29-Jun-2010

WASD + PHP running
The problem mentioned a few days ago was caused by multiple causes – one of them being an error in building the MySQLi extension, Mark Berryman supplied a new kit, so I installed it.
But not before I cleaned everything: the WASD_ROOT:[src.PHP] directory – that would become PHP_ROOT if you used the PHP_STARTUP procedure of WASD (?) – now holds just what’s needed to build the PHP runtime engine. The whole PHP package is now installed under WASD_ROOT:[PHP.AXP] like Mark Berryman describes in his README document that comes with the kit – the main exe’s in [.BIN], the extensions in [.EXTENSIONS], and PHP.INI aside these directories.
Now the sequence of getting it up and running is important, and I found this works:

$ DEF/SYS/EXEC PHP_ROOT DKA0:[WASD_ROOT.PHP.AXP.] /TRANS=(C,T)
$ @WASD_ROOT:[STARTUP]STARTUP
$ @WASD_ROOT:[STARTUP]PHP_STARTUP

Important as well: all PHP files must be set to W:RE. the SECURE script does NOT include this path, so the whole PHP-tree must be set correctly by hand.

Don’t forget PHP.INI – like I did, because you still won’t see the enabled extensions – and PHP doesn’t issue a warning on this! After correcting the protection mask, it works fine.

The PHP excutable now works as expected as well:

$ php cgi_bin:php_info.php
<h1><center>Testing the PHPINFO () function</center></h1><br />
phpinfo()
PHP Version => 5.2.13
...

Before I forget: of course you must enable PHP in the configuration:
in HTTPD$CONFIG.CONF, add INDEX.PHP to the section [Welcome],
.PHP $CGI-BIN:[000000]PHPWASD.EXE to the section [DclScriptRunTime], and to the section named [AddType] you should add these lines:
.PHP text/plain PHP source
.PHTML text/plain PHP source
.PHPS text/plain PHP source

For mapping, I created a separate configation file (PHP.CONF) that contains the lines:
set /**.php* script=query=relaxed
set /**.php script=query=relaxed ods=5
exec /php-bin/* (@cgi-bin:[000000]phpwasd.exe)/cgi-bin/* script=query=relaxed

and included the file in the mapping file wasd_config_map.conf, just before the DECnet lines:
[includeFile] wasd_root:[local]php.conf

Next step is installing the latest versions of PHPMyAdmin en WordPress – using the database on Diana – just for setting up the new environments, the current mapping causes loops and now I can find out how the mapping should be to get it running properly…

27-Jun-2010

More on 8.4 + WASD 10 + PHP
I installed the latest version of WASD (10.1) and PHP (5.2.13, as supplied by Mark Berryman) but still it didn’t work – got the same errors as before. After some fiddling around with files (I should have read the README file first 🙂 ) the PHP_INFO script did finally produce output, but notr entirely as I expected: for instance, no additional modules are shown. But at least, the error is now gone.
Using PHP interactively however, does produce the well known error:

$ php CGI_BIN:PHP_INFO.PHP
PHP Warning: PHP Startup: Unable to load dynamic library '/php_root/extensions/php_mysqli.exe' - %LIB-E-ACTIMAGE, error activating image $1$DKA0:[SYS0.SYSCOMMON.][SYSLIB]SSL$LIBCRYPTO_SHR32.EXE
-SYSTEM-F-SHRIDMISMAT, ident mismatch with shareable image in Unknown on line 0

but continues – and lists all modules that I enabled…

Perhaps it’s just a mismatch in logical names when running interactively, and when by the server, and if so: what caused it?

Question put into the WASD mailing list.

15-Mar-2009

Irene restored
I did run some checks (using Ubuntu LiveCD) on the memory of Irene – the family PC that broke down – and found quite a lot of errors, but I wasn’t sure of the truth of the outcome. It’s new (just a few weeks old) and had run perfectly for some time. So I returned the system to the shop to test it.
Indeed – the added 1Gb memory turned out to be bad. Had it removed and retry to boot – but it seems Windows is capable of making a mess of the disk due to memory errors: the same problem persisted: spontanuous reboot each time the system was booted.
The Ubuntu startup didn’t work either.
SO I had to do some repair: ChkDsk on both Windows disks (system and pagedisk), so at least Windows was bootable again.
The faulty memory was returned to the shop where I bought it, they ran some checks as well but found it defective indeed. So I got a new module, installed it and behold: as if nothing has happened. It seems nothing is lost.
Just Ubuntu needed to be re-installed, but that had nothing to do with failing disks. I think I made an error with assigning the disk priority (which is the “C:” disk can be set in BIOS) and finally I got it re-installed. Only to find that mouse and keyboard didn’t work. I installed an old keyboard and at that moment, it worked. Now to find a new keyboard 😉
WASD weirdness
I have 7 services defined – and I should have a list of 7 checking the services. But for some reason, in time it will be a multiple of 7: some way all 7 are duplicated and I didn’t find out why, yet. I seem to be the only one with the problem…
But to be true, that’s the only problem (apart from the known PHP engine stuff) I run into on Diana….
ATI card problems
For some time, the ATI-based card in Aphrodite – the workstation – fails, returning into a colorfull, stripy type of screen in the normal Windows mode, blacking out and sometimes restarting in the alternate setup, or blackout and power it off under Ubuntu. The only solution is to reset: Attempting to restart under Windows doesn’t work – and I cannot see why, and Ubuntu really hangs – the system is completely ‘dead’ – doesn’t react in any way. It might be set to SLEEP, eventually, but I doubt it – hitting the power butten does not resume but restarts – from BIOS, over GRUB into the selected system. It happens when I have watched movies – .AVI, .WMV, .MPEG, or, more particular, .MP4 – that’s where I first encountered the problem.

23-nov-2008

Podcasts
Podcasts – Ipod Broadcast – have been a request by Francesco Gennai. What he would like is streamed content: similar to youTube, though his example was more serious in the subjects offered. Live streaming will be a problem on OpenVMS since the IO system doesn’t support it, not the way that is required. But streaming files to a browser should be possible, so “Canned content”. I like Mark’s expression :).
So I set up a small environment, put some files to be retrieved, and created a small, very basic HTML file to access the files. These are indeed retrieved – but not in streaming mode. Not in the ususal set-up of the webserver, anyway.
So I followed a recommendation, by Robert Atkinson, to give podcastgen a try. For security reasons, I started to try it out on the secured site, but that implies a few problems I haven’t solved yet. You can read on the configuration and the problems on the podcast entry on the VMS wiki . and in the WASD mailing list archives – whenever my comments are accepted (it may lead to a problem – the Spam filter did complain for a number of reasons).

but once the problems are solved, there might be streaming video from this site, one day 🙂