Why Beyond Compare tool rocks

If a picture is worth a thousand words, here’s 10K worth for why you should check out Beyond Compare. It’s the one tool that I use every day I’m working at my computer. I’ve used it to compare not only files and folders but zip files to folders - it treats a zip like a folder and let’s you update the zip in situ. I’ve also used it to compare two Word documents, two Excel spreadsheets, MP3 files (tags), version stamps on executables. However, I wasn’t aware it could compare two photographs and show a “mask” of the differences between them!! It’s also the “external” tool I use for differencing in version control systems. If you earn your living using a (Windows or Linux) computer, how can you not afford to spend $50 to increase your productivity?

Preparing CentOS 5.3 (LAMP) for Drupal 6 – Part 2

Technorati Tags: drupal,centos,lamp,php

In the first article, I covered the basic steps for preparing a CentOS 5.3 installation for Drupal 6 by installing and configuring MySQL. This article covers the last quartet of the LAMP stack – PHP as well as initial installation of Drupal 6.

From a terminal console use the ‘yum’ utility to install the necessary PHP components:

yum install php-mysql php-gd php-imap php-ldap php-odbc php-pear php-xml php-xmlrpc

Next it’s helpful and common practice to create a PHP informational page to verify its installation using the Gnome text editor:

gedit /var/www/html/phpinfo.php

Paste or type the following then save and exit:

<?php

// Show all information, defaults to INFO_ALL
phpinfo();

// Show just the module information.
// phpinfo(8) yields identical results.
phpinfo(INFO_MODULES);

?>

Display the PHP information using the browser:

Scroll further down to verify that the Apache URL rewriting module is loaded:

This will be useful later for what is known in Drupal as “clean URLs”.

Implicit in the above instructions is the fact that the default location for the Apache web server document root folder is /var/www/html which means placing web files and folders under there makes them automatically served up by Apache and accessible via a web browser with no other special configuration. However, a common alternate approach is to create a separate Unix user account per installed application so that permissions and configuration settings are easily isolated to that account. This approach also facilitates remote development because it’s simpler and easier when enabling FTP access since Unix accounts typically have full access to their “home” directories. Doing it this way means a couple of extra steps when initially setting up the Drupal website but saves a ton of headaches in the future trying to enable access to the machine-wide directories under /var.

Earlier we created a MySQL database account called ‘drupal614’ (reflecting the current released version of Drupal). If you haven’t done so already, we’ll next create a Unix account with the same name:

useradd drupal614

passwd drupal614

After logging in as this new user, browse to the Drupal website and download the latest 6.x released version. Use the Nautilus file manager to open the .tar.gz file and extract it under the user’s home directory. Planning ahead for managing several versions, I chose to create a separate folder to hold websites (e.g. /home/drupal614/www/) so the full path becomes /home/drupal614/www/drupal-6.14.

At this point, we need to configure Apache to expose the Drupal directory by editing the httpd.conf file and adding entries:

gedit /etc/httpd/conf/httpd.conf

First we create an alias to the actual physical location on disk then we allow settings there to override the default settings for Apache by placing the following into the file at the end:

Next we edit the .htaccess file in the root of the Drupal install directory – uncomment the RewriteBase instruction and set the path to the alias we specified above in the httpd.conf file:

Now we should be able to follow the steps to grant write permissions outlined in the install guide then open a browser and navigate to the install page:

http://localhost/drupal614/install.php

You should see the initial page to choose a language:

The next page is where you’ll put in the database configuration information we had previously setup:

After setup is complete it is generally recommended to go into admin/settings/clean-urls and enable them if not already enabled:

At this point we have an installed and working version of Drupal! Subsequent posts will cover installation and configuration of various modules to achieve the level of functionality required for a high quality community site.

