Recently my personal hosting account with bluehost got renewed and I’m not really utilizing the server that much I figured to try installing subversion on Bluehost to make my hosting more useful. As far as I have tried I can only connect via svn+ssh and not through http as I dont have access to apache to add mod_dav_svn.so on my shared hosting account unless I upgrade to a dedicated host which is not what I want. I documented the steps I took just in case someone will find them useful on setting up theirs.

1. First is you need to enable SSH access on your account. Login to your account and request to enable SSH if not yet enabled. (The SSH option is disabled by default you need to submit a ticket to have it activated) Got mine activated within an hour.

2. Once enabled you should be supplied with a hostname, login user and password

3. Download the following applications: Putty and PuttyGen from http://www.chiark.greenend.org.uk/~sgtatham/putty/download.html

and TortoiseSVN from http://tortoisesvn.net/

4. Using putty connect to your host by entering the hostname and default port 22, enter your username and password on the command prompt type window.

5. Next is to create src directory and download the latest subversion package.

that should install subversion on your server
6. Create a svn directory and then the repository folder

7. If you have an existing website under public_html you can import it now to your repo

8. Edit your .bashrc file in vi and add the following then exit and save.

9. Next test out if all is working

10. Next is for setting up your subversion client to connect to the repo URL for Windows. Create a keypair on the server, this is going to be used for authentication.

11. Download the key to your computer using your FTP client.
12. Convert the key in puttygen, open up puttygen then on Conversions menu load the key and click on Save Private Key and save it as mykey.ppk

13. Test the key
open putty and create a new session like this:
Session->HostName: www.yourdomain.com
Session->Protocol: SSH
Session->Saved Sessions: yourdomain
SSH->Prefered SSH Protocol version: 2
SSH->Auth->Private Key file for auth: browse and select mykey.PKK
Go back to Session node and hit “save” button. You will see “yourdomain” in the list of available sessions.
Click “open” and you should see a telnet login prompt.
Use your username and if everything is ok, you don’t have to provide a password to your system.

14. On Windows 7 go to config file and edit with notepad.

Look for the section [tunnels] and add the following line

15. Finally checkout go to the folder you want to store the files and, if you already installed TortoiseSVN you should have a right click option SVN Checkout. For the URL of the repository simply enter the svn+ssh URL you tested earlier.

That should get you up and running on your Windows machine.

Now for your Mac machine, first download the scplugin, this is the mac counterpart of TortoiseSVN. Currently the contextual menu and icon badging is not working right on Snow Leopard or on Lion.

1. First launch Terminal from the Utilities and create a key, leave passphrase as blank

2. Next is SCP the key to your server using the username, domain name and password

The key should be uploaded successfully to your server

3. Next login to your server

4. That should be it you should not be prompted to enter your password when you login to your server either from SSH or SCP and even on the scplugin.

5. Open up Finder and browse to the folder you want to Checkout for your files. On the Finder Toolbar if you installed it right you should see the scplugin toolbar, click on that and choose Checkout, then enter your svn+ssh URL.

That should be it, you should be up and running.

Resources:
http://www.tabruyn.com/site/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=55:tortoisesvn-subversion-and-bluehost&catid=36:digital&Itemid=58
http://www.bluehostforum.com/showthread.php?12099-Setting-up-Subversion-on-Bluehost
http://blog.macromates.com/2005/subversion-support-and-ssh-key-pairs/

I’m using Eclipse PDT 32-bit which at the moment the only current all in one version. Can be downloaded here.

1. The first option needs a bit of work which is to
download the 64 bit JRE and Java SDK then
download Eclipse Classic 64 bit version and manually add the PDT. Check tutorial here.

2. Second option is download the Eclipse PDT 32 bit version and then download 32 bit JRE and JDK. You should not mix eclipse 32 bit with 64 bit java, it wont work as I found out the long way. See my screenshot below, it cannot find it since my Java is 64 bit.

Following option 2 which is the option I took.
Download the 32 bit version of JRE and Java SDK here .

They will be installed on the C:\Program Files (x64)\Java\ folder.

Next download Eclipse PDT and extract this your C drive like C:\eclipse. If try to run it you will likely get this error.

