World of *Nix

From last few months i am working to optimize our somewhereinblog.net server, because right now we are getting huge amount of hits everyday (1,00,000 + hits). In this series i will describe the tricks that i learned 🙂

On my first post of this searies i will talk about ETag. Before disable this, first we need to know what is ETags. From wikipedia:

An ETag (entity tag) is an HTTP response header returned by an HTTP/1.1 compliant web server used to determine change in content at a given URL. When a new HTTP response contains the same ETag as an older HTTP response, the contents are determined to be the same without further downloading. The header is useful for intermediary devices that perform caching, as well as for client web browsers that cache results. One method of generating the ETag is based on the last modified time of the file and the size of the file.

In certain situations, ETags may not improve the performance of a web application. For instance, some ETag generation schemes incorporate the file’s inode on the system. The file’s inode is unique to the file only on one specific machine. If a site has multiple servers, each with its own copy of the file (i.e. load balancing), then a user’s request for the same file may get served by a different machine. In that case, the inode will almost certainly be different and, if it is used to generate the ETag, it will cause the file to be re-downloaded.

So, this is not always helpfull for all type of sites. Always remember, if you are not using anything, you should not enable or kept enable on server.

Apache by default enable this ETags. We need to disable this to get better performance. Here i am describing the steps for debian and ubuntu linux.

We will take help from mod_header to disable ETags, so first we need to enable the mod_header (apache module)

sudo a2enmod header

sudo /etc/init.d/apache2 restart

this command will enable mod_header. Now open /etc/apache2/apache2.conf with your faviourate browser.

sudo nano /etc/apache2/apache2.conf

then paste the under given code to this apache2.conf file

Header unset ETag
FileETag None

now restart the apache2, and check if it working or not. If every thing OK, then you will not see the etags anymore 🙂

For better understanding i am giving you 2 screenshots.

Before ETag disable

After ETag disable:

If you don’t have root access to server, you still can do this from .htaccess , just copy that code to .htaccess instate of apache conf file.

Ask me if you have any question or problem about ETag.

on our new server we was getting problem with mail sending. yahoo and some other mail server was not receiving our mails to there inbox. so i imported the most popular php class (phpmailer ) in codeigniter as plugin. it’s install and use is too simple. you have to download the zip file from here, then unzip it to your plugin (systemplugins) folder. then edit phpmailer_pi.php , and edit the default configuration as needed as your mail server (default configuration will work fine with gmail smtp, you only have to edit the user name and pass) .

download:

phpmailer for codeigniter

usage:

you can now use all the functions that phpmailer supported. here is a the example that you will get in phpmailer site, but in ci format.

 < ?php
/*
 * Created on May 19, 2008
 *
 * To change the template for this generated file go to
 * Window - Preferences - PHPeclipse - PHP - Code Templates
 */

 class Action extends Controller {

	function Action()
	{
		parent::Controller();
	}

   function testMailer()
   {
	   error_reporting(E_ERROR);

	   $this->load->plugin('phpmailer');
	   $mail=new PHPMailer();

	/*$mail->IsSMTP();
	$mail->SMTPAuth   = true;                  // enable SMTP authentication
	$mail->SMTPSecure = "ssl";                 // sets the prefix to the servier
	$mail->Host       = "smtp.gmail.com";      // sets GMAIL as the SMTP server
	$mail->Port       = 465;                   // set the SMTP port 

	$mail->Username   = "[email protected]";  // GMAIL username
	$mail->Password   = "xxxxxx";            // GMAIL password
	*/

	$mail->From       = "[email protected]";
	$mail->FromName   = "sender name";
	$mail->Subject    = "This is the subject";
	$mail->Body       = "Hi,This is the HTML BODY";                      //HTML Body
	$mail->AltBody    = "This is the body when user views in plain text format"; //Text Body
	//print_r($mail);
	$mail->WordWrap   = 50; // set word wrap

	$mail->AddAddress("[email protected]");
	$mail->AddReplyTo("[email protected]","sender name");
	$mail->AddAttachment("/path/to/file.zip");             // attachment
	$mail->AddAttachment("/path/to/image.jpg", "new.jpg"); // attachment

	$mail->IsHTML(true); // send as HTML

	if(!$mail->Send()) {
	  echo "Mailer Error: " . $mail->ErrorInfo;
	} else {
	  echo "Message has been sent";
	}

   }
}

?>

imagemagick is one of the best library to work with image. recently i have to install it to our production server. here is what i did:

$ apt-get install imagemagick

it downloads the package and all it’s dependences from debian/ubuntu repository, and installed. now i have to install the support of php (as our product running on php)

$ apt-get install php5-imagick

then i restarted the apache server to take effect this new package installation. if your using php4 then the package name should be php4-imagick

$ /etc/init.d/apache2 restart

that’s all 🙂

if you need imagemagick for your ruby , you can install the librmagick-ruby package.

**if this post doesn’t answer ur question, please post it in comment, i will try to help as much as possible. thanks for ur time.

Nowadays, lots of php developers are thinking to move their development environment to linux. And I am writing this tutorial for them. As I like Debian GNU/Linux (www.debian.org) best and ubuntu (www.ubutnulinux.org) is now doing great, in this tutorial I am using the commands for debian & ubuntu.

