First, to clarify, I don’t hate the two lovely girls in this picture, but they can be quite the pair. Second, my mother told me never to say hate, so maybe that was not a good title. How about “I detest pair programming.”

Don’t get me wrong, I don’t want to be stuck in a cave for a couple of months and then crawl out bleary eyed and pronounce that I have created the perfect piece of code. I love collaboration. I go to others for help, input, guidance,¬†or to reciprocate for someone else.

What I¬†don’t like, is sitting¬†in a cube with two people where one person types and the¬†other looks over their shoulder all day.¬†Maybe I haven’t had the right person to do this with. Maybe¬†that is why the pair of kids in the picture works. They have their issues, but they get along well, and have similar goals most of the time.

When I am paired with someone, and they have the keyboard, I just feel like one of two things occurs. I am sitting there bored wondering why they just don’t let me type, or they are whipping through some material I have never worked with, and I am lost when I don’t get to “drive”. When I have the keyboard, I just find it annoying to have someone asking if the code could be done differently every 5 minutes. I don’t mind getting feedback, and code reviews are great. I have no problem working on a task, checking for ideas, implementing my approach, then getting feedback, and maybe refactoring. I just don’t like it in real time.

I don’t see the benefit. Luckily it only looks like we are doing this while several of us are new. It won’t last forever. Have you ever had to work for an extended time period in a pair? Did it work?

We are assuming that at this point you have Ubuntu installed. We are gong to install software raid in a moment. The first thing I want to do is make sure we have a static ip address. Usually Ubuntu will start up with a dynamic ip address. This can make it more difficult to transfer files to this box, so lets make it static.

Setting a static IP address

Type ifconfig eth0, and you will see your current address.

Lets make it static. Note, typing sudo in front of commands lets you assume the privileges of the administrator, or super user.

sudo nano /etc/network/interfaces

We will replace the text there with this text, which will assign 10.0.0.50 to our server, and assume the gateway is at 10.0.0.1:

auto eth0
iface eth0 inet static
address 10.0.0.50
netmask 255.255.255.0
network 10.0.0.0
broadcast 10.0.0.255
gateway 10.0.0.1

restart the network to get the new settings :

sudo /etc/init.d/networking restart

ifconfig eth0 and you should see the new settings.

If you want to see a whole lot more networking commands, see here.

Finding out drives

Great. Now before we can put two drives into a RAID 1 array, we need to tell linux what drives we are going to use for this.

How do we know what disks? I just type dmesg. This will scroll lots of stuff down the screen. If you are in the GUI at a terminal you can scroll. Otherwise type dmesg | less which will let you move through the text with the cursor keys.

This is all the hardware that was found and initialized. You will first see the ataX with X being the number of the drive. You need to look for a section after this that has letters like hda or sda. The drives I am using are SATA drives and they are sda and sdb. I could tell by the size of the drives. (press Q to exit less if you need to)

Partition for Raid 1

Ok, lets tell Linux that we want those drives to be used for raid.

sudo fdisk /dev/sda

[p] will list the partitions. If you had one previously, you will see it. Remove them. Press d for delete, then give a partition number. (no need if you only had one)

Now add a [n]ew [p]rimary partition number [1] with default start and end (the whole disk)

n [enter] p [enter] 1 [enter][enter][enter]

Now [p] again to verify that the partition is there. Note the type: 83. Type [l] to see all the types. We need to set the type to fd for Linux software raid.

t [enter] fd [enter]

Now write the partition table and exit: w [enter]

Now we repeat the process with the other drive.

sudo fdisk /dev/sdb

And repeat the fdisk commands.

Setting up mdadm for Raid1

Ok, now for Linux software raid. First we need to install it.

sudo apt-get install mdadm

When I did this, I was prompted that citadel-server was being installed. This is what is used by default as the mail server. Mdadm is dependant on a mail server so it can mail you of failures. Pick an admin user and say no to external auth.

Once installed you can build an array. I am going to use two drives in a RAID 1, mirrored setup. This duplicates all the data on both drives. They are mirrored. This is the command with my drives used. You will substitute for your devices:

sudo mdadm --create --verbose /dev/md0 --level=1 --raid-devices=2 /dev/sda1 /dev/sdb1

This should tell you that the array /dev/md0 has started.

If you would like to see when the array is built:

cat /proc/mdstat

This will tell you how long it will take, or if it is done.

Ok, that’s it for now.¬† We will look at commands to manipulate the array in a later article in the series. Next up will be creating the resizable volumes on the array using LVM.

I had all kinds of trouble getting Zenphoto to install on 1and1. None of which I believe are the fault of the Zenphoto project. I am blaming the difficulties on how you need to configure php on 1and1.

