The Survival Guides's Blog

Change Sugar CRM URL

survivalguides — Thu, 19 Jan 2012 12:39:12 +0000

I have just installed Sugar CRM in the Amazon cloud. More about the Amazon cloud will be coming in later in Amazon section.

The main issue that I had was that the URL is that of the server and I needed it to be the URL of the ELB (Elastic Load Balancer) in other words the URL was set to the hostname of the server.

To change this is relatively simple.

Navigate to

/var/www/html/XXXX

where XXXX is the directory where your Sugar installation is.

Edit the config.php file with your favourite editor and locate the hostname variable. Change this to what ever URL that you want, typically the CNAME entry from your DNS records.

A word of warning make sure you DNS is updated and proper-gated before change this setting.

Restart the HTTPD service and you should have the correct URL in place.

The steps

cd /var/www/html/XXXX

cp config.php config.php_DDMMYY

(sudo) vi config.php

Change the hostname

Then either

service httpd restart

./etc/init.d/httpd restart

Filed under: Admin, Sugar CRM

Create a startup script

survivalguides — Tue, 11 Oct 2011 19:37:52 +0000

To allow you to auto start a server service in Linux you need to create several files.

Create two files and don’t forget to use chmod 755 on them to make this executable

server-stop
server-stop

#!/bin/sh
# chkconfig: 235 99 10
# description: Start or stop the XXXXXX server
#
### BEGIN INIT INFO
# Provides:
# Required-Start: $network $syslog
# Required-Stop: $network
# Default-Start: 2 3 5
# Default-Stop: 0 1 6
# Description: Start or stop the pure-ftp server
### END INIT INFO

start=path to the start script
stop=path to the stop script

name=’what the server name is’

case “$1″ in
‘start’)
$start >/dev/null 2>&1 ;;
‘stop’)
$stop
;;

‘restart’)
$stop ; $start
;;
*)
echo “Usage: $0 { start | stop }”
;;
esac
exit

Save the file and then make the file executable

chmod 755 xxxxxx

To start the service manually

service xxxxxx start

To stop the service manually

service xxxxxx stop

To make the serever auto start then issue the following command

chkconfig –levels 345 xxxxxxxx on

OK thats is the theory see the list for examples

pure-ftp start stop

glassfish

Filed under: General Admin, Linux

Creating An APEX application

survivalguides — Tue, 04 Oct 2011 08:35:48 +0000

You need a container to house the application, in Oracle this is called a schema or user to us none Oracle DBA’s, confusing yes, but I am sure that an Oracle boffin would be able to explain it. All we need to know is that we need to create one.

You can either create one with the following script or let the create workspace wizzard help you

CREATE USER manufacturing IDENTIFIED BY “A Password”
DEFAULT TABLESPACE “USERS”
TEMPORARY TABLESPACE “TEMP”
PROFILE DEFAULT
QUOTA UNLIMITED ON “USERS”;

This guide will not take you through how to create a workspace or how to create an application as there are loads of books out there including some free Oracle guides, this and associated posts will hopefully get you around issues and tips to solve bits and pieces.

Alistair

Filed under: Application Express (APEX), IT Survival, Oracle

Installing Oracle APEX on Oracle XE

survivalguides — Tue, 04 Oct 2011 08:27:29 +0000

This installation is based on the latest Centos 6 build

cat /etc/redhat-release = CentOS Linux release 6.0 (Final)

Download the xe server and client, for this install I am using the release 10 as my main database is 10gR2 and I hope to port this into the live environment at some point.

As usual I downloaded all the rpm, zip files into /software

So download the relevant xe server and client

Download oracle-xe-10.2.0.1-1.0.i386.rpm

Download oracle-xe-client-10.2.0.1-1.0.i386.rpm

For this install you also need the latest JDK (I tried many times to get APEX working so not quite sure if you need this but I don’t think it does any harm)

Download jdk-6u27-linux-i586.rpm

It is work noting that these instructions have been based on the install instructions for APEX, APEX listener and the Glassfish server

The steps are as follows :

Install oracle and configure

Install APEX into oracle

Install Glassfish server & APEX

Install Oracle Listener

Install oracle

rpm -i oracle-xe-client-10.2.0.1-1.0.i386.rpm oracle-xe-10.2.0.1-1.0.i386.rpm

Once installed it will display

Executing Post-install steps…

You must run ‘/etc/init.d/oracle-xe configure’ as the root user to
configure the database.

