Hopefully it will be useful to someone.

I was getting the following error:
apxs:Error: Activation failed for custom /etc/apache2/httpd.conf file..
apxs:Error: At least one `LoadModule' directive already has to exist..
make: *** [install-sapi] Error 1

As you can see the assumption is that Apache’s httpd.conf contains at least one LoadModule directive. This is reasonable for Apache 1.3 but with the latest stable Debian Apache 2 package (which I’ve avoided using for far too long) there is a new fangled layout where httpd.conf has been sidelined (it is there but 0 bytes) in favour of a nice and logically organised config file system. I’m not sure if this is standard or the ‘debain way’ but it’s what I’ve got to work with.

Whatever, the fix is easy: simply trick the php build script that there is a directive there. It’s also commented out so we don’t annoy Apache next time we restart:

echo "
#LoadModule foo_module /usr/lib/apache2/modules/foo.so" > /etc/apache2/httpd.conf

(the line break after the opening quote is important so we get a blank line in the file).

Works for me.

pkill wasn’t cutting it so I quickly put this together which kills all of the processes containing the term ‘mysql’ in them when doing a ps ax.

for FOO in `ps ax | grep mysql | grep -v grep | awk '{print $1}'`; do kill -9 $FOO; done

I’ve recently done quite a lot of javascript DOM work for a site including some AJAX stuff and whilst it was a pleasure to develop in Firefox using Firebug, I’m now getting “it doesn’t work” errors with IE 7 and I need something more. A bit of Googling comes up with a couple of useful links here and here which looked like good advice, so I followed it thus:

Fire up IE7

Tools -> Internet Options -> Advanced: Disable script debugging (Internet Explorer) is ticked, untick it.

Restart IE.

Right click on the menu bar area and enable the Menu bar (mine was hidden anyway) then go to
View -> Script Debugger -> Open.

If you don’t get a pop-up asking you to choose a debugger (I didn’t) then you need to install the Microsoft script editor which comes with MS Office (weirdly).

Just to check, Windows-key and F should bring up a search, look for MSE7.exe if you don’t have it (I didn’t) put your office CD in and run setup. Under office tools -> HTML Tools -> Web scripting -> Web debugging, right click and select “Run from my computer”.

Restart IE.

View -> Script Debugger -> Open should now give you your pop-up, yay!

Now you can open your page in IE and make it break, when it does you shoudl get a “Do you want to debug” message. Yes we do so a press of ‘Yes’ gives us the same pop-up, selecting the Script editor allows us to do things other than just adding alerts() everywhere. For example we can pause the interpreter, step over each line, add watches and other normal debug things.

In conjunction with the View DOM option in the IE 7 developers toolbar IE almost doesn’t suck so much now.

Using the debugger doesn’t automatically fix your code, though.

Refererences:

http://erik.eae.net/archives/2005/07/04/21.49.50/
http://www.jonathanboutelle.com/mt/archives/2006/01/howto_debug_jav.html

p.s. I only tried the other debugger option once, it didn’t look all that so I stopped using it.

Works for me, etc.

[code]#!/bin/sh

# Darren Beale - siftware.co.uk
# bealers@gmail.com

# Oct 06
# v0.2

# This simple script creates a folder structure
# containing /trunk /tags and /branches. It then places the
# contents of a folder specified by the user into the trunk,
# creates a subversion repository and imports the code.

