This time I decided to do the reading and syslog really does have lots of benefits and is just as quick to set up as custom logging.

Anyway, I found this nice overview and examples of how you can use syslog with your application.

Check it out - Using syslog for your php applications

While this info has already been useful to some people and probably will continue to help people it wasn't really the reason that I set up the blog. As I learnt new things I wanted to share them but unfortunately due to various things (one being a new role) I have been very busy and haven't had the time or the content to post.

As a newly appointed development manager I feel that this blog might end up going a different direction to the original plan.

One post I do hope to make soon is related to recruitment of PHP developers. This seemingly simple task has proved challenging and I feel I have some advice to give anyone going through the process.

My first instinct was to use PECL to get the extension but doing that told me that there was an unmet dependancy so it couldn't be installed. The missing dependancy was libmemcached, here's what you need to do to get libmemcached setup:

First go to https://launchpad.net/libmemcached/+download and download the latest libmemcached (1.0.4 at the time of writing), once downloaded extract the archive and then open up a terminal window and cd to the new libmemcached-1.x.x directory. Now enter the commands below into the terminal window one at a time.

./configure
make
sudo make install

These commands will each take some time to run and while they are running you will see lots of output in the terminal window. What these commands do are ./configure configures the package for your system, make compiles the code into a binary that is usable by the system and sudo make install installs the built files onto your system (which in this case is moving the libmemcached library into place on your system).

Now that we have solved the dependancy issue we can now run PECL again:

sudo pecl install memcached

At the end of this process the script will remind you to configure PHP to use the new extension, if you are unsure on how to do this you can follow the end of yesterdays post - but dont forget to use memcached instead of memcache.

Open up a terminal window and run the command below, this will tell PECL to download, build and install the extension.

sudo pecl install memcache

Now that the extension is installed on your system, you need to enable it in your PHP configuration file. On a standard system the php.ini file can be found at /etc/php.ini. Open the file and scroll down to the extensions section, at the bottom of this section add the line extension=memcache.so and then save and close the file.

After that, all that is required is for you to restart Apache and enjoy your new extension

sudo apachectl restart

I lived with it for a few days because I was busy but eventually decided to try again with the jailbreak. A couple of days had passed and ChronicDev had released an updated version of Absinthe, version 2. I had done a bit of reading to try and find out what might have caused the blank icon issue and there wasn't much info available.

I decided that I would backup my device (very important), restore to stock 5.0.1 and then do the jailbreak on the clean phone before restoring from my backup. I did this and when the jail break finished this time I had a blank Maps icon - arrrggh! One thing I had seen on twitter (and as a message on Absinthe!) was not to touch the device while the jailbreak was in progress, however each time I hadn't been able to resist unlocking the phone after the first reboot, this was because a device passcode (not SIM passcode) can cause the jailbreak to fail.

3rd Time Lucky...

I decided to try one last time, so I restored to stock 5.0.1 again (without loading all my stuff and settings back on to it - so no device passcode lock) and then ran Absinthe 2 again. I clicked the Jailbreak button and then stepped away and made myself a coffee, buy the time I got back Absinthe had finished and all that was left was for me to run the new Absinthe app that was on my iPhone (or go into settings and toggle on VPN). At this point I was already confident that this time was a success as none of my apps were blank so I opened the Absinthe app on my phone and after a few moments the phone rebooted and when it came back online there was the new Cydia icon on my springboard and best of all no white icons - yay!

After that all that was left was to load up iTunes and restore from the backup I had done earlier. The backup restore and then a sync and everything was back to normal and it was off to Cydia for some tweaking.

I hope this helps some of the other people that had the blank icon issue as there really was nothing useful about when I was trying to find a solution.

Also one last thing, if you are going to follow the above and try and fix your blank icon issue then make sure you do it before Apple close the signing window on 5.0.1.

Happy hacking....

$username = 'myuser';
$password = 'mypass';
$loginUrl = 'http://www.example.com/login/';

//init curl
$ch = curl_init();

//Set the URL to work with
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_URL, $loginUrl);

// ENABLE HTTP POST
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_POST, 1);

//Set the post parameters
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_POSTFIELDS, 'user='.$username.'&pass='.$password);

//Handle cookies for the login
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_COOKIEJAR, 'cookie.txt');

//Setting CURLOPT_RETURNTRANSFER variable to 1 will force cURL
//not to print out the results of its query.
//Instead, it will return the results as a string return value
//from curl_exec() instead of the usual true/false.
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_RETURNTRANSFER, 1);

//execute the request (the login)
$store = curl_exec($ch);

//the login is now done and you can continue to get the
//protected content.