Executing Post-install steps…

Add these lines to the .bashrc file

cd ~

vi .bashrc

export ORACLE_HOME=/usr/lib/oracle/xe/app/oracle/product/10.2.0/server
export ORACLE_SID=XE

PATH=$PATH:/usr/lib/oracle/xe/app/oracle/product/10.2.0/client/bin
export $PATH

:wq

Configure Oracle

/etc/init.d/oracle-xe configure

Oracle Database 10g Express Edition Configuration
————————————————-
This will configure on-boot properties of Oracle Database 10g Express
Edition. The following questions will determine whether the database should
be starting upon system boot, the ports it will use, and the passwords that
will be used for database accounts. Press to accept the defaults.
Ctrl-C will abort.

Specify the HTTP port that will be used for Oracle Application Express [8080]: Enter

Specify a port that will be used for the database listener [1521]: Enter

Specify a password to be used for database accounts. Note that the same
password will be used for SYS and SYSTEM. Oracle recommends the use of
different passwords for each database account. This can be done after
initial configuration: Enter password (do not lose)

Confirm the password:

Do you want Oracle Database 10g Express Edition to be started on boot (y/n) [y]: Enter

Starting Oracle Net Listener…Done
Configuring Database…

NOTE to stop and start XE use

service oracle-xe start

service oracle-xe stop

We need to change some parameters in Oracle

sqlplus sys/(password)@//localhost/xe as sysdba

ALTER SYSTEM SET SHARED_POOL_SIZE=’100M’ SCOPE=spfile;

exit

service oracle-xe restart

Install APEX into Oracle

Download the APEX software (at the time of writing this was version 4.1), as stated before I have downloaded mined to /software

cd /software/apex_4.1_en/apex

sqlplus sys/(password)@//localhost/xe as sysdba

@@apexins.sql SYSAUX SYSAUX TEMP /i/

@apxchpwd

Enter a password for the ADMIN user Enter admin password that you want

ALTER USER APEX_PUBLIC_USER ACCOUNT UNLOCK

ALTER USER APEX_PUBLIC_USER IDENTIFIED BY ENTER PASSWORD;

exit

Install Glassfish server

Download the latest Glassfish server from Oracle from here

Again I downloaded this to /software

cd /software

mkdir glassfish

cp ogs-3.1.1.zip glassfish/

cd glassfish

unzip ogs-3.1.1.zip

cp -r glassfish3 /opt/

mkdir /opt/glassfish3/glassfish/domains/domain1/docroot/i

Note: The ‘i’ directory is very important, again not from any notes that I have seen, might have missed this. Got it from a YouTube demo installation.

cd /software/apex_4.1_en/apex/images

cp -r * /opt/glassfish3/glassfish/domains/domain1/docroot/i

cd /opt/glassfish3/glassfish/bin

./asadmin start-domain

You may get this error

Waiting for domain1 to start ……..Error starting domain domain1.
The server exited prematurely with exit code 0.
Before it died, it produced the following output:

Launching GlassFish on Felix platform
Oct 3, 2011 1:44:29 PM com.sun.enterprise.server.logging.LogManagerService postConstruct
WARNING: Record begin marker is not a proper value so using default.
Oct 3, 2011 1:44:29 PM com.sun.enterprise.server.logging.LogManagerService postConstruct
WARNING: Record end marker is not a proper value so using default.
Oct 3, 2011 1:44:29 PM com.sun.enterprise.server.logging.LogManagerService postConstruct
WARNING: Log Format field separator is not a character so using default.
[#|2011-10-03T13:44:30.196+0100|INFO|oracle-glassfish3.1.1|org.glassfish.ha.store.spi.BackingStoreFactoryRegistry|_ThreadID=10;_ThreadName=main;|Registered org.glassfish.ha.store.adapter.cache.ShoalBackingStoreProxy for persistence-type = replicated in BackingStoreFactoryRegistry|#]

Command start-domain failed.

If you do, then delete then the default doamin needs to be recreated

./asadmin delete-domain domain1

./asadmin create-domain –nopassword domain

./asadmin start-domain

Copy the files etc again

The successful output should look like this

Waiting for domain1 to start ……..
Successfully started the domain : domain1
domain Location: /opt/glassfish3/glassfish/domains/domain1
Log File: /opt/glassfish3/glassfish/domains/domain1/logs/server.log
Admin Port: 4848
Command start-domain executed successfully.

You now have a working Glassfish server ready for the listener and Apex to be deployed.

