Category: Development

Development projects

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Install PHP 5.3 on CentOS 5.6

This article will outline the process for install PHP 5.3.x on CentOS 5.6 via the Enterprise Linux (EPEL) repository.

System Update

First of all, complete a yum update on your machine by running:

# yum update

If a kernel update occurs I recommend rebooting before completing the rest of the steps in this outline.

Install Repositories

In order to upgrade your PHP and MySQL environment you will need to install two repositories, one from the Fedora site and one from Famillecollet (remi).

# rpm -Uvh http://download.fedora.redhat.com/pub/epel/5/x86_64/epel-release-5-4.noarch.rpm
# rpm -Uvh http://rpms.famillecollet.com/enterprise/remi-release-5.rpm

Apache & PHP Update

Once the repo’s are installed you can  complete the install (or upgrade) of MySQL, Apache and PHP: Continue reading “Install PHP 5.3 on CentOS 5.6”

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Install LAMP (Linux, Apache, MySQL, PHP) on CentOS 5.6

This article will outline the process for installing Linux, Apache, MySQL and PHP (also known as ‘LAMP’) on CentOS 5.6.

Getting Started

First of all, make sure your YUM repositories and packages are up to date:

# yum check-update
# yum update

Install any available package and library updates.

Apache

Next, install Apache, set it to run on startup, and finally start the service:

# yum install httpd
# chkconfig –add httpd
# service httpd start

MySQL

Installing MySQL is similar to installing Apache, except we have an additional step of running a basic setup wizard. Continue reading “Install LAMP (Linux, Apache, MySQL, PHP) on CentOS 5.6”

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Installing PHP 5.2.x on CentOS

At the time of writing, PHP 5.1.6 is the “current” version shipped with CentOS 5.4. While I’m sure there is valid (?) reason for CentOS still distributing 5.1, many web developers need 5.2 functionality in their applications to run correctly.

There are two common ways to upgrade CentOs 5.4 to PHP 5.2:

  1. Download, compile and install Apache and PHP from source.
  2. Use yum with the CentOS Testing Repository

Compiling From Source

If you want to install from source, the standard ./configure; make; make install process will work in most cases (actually, if you want to do anything productive, it will be a bit more complicated than this).

While this process affords you the ability to fine-tune your configuration, you loose automatic updates and any future modifications to the Apache or PHP configuration will most likely require recompilation.

Using yum

Since we’re using CentOS, the best approach is to just go with the native package manager. Like it or not, RPM is a solid package manager which really makes life easy if used correctly. Yum is the fronted for RPM management in CentOS. Continue reading “Installing PHP 5.2.x on CentOS”

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Unmask Parasites

Unmask Parasites is a simple online web site security service that helps reveal _hidden_illicit content (parasites) that web site crackers/hackers insert into benign web pages using various security holes.

Wikipedia defines Parasitism as a “type of symbiotic relationship between organisms of different species in which one, the parasite, benefits from a prolonged, close association with the other, the host, which is harmed.”

Hackers exploit security vulnerabilities of web software (blogs, forums, CMS, image galleries, wikis and e-commerce solutions) to insert hidden illicit content into web pages of innocent third-party web sites.

Most times this technique is used by spammers who insert hundreds of hidden links to web sites advertising medications, cheap loans and porn.

Another example of hidden malicious content is code that redirects visitors that click on your site’s search results in Google to absolutely different web sites owned by spammers. This sort of exploit can hardly be detected by site owners, because the malicious code redirects only first time visitors.

What all these techniques have in common is they parasitize benign web sites to take advantage of their search engine ranking, visitors, and site hosting which is paid for by their victims – unaware web site owners.

You can test out Unmask Parasites against your own site by clicking here.

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Optimize SQL Server 2005/8 in Large RAM Systems with AWE

Microsoft SQL Server is a data-intensive and disk I/O (read and write) intensive database management system. SQL Server running on systems with a large amount of physical RAM memory (8 GB or more) can be configured to use the Address Windowing Extensions (AWE) API to provide access to physical memory in excess of the limits set on configured virtual memory, and force all paging to take place in memory for faster data and thread access.

With the Address Windowing Extensions (AWE) API, Microsoft SQL Server can support and access very large amounts of physical memory, upwards of 64 gigabytes or more on Windows 2000 Server, Windows Server 2003 and Windows Server 2008 (R2). The specific amount of memory SQL Server can use depends on hardware configuration and operating system support.

Before enabling AWE, Lock Pages in Memory permission must be granted to the user account that runs SQL Server as AWE memory cannot be swapped out to the page file. Note that AWE is not required for 64-bit systems, but the Lock Pages in Memory privilege is recommended for 64-bit systems.

Step 1: Enable PAE support on Windows Server to allow large segment of physical memory to be used. Continue reading “Optimize SQL Server 2005/8 in Large RAM Systems with AWE”