MySQL Backup Shell Script

Many of my clients need a quick backup solution before we implement anything on a larger more permanent scale. I wrote this simple script that simply make a copy of a database and then created a timestamped tarball of the file.

#!bin/sh

date=`date +%Y-%m-%d_%Hh%M`

cd /my/path/for/backups/

mysqldump -umy_user -p”mypass” my_database > $date.sql

tar -zcvf $date.tgz *.sql

# uncomment this line to import the sql into another database, for example as a mirror
#mysql -umy_user -p”mypass” mirror_database < $date.sql

rm *.sql

Then, just setup a cron job to run this at whichever interval you want this to run.

Uninstall U3 System from USB Thumbdrives

I recently bought a new thumb drive that came with the infamous U3 System software. I hate this software to no end and I wanted it gone, but the typical system formatting process and the manual deletion process didn’t work. After doing some research, I found that U3 provides an uninstaller which is a pain.

Just google “u3 uninstall.exe” or visit u3.com/uninstall and follow their stupid download process.

CVS to Subversion Transfer

Most of my projects all use Subversion now, as everyone knows it’s the recommended little brother of CVS. However, for everything that doesn’t have a home in SVN with a client, I was storing in CVS I had running on my local dev machine.

Not wanting to loose any of my files or their histories, I wanted to find a way to transfer everything into subversion. At the recent ZendCon I heard about cvs2svn and I tried it out. It was very easy to install (required Python, which was easy for me to installed through Yum), and it was easy to run - at least for me as I was just pulling everything over.

Now I’ve got everything in subversion and I was able to maintain the file histories for everything.

Tagging & Protecting PDF Files using PHP

I recently had to run some tests on tagging/watermarking an existing PDF file, and then protecting it using php. First, you’ll need to download the proper libraries.

Extract all of those packages, get rid of non-essential files and place most everything in the same folder… “font” and “decoders” will likely be the only folders remaining.

Then, place your existing pdf in the same folder.

Then, create a new php file with the following code. You can modify the message or its position, or you can ready the manuals for the above packages for more options. To set a user/owner password, just add them as the second and third arguments for the SetProtection method (outside the array, which is the first argument).

[PHP]
define(’FPDF_FONTPATH’,'font/’);
require(’FPDI_Protection.php’);

class PDF extends FPDI_Protection
{
function Footer()
{
//Position at 1.5 cm from bottom
$this->SetY(-15);
//Arial italic 8
$this->SetFont(’Arial’,'I’,8);
//Page number
$msg = “If you’re not ” . $_SERVER['REMOTE_ADDR'] . “, then you’ve stolen our stuff.”;
$this->Cell(0,10,$msg,0,0,’C');
}
}

$pdf= new PDF();

$pagecount = $pdf->setSourceFile(”document.pdf”);

for ($i=1; $i < = $pagecount; $i++) {
$tplidx = $pdf->ImportPage(1);
$pdf->addPage();
$pdf->useTemplate($tplidx,0,0,0);
}

$pdf->SetProtection(array(’print’));
$pdf->Output(”newpdf.pdf”,”I”);
[/PHP]

Installing Subversion on Fedora Core

I’ve been using subversion a lot recently - from using repositories with client development companies to installing it for clients - it seems to be the SVN month.

Here’s how I installed subversion on a machine with Fedora Core 4. For anyone learning or using Subversion, I highly recommend that you read the book.

You may already have subversion installed, if not, just run this:

# yum install subversion
# yum install mod_dav_svn

Then you’ll need to setup at least one repository. I’m going to need multiple repositories that I can use for different clients so I have a bit of extra admin work ahead of me. You can setup as many repositories as you need, but no matter what you’ll need at least one. Here create the folders…

# mkdir /svn
# mkdir /svn/repos
# mkdir /svn/users
# mkdir /svn/permissions

We need to give these folders the proper permissions

# chown -R apache.apache /svn

Then we need to tell subversion to make our first repository.

# svnadmin create /svn/repos/myproject

First, I need to setup a config file for svnserve.

# vi /svn/repos/conf/svnserve.conf

Then, look for variations of the following code and edit it as necessary. By default any anonymous user can access the code so to disable that you must include anon-access = none, just commenting the value out will not prevent anonymous access.

anon-access = none
password-db = passwdfile
realm = My SVN Repository
auth-access = write

The password-db is just a path to a file containing usernames and passwords. You’ll create this file especially for SVN. I create each file inside of the repository conf directory. So, save your changes and then we’ll create said user file.

# vi passwdfile

Enter in something like:

[users]
username = password

Anyway, you’ll need to start the svn server.

# svnserve -d --listen-port=3690

One side note - svnserve just runs and doesn’t have a way to stop besides killing the process. If you make changes to the svnserve.conf or user file you’ll need to restart svnserve.

# killall svnserve

Then, go ahead and test (best to do so on a different machine).

# svn co --username=myusername svn://mydomain/svn/repos/myproject

The system should then ask you for your password. Go ahead and run some tests.

Now, let’s setup apache.

Create a new apache include file that will hold our configurations (You may already have this is subversion was already installed).

# vi /etc/httpd/conf.d/subversion.conf

Now, this file will need to contain something like this to serve the repository through apache:


LoadModule dav_svn_module modules/mod_dav_svn.so
LoadModule authz_svn_module modules/mod_authz_svn.so


DAV svn
SVNPath /svn/repos
AuthType Basic
AuthName “Subversion Repository”
AuthUserFile /svn/users/svnpass
Require valid-user
AuthzSVNAccessFile /svn/permissions/svnauthz.conf

Now, this essentially tells apache to load the mods needed for svn. We need to create some files so that this config will work properly. The first is our htpasswd file which I named “/svn/users/svnpass”.

# htpasswd -cb /svn/users/svnpass username password

Next we need to create the svnauth file.

# vi /svn/permissions/svnauthz.conf

Inside we’ll place a list of users who have access to files:


[/]

username = rw

The “rw” states that this user has read/write access to the root repository /.

Restart your web server and you should be done.

service httpd reload
or you can use:
/usr/sbin/apachectl restart - this option outputs better error messages in case you’ve made some syntax mistakes.

Go to your repository and you should see subversion displaying the repo info.

http://yoursite.com/svn/repos/

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