Preparing CentOS 5.3 (LAMP) for Drupal 6

Having just embarked on a side project to build a community website using Drupal 6 I decided to capture the steps both for documentation purposes and to help others who may seek to do the same. To begin with, CentOS is short for Community ENTerprise Operating System and is “an Enterprise-class Linux Distribution derived from sources freely provided to the public by a prominent North American Enterprise Linux vendor.” In other words this open source project takes the GPL-released RedHat sources and compiles them along with free, open source replacements for RedHat’s proprietary portions. Within the business community, it is widely popular because it is “just like” (just as good as?) the commercial version it is based upon.

On numerous occasions I have installed versions of CentOS on Microsoft’s Virtual PC and Hyper-V products as well as VMWare’s Workstation. In my opinion, it is far easier with VMWare’s built-in support however their workstation product costs around $180 whereas the Microsoft products are “free” with corresponding Windows licenses. Note however that VMWare Workstation is only necessary to initially build a new virtual machine instance. Once you have the guest OS installed, you can use their free VMWare Player to run the virtual machines. VMWare has a great program of “appliances” which are pre-built, pre-configured virtual machines ready for download and operation. In fact, there’s a CentOS 5.3 appliance ready to go – you just need to download then install VMWare Player and download the appliance and you’re up and running.

The Apache web server is already installed in the appliance and when you choose “server” if performing your own install. That leaves MySQL and PHP along with some configuration. Begin with MySQL by opening a terminal window (right-click on the desktop) and switching to the built-in root user (a.k.a. superuser):

su -

yum install mysql mysql-server

Once MySQL is installed enable it for autostart using:

chkconfig –levels 235 mysqld on

then start it manually this first time using:

/etc/init.d/mysqld start

Set the MySQL database login for root:

mysqladmin –u root password ‘PASSWORD-GOES-HERE’

Next log into the MySQL command processor and set the database name to use for subsequent commands:

mysql –u root –p

mysql> USE mysql;
Reading table information for completion of table and column names
You can turn off this feature to get a quicker startup with -A

Database changed

At this point there’s some housekeeping that’s usually done to secure the database beginning with removing the anonymous accounts that let any connection to the database to happen.

mysql> DELETE FROM user WHERE User = '';

mysql> FLUSH PRIVILEGES;

Now look at the remaining contents of the user table:

mysql> select Host,User,Password from user;
+-----------------------+------+------------------+
| Host                  | User | Password         |
+-----------------------+------+------------------+
| localhost             | root | 44d0372963d3fb50 |
| localhost.localdomain | root |                  |
| 127.0.0.1             | root |                  |
+-----------------------+------+------------------+
3 rows in set (0.00 sec)

Note that the Password column contains a hashed (encrypted) value. To exit the MySQL command processor and return to the Linux shell use ‘quit;’  or ‘\q’:

mysql> quit;
Bye

Create a separate database login for a Drupal user (e.g. drupal614):

mysqladmin –u root –p create drupal614

This database account will be used to connect to MySQL and will “own” the tables and other artifacts created to support Drupal. Rather than using the separate mysqladmin from the Linux shell you can accomplish the same thing from within the MySQL command processor before quitting:

mysql> CREATE USER 'drupal614'@'localhost' IDENTIFIED BY 'drupal614';
Query OK, 0 rows affected (0.00 sec)

mysql> GRANT ALL PRIVILEGES ON *.* TO 'drupal614'@'localhost' WITH GRANT OPTION;
Query OK, 0 rows affected (0.01 sec)

mysql> CREATE USER 'drupal614'@'%' IDENTIFIED BY 'drupal614';
Query OK, 0 rows affected (0.00 sec)

mysql> GRANT ALL PRIVILEGES ON *.* TO 'john'@'%' WITH GRANT OPTION;
Query OK, 0 rows affected (0.00 sec)

mysql> flush privileges;
Query OK, 0 rows affected (0.00 sec)

mysql> quit;
Bye

The above commands will create two database accounts – one for connecting from within the Linux machine and the second set for connecting to the Linux machine from another. This second account is useful if you wish to connect say from your Windows machine using a free utility such as DbVisualizer or SQuirreL SQL. The GRANT command is a lazy bit of a cheat in that it grants all permissions to the drupal614 account. Looking at the Drupal installation guide you’ll find a longer syntax which only grants the specific permissions that Drupal needs to connect and use the MySQL database.

