While recently upgrading and moving Bugzilla to 3.4.2 I ran into an issue on a CentOS 5 server that was giving the following error any time I tried to access a buglist:

undef error – Cannot determine local time zone

After some searching I finally discovered that the issue was with Bugzilla looking for the timezone information in /etc/localtime, while CentOS had not updated that file since it’s original installation.

The solution is to change /etc/localtime to a symlink that leads to the correct timezone file for you:

ln -sf /usr/share/zoneinfo/America/Los_Angeles /etc/localtime

It’s quite common for web engineers to develop applications on either a local machine, or a server running on the local network. In many situations one does not have the luxury of a domain name service to base everything off of, and it becomes a matter of using the IP address or an internal host file.

For example, I have an internal server that we do most of our development on and we’ve typically placed everything in the default htdocs directory. That tends to be a problem if we’re working on a pre-existing application that was designed to work only from the root level.

In the following steps I’ll describe setting up a virtual host and how to trick your computer into simulating the domain service.
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Here is a quick and dirty guide to create your own remote repository. Access is controlled through standard ssh so it’s as secure as your ssh access is.
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It’s pretty straightforward to install Git on a mediatemple DV 3.0 server. If you have later versions of their servers with Yum installed, you may be able to simply install it through yum.

To begin you need to download the latest version and run through the standard extraction and configure/make/make install.

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Pecl was giving me some problems so I needed to install APC for PHP manually. Pecl was compaining that apxs was not found during the config process, so I had to install it myself so that I could pass it the proper path.


wget http://pecl.php.net/get/APC-3.0.19.tgz
tar -xzf APC-3.0.19.tgz
cd APC*
phpize
./configure --enable-apc --enable-apc-mmap --with-apxs=/usr/local/apache2/bin/apxs
make
make install


Make sure you actually use your correct path to apxs. If apxs isn’t installed then you need to install the httpd-devel package, which usually works just fine through yum install httpd-devel

Then, just add the so path to your php ini and restart.


vi /usr/local/lib/php.ini
extension=apc.so


Then restart your server and should be done! Try running phpinfo(); to see if APC reports as installed and enabled.

After dealing with some weird update issues trying to do this with a manually-download rpm file, I finally figured out that performing the following worked just fine:

# rpm -Uhv http://apt.sw.be/redhat/el5/en/i386/rpmforge/RPMS/rpmforge-release-0.3.6-1.el5.rf.i386.rpm
# yum -y install lighttpd lighttpd-fastcgi mysql-server
# chkconfig --levels 235 lighttpd on
# /etc/init.d/lighttpd start

I did decide to change the port to 81 so that apache could still run on 80:


# vi /etc/lighttpd/lighttpd.conf


I’m running several dedicated servers from mediatemple and I have dozens of domains that I’m hosting for clients running on those. The qmail application seemed to have chosen the very first domain on each server as it’s default return address for all alert and mailer-daemon messages.

I wanted to alter the domain it used, so I changed it by editing the configuration file:


$ vi /var/qmail/control/me


Enter the domain name you want and save the file, then reboot qmail:


$ service qmail stop
$ service qmail start


A few weeks back my old primary system suffered some serious boot issues and was out for an entire day. After a lot of time wasted trying to save things with knoppix, etc, I finally went out and bought a new system.

I’ve grown used to developing on windows so things have been a little slow, but I’m gradually adjusting to using a mac. I’ve already moved my dev server and my subversion server to this machine so I’ve brought the old system home for triage. Eventually, it will allow me work from home whenever I need to, and it allows us to play games again.

Two of our other systems are now up for sale on craigslist/ebay.

So far though, I’m doing just fine and am enjoying the new system. It’s much cleaner, more intuitive, etc.

For the last ten months I’ve been working solely on my Acer Aspire 9500 laptop, which had replaced my Compaq Presario 900US. The wide 17″ screen of my current laptop was excellent for working on all day, as well as when I had to demo projects for clients. However, the 512MB of ram, the limited Celeron processor, and the 80GB drive just isn’t enough anymore. Working became difficult when I had a ton of apps open at once – both processor time and screen real estate dwindled.

Playing a video game during lunch was essentially impossible.

So, I’ve finally got myself an upgrade. After spending a month or so checking out various prices, I finally went with a customized HP Pavilion d4790y. Because I customized it I got an HP 19″ wide LCD monitor for $100. I bought a second 19″ LCD monitor that was on sale at NewEgg.com (Acer AL1917WAbd 19″).

Here are the specs of my custom work machine:

• Intel(R) Core(TM) 2 Duo processor E6400 ( 2.13GHz )
• 2GB DDR2-667MHz dual channel SDRAM (2×1024)
• 320GB 7200 rpm SATA hard drive
• LightScribe 16X DVD+/-R/RW SuperMulti drive
• 15-in-1 memory card reader, 3 USB, 1394, audio
• 256MB NVIDIA GeForce 7600 GT, HD , TV-out, 2 DVI
• Integrated 7.1 channel sound w/front audio ports

I down-graded the system to Windows XP, SP2 because many of apps have no or little support for Vista. I’ll have some pics soon .

The replacement power supply from HP showed today, so I performed some PC-surgery and the pc is in recovery now. Now, I need to find a way to sync all of the stuff I temporarily placed on the laptop back with the stuff left on the old PC. Maybe a good time for a reformat?

Nah, like I have that kind of time.