Ulyssesonline

the tech surfer

Archives for July 2009

Faxzero

I send about a dozen faxes a month. I thought about having my own fax machine and separate phone line, but the amount of fax I send each month didn’t merit buying a fax machine, buying extra supplies and paying for an extra phone line.

So, I’ve decided to find a cheaper solution. Perhaps, something for free. A quick Google search did the trick for me. I found FaxZero.com several months ago. Now, I send my faxes electronically via web for FREE.

Faxzero allows me to send two faxes a day. The only catch is, there is a 3 page limit, and the fax comes with an ad which I don’t mind at all. Sending a premium fax will cost me $1.99 payable through Paypal. Still, not bad. Premium fax contains no ads, a 15 page limit and priority delivery.

Try Faxzero!

Remove Apache, Install Lighttpd

I was asked in my previous post as to why I installed the popular Apache web server instead of lighttpd, a fast and highly optimized web server with a small footprint. If you need enough convincing, Youtube, Wikipedia and Meebo all use the lighttpd web server. Well, if you asked for it, you’ll going to get it. This article is a how-to in removing Apache and replacing it with the lighttpd web server.

Remove Apache

sudo apt-get remove apache2

Remove Apache from startup

sudo update-rc.d -f apache2 remove

Install lighttpd

sudo apt-get install lighttpd

Install PHP-5 and modules

sudo apt-get install php5-cgi php5-mysql php5-curl php5-gd php5-idn php-pear php5-imagick php5-imap php5-mcrypt php5-memcache php5-mhash php5-ming php5-ps php5-pspell php5-recode php5-snmp php5-sqlite php5-tidy php5-xmlrpc php5-xsl

Edit php.ini and set cgi.fix_pathinfo to 1

sudo vi /etc/php5/cgi/php.ini

Set cgi.fix_pathinfo = 1

Add lighttpd user

sudo useradd -d /home/lighttpd -m -s /bin/bash lighttpd

Add lighttpd group

sudo groupadd lighttpd

Set mod_fastcgi and mod_rewrite

sudo vi /etc/lighttpd/lighttpd.conf

Uncomment the following lines:

"mod_fastcgi",
"mod_rewrite",
Add FastCGI</strong>
fastcgi.server = ( ".php" => ((
"bin-path" => "/usr/bin/php5-cgi",
"socket" => "/tmp/php.socket",
"max-procs" => 1,
"bin-environment" => (
"PHP_FCGI_CHILDREN" => "4",
"PHP_FCGI_MAX_REQUESTS" => "1000"
),
)))

Set file permissions to log files

sudo chown -R lighttpd:lighttpd /var/log/lighttpd/error.log
sudo chown -R lighttpd:lighttpd /var/log/lighttpd/access.log

Set WordPress Permalinks

sudo vi /etc/lighttpd/lighttpd.conf 
server.error-handler-404 = "/index.php"

Restart lighttpd web server

sudo /etc/init.d/lighttpd force-reload
or 
sudo /etc/init.d/lightttpd restart

Install LAMP on Ubuntu Desktop

My development server is old. You’ll get a chuckle when you see the specs. It runs on a 400Mhz Pentium II CPU with a 128MB RAM and a 40GB drive. This old relic still manages to run Apache, MySQL, PHP and a local DNS. The server has also gone through 4 Ubuntu upgrades from version 7.04 to 9.04. After each upgrade, pages that require MySQL and PHP have slowed down considerably.

You guessed it. It’s about time to move to another machine. So, I’ve decided to install AMP minus the L (Linux) since we are already installing it on the Ubuntu Desktop. The following tutorial will show you how to install Apache, MySQL, PHP as well as the MySQL admin tool called PhpMyAdmin. Let’s get started:

Install Apache

sudo apt-get install apache2

Install PHP. Restart Apache

sudo apt-get install php5
sudo /etc/init.d/apache2 restart

Install MySQL

sudo apt-get install mysql-server
sudo apt-get install libapache2-mod-auth-mysql
sudo apt-get install php5-mysql

Finally PhpMyAdmin
sudo apt-get install phpmyadmin

You’ll be asked to provide passwords on the MySQL and PhpMyAdmin installations. There are a couple of minor tweaks you have to do to make sure the applications are working properly. First, make sure the MySQL extension is set in PHP. Restart Apache again after you make your changes.

MySQL Extension. Restart Apache

sudo vi /etc/php5/apache2/php.ini
extension=mysql.so
sudo /etc/init.d/apache2 restart

Now, open your Firefox browser, and type `localhost` in the address bar. If you see “It Works!,” that means the installation was successful. One final thing before you go, I installed WordPress and the installation was a success, except for the mod_rewrite which wasn’t working if you try to use the permalinks feature. To make the permalinks feature work, first you’ll need to create a .htaccess file and make it writable. Next, turn on mod_rewrite module.

Mod Rewrite

cd /var/www/
touch .htaccess
chmod 777 .htaccess
sudo a2enmod rewrite

Lastly, make sure AllowOverride is set to All. Edit the file:

sudo vi /etc/apache2/sites-available/default

Allow Override

<Directory /var/www/>
Options Indexes FollowSymLinks MultiViews
AllowOverride All
Order allow,deny
allow from all
</Directory>

Restart Apache

sudo /etc/init.d/apache2 restart

RecordMyDesktop

RecordMyDesktop is one of my favorite applications in my Ubuntu desktop. It allows me to record a video of my desktop or just a portion of my desktop. I can use RecordMyDesktop for instructional videos, tutorials or just about any video project I want to capture on my screen. Installing the application is a breeze. You can use the Synaptic Package Manager and search for “RecordMyDesktop.” If you prefer the Terminal, you can install RecordMyDesktop by typing the following:

apt-get install recordmydesktop

RecordMyDesktop contains many options and switches. You can specify height, width, video quality, bitrate, audio quality, and delay. Delay is a nice feature to position the capture screen before recording can begin. You can view all the options of RecordMyDesktop by typing –help from the terminal:

recordmydesktop –help

Here is a screen capture at 450x300px, 10 second delay in ogv format.

recordmydesktop -width 450 -height 300 -delay 10 -o sample.ogv

Red Hat Joins S&P 500

Red Hat is set to join the Standard & Poor’s 500 this coming Friday, July 24, 2009. Red Hat joined Nasdaq in 1999 and then moved over to the NYSE in 2006. As a testament of Red Hat increasing role in business servers, the NYSE started using Red Hat servers themselves in 2008 for their trading operations. Despite the global economic crisis, Red Hat continues to impress posting revenue of $174 million this past year. Red Hat recent quarter netted $18 million net income.

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