This has been a quick whirlwind tour of the essential steps. I have only tried this twice – first as a trial and error practice and again using a fresh machine to validate that I had the specific steps worked out.

Next up will be the steps for installing PHP and Drupal.

How To Hack a New Integrated XP Mode Application

Technorati Tags: win7,xpmode,virtual,eclipse

One thing I discovered about integrated applications is that only Windows installer-based applications will be “exported” from the XP Mode machine to the Windows 7 host. I decided to install the new Eclipse 4.5 release under (in?) XP Mode and it runs great there. Since I wanted to also have the nifty application shortcut on the Windows 7 start menu I looked around the ‘verse for how to do that but couldn’t find anything. I already had a few applications “exported” that way so I decided to try and hack the appropriate links together to make it work. Here’s the steps necessary to make it happen:

1. Manually register the application in the Terminal Services Application Allowed List.
   
2. Extract an icon (optional) to put on Windows 7 shortcut.
   
3. Manually create the shortcut on Windows 7.

Note: These steps are (obviously) completely unsupported by Microsoft and have received limited testing. OK, I really only got this one application to work on one machine :) so use at your own risk!

Register the Application

Within the running XP Mode instance, you need to add entries in the registry under HKLM\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\Terminal Server\TsAppAllowList\Applications which appear to contain enough information to “auto-launch” the requested application. Here’s a screenshot of the entries I created for Eclipse:

Note the random key name, “cfc5bae5”, which I made up. By looking at other entries, I was able to create all the necessary values. One thing I did to be “safe” was to open a command prompt and use “dir /x” to ensure the short path name was correct. In the case of Eclipse it is only seven characters long so Windows doesn’t have to mangle the name to shorten it into “8.3” format. If you look at other applications registered there, you’ll see what I mean.

Extract the Icon

Since the Eclipse executable has its icon embedded within as do most Windows applications, I used the free IconsExtract utility from NirSoft to extract out the embedded icon and save it as an .ico file:

I then copied the extracted icon file out to the Windows 7 host drive using the default mapped drive letter automatically created for XP Mode.

At this point, I shut down the running XP Mode instance using the Windows Security link on its Start Menu. Simply closing the window or using Log Off leaves the virtual machine running and I wanted to be sure the test would work from a “cold start”.

Manually Create Shortcut on Windows 7

The machine-wide Start Menu shortcuts for Windows 7 are stored under %SYSTEMDRIVE%\ProgramData\Microsoft\Windows\Start Menu but you’ll only find the Windows Virtual PC and Windows XP Mode links there. Instead, all the application shortcuts are stored under your user profile’s roaming settings - %APPDATA%\Microsoft\Windows\Start Menu\Programs\Windows Virtual PC\Windows XP Mode Applications where %APPDATA% typically resolves to C:\Users\{yourLoginName}\AppData\Roaming\. If you look at the properties of an existing shortcut that was automatically exported you’ll find something like this one for Notepad++:

%SystemRoot%\system32\rundll32.exe %SystemRoot%\system32\VMCPropertyHandler.dll,LaunchVMSal "Windows XP Mode" "||6cab7fc4" "Notepad++"

After examining a couple of these, it became apparent that the key piece of information is the random string of hex characters embedded after the double pipes, i.e. “||6cab7fc4”. This string value corresponds to the registry key name within the XP Mode virtual machine from step one. Now it was simply a matter to copy|paste one of the existing shortcuts, change the name and the embedded string and select the application icon previously exported and copied out to Windows 7.

Looking at the other shortcut entries I learned that the icons are stored under %LOCALAPPDATA%\Microsoft\Windows Virtual PC\Virtual Applications\Windows XP Mode where %LOCALAPPDATA% typically resolves to C:\Users\{yourLoginName}\AppData\Local\.

