Understanding the Dream

It's pretty annoying to me that the latest version of phpMyAdmin requires PHP 5.2, which as some of you may know, is NOT installed on CentOS 5 by default. Instead, you have to use scary-looking RPM's with the word "testing" in them. So... to remove some of the scaryness/complexity of installing PHP 5.2 on CentOS 5 for use with phpMyAdmin, I've written down the following steps that makes the upgrade process pretty easy.

1. First install the yum-priorities package. This enables you to specify which repo you want yum to prioritize when it's checking for updates.
   
   # yum -y install yum-priorities
   
   
2. Next, you'll want to add the scary "CentOS 5 Testing" repository to your listof repo's for YUM to check. You can do that by adding the contents of THIS FILE to your own /etc/yum.conf. I just copied and pasted the contents of that file to the very bottom of my yum.conf and it worked fine.
   
   
3. Now you should be able to perform a PHP upgrade with YUM by specifying that you want to use the "testing" server as a priority:
   
   # yum --enablerepo=c5-testing upgrade php
   
   or... if you haven't installed PHP yet:
   
   # yum --enablerepo=c5-testing -y install php
   
   
4. You will probably also want to install the following modules for use with phpMyAdmin:
   
   # yum --enablerepo=c5-testing -y install php-mysql php-mcrypt php-mbstring
   
   
5. After you're done installing/upgrading php and all required modules, don't forget to give Apache a quick restart so your upgrades take effect:
   
   # /etc/init.d/httpd restart

Just recently I installed a second HD into my Ubuntu machine at work. I had created a LOT of VirtualBox Virtual Machines for testing the Railo installers on Windows and various other versions of Linux, and this was taking up the majority of my space on my main drive. To fix this, I installed a second drive (another 250GB) and moved over all my VirtualBox files to this second drive. Once I did that, I created a symlink from my home ".VirtualBox" directory to the directory that was on my second drive.

The default behavior for Unbuntu 10.04 is to not mount a drive until you click on it in your "Places" menu. That's generally fine for me and for most other folks, but annoying when I have things I use frequently on there. I want this second drive to always be mounted so I can use it whenever I want without having to click on it first. Other reasons compelled me to do this, like the fact that I had a desktop app icon mapped to this drive and it wouldn't show up unless I mounted the drive. Silly.

Here are the steps I took to mount the drive by default every time I rebooted my Ubuntu Desktop:

1. First, create a directory to mount the second drive. I put mine in /media/driveshare:
   
   $ sudo mkdir /media/driveshare
   
2. Next, you'll need to know your drive's system label. You can see that using the FDISK tool:
   
   $ sudo fdisk -l
   
   Here are my results:
   ---------------------
   Disk /dev/sda: 250.1 GB, 250059350016 bytes
   255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 30401 cylinders
   Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes
   Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
   I/O size (minimum/optimal): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
   Disk identifier: 0x000d4017
   
      Device Boot      Start         End      Blocks   Id  System
   /dev/sda1               1       30401   244196001   83  Linux
   
   Disk /dev/sdb: 250.1 GB, 250059350016 bytes
   255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 30401 cylinders
   Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes
   Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
   I/O size (minimum/optimal): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
   Disk identifier: 0x000ebf9b
   
      Device Boot      Start         End      Blocks   Id  System
   /dev/sdb1               1       29164   234259798+  83  Linux
   /dev/sdb2           29165       30401     9936202+   5  Extended
   /dev/sdb5           29165       30401     9936171   82  Linux swap / Solaris
   -----------------------
   
   You can see my set up is a bit unusual. My main drive appears to be on "sdb" and my "extra" drive appears to be "sda". You can tell by which drive has the swap partition. This probably has to do with how I plugged them into the motherboard. So... in my case, I will need to mount "sda1" to my "/media/driveshare" folder.
   
3. Create a backup of your FSTAB file, just to be on the safe side:
   
   $ sudo cp /etc/fstab /etc/fstab.bak
   
4. Now edit your FSTAB file with your preferred editor. I like "vim":
   
   $ sudo vim /etc/fstab
   
5. ...and add your system's equivalent to the following line:
   
   /dev/sda1 /media/driveshare ext3 defaults 0 0
   
   Note that I specified my filesystem as EXT3. You will need to change this if you formatted using a different file system. I think the default in Ubuntu 10.04 is EXT4, but using EXT4 with VirtualBox caused an annoying error to pop-up, so I simply used EXT3 when I formatted this particular drive.
   
6. After that, you can reload your FSTAB with the following command:
   
   $ sudo mount -a

Do you see your drive mounted? Unmount it (by right-clicking it and selecting "unmount"), and try the above command again. If it's mounted, then you're all set!

UPDATE: I've tested and this works great on Ubuntu 11.04 as well. Doesn't look like anything has changed in recent releases.

