I used to use a 2 command 1 liner to update my system: sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get dist-upgrade That was easy enough to type out now and then. But over time it grew to include removing and cleaning downloaded packages as well. Then there’s the matter of knowing if an update requires a system restart. The lazy me put it all into one bash script and made it globally accessible and executable:

Something changed recently, preventing a VM from fully provisioning. Tracking it down was a bit of a PiTA. OS: CentOS 6.9 Ruby: 2.4 - installed from source with the gearlingguy.ruby ansible role Gems to be installed: sass Output of attempting to install the sass ruby gem: $ sudo gem install sass Fetching: rb-fsevent-0.10.2.gem (100%) Successfully installed rb-fsevent-0.10.2 Fetching: ffi-1.9.21.gem (100%) Building native extensions. This could take a while... ERROR: Error installing sass: ERROR: Failed to build gem native extension.

This tweet has to have been the most popular thing I have ever said. At time of posting it has gained 80 retweets, 25 favourites and many replies/questions. Work recently bought me a new workstation, so the 1st thing I always do is to dual boot with Ubuntu. Some might consider me an edge case user. Though as a developer, I like a rather particular set-up. That is, 3 wide screen monitors with the central one rotated 90 degrees for my IDE.

Example user ‘iain’ sudo mkdir -p /chroot/iain/home/iain sudo useradd -M -d /home/iain iain sudo passwd iain sudo chwon iain: /chroot/iain/home/iain sudo nano -w /etc/ssh/sshd_config # At the end of the file, add: Match User paypoint ChrootDirectory /chroot/iain AllowTCPForwarding no X11Forwarding no ForceCommand internal-sftp sudo /etc/init.d/ssh restart

If, like me, you can’t wait for Ubuntu 12.04.1 to be released, you can force an upgrade of your favourite OS OS. sudo apt-get update; sudo do-release-upgrade -d If you are going from the previous LTS 10.04, then the -d is important. Otherwise there would be no upgrade to offer. The upgrade process should go smoothly enough. Except for when it comes to the kernel. Bytemark VM’s make use of kernels that sit outside of the VM itself.

Further to my original quick db update queries, I found the need for a more in-depth approach. A WordPress site my father works on has weekly backups, but he wanted to see that they actually worked. To do so, I set up a subdomain vhost on my bytemark server and set about getting the back to work with it. One of the most annoying/lazy/strange things about WordPress is that it uses serialised arrays within database fields.

Current project requires a couple of VPN tunnels to be set up. An IPsec and a PPTP. The IPsec will wait for another day, the PPTP is set up and ready to go. One thing that wasn’t quite right with the tunnel though, is the static route created by PPTP missed out a large chunk of the server’s network. Starting the tunnel sets up the routing rule of 192.168.100.111 to be sent to the tunnel.

Web server: Linux (Ubuntu on my dev setup), Apache, PHP 5.3, Symfony 1.4, Doctrine 1.2. Database server: Microsoft Windows 2008 Server, MS SQL Server Trying to get Symfony to talk to the database server has been a painful experience for the last few days. But perseverance has paid off. Lots of Googling with trial & error has resulted in actually achieving a development setup that will mirror the eventual production setup.

Via the Ubuntu Software Centre: Search for thunderbird Click on the search result “Thunderbird Email” and then on the “More Info” button Enable at least the “Calendar Extension for Thunderbird - Google Calendar support (xul-ext-gdata-provider)” Install the add-ons Open your Google Calendar in your web browser In the left-hand column, under “My calendars”, hover over the calendar of choice and click the down arrow that appears after the calendar name Select “Calendar settings” Close to the bottom of the page will be the “Calendar ID” (in my case it is my full email address.

This list is partly to remind myself what essential apps need to be reinstalled after a system wipe. But it does have me thinking, what do other web developers use on a daily basis? Web browsers: Google Chrome FireFox IE Opera Safari FireFox addons: Adblock Plus British English Dictionary ColorZilla Dummy Lipsum Firebug Html Validator Web Developer Xmarks Code editing: PhpEd Eclipse PDT TextPad vim Code tools: SQLyog WinMerge System tools:

Installed Ubuntu 10.04 from ISO onto a blank virtual box machine. All worked well for a while, until I recently did an aptitude safe-upgrade. The next time I booted the system, mysql failed to start and refused to do so when I issued: sudo service mysql start It would just hang there. Tracked the issue down to this bug. How I maged to get it to work: In a terminal:

Just a quicky… Using the guide from here, I’ve managed to use the ’net connection of my Nexus One with my Eee PC running Ubuntu Netbook Remix. Speed tests… Nexus One using Wi-Fi and home cable: Nexus One using 3G in the Telford & Wrekin region:

The MySQL PASSWORD() function has started giving a different value on a client’s live server compared to local development servers. This has resulted in end users not being able to log in when PASSWORD()` is used to compare the stored and entered passwords. Why this has happened I have no idea. Any thoughts? dev mysql> SELECT PASSWORD('foobar'); +-------------------------------------------+ | PASSWORD('foobar') | +-------------------------------------------+ | *9B500343BC52E2911172EB52AE5CF4847604C6E5 | +-------------------------------------------+ 1 row in set (0.

This is on myrant.net rather than my other blog on lazygnome.net as it wasn’t as quick and easy as I’d have liked to set up. So, in a way, a very tiny rant with a lot of helpful content (I hope). Inspiration for this article came from following Popey’s setup instructions with Ubuntu 9.10 alpha. Download Ubuntu 9.10 32bit desktop ISO: http://www.ubuntu.com/getubuntu/download a) if you have an external CD drive, burn the ISO to a CD.

Applications which steal input focus are pure scum. The only times that a new window should take focus are: application launched by the user. alert box instigated by the application currently with focus. Whilst I’m coding in an editor, I do NOT want the virus scanner to pop up to say its finished running and expect me to care at that time.