Upgrading PHP on Red Hat 5

As you may know, Red Hat Linux 5 comes with PHP5 in a pre-packaged form. However, due to the OS' long release cycle, you may find that the supplied version is at least one major release (and several minor) behind the current standalone "stable" release. At the time of writing, Red Hat 5 ships with PHP version 5.1.6, while the standalone stable releases are 5.3.1 and 5.2.12. In some cases this may become an issue, especially if your PHP code relies on newer features not present in the Red Hat supplied binaries.

One solution is to switch to a Linux distribution with a more sane approach to its software base, but if that is not feasible the only choice is to do an "out-of-band" upgrade. Below I will describe how to build a set of PHP5 binaries that closely (but not entirely) replicate those supplied by Red Hat.

Moving from Wordpress to Blogger

If you are reading this it is highly likely you are thinking about moving your blog from the Wordpress platform to Blogger. I have just done this a few days ago, so here are my field notes and thoughts on the entire process.

Wordpress is a great blogging platform, clearly superior to Blogger. However for me, as a sysadmin, it has one major downside - frequency of updates. There are several big updates a year and at least one or more major releases. This is not a problem if somebody is doing the updates for you, e.g. your hosting provider, but becomes a nuisance once you get to do it yourself. Especially if you are someone like me, who has a blog to use it as a "memory dump" of sorts rather than anything else.

So, at some stage, you may consider changing the platform and look into moving to Blogger. You could move to hosted Wordpress but there is a catch - wordpress.com will charge you for hosting a blog under your own domain man. Blogger does this for free.

Initially the whole platform change process seems like a daunting task with all the differences in templates, layout and how things are done in the back-end. But let's be honest - the most important part of any blog is the content. Read on for a few tips that will hopefully help you move place.

Configuring network interfaces in reverse order under Red Hat 5

As you may know, network interfaces under Red Hat 5 are configured in numerical order, with eth0 followed by eth1, eth2 and so on. The default gateway will by default be configured for that of the last interfaces to be brought up. Sometimes this is less than optimal. For example you may have two interfaces, the first one dedicated to normal traffic, the other one for storage traffic or some other non-default use. You probably do not want all you traffic to go via the second gateway, but by default it will.

"No Idea" has a new home

I guess this is a "Hello World" moment.

This blog has a new home from today - Blogger. After a few years of using various dodgy hosting providers and even running the infrastructure myself I got fed up with all the constant updating of Wordpress, its plugins and similar nonsense.

While looking for a new home wordpress.com was an obvious candidate but there's a catch: redirecting your own domain to a wordpress hosted blog is a premium feature. On the other hand Blogger offers this for free. Since I have my own domain and want my blog to be part of it, the choice was obvious.

Also, following a friends advice I've started hosting all my blog-related images on my flickr.com account, but have then discovered that Picasa Web can do the same for me. How convenient... I'm not entirely sure if I want to keep all eggs in one basket though. I guess time will show if this was a good decision.

All in all, while more clunky and less flexible than Wordpress, this platform will do just fine for my needs. I blog very infrequently.

p.s.: I will describe the whole Wordpress to Blogger transfer in more detail soon.

The "smart(er) way" to start Skype on Linux

I hope this will help others having issues with Skype on Linux. This script starts Skype with the right environment variables set, so that video works and doesn't crash the process. It also checks for existing processes and tries to activate the running window. However, it won't work if Skype is minimized to tray. I've tried dogtail but can't get a handle of the icon in gnome-panel. Anyone care to try it and report back? :)

Making your own (rooted!) Android ROM

Before I start, it needs to be said: What you will find here is mostly a compilation of dozens of hints, guides and wiki posts available on the web, with a touch of my knowledge. The goal was to create a guide that has all the links, all the tools and the advanced steps, required to make your own Android ROM, covered. This guide was written for and tested on a HTC Hero. Other devices may follow the same route, but check first. This guid uses Linux commands and tools and assumes you have access to a PC running Linux, and basic Linux knowledge.

If at any stage you don't understand what this text is about, stop and go away. I don't take any responsibility for devices damaged or otherwise broken because of following this guide. While slim, there is always a chance your device will become a useless brick after this. You have been warned.

Android on 3 Ireland

This is more of a reminder for myself, but others may find it useful.
These are the settings you must enter into your Android based smartphone in order to get MMS and 3G/HSDPA ("mobile broadband") working with 3 Ireland.