# Use as you see fit

## change me
SVN_PASSWD_FILE=”/etc/subversion/passwd”
SVN_REALM=”SIFTWARE”
SVN_SERVER=”shrek”

if [ `id -u` != 0 ]; then
echo “You need to be root to run this script”
exit 1;
fi

echo
echo “You now need to enter the FULL path to the source code that you will be importing.”
echo “After importing the folder will be renamed but otherwise untouched.”
echo “Note: that the *contents* of this folder will be placed into the trunk for the new project.”
echo
echo -n “Path: ”
read SOURCE_PATH
echo

if [ ! -d $SOURCE_PATH ]; then

echo “That directory does not exist, exiting…”
exit 1;
fi

echo -n “Please enter the name of the repository that you would like to create: “;
read REPOSITORY_NAME

echo
echo “Copying source code”
cd /tmp
mkdir $REPOSITORY_NAME
cd $REPOSITORY_NAME
mkdir trunk tags branches
cd trunk
cp -Rp $SOURCE_PATH/* .

echo
echo “Renaming $SOURCE_PATH”
mv $SOURCE_PATH $SOURCE_PATH.pre.svn

echo
echo “Creating repository”

svnadmin create –fs-type fsfs /export/svn/$REPOSITORY_NAME

echo “[general]
password-db = $SVN_PASSWD_FILE
realm = $SVN_REALM”> /export/svn/$REPOSITORY_NAME/conf/svnserve.conf

cd /export/svn
chown -R svn:svn $REPOSITORY_NAME
find $REPOSITORY_NAME -type d -exec chmod 2770 \{\} \;

echo
echo “Importing…..”
cd /tmp/$REPOSITORY_NAME
/usr/bin/svn import . file:///export/svn/$REPOSITORY_NAME/

echo
echo “Done.”
echo
echo “You can Ctrl-D now, cd to your sandbox and checkout your project by typing:”
echo “svn co svn://$SVN_SERVER/$REPOSITORY_NAME/trunk $REPOSITORY_NAME”
echo
[/code]

So I get to the last one, copy the database over and do the normal mysql import along the lines of:

[code]mysql -ufoo -pbar database_name < database_name.sql[/code]

Errors++

Turns out the Donke^H^H^H^HDeveloper who built the application didn't care about things like reserved words or spaces in the table and field names. Check out this example of a table, made up but containing valid examples:

[mysql]
CREATE TABLE Site-Password (
# ^^^^^^^^^^^^^ HYPHEN and RESERVED WORD
Name of AdviceClient varchar(255) default NULL,
# ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ SPACES
Date - TEXT varchar(50) default NULL,
# ^^^^^^^^^^^ TWO RESERVED WORDS!, SPACES and HYPHEN
MeetingDate datetime default NULL,
NextMeetingDate datetime default NULL,
Advice Type - 1 varchar(255) default 'Initial Interview',
# ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ SPACES, HYPHEN
KEY Key Carer (Key Carer),
# ^^^^^^^^^ RESERVED WORD and SPACES (Genius)
#
);[/mysql]

Anyway, I got it working in the end by hosting it on it’s own virtual server, with *exactly* the same version of MySQL (4.0.17) and using the mysqldump flag –quote-names.

Reckon I lost 4 hours on that.

For example to tar up the contents of /var/log but to exclude /var/log/apache & /var/log/mail/

tar -jcvf logfiles.tar.bz2 /var/log/* --exclude=/var/log/apache/* --exclude=/var/log/mail/*

Just in case you didn’t already know then the ‘j’ flag in the ‘jcvf’ tells tar to use bzip2 compression.

[perl]#!/usr/bin/perl -w
use strict;

my $dumpDir = “/tmp/foo”;
my $dumpUser= “root”;
my $mysqlBin = “/usr/local/mysql/bin”;
my $mysqlPassword = “bar”;

foreach (`ls -F /usr/local/mysql/var`)
{
if (/\//)
{
chomp;
s/\/$//; # remove the trailing / now
my $dumpFile = “$dumpDir/$_.sql”;
my $dumpCommand = “$mysqlBin/mysqldump -celqF –password=$mysqlPassword $_ > $dumpFile”;
system $dumpCommand; # or warn “mysqlDump of $_ failed”;
}
}[/perl]

Works for me.

Outputs
a
b
c
d
e
f

[code]:%s/127\.0\.0\.1/10\.0\.0\.1/g[/code]

if you mess it up then press u for undo. Of course if it’s an important file then back it up first.