For those who are not yet members of the Railo-Beta list (http://groups.google.com/group/railo-beta), know that the Patch Level 1 Release Candidate for the 3.1.2.001 Railo installer is now available for testing. Features include full IIS6 support, better IIS7 support, a new OSX beta version, FusionReactor trial install, and many other usability enhancements that should make getting up and running on Railo a snap.

The initial PL1 release was announced here:

http://groups.google.com/group/railo-beta/browse_thread/thread/d0087715afb042a0 and included the following change log:

3.1.2.001-pl1 Patch Notes:
--------------------------
- [NEW] IIS6 Is now fully supported on Windows Server 2003
- [NEW] IIS7 Is now properly supported on Windows 7 machines
- [NEW] IIS7/IIS6 now set "index.cfm" as a default document option
- [NEW] Windows 64-bit is now available
- [BUGFIX] Windows 32-bit Installer will now auto-detect 64-bit machines
and will install the 64-bit connector when being installed on a 64-bit
version of Windows. This is true for both IIS6 and IIS7. This avoids the
  "LoadLibraryEx" failure in IIS if a 32-bit connector has been
installed on a 64-bit version of IIS.
- [UPDATE] The Tomcat connector has been upgraded from version 1.2.28 to
1.2.30 (latest as of this release)
- [UPDATE] The Tomcat Engine has been upgraded from version 6.0.20 to
6.0.26 (latest as of this release)
- [UPDATE] Source code in the Java JDK has been removed in order to
reduce the size of the installers by approximately 20 MB. The installers
now hover around the 100MB range. More rarely-used aspects of the JDK
that ships with the installer may be removed at a later date in order to
reduce the download size even more.
--------------------------

However, beta testers reported several show-stopping problems and incompatibilities with certain set-ups. Like, for example, having the IIS6 compatibility modules installed in IIS7. Those issues have been addressed now, and several additional features have been added to the PL1 release. Many of the additional features were added by Bilal Soylu. Bilal approached Railo offering to help build easy-to-use installers and we began to work together to improve the installers that I had been working on. He's proven to be an extremely valuable assett to the team and we're blessed to have his help.

With the initial PL1 problems fixed, and with some usability features added, I'm hoping the latest PL1 release will finally be ready to go.

If you'd like to help out in testing them, the beta download site is here:
http://clubwheat.viviotech.net/beta/

and the release notes for the latest RC3 release are as follows:

--------------------------
- [NEW] OSX - A new OSX build is now available for BETA testing. (bilal)
- [NEW] All OS's - FusionReactor can now be installed automatically as
part of the install package (jordan)
- [NEW] All OS's - In-Use Port Detection has been added and improved in
for Tomcat and FusionReactor. (bilal,jordan)
- [NEW] All OS's - Multi-Language is now supported (bilal)
- [NEW] All OS's - A German Translation has been added (bilal)
- [NEW] All OS's - The final screen of the installer now prompts you if
you'd like to open up the Railo Administrator. (bilal)
- [NEW] Windows - The installer now tests for required IIS modules and
gives you a notice if you don't have them installed. It still allows you
to *try* to install, but if you want the connector part of the installer
to work, then you need to install the required IIS modules. (jordan)
- [NEW] Windows - 64-bit and 32-bit Windows installers have been merged
into a single installer. The Windows installer will now auto-detect the
OS bit-type that it's being installed on, and run the appropriate
methods for that bit-type. The idea was to make the install simple to
the extreme. The Linux installers will remain separate for the time
being. (bilal)
- [NEW] Windows - A Notice has been included for WinXP installs stating
that it's not officially supported. (bilal)
- [Update] Windows - The JDK has been replaced with a simple JVM for
Windows installs. The JDK was more then most folks needed, and switching
to the simple JVM allowed for a smaller installer. (bilal)
--------------------------

Thank you for your interest and we look forward to hearing your experiences!

When working with ColdFusion on Linux, you may encounter a situation where you want to make the contents of the CFIDE folder available to all sites that are hosted on that server. The reason you might want to do this is for things like CFFORM to work properly on a host that doesn't physically have the CFIDE directory located in that site.

The solution for this is an Apache Alias. Add an alias to the Apache httpd.conf file similar to this:

Alias /CFIDE /var/apache/htdocs/CFIDE/
Alias /cfide /var/apache/htdocs/CFIDE/

Adjust the second path to actually point to where your primary CFIDE folder is located. It's usually your default site, but it can be changed during the install.

Further, for best security practices, take a look at Pete Freitag's guide to locking down the CFIDE directory. The PDF file he provides offers cusotm apache configs for locking down unused CFIDE services and thus lowering the attack surface that bad guys might use to access your box:

http://www.petefreitag.com/item/758.cfm