Configure Glassfish

Navigate to http://FQDN:4848 (where FQDN is your DNS server name)

Change the admin password to start with

Click on domain and then choose the Administrator Password tab

Do not forget to press Save

We now need to create two users:

Pick Configuration

Pick Server-config

Pick Security

Select the check box next to Default Principal to Role Mapping.

Save

Pick Realms

Pick File

Manage Users Button

New Button

User ID: managerlistener

Group List: Manager

New Password:

Confirm New Password:

New Button

User ID: adminlistener

Group List: Admin

New Password:

Confirm New Password:

Install Oracle Listener

You should have already downloaded the listener

Select Applications

Click Deploy

Navigate to the downloaded Apex Listener folder and find apex.war file

Click OK

To find the URL that the site will operate on, make sure that you are still in the Applications section from where you deployed the apex.war file. Click on the Launch link under action

This will open a new browser window with the server links, I have two

http://FQDN:55596/apex

https://FQDN:8181/apex

Listener Configure

This area was a little bit of an issue and I still am not quite sure on how it worked in the end to be honest. If you follow the instructions then all should go well. I in stalled this software about six-times on the same server so some of the config was left behind and I am not sure where one of the important files is stored.

The instructions give you the following urls

https://FQDN:8181/apex/listenerConfigure

https://FQDN:8181/apex/listenerAdmin

https://FQDN:8181/apex/listenerStatus

I have yet to get the Status to work (that’s another day)

To configure the listener

Navigate to http://FQDN:8181/apex/listerConfigure

Username:APEX_PUBLIC_USER

Password: As per what was set above with the SQL script

Connection Type: (Mine is basic)

Hostname: FQDN of the sever

Port:1521

SID:XE

The assumption is that you did not change any of the defaults when installing Oracle.

The next bit was the hardest bit, as I am not sure where the documentation is for this, all of this has been gleaned from various bits and pieces.

If you get the dreaded

HTTP Status 403 – Requested url http://:8080/apex/wwv_flow.accept is not allowed.

then the chances are it has something to do with this setting

The following are the settings that I used to get it up and running, if you find any more documentation around this subject please drop me a line.

Security Tab

Allowed procedures

wwv_flow_file*,www_flow_file*, p, n, cust*, apex*, f, wwv*,www*

As soon as you press the Apply button you should see the APEX screen. There are many sources, but there is not one definitive source that I have found. Hopefully this information will add to what is already out there and help others.

Stay tuned to see if I can now develop in this stuff more posts will be available.

Hope that you get it working and if you need help drop me a line and I will see if I can give you a hand

Alistair

Filed under: Application Express (APEX), IT Survival, Oracle

Proxy PAC file hosting and writing

survivalguides — Mon, 26 Sep 2011 08:30:28 +0000

I am not going to profess to being an expert in this filed but I have done a few PAC files.

I am not going to explain what a PAC file is, because if you are reading this then you already know and need some help. This issue that I found was that no one has actually really created a definitive help on this subject so it is almost a black art

Well for the hosting, as you know that can be on any platform that supports a web server or a shared directory, I don’t know the cons of a shared drive I have always used a web server.

This used to be hosted on an old Windows 2000 server, there was never a need to move it from this kit, but since we are moving to the virtual environment it has to go. So the obvious platform was one of our Linux servers serving out the company intranet blog.

Centos 5.5, latest Apache version.

You place the PAC file in the www root and point your browser at it and chances it will not display, just point a web browser at it and see what happen, if this is the case there were two issue with my installation.

SELINUX was still on, I hate that thing

setenforce 0 (that is zero)

Will disable this, I am sure there is away around this with and selinux command, but it was internal and it was just getting in the way.

The next thing was that the web server didn’t know what to do with the PAC file script.

add this line to the httpd.conf file (normally located /etc/httpd/conf/)

Addtype application/x-ns-proxy-autoconfig pac

Right enough about hosting, the basics of a PAC file are

function FindProxyForURL(url, host) {

Some functions to direct you to a proxy server or not

}

The functions are the key bit, you can paramatise the variables as this is just JavaScript at the ned of the day, but start of simple with hard-coded and then move to variables once it is working. But you knew this anyway, my PAC files are never very long and so I don’t bother with variables, it everyone’s own choice.