Here is the finished shortcut properties with the Eclipse icon showing the embedded string. Notice the indicated string value matches the random set of characters I chose in step one when creating the registry key in the XP Mode virtual machine.

I’ve listed the steps in order from “inside out” – that is, from inside the virtual machine out to the Windows 7 host machine. However, the truth of the matter is that I worked backwards from outside in to figure it out. I first examined and compared a few existing Windows 7 shortcuts to realize that the string value played an important part – except for the application name, the rest of the shortcut commands were identical. I then fired up the XP Mode virtual machine and went right to the registry editor to search for one of those strings and hit pay dirt – I found the configuration within that contained all the necessary information to launch the application. The only piece left was a bit of polish to extract the icon so I could use it in Windows 7. Again, looking at other existing shortcuts I found where the application launch icons were stored and put the new one there.

WEI on Vista x64 vs. Win7 x64

Technorati Tags: win7,t61p

I just finished installing Win7 RTM x64 on my Lenovo T61p and here’s the results of the Windows Experience Index (WEI):

 

Here’s the results “as delivered” last summer from Lenovo with Vista x64:

It’s basically the same machine – I say “basically” because technically there’s a different hard drive – both are SATA 7200 rpm. There are really two variables in play here – the different OS of course and different drivers.

As delivered it had all the Lenovo eye candy installed which I left pretty much left intact except for occasional system updates. With the fresh installation of Win7 RTM x64 I managed to get a working nVidia driver by using the latest Vista 64-bit version (ver. 7.15.11.7693, 2009/01/15) from their support site working. I was not able to the the official nVidia Windows 7 64-bit version (ver. 186.03, 2009/06/09) to install however they’ve labeled it a beta release.

Misguided usability “feature” in Safari

Finding it necessary to test some features of a web application using Safari, I dutifully downloaded the Windows version and installed it. Upon launch I was greeted with this gaudy home page shown here on the right. Now maybe some people enjoy the tackiness of a supermarket tabloid emblazoned with color and too many things going on at once. In fairness, Apple’s start page is no worse than Microsoft’s MSN property. In all the years of using IE and Microsoft attempting to shove their noisy, bulked up on steroids homepage under foot as the welcome doormat, I’ve dutifully avoided it and set my startup page to Google’s minimalist starting point. To me it’s like the difference between opening my front door and stepping out onto a quiet, country scene or stepping out onto the sidewalk of the Las Vegas strip – to each his or her own.

However, when I attempted to switch my home page over to Google I was jarred with this unexpected dialog from those brilliant minds at Apple. How do I put this gently? WTF?!?! What does setting my home page have to do with using the search bar? Don’t they get it? Let me put it to them plainly – I can’t stand your lousy home page and hope to never see it again.

After reflecting for a moment it occurred to me there’s some nefarious programming going on here. It wasn’t a case of them whining about not using their home page, THEY EXPLICITELY CHECKED FOR AND ATTEMPTED TO STOP ME FROM USING GOOGLE AS MY HOMEPAGE!!! They also deflected the issue by directing me to the search bar as though it was a matter of searching. Firefox doesn’t do this. Internet Explorer doesn’t do this. I’m guessing that Opera doesn’t either although I haven’t tried Opera.

It dawned on my that they made an intentional decision to write code that would check if I was switching my home page to Google’s and attempt to warn me off. Someone actually thought up this “feature”, added it to the development tasks, assigned it to a developer to code, wrote a test plan for QA to verify the “feature”, informed the localization team so that it could be translated into however many languages the browser supports and shipped it! How many man-hours of production costs went into this “feature”?

Um…maybe the Apple team (and the users of the software) would be better served by more useful features like a simple, easy way to debug JavaScript instead of this. Today being April 15th in the U.S. I thought it was apropos to mention this little additional “line item” in the Apple Tax.

