Compile and install Apache 2.4 on Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) 6 or CentOS 6

Submitted by erikwebb on April 12, 2013 - 11:02am

There are a lot of threads on the Internet that point to running Apache 2.4 on RHEL 6 as being a difficult setup. It's actually quite easy, thanks to Apache's wonderful packaging. Since Apache builds their source packages so they can easily be compiled into RPMs. (All of these steps were performed on a fresh installation of CentOS 6.3.)

First we need to install all of the tools for building RPMs and create the directory structure -

Providing Date Module Functionality for Custom Date Fields in D6

Submitted by erikwebb on June 12, 2012 - 5:49pm

The Date module creates a standardized way to interface with date fields across many different data types. When creating a custom module that creates its own date or timestamp field, you may want to take advantage of common functionality, such as easy Views integration with popup exposed filters.

To accomplish this, there are two hooks that you must implement in your existing module -

Compiling PHP Extensions on OS X Lion with XCode 4.3 and Acquia Dev Desktop

Submitted by erikwebb on May 14, 2012 - 11:11am

With OS X Lion and the new XCode 4.3, locations have changed and SDKs are no longer available. The current Acquia documentation also no longer works. I have begun compiling extensions using the following trick -

/Applications/acquia-drupal/php5_3/bin/phpize
CFLAGS='-arch i386 -isysroot /Applications/Xcode.app/Contents/Developer/Platforms/MacOSX.platform/Developer/SDKs/MacOSX10.6.sdk -mmacosx-version-min=10.5' ./configure --with-php-config=/Applications/acquia-drupal/php5_3/bin/php-config
make

Setup Simple SSH-Based Git Hosting

Submitted by erikwebb on May 1, 2012 - 9:40pm

Unlike Subversion, Git can be hosted using basic files and a simple access method such as SSH. This setup requires only three steps -

Create a dedicated user to host the Git repository -

# As ‘root’
useradd git

Add all developers’ SSH public keys to the Git user to enable password-less Git access -

Benchmarking Memcached with memslap

Submitted by erikwebb on December 5, 2011 - 10:57pm

Just like any other component in a server stack, it is important to be able to isolate the performance of each server to granularly test small configuration changes. Apache ships with ab for this purpose. Memcached has the memslap program provided by libMemcached. To run tests, we'll start two small Memcached servers on the local machine -
$ memcached -d -m 256 -p 11211 $ memcached -d -m 256 -p 11212

Using LDAP for Authentication is Never Best Practice

Submitted by erikwebb on November 6, 2011 - 5:21pm

Many enterprise clients rely on LDAP as their authentication and authorization provider for their websites. LDAP is used to store all of this information, the infrastructure already exists, so why not use it? There are plenty of reasons. So much so that I don't know if I can ever "recommend" a client directly integrate their web site with LDAP again.

Installing uploadprogress PECL library on pair Networks Shared Hosting

Submitted by erikwebb on October 10, 2011 - 9:28am

pair Networks

cd /tmp/ewebb/ pecl download uploadprogress tar xzf uploadprogress-1.0.3.1.tgz cd uploadprogress-1.0.3.1 phpize ./configure make make test mkdir ~/php-extensions cp modules/uploadprogress.so ~/php-extensions/ cat >> ~/public_html/fcgi-bin/php.ini <<EOF [uploadprogress] extension=/usr/home/ewebb/php-extensions/uploadprogress.so EOF

Git Tricks

Submitted by erikwebb on October 6, 2011 - 9:50am

This is a personal collection of Git tricks I've collected -

How to delete a 'git commit' [Stack Overflow]
Deleting a remote branch [Github]
Remove sensitive data [Github]

Setting up PEAR and Drush on pair Networks Shared Hosting

Submitted by erikwebb on October 4, 2011 - 9:46pm

I've recently decide to switch back to pair Networks and ran into some issues getting Drush setup via the new Pear method. Here are my notes -

Drupal on RHEL 6: Is It Ready?

Submitted by erikwebb on September 14, 2011 - 8:51am

Since Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) 5 came out in March 2007, it has become quite long-in-the-tooth compared to Ubuntu and other flavors with much faster release cycles. It's of course Red Hat's policy not to upgrade components to ensure the maximum amount of backward compatibility, so this lag is to be expected. Additionally many Red Hat support customers are weary of installing packages from other repositories like EPEL or freshrpms. Thankfully RHEL 5.6 added the ability to run PHP 5.3, but most other components were still missing and out-of-date.

Using Taxonomy in Drupal 7

Submitted by erikwebb on September 12, 2011 - 9:33pm

Even though taxonomy terms can now have fields, there are still some big differences with nodes that prevent them from being true equals. When deciding whether you should create content as nodes or terms, there are a few differences to consider -

Taxonomy terms have no workflow. There is no concept of a published or unpublished taxonomy term. If terms need any sort of approval or moderation, you should consider a content type.

Changing the URL of All Taxonomy Terms

Submitted by erikwebb on September 9, 2011 - 4:48pm

At a client this week, I struggled to find an easy way to change the links to all taxonomy terms. I tried using template_preprocess_field(), but that only covered the uses of taxonomy terms with fields. Taxonomy terms can be used in other places and it simply didn't make sense to involve the Field API; there must be something more universal.

Node Push: Getting Content Out of Drupal

Submitted by erikwebb on August 11, 2011 - 5:29pm

At some recent clients, Drupal has been used purely as an input method for content to then be pushed into other systems. Although the Services module provides a decent method for receiving content, there appears to be no modules that allow nodes to be easily pushed out of Drupal into other systems in configurable formats (e.g. JSON or XML). I've started a new sandbox project on Drupal.org named Node Push to solve this problem.

Drupalcamp South Carolina: A Cautionary Tale for Small Town Drupal?

Submitted by erikwebb on June 19, 2011 - 10:30am

Last weekend I gave two presentations at Drupalcamp South Carolina as part of the Southeast Linuxfest. I also attended last year, which was the very first Drupalcamp that I had attended. It was an awesome experience and has directly led to the involvement I now have in presenting all over the US, and soon in Europe as well. This year, however, was very disappointing to me. The turnout seemed substantially less than last year.

Open-source, Software Load Balancers

Submitted by erikwebb on March 24, 2011 - 3:29pm

There are countless load balancers available on the market. Some hardware, some proprietary, some hosted - there are too many options to enumerate. Instead, here is a quick list of some of the most popular open-source software load balancers and their advantages/disadvantages -

erikwebb dot net

Open source. Infrastructure. Consulting.