The basic functions are

if (evaluate some thing)

{

return (proxy / direct);

}

The return address will formatted either be

return “DIRECT”;

Will not go through the proxy server

return “PROXY(the proxy address including the port number)”

Will go through the proxy server

So lets start (there is an example at the end as this is the best way that I tend to learn, but it is worth understanding the basics

if ((host==” host address FQDN”))

{

return “DIRECT”;

}

This will check to see if the host matches and if so sets it direct and not through the proxy server

If you need multiple hosts then you can do the following

if ((host==” host address FQDN”)||

(host==” host address FQDN”)

)

{

return “DIRECT”;

}

To base the direction on the hosts ip address or range

if (isInNet(host, “ip address / network range”, “network mask”))

{
return “DIRECT”;

}

We can also evaluate the domain name of the host and base the decisions on this

if (dnsDomainIs(host, “.xxxxx.xxxx”)) {

return “DIRECT”;

}

Handy for keeping directing traffic to your internal servers especially if there are all on different sub-nets

If you want to look at a client address and create the direction based of this

if (isInNet(myIpAddress(), “ip address / range”, “network mask”)) {
return “PROXY xxxxxx:xx”;
}

If you can write JavaScript then I believe you can use any function if a PAC file.

You now need to test it the best tool I have found is this pacparser the windows version is a command line tool, just a note I never got it working when the PAC file was hosted on a web server, but point it at a local file and it works perfectly.

After writing this I found a brilliant resource here, this has many examples much like above but does go into a bit more detail.

Now for the example, this is just and example but it does work in a live environment when some of the domains and proxies are changes, I don’t look for Google in my live environment, this is an illustration of how to use the host function.

function FindProxyForURL(url, host) {

// start with the exceptions

if ((host == “www.google.com”) ||

(host == “www.google.co.uk”))

{
return “DIRECT”;
}

if (isInNet(host, “192.3.1.0″, “255.255.255.0″))
{
return “DIRECT”;
}

if (isInNet(host, “192.4.1.0″, “255.255.255.0″))

{
return “DIRECT”;
}

if (isInNet(host, “10.0.0.0″, “255.0.0.0″))
{
return “DIRECT”;
}

// send all the company internal domain traffic direct

if (dnsDomainIs(host, “.mydomain.local”)) {
return “DIRECT”;
}

//if it does not match any thing proxy it

Return “PROXY proxy.mydomain.local:80″;

} // End of function

http://www.proxypacfiles.com/proxypac/index.php

Filed under: General Scripts, IT Survival

Installing Oracle XE Centos 6

survivalguides — Fri, 23 Sep 2011 15:52:26 +0000

We need some small Oracle application writing and have choosen APEX and it fairly easy to use and also FREE always a good thing. To start out we are going to use the Oracle XE version to start us off and if need be install on the live Oracle server.

So the build is in Vmware as always and the OS will be Centos 6, trying to keep up with the newest releases.

Download the Oracle XE client and server from the Oracle web site, I am not includin a link as it is your choice which one you want. I am installing:

oracle-xe-client-10.2.0.1-1.0.i386

oracle-xe-10.2.0.1-1.0.i386

Once downloaded then

rpm -iv oracle-xe-client-10.2.0.1-1.0.i386.rpm

rpm -iv oracle-xe-10.2.0.1-1.0.i386.rpm

You may get the following error

error: "net.bridge.bridge-nf-call-ip6tables" is an unknown key

If you do then

yum install bc libc.so.6 libaio.so.1

This install the relevant packages required by Oracle.

To install Oracle

rpm -iv oracle-xe-10.2.0.1-1.0.i386.rpm

/etc/init.d/oracle-xe configure

This will start the configuration.

Specify the HTTP port that will be used for Oracle Application Express [8080]: Take the default

Specify a port that will be used for the database listener [1521]:Take the default

Do you want Oracle Database 10g Express Edition to be started on boot (y/n) [y]:y

Starting Oracle Net Listener…Done
Configuring Database…Done
Starting Oracle Database 10g Express Edition Instance…Done
Installation Completed Successfully.
To access the Database Home Page go to “http://127.0.0.1:8080/apex”

To ensure Oracle is started

service oracle-xe start

Starting Oracle Database 10g Express Edition Instance.

Filed under: IT Survival, Linux, Oracle

How to embed a video in WordPress blog

survivalguides — Tue, 30 Aug 2011 07:31:26 +0000

I am just starting you an internal blog site for various parts of the organisation to allow them to disseminate information to the masses, one of the requirements was to embed video into the blog.

This is done via a plugin, which I would presume there are many, the one that I have found and works brilliantly is from here

The instructions are really easy.

