cpan
install DBD::Oracle


This will likely fail but leave you with a cpan prompt.  When it does, type:


look DBD::Oracle

export ORACLE_HOME=/usr/lib/oracle/11.2/client64/lib
export LD_LIBRARY_PATH=$LD_LIBRARY_PATH:$ORACLE_HOME


The above will drop you at a shell prompt at the directory where the DBD::Oracle source code has been extracted, and configures the environment for the compile/install. Now you can do the compile and install process with:


perl Makefile.PL -V 11.2
make


If all is good, then you can go ahead and do the install:


sudo make install


The LD_LIBRARY_PATH environment variable must be set as given above for any user who will be using DBD::Oracle, so be sure to set the path permanently through a simple script added to the /etc/profile.d directory.

However after spending a little time to get to know my Mac OS Terminal, I have come to realise that it isn’t quite as limp as I thought.  Either through the Leopard or Snow Leopard updates, Tabs were introduced (I don’t recall seeing them in Tiger which was when I last paid any attention to Terminal).  Neat!

So I starting looking at the biggest annoyance with Terminal, the inability to navigate the Bash shell command line with the keyboard.  With other terminals I have used on both Windows and Linux, it was possible to press Home to go to the start of the shell command, End to go to the end, and use Ctrl-Left and Ctrl-Right to move the cursor word by word through a command line.  This might seem trivial but I’m quite proficient with the UNIX shell (from my days as a UNIX Sys-admin) and tend to write reasonably complex shell commands.  There is nothing more frustrating than realising you omitted a switch to one of the first commands in a pipeline.  There was no choice but to hold down the left arrow cursor key and wait for the cursor to gingerly wander back to the start of the command where it can be positioned to insert or correct a switch. This has always given me the shits!!

So after some investigation and reading a couple of blog posts on this issue, I found an article: The complete keyboard mapping for Leopard’s Terminal.app by Henrique Bastos which provides instructions on how to configure these keys.

• Apache2
• Pear
• Komodo IDE’s Simulate CGI Environment Debugging

I chose:

sudo port install php5 +apache2 +pear +fastcgi

The problem is that PGP WDE creates a extra partition on your drive, usually at slice 3 (ie. /dev/disk0s3) that contains a copy of the /System/Library/CoreServices directory of your existing Boot Volume which is typically /dev/disk0s2. This copy is unencrypted and used to boot the OS, and load the PGP WDE drivers which can then access your encrypted /dev/disk0s2 partition (ie your main drive). Backup tools such as SuperDuper do not copy this extra partition to the new drive/image, but the drive is still blessed to boot from /dev/disk0s3, which no longer exists. To fix the problem, mount the restored volume. If you cannot access the backup/restored drive from an operating mac, then you need to boot your Mac using your OSX install DVD. Once you have booted the install DVD, choose the Utilities menu and select Terminal. Mount your drive by typing:

diskutil mount disk1

This should mount it under /Volumes/MacIntosh HD
or whatever the name of your volume is.

So there are two tasks we need to perform, using a single command. We need to set the boot partition as /dev/disk1s2 rather than /dev/disk1s3 (substitute the disk? number for your drive – make sure you get this right – if unsure, seek assistance from an expert). The other task is to re-enstate the original apple boot.efi file, overwriting the pgpboot.efi file. The pgpboot.efi is not required because the drive is no longer encrypted (at this stage). So execute the following command:

cd /Volumes/<mount point>
sudo bless --folder System/Library/CoreServices/ --bootefi System/Library/CoreServices/appleboot.efi --setboot


Now the drive should be bootable once again.

Once you have rebooted the drive, you can use the PGP tools to encrypt the drive again as was done previously.

Damien.

sudo pecl install xdebug

Then I added the file /etc/php.d/xdebug.ini with the lines:

extension=xdebug.so
xdebug.remote_enable=1
xdebug.remote_handler=dbgp
xdebug.remote_mode=req
xdebug.remote_host=127.0.0.1
xdebug.remote_port=9000

Running php -i, yields amongst others, the following message:

xdebug support => enabled
Version => 2.1.1

Supported protocols => Revision
DBGp - Common DeBuGger Protocol => $Revision: 1.145 $

All good so far. Now I need to set up the debugging proxy server on the webserver host so that multiple developers can debug scripts from the same dev webserver.

To do this, I followed the instructions provided by Komodo using their python-based proxy server:

export PYTHONPATH=/lib/support/dbgp/pythonlib;$PYTHONPATH
cd /lib/support/dbgp/bin
python pydbgpproxy -i 138.77.20.48:9001 -d localhost:9000 -l DEBUG

So now I have configured Komodo to use the proxy server for debugging.

Komodo debugger options

Now to initiate a debugging session with a website script, I followed the instructions provided by Komodo:

Click Debug | Listen for Debugger Connections

Then in the browser, enter the URL of the script and append: ?XDEBUG_SESSION_START=damo

Now Komodo asks to start a debug session where I click Yes, and …. The script completes and no debugging occurs.

Seems more investigation is required here.

I am wondering whether the ajax calls in the script I am attempting to debug are confusing the proxy and or Komodo? Each ajax call will also have the cookie set for debugging and so there are multiple requests do debug with the same Komod instance. Perhaps this is why the debugger is not working.

I am hopeful I can get this working. Will save alot of time trying to find those nasty bugs.