A Java Runtime Environment (JRE) or Java Development Kit (JDK) must be available in order to run Eclipse. No Java virtual machine was found after searching the following locations:
c:\Program Files\Eclipse\jre\bin\javaw.exe ‘javaw.exe’ in your current PATH

To resolve this
1. Create a shortcut to your desktop

2. Right click on the shortcut and choose properties

3. Edit the target path to

C:\eclipse\eclipse.exe -vm “C:\Program Files\Java\jdk1.6.0_26\bin”

Dont forget the quotes as spaces in the target path returns strange results in Windows 7.

That should be it you should be up and running.

I had  to do the same on Mac OS X which eventually took me a bit of time to figure out. So I’m writing this short tutorial to document how I got it configured, so I can refer to it in the future and also help out those having a hard time setting it up. This tutorial is basically for those users who connect to Ec2 from a Windows platform and then moved to a Mac OS X platform.

1. On Windows using a telnet application like Putty to connect via SSH, you require a .ppk key. So first thing is to locate your PPK key in Windows.

2. Next you need to convert the PPK key to an OpenSSH format. Using PuttyGen load the .ppk file and then save the .ssh file generated. (eg. files aws_rsa.ppk and aws_rsa.ssh)

3. Copy the .ssh file and the original .ppk file over to your Mac directory like the Documents folder

4. Next open up Terminal on your Mac and create a new directory

# mkdir ~/.ec2

5. Copy the .ssh file to the ~/.ec2 directory

#mv /Users/myUser/Documents/aws_rsa.ssh ~/.ec2/aws_rsa.ssh

6. Change the file permission

# sudo chmod 600 aws_rsa.ssh

7. Finally connect to your instance.

# ssh -i aws_rsa.ssh root@ec2-xxx-xx-xxx-xxx.compute-1.amazonaws.com

Replace ec2-xxx-xx-xxx-xxx.compute-1.amazonaws.com with your EC2 public address.

Hopefully you should be able to connect to your server instance then.

Next is straightforward, this is for using a GUI like FileZilla to connect to your instance.

1. Open up FileZilla then go to Preferences

2. Go under SFTP and click on Add Key

3. Browse over to your Documents folder where you saved your .ppk file

4. Create a new site and add the public address for the host and protocol as SFTP (SSH File Transfer Protocol), user as root and password leave as blank.

That should be it you should be it. You could now SSH using the Terminal or connect via SFTP using FileZilla. Happy cloud computing.

On Mac it kinda needs a bit of work but basically you have to configure PHP, download-install MySQL and phpMyAdmin.

I wrote a short tutorial below to cover the installation.

Mac OS X Snow Leopard includes PHP 5.3.x version by default, you simply need to enable it to start using it.

You can use a text editor or use the Terminal, I prefer to use the latter.

a. To launch Terminal go to Applications > Utilities > Terminal

b. On Terminal change directory to /etc/apache2

# cd /etc/apache2

c. Use your favorite editor, I use Vi, open up httpd.conf

NOTE: The file has write permission, so you need to sudo in order to make changes, if you haven’t created a password yet for your account, this is the perfect time to create one.

Go to  System Preference > Accounts > Set the password for your account. Once done continue with the terminal

# sudo vi httpd.conf

If prompted for your password enter the password.

d. Do a search for .php and uncomment the line

#LoadModule php5_module        libexec/apache2/libphp5.so

To do a search type /.php on the vi editor and hit Enter

e. Exit and Save

Hit the Esc key and type to exit and save

2. Start Sharing by opening System Preferences, clicking on “Sharing” under Internet & Wireless and then check  “Web Sharing”.

Congrats PHP is enabled.

2. Install MySQL

a. Download the package from http://dev.mysql.com/downloads/mysql/5.1.html#macosx-dmg

b. Pick the 64 bit version.

c. After mounting, go over the readme.txt for more information.  Install the mysql-5.1.56-osx10.6-x86_64.pkg, go through the wizard.

d. Then also install the startup package which will start the MySQL server when you start your Mac.

e. You should be able to connect to the MySQL server, byrunning `/usr/local/mysql/bin/mysql’ on the command line

3. Next for managing your database with a GUI

a. Go ahead and download phpMyAdmin from

http://www.phpmyadmin.net/home_page/downloads.php

b. I extracted the folder inside my local folder.

c. Read the documentation for ways on how to setup authentication for phpMyAdmin either by cookie or config.

$cfg['Servers'][$i]['socket'] = ”;

e. To find out where it is located type the command ‘status’ on the Terminal when logged in to Mysql.