//set the URL to the protected file
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_URL, 'http://www.example.com/protected/download.zip');

//execute the request
$content = curl_exec($ch);

//save the data to disk
file_put_contents('~/download.zip', $content);

My first reaction was to fire up terminal and run sudo pecl install uuid. It all looked good for a moment but then came to a grinding halt when 'make' failed.

Here is the error for reference (and for those searching snippets of it):

cc -I. -I/private/tmp/pear/temp/uuid -DPHP_ATOM_INC -I/private/tmp/pear/temp/pear-build-rootEEpqkn/uuid-1.0.2/include -I/private/tmp/pear/temp/pear-build-rootEEpqkn/uuid-1.0.2/main -I/private/tmp/pear/temp/uuid -I/usr/include/php -I/usr/include/php/main -I/usr/include/php/TSRM -I/usr/include/php/Zend -I/usr/include/php/ext -I/usr/include/php/ext/date/lib -I/include -DHAVE_CONFIG_H -g -O2 -c /private/tmp/pear/temp/uuid/uuid.c  -fno-common -DPIC -o .libs/uuid.o
/private/tmp/pear/temp/uuid/uuid.c: In function ‘zm_startup_uuid’:
/private/tmp/pear/temp/uuid/uuid.c:89: error: ‘UUID_TYPE_DCE_TIME’ undeclared (first use in this function)
/private/tmp/pear/temp/uuid/uuid.c:89: error: (Each undeclared identifier is reported only once
/private/tmp/pear/temp/uuid/uuid.c:89: error: for each function it appears in.)
/private/tmp/pear/temp/uuid/uuid.c:90: error: ‘UUID_TYPE_DCE_RANDOM’ undeclared (first use in this function)
/private/tmp/pear/temp/uuid/uuid.c: In function ‘zif_uuid_create’:
/private/tmp/pear/temp/uuid/uuid.c:168: error: ‘UUID_TYPE_DCE_TIME’ undeclared (first use in this function)
/private/tmp/pear/temp/uuid/uuid.c:171: error: ‘UUID_TYPE_DCE_RANDOM’ undeclared (first use in this function)
/private/tmp/pear/temp/uuid/uuid.c:181: warning: format ‘%d’ expects type ‘int’, but argument 4 has type ‘long int’
make: *** [uuid.lo] Error 1
ERROR: `make' failed

After a bit of googling I found out what the problem was and a solution to it. The full explanation and solution can be found here:

http://unrealexpectations.com/blog/2010/04/mamp-pecluuid-module-working-on-snow-leopard/

I can confirm that the patch and build worked on my set up (OSX 10.7 Loin) and I hope by spreading the word it some more people out.

Installing on OSX 10.7 Lion

OSX Lion already has the PEAR install bundle so there is no need to download it, open up a terminal window and enter the following commands:

cd /usr/lib/php
sudo php install-pear-nozlib.phar

Downloading and installing

Do not follow this part if you have just done the above steps. Otherwise enter the below into a terminal window:

curl http://pear.php.net/go-pear.phar > go-pear.php
sudo php -q go-pear.php

It will ask you to enter a new installation base ($prefix). I recommend you use /usr/local

Configuring PHP include path

Edit /etc/php.ini and find the line: ;include_path = ".:/php/includes". Uncomment it (remove the ; at the beginning) and add the PEAR path to it. It should end up looking similar to the below:

include_path = ".:/usr/lib/php/pear"

Update PEAR

Now to update the install enter the 3 commands below into the terminal window:

sudo pear channel-update pear.php.net
sudo pecl channel-update pecl.php.net
sudo pear upgrade-all

Install PHPUnit

Just for good measure you will probably also want to install PHPUnit, if you do then execute the below command and your ready to go.

sudo pear channel-discover pear.phpunit.de
sudo pear channel-discover pear.symfony-project.com
sudo pear install pear.phpunit.de/PHPUnit
sudo pear install phpunit/DbUnit --alldeps

First off, head over to the MySQL site and download the Mac pre-compiles binary of MySQL Community Server 5.1.x (the latest download says it's for OSX 10.6 Snow Leopard but it works fine with 10.7 Lion). Download the latest DMG available, this can be found here http://dev.mysql.com/downloads/mysql/5.1.html.

