Daily Bitekletas

I just need to write something about this since I’ve been a victim of configuration overload lately. While I was setting up a demo site for a client, I kept of wondering why the site is not functioning properly. All RewriteRule entries are being ignored by Apache.

The idea that Apache may not be allowing .htaccess didn’t come to my mind at first. I deliberately put in invalid characters inside the .htaccess file hoping that Apache would throw in some server error message but it did not! Then I remember the keyword AllowOverride None. Aparently, this is the default setting in Apache (so don’t mess with it!). I had to put a custom setting for a specific directory in order for .htaccess to work. Here is a sample configuration on how to allow .htaccess to specific directory (assuming your files are in /var/www/sitea).

<Directory /var/www/sitea>
AllowOverride All
</Directory>

AllowOverride can accept other values (except none) for fine-grain control. It can be embedded inside a <VirtualHost></VirtualHost> for specific needs (which I did) or just put it along with other global entries. Now .htaccess should work without a hitch!

This is only applicable to individual that has a superuser access to a system.

The patches includes a few significant features and many enhancement on the manageability and reliability of MySQL database server.

The features are:

• SemiSyncReplication - block commit on a master until at least one slave acknowledges receipt of all replication events.
• MirroredBinlogs - maintain a copy of the master’s binlog on a slave
• TransactionalReplication - make InnoDB and slave replication state consistent during crash recovery
• UserTableMonitoring - monitor and report database activity per account and table
• InnodbAsyncIo - support multiple background IO threads for InnoDB
• FastMasterPromotion - promote a slave to a master without restart

Enhancements include:

• LosslessFloatDump - support dump and restore of float/double without loss of precision
• Use 8X less memory for account and table privileges
• Use fastest compression rather than the default level for client/mysqld networking
• InnodbSampling - control the number of leaf blocks sampled for optimizer statistics
• InnodbStatus - display more statistics in show innodb status
• Reduced number of calls to fsync when the InnoDB background IO thread is active
• Changed InnoDB to recover when InnoDB and MySQL data dictionaries are inconsistent
• NewSqlFunctions - functions for checksums and floating point to string conversion
• Backported START SLAVE UNTIL
• Sort float columns with the order: -INF < negative < 0 < positive < +INF < NaN
• Change long_query_time to be dynamic and log all queries that run for greater than or equal this number of seconds rather than greater than.
• Count connection attempts tha are denied because of max_connections and display the count as denied_connections
• MoreLogging - log actions done on specified tables and SUPER users
• rpl_always_enter_innodb boosts the priority of the slave SQL thread (for replication) in InnoDB by making it ignore the InnoDB concurrency limits
• rpl_event_buffer_size sets the fixed size buffer that is allocated in the master for each connected slave. The buffer is used for replication events smaller than the buffer. This reduces memory allocation done to copy replication events from the master.
• Backported sync-binlog
• Added reserved_super_connections to reserve the final N connections for users with the SUPER privilege
• NewShowStatus - many new variables in SHOW STATUS

More details here..

LAMP is an open source web development platform, a software stack, used together to run dynamic websites. The acronym LAMP stands for: Linux (L), Apache HTTP Server (A), MySQL (M), PHP or Perl or Python (P). The acronym was coined by Michael Kunze coined in an article for the German computing magazine.

I admit that the title kind of confusing and most people would say that running LAMP on Windows is impractical since there are packages that are specifically designed to run on Windows platform like XAMPP. However, I just feel that running XAMP puts a heavy load on work station. I tried it, for me it runs slow. Though it works, I still enjoy working on Linux commandline as most geeks are. I’m a LAMP specifically Linux fan (dual boot - Windows and Ubuntu ) but my work requires me to use Windows.

Read the rest of this entry »

A group of developers all over the world are into something big that will soon be in your next phone. OpenMoko is an attempt to create an open/free software stack for mobile phones.

At the moment, there is an actual live phone (Neo1973) being used by developers to further the development of the OpenMoko Framework. Most of the user interface specifications supports stylus and finger based input. The phone functions just like the Apple iPhone but I would think that OpenMoko based phones will be very customizable as it is most likely to run on embedded Linux and QT.  Some more links for your reading pleasure..

•  iPhone and Neo1973 Comparison
• Some photos
• Look and Feel Specs
• Planet OpenMoko - where developers’ blog are aggregated

All in all, their wiki page is very impormative and worth checking out.

Linux on desktop looks promising. Look at the two demo videos. Ain’t that sweet?

AiXgl on Ubuntu 6.06 Dapper

Gentoo Linux with Beryl