What problems did I have. It appears that there were tables that were not created correctly. The way I figured this out was that I was trying to save a ¬†guest user and password to¬†and album. The name wouldn’t stick. When I went in and look under the MySql admin¬†tool (phpMyAdmin), there was no user field in the albums table. Something was wrong right from setup.

So here are the steps that I came up with to get zenphoto installed properly. I can’t say that all of the steps I took were necessary, and some might even be suspect, but in total it works.

First of all, I am on a linux hosted shared server on 1and1. That is important, because of how php must be configured. The commands here need to be entered at the command line. You can ssh here, or use putty from windows, but this is not an explanation on how to do that.

I downloaded the current version which at this point is zenphoto-1.2.4.tar.gz.¬†To do this I used wget so I don’t need to transfer it after downloading. Then I expanded the archive and installed the files.

wget http://zenphoto.googlecode.com/files/zenphoto-1.2.4.tar.gz
tar -xvzf zenphoto-1.2.4.tar.gz

Don’t do the setup yet.

I then went to the 1and1 web site, logged in and went to the MySQL Administration control panel. I selected to create a new database, and picked version 6. You can choose between 5 and 6. I picked 6. 1and1 will tell you the user name, password, host, and database name you will need to enter into setup, but don’t run setup yet.

We want to tell apache to use PHP5 instead of 4. To do this we want to modify the .htaccess file that comes with zenphoto. In that file are some rules for rewriteing. We don’t want to change those. Just add a couple of lines. To edit this file I typed

nano -w .htaccess

You need to add these two lines after the comment lines (with #’s) and before the <IfModule mod_rewrite.c> line

AddType xmapp-php5 .php
AddHandler x-mapp-php5 .php

Now that is done press ctrl-X to exit, and say yes to saving. Don’t run set up yet. We have a couple more things to do.

Now we need to tell php to turn off magic quotes, and to use UTF character encoding. We do this by creating a php.ini file in the directory where the code is. This is the dumb part. You need this in every directory you have php code. I put it in the root of my zenphoto install, and in the zp-core folder. This is what I put there.

[PHP]
magic_quotes_gpc = Off
mbstring.internal_encoding = UTF-8

If you want to create this file, type

nano -w php.ini

Now copy the code above and press shift-insert in the terminal window. Then you can press ctrl-X and say yes to save.

I also copied this file to the zp-core folder

cp php.ini zp-core/

Just a note: There are instructions on the web that you can add these directives to your .htaccess file, but that will not work on 1and1 linux shared hosting. You will get a 500 server error. See here.

Ok, now you can run setup. Go to your browser and head to http://www.yourwebsite/zenphoto/ This will in turn tack the zp-core/setup.php to the end and start the setup. There will be a couple of warnings left. First one is about strict permissions. I clicked on the link, and zenphoto set things up how it wanted. Next is the .htaccess file. Ignore this one, because we modified the file. The time stamp should be different.

Now you can go ahead and enter you database information. Press OK, and zenphoto should tell you that everything is A OK. You will then set up an Admin user and password, then you are given the opportunity to log in.

If you want to check out the issue I had, upload some files to a new album. Then edit the album and put in a guest user and password and save. Log out, then click on the album you created and locked. Enter the name and password you entered for the guest user. If when you login you can see the album, you are good to go. When I did this process before this procedure, I would try to save the album with the guest user. The name would disappear once I pressed save. Then when I tried to log in I was given an error.

I hope that saves someone some hassles. Good luck.

I have been working on a gallery with Zen Photo with my Cyberward theme. Still trying to decide what I want to do with it, but I think that I will move to migrate my family photos over to Zen Photo instead of Gallery.

Zen Photo just seems better in my opinion. Gallery (actually Gallery2) seems slow and burdened. Too many things activated and going on by default.¬† Zen Photo has fewer plugins, but that’s ok by me. It seems much easier to hack on too. I guess now I just need to time to do this.

This is just the first version. There is much more that I want to do with this plugin, but you have to start somewhere.

Get it here.

I got an iPhone recently, and I have to say that I love the thing. I have used more minutes of data plan than I have minutes of talk time. I like checking email/flickr/facebook/rss feeds when I have a minute without using a computer, or without needing a wi-fi connection. I will document some of the other plug-ins that I am using later, but right now I want to talk about Wordpress and iPhone/iTouch devices.

I was amazed that I could read my blog on the iPhone. I had to zoom in a bit, but it wasn’t too bad. I was happy. Then I started to wonder about creating a theme that is more suited to the iPhone screen. Then I did what all good programmers do before they start cooding. They Google. Sure enough, I found WPTouch.

If you have an iPhone/iTouch, come back and take a look. You won’t believe it until you see it.

This plugin for wordpress intercepts when an iPhone is accessing your blog, and replaces it with a theme that looks like an iPhone application. Amazing. Using a little javascript, it even has menus, ¬†and the comments work just fine. It does make your site a little generic. It has the ability in the admin screen to adjust the colors, but I haven’t played with it yet. I would like to modify the header, but I’ll leave that for another day.