Damien.

So I have had to do some massaging to get php working.

The file /opt/local/apache2/conf/extra/mod_php.conf is missing some configuration parameters. I’ve changed mine to look like this:

<IfModule mod_php5.c>

AddType  application/x-httpd-php         .php
AddType  application/x-httpd-php-source  .phps

AddHandler php5-script .php
AddType text/html .php

DirectoryIndex index.php

</IfModule>

I specifically had to add the handler and also load the module. Then in the /opt/local/apache2/conf/httpd.conf file, I had to add the line: Include conf/extra/mod_php.conf as there wasn’t even a commented out line that would include this module.  Also in the /opt/local/apache2/conf/httpd.conf file, also need to add the line LoadModule php5_module modules/libphp5.so so that the php library is loaded into Apache.

A graceful on the server:

sudo /opt/local/apache2/bin/apachtctl graceful

and away we went.

Damien.

Addendum

Turns out that a message is printed at completion of the install, which was not apparent to me because I used a GUI to do the installation. The message states:

If this is your first install, you need to activate PHP in your web server.

To enable PHP in Apache, run
cd /opt/local/apache2/modules
/opt/local/apache2/bin/apxs -a -e -n “php5″ libphp5.so

A useful tip I highlighted in a previous post helps to find this sort of information after installation.  This command simply adds a LoadModule option to the main httpd.conf file, but does not add the other configuration options above.  So you still need to make the above changes.

Essentially, you need to forcibly uninstall perl5.12 (or perl5.10) and then re-install with the threads variant:

sudo port -f uninstall perl5.12
sudo port install perl5.12+threads

Then you can install mod_perl2 with:

sudo port install mod_perl2

Not a particularly elegant solution, but nonetheless gets the job done. Hopefully this issue will be fixed in the future.

Damien.

Anyway, here are some very handy tips that I have discovered in my travels.

Post-installation instructions

Some packages provide instructions on installation completion.  At times you may have ingored them or used tools such as Porticus to do the installation in which case the instructions are lost in the scroll from all the dependencies that went along with it.  So, there are a couple of commands that you can use to get this vital information back:

This command looks at the notes for a package (if it has any):

sudo port notes $packagename

If there are no notes, you can look at the portfile directly using:

sudo port cat $packagename

You will probably see some instructions to be printed at the end of the script

How do I start or stop daemon processes

So this always frustrates me, and each packaging system does it differently. Macports wraps some scripts around the launchd system of MacOS 10.4+. So you can use the launchctl load -w /Library/LaunchDaemons/${packagename}.plist to do it. But a more convenient way is to use the load/unload option to the port command.

sudo port load $packagename
sudo port unload $packagename

Sadly, this not only starts and stops the daemon process, but also enables or disables auto-startup at the same time. You can do things separately, or at least not without knowing the individual package’s startup scripts.

As I come up with new tips and tricks, I’ll add them to this blog post.

Damien.

To install postgresql84 on Snow Leopard (10.6) using Macports, execute the following commands:

sudo port install postgresql84-server
sudo mkdir -p /opt/local/var/db/postgresql84/defaultdb
sudo chown postgres:postgres /opt/local/var/db/postgresql84/defaultdb
sudo -u postgres /opt/local/lib/postgresql84/bin/initdb -D /opt/local/var/db/postgresql84/defaultdb

Now to make sure that the postgres user account can be executed using the su command, we need to give postgres a shell:

sudo dscl . -create /Users/postgres UserShell /bin/sh

Then merge the Sys V Shared Memory Kernel parameters from the /etc/sysctl.conf.pg file with your existing /etc/sysctl.conf file (if you already have one):

sudo sh -c "cat /etc/sysctl.conf.pg >>/etc/sysctl.conf"

You can reboot at this point so that the new Sys V shared memory configuration in /etc/sysctl.conf is loaded by the kernel.  Alternately, being a UNIX you can execute the following command to get you going right away:

sudo sysctl -w `cat /etc/sysctl.conf.pg`

Next, we need to create the logfile directory and make it writable by the postgres user:

sudo mkdir -p /opt/local/var/log/postgresql84
sudo chown postgres:postgres /opt/local/var/log/postgresql84

Next, add to the /opt/local/lib/postgresql84/bin directory to your path variable in either /etc/profile or ~/.profile and you should be set

export PATH=/opt/local/bin:/opt/local/sbin:/opt/local/lib/postgresql84/bin:$PATH

Now create yourself a postgres database user account

$ createuser `whoami`
Shall the new role be a superuser? (y/n) y

To make the database server accessible via a TCP socket, edit the /opt/local/var/db/postgresql84/defaultdb/pg_hba.conf file and add the following two lines:

host    all         all         127.0.0.1/32          md5
host    all         all         0.0.0.0/0                md5

Edit the /opt/local/var/db/postgresql84/defultdb/postgresql.conf file and add the following line:

listen_addresses = '*'

Now, we should be right to start the server.  We use MacOS’ launchctl command:

sudo launchctl load -w /Library/LaunchDaemons/org.macports.postgresql84-server.plist

Now you can connect to the database server with:

psql template1
psql (8.4.7)
Type "help" for help.

template1=#

Hopefully this has been useful to someone else, as I have spent over 2 hours *&^%*&% around with this to get it working.

Damien.