Technorati Tags: apple,safari,google

Debugging Safari on Windows

Truthfully, I had strongly considered titling this post “Drive by blogging” as a nod to a drive by shooting or “Blog rage” in deference to road rage because that’s how I felt this morning. I briefly considered “Why Safari sucks” as well. The fact is that compared to debugging under Internet Explorer or Firefox, Safari is still in the dark ages.

Searching for “Safari debug JavaScript” easily turns up secret incantations for enabling the hidden Developer’s menu and you think you’re onto something only to be let down. Okay, that’s not totally fair – apparently you had to hunt for preferences and edit an XML file or type in an undocumented command string but now it’s found on the Edit | Preferences dialog under the Advanced “section” (or is that “tab” or “button” in Apple-speak – hard to tell with that non-intuitive dialog).

With the “Show Develop menu in menu bar” checked, you’ll be briefly pleased at the shiny new menu shown here on the left. I’ve highlighted the most promising options. Web Inspector is a nice little DOM inspector and even shows the JavaScript files currently loaded – same as Firefox/Firebug and IE/DeveloperTools. The Error Console is pretty standard and the Network Timeline is a very nice feature.

My issue with all this glitz is that IT’S FREAKIN’ NEAR USELESS!!! You can’t *DEBUG* JavaScript in a way that is considered modern, standard practice today. Unlike Internet Explorer with it’s developer add-in or Firefox’ Firebug add-in, you can’t set breakpoints and step through code, nor can you inspect variable values nor see a call stack to figure out where you’ve come from.

In fact, the above mentioned search yields as its number one result the Safari Developer FAQ which specifically answers the question - it’s #14 on the FAQ list. I’ll quote a bit of it here: “Safari 1.3 and above supports explicit logging of arbitrary information … by using window.console.log() in your JavaScript. All messages are routed to the JavaScript Console window and show up nicely in a dark green, to easily differentiate themselves from JavaScript exceptions.”

Gee, it bring tears to my eyes to think that 25 years ago when I first started programming in RPG II and Cobol-74 on IBM systems I could carefully insert debug logging code into my program and observe the values of variables when I re-ran the program and managed to bring it to the same state it was in that caused me to consider there’s a bug in there somewhere. It’s really great to know that the Apple team hasn’t strayed too far from the tried and true basics that have worked for so long. No wonder Safari is such a distant third in the browser market with the rest of the niche players – developers HATE working with it!!

On to my real gripe – if you really dig hard, you’ll come across the WebKit underneath Safari with instructions on how to build and debug it. There’s two itsy, bitsy things they don’t tell you in the Windows instructions…

1. If you already have Cygwin for other things, forget about it. Rip it out and install their customized version mentioned in step 3. They’re not explicit about that and you will waste time otherwise. While I applaud them for making it somewhat turnkey, at least point out that they’ve got a custom configured version and that it’s the only way you’ll get it to work. Their wiki has a link to the “list” of packages (really just a pointer to the Perl source for the installer) but adding those packages to an existing Cygwin install still doesn’t work.
2. The second dirty little secret they forgot to spell out…you *MUST* download the source under your home directory, e.g. /cygwin/home/<username>/WebKit. So /WebKit or /Src/WebKit, or /Repo/WebKit …none of these are allowed – there’s only one path structure that will work and it’s theirs. There’s plenty of path references inside their Perl scripts that assume this directory structure and will only work properly with it. I don’t necessarily have a problem with that, but I do have a problem with them not taking the extra minute to point this out clearly so as not to waste the time of others.

If you make either of these mistakes (or both, as I did) you will waste a lot of time and effort chasing missing things, strange error messages, and generally getting frustrated. Welcome to the wonderful world of free, open source projects – you get what you pay for…nothing!

Now on to debugging a JavaScript library that works beautifully under Internet Explorer and Firefox but not so much under he-who-must-not-be-named-browser.

 

P.S. Did you catch the hidden message? If you want to debug JavaScript running in Safari you need to download the source code for the browser, configure a proper build environment, then run the browser in the debugger. Ooh-rah! Only way to be productive.