Monthly Archives: April 2012

Installing MySQL on Snow Leopard

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I had all sorts of trouble installing MySQL on Snow Leopard. I never had any trouble installing mysql on Ubuntu.

Installing it normally on Snow Leopard would give me a success screen saying it had been installed but it seemed to have completely failed to install.

I then installed and used macports and that was the start of the solution. If I was trying to install MySQL on Lion or Mountain Lion I think I would try macports first.

You need to get xcode (to use macports) if you didn’t have it already you are going to have some challenges because I couldn’t find it in the Apple developer center (they removed it since I guess you shouldn’t be still using Snow Leopard in their opinion). Luckily I already had xcode installed.

To install mysql using macports

[bash]sudo port install mysql5[/bash]

Then you will avoid a bunch of frustrating errors (though you may enjoy that process) if you realize you need the server msql also.

[bash]sudo port install mysql5-server[/bash]

Pay attention to the messaging when you do that and you will see, suggestion to

[bash]sudo -u _mysql mysql_install_db5[/bash]

See the instructions that show for lots more on how to deal with that failing, as it did for me. Or celebrate if it worked.

Go ahead and add mysql to the default path open your .bash_profile or .profile

[bash]vim ~/.profile[/bash]

Then I tried sudo /opt/local/share/mysql5/mysql/mysql.server start but that failed. At which point I found that macports has its own version

[bash]sudo port load mysql5[/bash]

Which worked.

To login to MySQL you can use (root is created with no password on install).

[bash]mysql5 -uroot -p[/bash]

Go ahead and change the root password as the first thing you do.

Related: Getting Ruby on Rails & mysql setup on a Mac OSX Leopard clean install – MacPorts doesn’t install org.macports.mysql5.plist with mysql5 +server – MySQL Performance Tuning Tips – MySQL cli Syntax

Set the Web Server to Use the Domain Without www

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The main reason to bother with this is to help search rankings. Sub-domains (for example, www.curiouscat.com and curiouscat.com) are treated as separate websites even if you have entirely the same content displayed for both. If 20% of the links to your site use the www and 80% don’t then your sites ranking by search engines is less than it would be if it was just treated as one site.

You can set the domain to use in Google webmaster tools. But that doesn’t do anything for all the other search engines. Also if you have both, some reports some will keep statistics separately for the non-www and www domain (Google Adsense does this, for example).

Using virtual hosts file (sites-enabled)

For Apache you can place the following code in your virtual hosts file (in the sites-available directory under Apache).

Replace curiouscat.com with your domain name.

[bash]<Directory /srv/www/curiouscat.com/public_html/>
RewriteEngine On
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^www.curiouscat.com$ [NC]
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ http://curiouscat.com/$1 [R=301,L]
</Directory>[/bash]

Then you need to capture the update and reload Apache.

Disable the site (in order to enable it with the updates)
[bash]sudo a2dissite curiouscat.com[/bash]
Enable the site
[bash]sudo a2ensite curiouscat.com[/bash]
Reload Apache (new way – Ubuntu 12.04)
[bash]sudo service apache2 reload[/bash]
Old way to reload Apache was > sudo /etc/init.d/apache2 reload

If when you try to reload you get this error message:

“Invalid command ‘RewriteEngine’, perhaps misspelled or defined by a module not included in the server configuration” then enable modrewrite on apache:

[bash]sudo a2enmod rewrite[/bash]

You should then be told to restart apache

[bash]sudo /etc/init.d/apache2 restart[/bash]

Using .htaccess

Or you can include the following in your .htaccess file

[bash] RewriteEngine On
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^www.curiouscat.com$ [NC]
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ http://curiouscat.com/$1 [R=301,L][/bash]

Related: Checklist for Setting Up a New Domain on VPS – Phusion Passenger Tips and Troubleshooting Ideas

If you wanted to force www to be used instead just flip the regular expression around:

[bash]<Directory /srv/www/curiouscat.com/public_html/>
RewriteEngine On
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^curiouscat.com$ [NC]
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ http://www.curiouscat.com/$1 [R=301,L]
</Directory>[/bash]

Customizing the Command Prompt for Terminal in Ubuntu

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To customize the look of the command prompt for Terminal in Ubuntu you can insert code into .bashrc (if you are having trouble with updates in .bashrc not working you may want to see if it is set in .profile – thus overriding your .bashrc). Those files are found in your user directory /home/[username]

[bash]echo $PS1[/bash]

will show you the current settings. You can make a change directly from the command line but it will only work for that session. For example:

[bash]PS1="\d\w $ "[/bash]

This is the code I have in my .bashrc related to the terminal prompt

[bash]# set variable identifying the chroot you work in (used in the prompt below)
if [ -z "$debian_chroot" ] && [ -r /etc/debian_chroot ]; then
debian_chroot=$(cat /etc/debian_chroot)
fi

# set a fancy prompt (non-color, unless we know we "want" color)
case "$TERM" in
xterm-color) color_prompt=yes;;
esac

if [ -n "$force_color_prompt" ]; then
if [ -x /usr/bin/tput ] && tput setaf 1 >&/dev/null; then
color_prompt=yes
else
color_prompt=
fi
fi

if [ "$color_prompt" = yes ]; then
PS1=’${debian_chroot:+($debian_chroot)}\[\033[01;32m\]\u@\h\[\033[00m\]:\[\033[01;34m\]\w\[\033[00m\]\$ ‘
else
PS1=’${debian_chroot:+($debian_chroot)}\u@\h:\w\$ ‘
fi
unset color_prompt force_color_prompt[/bash]

Testing Email Using The Ubuntu CLI

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For a Virtual Private Server (VPS) or any other web or other server you should have alerts sent by email for various things. So for example if you automate security updates for an Ubuntu web server you want to be notified if there is some issue with the automatic update.

In order to check and be sure email is setup and working on the sever there is simple command line code to use:

[bash]mail -s Test[/bash]

you then get a prompt to enter

To: [enter the email and press return]

Cc: [press return]

then a blank where you can type in any text you want in the body of the message.

Then you send the message with by pressing CTRL-d

[bash]CTRL-d[/bash]

If you don’t receive the email then you can troubleshoot what is going wrong.

Keeping Your Hosted Ubuntu Web Server Software Up to Date

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To setup automatic security updates follow the instructions from Ubuntu.

To run security update manually

[bash]sudo unattended-upgrade[/bash]

A full update of all packages can be done using the follow, remember this may create some issues is one update makes something else you have no longer work properly. You should test to make sure things all work after the updates (for production systems obviously you should test things before [first updating the staging server to make sure the updates don’t cause any problems] and after the updates).

First update the local package index (to find what needs to be upgraded).

[bash]sudo apt-get update[/bash]

Then upgrade the software.

[bash]sudo apt-get upgrade[/bash]

Adding a Key to Your Server for SSH Login

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Using Ubuntu

An authentication key allows your server to authenticate the computer you are using has the right key and should be granted access. This lets you use the key instead of a username and password when using ssh.

If you don’t already have a key on your local machine (look for a file named id_rsa.pub in your user home directory under the .ssh folder

[bash]cd /.ssh[/bash]

will get you to the right directory) then you need to generate the key pair. On your desktop machine use:

[bash]ssh-keygen[/bash]

Next you copy the file to your server. scp ~/.ssh/id_dsa.pub [user]@[server]:.ssh/

[bash]scp ~/.ssh/id_dsa.pub username@servername:.ssh/[/bash]

Rename the file on the server to authorized_keys2
[bash]mv id_rsa.pub authorized_keys2[/bash]

The key is for to authenticate your computer. But on the ssh login Ubuntu will look in the user folder. So if you also had user2 access to the server and tried to ssh into the server you would not be authenticated because it would look in user2/.ssh for the authorized key file and not find it. You can put the same key in any user folder on your server to have that user also be automatically authenticated.