I installed version 1.7.5 from the plugin repository on wordpress .

So, what if you want to make a post? There’s a plugin for that too. I have installed an application on the iPone called Wordpress for iPhone. This app provides a simple interface to allow posting to your blog. There are lots of features available, but some things are left wanting. It would be nice to be able to add pictures from your wordpress gallery, but it looks like you can only add pictures from the iphone. Both your synched photo’s, and your camera. You can save drafts locally, but not edit ones from your site. The editor isn’t the “visual” editor from your site, it is the html editor, so links and images are in tags. I think it will be nice to have though.

So why didn’t I write this post from the iPhone? You type even this many words on that little virtual keyboard and tell me how long it would take you

Here is the exif data when you put this tag in your post: [lameda_exif id=556]

The thing with this, is you still have to go into the post html and find out what the wordpress id of the image is. Still a bit of a pain. I like that it is pulling this from wordpress. Looks like wordpress stores this in the post_metadata table in an entry about the image. Not all data is saved, just some of the more basic ones like those shown. We just need a more automated, and visually appealing way to show it.

[exzo url="" title=""]dsc_0021[/exzo]

That will get you this image on my site:

Most of the styling and which exif data that shows up is all customizeable. But I have a couple of issues. First, there seems to be an issue in the plugin where is doesn’t reference the zoom.css file. I had to modify exzo.php to point to it correctly. Second, the included lightbox effect isn’t so hot. The biggest issue is that the image pops up full size. Other versions I have seen try to scale the image for the viewport.

It does look like you could opt to just show the exif data though, like this :

[exif="dsc_0021.jpg"]

What would be really neat is if instead of the formatting of the picture, and the need to use this tag, is if via javascript, it could just attach itself to the image and display on a hover, or a click or something. Hmmm… that would be interesting…

• Software Raid – I have two large drives, and I want the data mirrored. If one drive fails, I can replace it without losing my data.
• Volume Management – I have two large drives, but I want it partitioned dynamically. I don’t just want a great big dumping ground. I want separate locations for music, video, pictures, etc. I don’t just want to partition these drives and have the sizes set in stone. I want to be able to re-size them as need fits.
• Serve files to Windows, Mac, and Linux computers. This generally means I want to be able to run something like Samba and NFS so that other computers can “see” my shares.
• Users – I want to be able to have users set up with different permissions.

So, with that in mind, what open source software can we find that will fit the bill? There is more than just vanilla Linux out there. There are a few projects that make NAS like software. Lets look at those first.

1. Openfiler – I had missed this before when looking, but it looks to have all of the required items.
2. FreeNAS – I have wanted to try this for awhile, but the volume management has been in beta. I can’t tell for sure if this is still the case or not. It is also¬†BSD based which I am less familiar.
3. NasLite – This isn’t open source, so I am not considering it, but it does seem inexpensive.
4. Roll Your Own – This would take a linux distro and add or configure the pieces to create a NAS

I would urge you to look into Openfiler or FreeNAS. For this series, it would be pretty short if we used one of them, so we are going to roll our own (I may get to trying and reporting on those others at a different time) Also, if you decide you want to add some other software to those such as a UPnP or iTunes or MythTV or CVS server it is more difficult, or not possible.

So, we need a linux distro. You really could pick any linux distribution you want, but for this series, I am going to use Ubuntu. I used to use Gentoo (for several years), but I find Ubuntu a little easier now, and have switched to using it. Depending on your hardware, you may want to consider their server edition without a desktop, but I am going to install the desktop version. Why? Well, I find it easier to have multiple terminals open I can look at, a web browser to Google what the heck just went wrong, and to check email where I sometimes save notes to myself. If you think I am nuts, go ahead with the server version. You will save yourself some CPU cycles not having Gnome running. I will try to base this series entirely on the command line, so it shouldn’t matter.

I am not going to cover installing Ubuntu. It is dead simple. If you would like some documentation, Ubuntu has good documentation on installing their software, so I wont try to duplicate it.

Go ahead, install Ubuntu onto the OS drive you have, and next time we will look at Linux Software RAID as a way to provide some data redundancy with the other two drives.

While playing with this plugin I discovered a bug. I couldn’t update/save the attributes for a file. I was trying to assign a custom icon, and the display name, but nothing would stick. Hunting this down I found out why php debugging, especially ajax calls really sucks. Anyway, I finally discovered what the issue was; a variable that was not initialized. It must be the particular combination of Wordpress (2.7), PHP(4.5), and MySql(5.0) that I was playing with, because I can’t belive that this doesn’t work for everyone that uses this plugin.

Turns out that the developer has a tracker, so I created a bug with my solution. I am going to be moving to this from the Download Manager plugin I was using.