Tip the plugins folder is usually found /var/www/html/XXXX/wp-content/plugins

Where XXXX is the name of the folder that you created to hold the WordPress install (in a single site usually WordPress)

Just remember that after you have you loaded the folder, ssh onto the server and navigate to the plugins folder and then

chown -R apache:apache embedded-video-with-link/

Follow the rest of the instructions and you will have a new plugin Icon when composing your posts

Filed under: Wordpress

How to change wordpress upload limit from 2MB

survivalguides — Tue, 30 Aug 2011 07:23:14 +0000

The WordPress upload limit when hosting your own site is set to 2MB, this is also probably the case if you have a hosted site as well, I am sure you guys will let me know.

This I have found out (much searching) is down to the php.ini config.

There are many posts out there that try to give you instructions on what to do, but they always missed something, I came accross this post from bh_wp_fan that put me on the right path.

vi /etc/php.ini

Find the lines upload_max_filesize, and post_max_size

Alter these to what every you want and away you go. There are a few more tips so by the poster so if need any help I would drop on this section.

Would have loved to say that I found that out by myself but, bot this time

Filed under: Wordpress

Pure-FTP configuration Linux

survivalguides — Tue, 23 Aug 2011 09:34:58 +0000

Pure-FTP is a very good FTP server and is easy to install and set-up. There is a little trick to use to get it working but it will ensure that any users that are logged into the FTP session stay in their home folder.

Download pure-ftp from here

You need the GCC and make packages to install this

yum install GCC

yum install make

Once downloaded un-tar the file as per normal

tar -xf xxxxx.tar

There is an install file that explains how to install the server, but the basics are

./congure

./make

./make install

This will install the server. The clever bit is how to start the server. You do this by creating a file in the /etc/init.d directory and a start stop file

cd /usr/local/sbin

vi pure-ftp-start

Insert the following line

/usr/local/sbin/pure-ftpd -A -H -E -p 40000:50000 -c 20 -C 3 -I 5 -u 1 &

Save the file and then make the file executable

chmod 755 pure-ftp-start

vi pure-ftp-stop

Insert the following line

pkill pure-ftpd

Save the file and then make the file executable

chmod 755 pure-ftp-stop

cd /etc/init.d

vi pureftpd

Insert the following lines – the basis of this has been copied from another startup. Really need to look at some of the stuff at the top, but it works.

#!/bin/sh
# chkconfig: 235 99 10
# description: Start or stop the Webmin server
#
### BEGIN INIT INFO
# Provides: pure-ftp
# Required-Start: $network $syslog
# Required-Stop: $network
# Default-Start: 2 3 5
# Default-Stop: 0 1 6
# Description: Start or stop the pure-ftp server
### END INIT INFO

start=/usr/local/sbin/pure-ftp-start
stop=/usr/local/sbin/pure-ftp-stop

name=’pure-ftp’

case “$1″ in
‘start’)
$start >/dev/null 2>&1 ;;
‘stop’)
$stop
;;

‘restart’)
$stop ; $start
;;
*)
echo “Usage: $0 { start | stop }”
;;
esac
exit

Save the file and then make the file executable

chmod 755 pureftpd

To start the service manually

service pureftpd start

To stop the service manually

service pureftpd stop

To make the pure-ftp serever auto start then issue the following command

chkconfig –levels 345 pureftpd on

Filed under: General Admin, IT Survival, Linux

Copy data and create directory

survivalguides — Wed, 15 Jun 2011 10:37:09 +0000

A script to copy data and create a directory

today_date=`date +%e%m%y`

#trims the space when date start with a 0
current_date=”${today_date#”${today_date%%[![:space:]]*}”}”

# The directory that the orders will be backed upto
backup_directory=/home/nisbets_copyorders/$current_date
# The backup home directory
backup_directory_home=/home/copyorders
# The directory to copy the orders to
to_directory=/home/incoming
# The directory to copy the orders from
from_directory=/home/xxx/incoming

echo $current_date
echo $backup_directory
echo $to_directory
echo $from_directory

cd $backup_directory_home
#if the backup directory exists then don’t do anything, if it does not then create it
if [ ! -d "$backup_directory/" ]; then
cd $backup_directory_home
mkdir $current_date
fi

cd $from_directory
cp $from_directory/* $to_directory/
cp $from_directory/* “$backup_directory/”

rm -f /home/xxx/incoming/*

Filed under: Scripting