Ok, now starting:

First on all let’s make a list of software a PHP developer need mostly:

1.Apache
2.PHP
3.Mysql
4.PHP IDE

Ok, let’s start with Apache. Debian & ubuntu use APT to manage the packages. You can easily install apache using apt, here is the command

Debian user:

su

Ubuntu user:

sudo su

Rest of the command ar same for both debian & ubuntu.

apt-get install apache2

It will install all the apache2 & all the related packages (software)
If you need to enable mod_rewrite, follow this link
Now install the PHP

Apt-get install php5 libapache2-mod-php5

This will install the php5 and configure your apache2 server for PHP. You don’t need to do anything.
Lets test the server, if it working ok.

touch /var/www/info.php

Chown www-data:www-data info.php

Now edit this info.php with your feviourate editor and add write code to show phpinfo():
and now browse http://localhost/info.php from your browser. Now check if all your requested library are installed.
if you need any more library, you can check if it already available on your debian/ubuntu package list.

apt-cache search php5-

then you will get the list of available php5 library. Now simple use this command to install it.

apt-get install php5-gd

(example, if you want to install php5 GD library)

Remember: after installing every extra packages, you must need to restart apache server

/etc/init.d/apache2 restart

Ok, so you have now apache2 and php5 installed system. Let’s install mysql:

apt-get install mysql-server-5.0 php5-mysql

It will install all the necessary packages to run mysql-server.
Now restart your apache to take effect.
Complete!!!! Server is allmost ready.
Now i am going to derive how you will transfer your old code to this new environment. Belive me it’s too simple, so don’t worry.

First of all copy your source code to /var/www, here is the details procedure:

mkdir /windows

Here we make a folder for C drive of windows to mount.
mount /dev/hda1 /windows
then we mount the C drive to windows folder (here i use hda1 as example, if your hdd is sata then it will be sda1)

cp -r windows/Apache2/htdocs/xyz /var/www

here we copied our xyz site to /var/www (in debian and ubuntu, default apache2 root folder is /var/www)

cd /var/www

chown -R www-data:www-data xyz

Now change the ownership to www-data

Now we need to move the mysql database, there is two way:

1.use phpmyadmin
2.simple copy the database from data folder
I am deriving the 2nd way.

cp -r /windows/Mysql/data/xyz /var/lib/mysql

chown -R mysql:mysql /var/lib/mysql/xyz

You are done.

PHP Ide for linux environment:

1.Zend ( i personaly use this)
2.PHPEd
3.PHPEclipse
4.quanta plus
5.emacs
6.vi
7.PHPedit

***I know this tutorial needs more edit, please make your comments if you got anything wrong, or missed anything. I want it a cool tutorial for php developers.

Read some reviewed, the best and most affordable php hosting solutions on the market.

Here i am going to describe how to enable mod_rewrite in apache2.2 -specaily for debian.

In default installion of apache2.2 on debian never enable mod_rewrite default. So you may need to enable .

First install the apache2.2 with this command :
debian user please use “su” before start this process
ubuntu user please use “sudo su” before start this process

apt-get install apache2 (it will install apache 2.2)

on current debian system you can enable mod_rewrite with simple command

a2enmod rewrite

old style, you can skip this portion

now use locate to find if the mod_rewrite.so is availble on your server

updatedb
locate mod_rewrite.so


it will found in “/usr/lib/apache2/modules”

new apache follow some folders to enable and disable mods.
so now do this:

cd /etc/apache2/mods-enabled
touch rewrite.load
gedit rewrite.load (you may use any editor to edit this file)

now paste this following line

LoadModule rewrite_module /usr/lib/apache2/modules/mod_rewrite.so

end of old style

Then edit /etc/apache2/sites-available/default or /etc/apache2/sites-available/000-default (check which one available on your system)

Find the following

Options Indexes FollowSymLinks MultiViews
AllowOverride None
Order allow,deny
allow from all

and change it to

Options Indexes FollowSymLinks MultiViews
AllowOverride all
Order allow,deny
allow from all

and finally restart Apache

/etc/init.d/apache2 restart
or
service apache2 restart

OK, you done 😀

don’t forget to comment, if it works or not.

thanks.

if you like my post, please tweet it, so other also can see this post.

গত কাল এক বন্ধুর জন্য পিএইচপিএর বাংলা বই কিনতে গিয়েছিলাম নিলক্ষেত। কিন্তু বইয়ের অবস্থা দেখে খালি হাতেই বাড়ি ফিরলাম। কি আর বলব তাদের বইয়ের কোয়ালিটি। মোট 2 টি বই পেয়েছিলাম। 1তম টায় দেখলাম পিএইচপি আর মাই এসকিউল ইনেস্টলশেন করতে করেতই অর্ধেক বই শেষ বাকিটা যা্ষ্ট ম্যানোয়ালের ট্রানসলেশন। আর দ্বিতীয় বইটিতে দেখলাম যা আলোচনা করা দরকারঁ তার সম্প্রর্কে খুব কমই লিখেছে। শুধু আজে বাজে কথায় ভর্তি।

আমি খু্বই হতাশ হলাম। চিন্তা করছি সময় করতে পারলে একবার চেষ্টা করে দেখব, একটা পিএইচপি বই লেখতে পারি কিনা যা দিয়ে যে কোন ব্যক্তি অন্তত বেসিকটা ভালভাবে বুঝে শিখতে পারবে।

Read this first

At last today it released from ekushey.org

Now you can download it from here

প্লাগিনটি টেস্ট করার জন্য সবাইকে ধন্যবাদ।

At last I got my phpED (license copy). Thanks goes to Hasin Hayder.

Hope it will help me to make batter experience with PHP.

Soon i will write review on phpED 5.0