.php that reads

    $spaw_dir = '/spaw/';

    $spaw_root = dirname($HTTP_SERVER_VARS['SCRIPT_FILENAME ']).$spaw_dir;

    include $spaw_root.'spaw_control.class.php';

tries to include "/users/u/v/uvmsnow/public_html/admin/spaw/"

But that ain’t right — unless you put a copy of /spaw/ in admin. But then ,if you want to use spew from code in another folder, you have to do the same thing. Messy.

So, you could do something funky like this

    $spaw_dir = '/spaw/';    $spaw_root = $HTTP_SERVER_VARS[’SCRIPT_FILENAME’];    $i=0;    while (!file_exists($spaw_root.$spaw_dir) && $i < 10) {        $i++;        $spaw_root =dirname($spaw_root);    }    $spaw_root.=$spaw_dir;    include $spaw_root.’spaw_control.class.php’;

The $i helps to keep the loop in check in case of typos, missing folders, etc.

Finished art lab. It all works like a charm - so far. Talked to Bill, he said Nancy and Tom would be trying stuff out soon. Dunno if all the printers will work, and there is the issue of yet another scanner, I think but all should be solvable. Still need to configure the loadsets a bit for ART and CMD differences.

Took a look at the big screen near cook commons

• no one sure who installed it
• has a locked case for the DVD player, but o one knows where the key is
• has no room for a PC. Maybe a mac Mini or laptop
• has no network connection
• manual?
• remote control
• Can’t see the connections on the back
• Can’t get to the connections on the back

Discussed with Kate and RogerW (limited) possibilites for providing it with programming. Need to investigate more software/hardware options

Started instaling, testing, using RadMind to configure Art Lab. Testing highly focused on Macromedia Dreamweaver, which consistently fails in the CMD. Son of a gun, it works great in Williams 414, on G4s, Gs, and dual G5s. So what’s wrong with the library? I dunno. Maybe I should reimage those machines. Anyway, brought  a few machines up to base level, then starting installing Art-specific stuff for their scanners, and Macroedia Director, too.

Keeping watch on the interns

Mentoring the programming interns

Colleauge had troubles amking wiki go. I found solutions (bad version of LocalSettings.php).

Meeting to discuss new LMS proposal.

reviewed my own notes to prepare for Kate’s questions:

Will reported that Microsoft apps were acting up again (the corrupt font issue). Fixed, for the moment.

Finally finished the Dublic Core mappings document. See here (well, if you have the right NetID!).

Introduce Carol to the software downloads database, cocoamysql, some simple relational queries.

Defined problem of using MEOW with our MovableType installation

Assisted ccaldwel with copule of outstanding Mac configuration issues

helped FCS debug issues with latest Oracle Calndar clients for MacBook Pro

met with tuna and ilan to bang out final revisions./instructions/methods for debateoneworld.org web site.

remembering what I did last week.

Spent some considerable time researching the question for asnider, can we convert .rm file to .mp4 files directly, with MacOSX Answer appears to be yes, with ffmpegx and some caveats (no intel mac support, as of yet).