Entries from April 2006 ↓

That’s a plant I have at home. I don’t know what is it called, but I like it. Looking out the window, seeing all these green plants, and then the greenery that’s visible from the window…

I experienced peace.

It’s also a fulfilling experience to grow the plants. To water them, to take care of them, and then to pick the flowers! My sister got the plants for the home, and I am now loving them!

Green is good!

Had to install PHP5 with SOAP support on a server. The server was a fresh RHEL4 edition. It’s been a while I setup PHP on a server and our sys admin was on leave, so I decided to do it.

My experience in installing PHP on a server has been this: no matter how many times I have done it, I will face a new problem every time!

So in tune with that, I faced numerous issues this time as well! The first problem with the situation is that you have to recompile PHP. If you want to add SOAP support (or something similar) to PHP, you will have to recompile PHP (or load a dynamic module). So I downloaded the PHP source code. But I wanted to be sure I have other things set on the machine before I begin.

Problem 2: apxs is not available on the server. This is actually a known trouble starter. Most people don’t have apxs on their installation. And it’s needed for PHP to compile. So this means, I need to get httpd-devel on the server. So I download the latest httpd and httpd-devel RPMs from rpmfind.net. But I forgot there is something called as dependenies too! The newer versions of Apache required newer libraries of a lot of things.

So I did all that - going through dependencies one by one and upgrading / installing / forcing / avoiding dependencies. Yum was not available on the system, and when I tried to RPM Yum, it gave me further dependency problems.

Solution 1: After much frustration, I decided to try some automated method. This point generally comes when you are on the 4th or 5th level of dependency resolution. I tried “up2date“, and well, it worked! I removed all the latest version RPMs I had installed, and got the versions that came with the original setup via up2date. Also added httpd-devel.

Problem 2: Then I wanted to install MySQL. The server had MySQL client libraries, but not the server. This was strange, so I installed the MySQL server via RPM. But the server did not start. Checking the /var/log/messages, I found this:
Apr 21 23:30:07 bigserver kernel: audit(1145680207.552:0): avc: denied { write } for pid=13965 exe=/usr/sbin/mysqld name=mysql dev=dm-4 ino=114815 scontext=root:system_r:mysqld_t tcontext=root:object_r:var_lib_t tclass=dir

Solution: I had never seen a problem like this! So I Googled, and found out that this is something that happens because of the SELinux configuration in RHEL. It’s actually a reported bug on MySQL. I invoked the “system-config-securitylevel” application from the server, and disabled SELinux policy for mysql daemon. That got rid of the error. But the server still wouldn’t start.

Searching more, I found that unless I manually deleted my.cnf and other MySQL files, it would not work. So I deleted the /var/lib/mysql and my.cnf and installed MySQL server again. That made it work!

Problem 3: I knew that if I just took the PHP configure string from phpinfo output, it’s not going to compile. Most of the libraries will not be available and configure will complain about them. So I cleaned the ./configure command and executed it. But oops, it said libmysqlclient was either not present or the version was wrong. Now just a while ago I had installed the latest MySQL server, I checked the lib folder and the library was right there. What could be the problem then? After a bit of hitting around, it struck me that may be the file was indeed wrong version. The file was never replaced in the RPM installation because of the same problem that I faced earlier. So unless I manually remove those files and install MySQL devel again, it would not work. So I did that, and configure worked like an obedient servant after that.

Note: The easiest part in this whole process was the actual PHP compilation. It completed before I could check my emails! The server was pretty fast and the compilation was completed quickly and without a hassle. I did a make install and that set things right.

I am now ready to setup the application on the server and let it roll!

And I am wearing my PHP t-shirt today!

I was reviewing my future plan this morning. I have created a plan of what I want to achieve in life. In the last few years, I am happy and enjoying with family. Thinking about it, I remembered a joke. All our life, we work harder and harder to get more. To get more and more. Finally to have an island and go rest there. So why do all this planning? The simpler solution is to go to the island right away and rest. Or, be happy right away. Why do I want to wait for so many years? And if I am happy already, then what am I doing with all these future plans!

I also felt that most of the goals I set - were big, but so small if I look at the whole world. Everybody may be going after such goals. Then, what am I doing differently?

The answer to that was that it’s not only about what I am at the end of my life, it is also about what I have contributed to others. And that’s what I have to work on. I can be happy even now, but it would be cool if I contribute to a million lives and than be happy!

Here’s another Logic Builder!

Write an application that will take a block of text as input and generate a list of keywords from it. You can make the app as simple or as complex as you want.

A few notes:

• You can remove words with less than 3 characters
• You can remove common words
• You can remove verbs, and use only nouns
• You can use some third party webservice to generate the keywords
• You can remove duplicates

Responsibility and accountability comes as a burden to most people. When somebody holds me to account, I feel offended. It’s as if the other person is making me wrong.

When I started realizing that it’s only the situation that the other person is holding me responsible for, and not making me wrong, I started to get value out of it. I realized that when somebody holds you to account, it’s actually for your own good. I learnt from that and made improvements. I also learnt not to take the authorities too seriously! Not to die when somebody asks you why a particular thing is not done. All it needs is cleaning up and making up for it.

I had learnts that responsibility is a grace that you give to yourself. Not a burden you carry. It’s something that gives you power to create things. Not something that takes away your freedom, power and creativity. Responsibility actually gives you freedom to go ahead and be the cause in the matter!