Connection id: 36

Current database:

Current user: pauloorquillo@localhost

SSL: Not in use

Current pager: stdout

Using outfile: ”

Using delimiter: ;

Server version: 5.1.56 MySQL Community Server (GPL)

Protocol version: 10

Connection: Localhost via UNIX socket

Server characterset: latin1

Db characterset: latin1

Client characterset: latin1

Conn. characterset: latin1

UNIX socket: /tmp/mysql.sock

Uptime: 7 days 2 hours 30 min 9 sec

f. You should see something like above note the UNIX socket and edit your phpmyadmin config file

$cfg['Servers'][$i]['socket'] = ‘/tmp/mysql.sock’;

That should be it you should be up and running. Happy coding.

Yesterday my host changed servers, then I upgraded to the latest version of WordPress and everything got whack on uploading images in the admin with this error.

Unable to create directory /home/username/public_html/wp-content/uploads/2008/05. Is its parent directory writable by the server?

Here are troubleshooting steps you can do.
1. With the error above, it can be assumed it is a permission problem with the folder. Default is 755, With your FTP software or WebFTP, edit the uploads folder in the wp-content to 777. Then try again.

2. If that doesn’t work, it can be an ownership issue. Wherein the owner of the files is apache and not your user account.

If you have access to SSH, you can edit the file to change ownership to

chown -R username:apache_user /home/username/public_html/wp-content/

username:apache_user for me is the ftp account, others are different.

3. If this doesn’t work. Check the upload path in the admin – Settings – Miscellaneous and make sure it is wp-content/uploads sometimes the upgrade or server move changes it to the absolute path.

The 3rd solution worked for me. Hope you find this useful

1. Built in password reset disk creation in XP and Vista. When you enable password for the administrator in Vista or XP on the User Accounts, there is an option to create a password reset disk which is designed for future use incase you forget it. This is one option if you created one. But the truth is who creates one? maybe network administrators but not the common PC users.

2. If first option is not available to you,then you can search for a password boot disk which will disable the administrator password. There are dozens of these types of programs but one program I recommend is PC Login Now 2.0. Download the iso file and burn it to a disk to create the boot disk, that simple. Configure your pc or laptop to boot in the cd drive, insert the CD and it would boot then just disable the password and restart. Took about 5 minutes for the whole process.

And from that effort, my friend gave me my request for Absolut Vodka, not bad for a 5 minute work which took them about a month trying without any success.

A theme I’m working on runs fine and was tested on PHP 4.3.x locally in my machine, I tried testing on PHP 5.2.x and I immediately encountered syntax error on WordPress. Traced the problem to be inside the Loop in WordPress. Sharing it here for those having hard time making their themes work on their host.

Parse error: syntax error, unexpected T_ENDWHILE

Parse error: syntax error, unexpected T_ELSE

Parse error: syntax error, unexpected T_ENDIF

Solution: check your if/else or while scripts and modify them accordingly to confirm to WordPress or your initial PHP tags.

Example script courtesy of undersigned.net, This code changes every other post to their own css tags. This runs fine and tested on PHP 4.3.x only

<?php if ( have_posts() ) : while ( have_posts() ) : the_post();

$loopcounter++; ?>

<div class=“post”>

<?php if ($loopcounter % 2 == 0) { ?>

<h1 class=“even”><?php the_title(); ?></h1>

<?php } else { ?>

<h1 class=“odd”><?php the_title(); ?></h1>

<? } ?>

<?php the_content(); ?>

</div>

<?php endwhile; ?>

You used the if/else normal php codes inside the WordPress loop tag. Make a strict code by simply changing your if/else to WordPress tags to make it work on PHP 5.2.x.

<?php if ( have_posts() ) : while ( have_posts() ) : the_post();

$loopcounter++; ?>

<div class=“post”>

<?php if ($loopcounter % 2 == 0) : ?>

<h1 class=“even”><?php the_title(); ?></h1>

<?php else : ?>

<h1 class=“odd”><?php the_title(); ?></h1>

<? endif; ?>

<?php the_content(); ?>

</div>

<?php endwhile; ?>

That’s it, issue fixed! It should be similar to other scripts using similar coding style and not just to WordPress. Happy theme tweaking!

Simply open your php.ini and uncomment extension=php_gd2.dll

;extension=php_exif.dll
;extension=php_fdf.dll
;extension=php_filepro.dll
extension=php_gd2.dll

Next check the extension_dir and edit to your php directory.

extension_dir = C:\php\extensions\

Edit the path accordingly to where the php_gd2.dll file is found in the php directory.
Save and restart Apache. GD should now be enabled.