When the download finishes, open the disk image and install the main package file (mysql-5.1.xx-osx10.6-x86_64.pkg), when that finishes double-click on the preferences pane (MYSQL.prefpane file) file to install that into the System Preferences menu. If you would like the database server to start on boot then you also need to install the MySQLStartupItem.pkg file.

Once this is done you can then open System Preferences and under the "Other" heading you will find your new MySQL preferences, from here you can start and stop the server and also enable/disable startup option.

Now if you are going to us mysql from terminal then you will want to add the mysql binaries path to your $PATH shell variable. To do this edit your .bash_profile file and add /usr/local/mysql/bin to the PATH variable. Your file might look like this:

export PATH=~/bin:/usr/local/bin:/usr/local/mysql/bin:$PATH

When all the above is done you can start setting up the server. We now need to secure the server by setting some defaults and removing some test stuff, to do this open a terminal and run:

sudo /usr/local/mysql/bin/mysql_secure_installation

It will ask for your password (because of sudo) and then will ask you some questions about changes it wishes to make. Enter a password for root and then you can accept the defaults for the rest of the questions if you are unsure.

One last thing, if you intend to use MySQL with PHP then you will need to update your php.ini file to change the location that is set for the mysql.sock file. Open php.ini and find and replace /var/mysql/mysql.sock with /tmp/mysql.sock. This is because the MySQL default location for the mysql.sock file is in /tmp

Hope it helps

Generate a host key

First off we'll make a home for the new SSL files. I used /private/etc/apache2/ssl. We need to change to the new directory and then run a ssh-keygen command to create the server key file. Open up a terminal window  and enter the commands below.

mkdir /private/etc/apache2/ssl
cd /private/etc/apache2/ssl
sudo ssh-keygen -f server.key

Generate a certificate request file

This command creates a certificate request file. A certificate request file contains information about your organisation that will be used in the SSL certificate. You will be asked various questions, fill these in as appropriate or leave blank. Please note that you shouldn't set a pass phrase on the certificate, just leave this blank when it asks for a pass phrase.

sudo openssl req -new -key server.key -out request.csr

Create the SSL certificate

Create a self signed SSL certificate using the request file.

sudo openssl x509 -req -days 365 -in request.csr -signkey server.key -out server.crt

Configure Apache

Create a backup of /private/etc/apache2/httpd.conf.

In /private/etc/apache2/httpd.conf, make sure the SSL module is enabled (remove the # from the start of the line)

LoadModule ssl_module libexec/apache2/mod_ssl.so

In the same file search for the below line and uncomment it (remove the #)

Include /private/etc/apache2/extra/httpd-ssl.conf

Edit /private/etc/apache2/extra/httpd-ssl.conf, search for the lines that start with SSLCertificateFile, SSLCertificateKeyFile and update them to match the below:

SSLCertificateFile "/private/etc/apache2/ssl/server.crt"
SSLCertificateKeyFile "/private/etc/apache2/ssl/server.key"

In the same file comment out (add a # to the beginning of the line) the lines that start with SSLCACertificatePath and SSLCARevocationPath

Configure the vhosts

In /private/etc/apache2/httpd.conf, search for the below line and uncomment it (remove the #)

Include /private/etc/apache2/extra/httpd-vhosts.conf

Now open /private/etc/apache2/extra/httpd-vhosts.conf and add the line below under the port 80 NameVirtualHost directive

NameVirtualHost *:443

Now you can configure a basic SSL vhost by adding the code below to the end of the file. Please note that for the DocumentRoot you should replace it with a real path.

<VirtualHost *:443>
    SSLEngine on
    SSLCipherSuite ALL:!ADH:!EXPORT56:RC4+RSA:+HIGH:+MEDIUM:+LOW:+SSLv2:+EXP:+eNULL
    SSLCertificateFile /private/etc/apache2/ssl/server.crt
    SSLCertificateKeyFile /private/etc/apache2/ssl/server.key
    ServerName localhost
    DocumentRoot "/some/website/directory/"
</VirtualHost>

Check the config and restart Apache

sudo apachectl configtest
sudo apachectl restart

Now you can open your browser and try out your new HTTPS site