How to Enable SSL on Xampp with Vhosts

If you need to enable SSL on Xampp whilst stilling using vhosts, follow the next few steps. It assumes that you already have vhosts enabled.

Open xampp/apache/conf/extra/httpd-vhosts.conf
Around line 19 you should see “NameVirtualHost *:80″, below this line add “NameVirtualHost *:443″ (without quotes)

Then add a new vhost site just like a normal one but with *443 instead on *80 and the following lines:

SSLEngine on
SSLCertificateFile conf/ssl.crt/server.crt
SSLCertificateKeyFile conf/ssl.key/server.key

An example of this is:

    DocumentRoot "C:/xampp/htdocs/myproject/public"
    ServerName mysite.local
    ServerAlias mysite.local
	SSLEngine on
	SSLCertificateFile conf/ssl.crt/server.crt
	SSLCertificateKeyFile conf/ssl.key/server.key

Restart Xampp apache and everything should work fine.

Setting up a Cron with Plesk using a PHP File

I have a Server with a Plesk control panel and I wanted to automate a PHP script using a cron (or crontab). Within Plesk it’s called a scheduled task. The problem is its not that user-friendly (but like everything it’s very easy once you know how) so below is how to do it.

In the above screenshot you will see that the fields look pretty straight forward however there are a few tricks you need to know. To get a cron to run every minute, hour, day or month you need to use a asterisk (*).

Once you’ve set the frequency of the cron you need to call a command. For PHP files you need to do the following:

• Give the path to the php folder, (usually just php)
• Type in “-q” (this suppresses the HTTP header output)
• Finally, give the path to you php file

The example above runs the following script every day at 00:07 in the morning.

php -q httpdocs/crons/stats.php

If you just put the php file into the command it will throw an error.

Installing LAMP on Ubuntu

So I been getting rather annoyed with CentOs recently, mainly due to the lack of PHP support above 5.1.6, especially with all the cool features of 5.3. Also I always seem to have massive trouble installing anything like Mcypt or Memcache.

So I thought I’d give Ubuntu a go and I’m now a convert! Everything went smoothly, not one issue or problem. The support forums are brilliant and almost all questions have already been answered. I dont know whether I’ve just got lucky (I guess only time will tell) but Ubuntu is now my first port of call when setting up a new server.

Below is a line by line tutorial on how I got setup with Ubuntu 10.04 Lucid. I don’t go into too much details on how to edit the files using nano or vi but you can have a look on my previous posts or online, otherwise you can sftp in using root and change the files that way, (my preferred method).

Install Lamp on Ubuntu

sudo tasksel install lamp-server
You will need to enter a root mysql password for mysql

Change Apache Default Web Location on Ubuntu

If you need to change the default root location from /var/www to something else you can do so in the following file location. This is useful for using frameworks such as Zend Framework.

/etc/apache2/sites-available/default

Create file and add Fully Qualified Domain Name to Apache config (auto adds all in conf.d)

Create a new file call fqdn in:

/etc/apache2/conf.d/

In the top of the file write the following where mydomain.com is the domain name pointing to this server.

servername mydomain.com

Enable mod_rewrite on Ubuntu

a2enmod rewrite

Edit “AllowOverride None” for default site (usually the first 2 found on line 4 and line 10). Change to the following

AllowOverride All

Found in:

/etc/apache2/sites-available/default

Disable Directory Listing on Ubuntu

Inside: /etc/apache2/sites-available/default
Add "-" before the word Indexes

Options -Indexes

Restart Apache on Ubuntu

sudo /etc/init.d/apache2 restart

Install Memcached on Ubuntu

apt-get install memcached
apt-get install php5-memcache

Install Mcrypt on Ubuntu

sudo apt-get install php5-mcrypt

Install APC on Ubuntu

apt-get install php-apc
/etc/init.d/apache2 restart

When you get erros you need to type

apt-get install re2c
apt-get install gawk

Restart Apache

sudo /etc/init.d/apache2 restart

Other Useful Info on Ubuntu

PHP.ini Location in Ubuntu

/etc/php5/apache2/php.ini

How to install Memcached on Xampp on Windows 7

For one of my Zend Framework web applications I’m going to install memcached. I am currently using file cache however think memcached is a much better way to go. This post is one in a series:

1. Installing Memcached on Windows 7 and Xampp
2. Setting up Memcached Cache in Zend Framework
3. Installing Memcached on Centos 5.

Installing Memcached on Xampp and Windows 7

1a. Go to your php.ini file usually located in C:/xampp/php/php.ini
find this line:

;extension=php_memcache.dll

and replace it with:

extension=php_memcache.dll

1b. If you cannot find this line simply add the following line to below where all the ;extension= lines.

extension=php_memcache.dll

2.  Add the following to just below the new line

[Memcache]
memcache.allow_failover = 1
memcache.max_failover_attempts=20
memcache.chunk_size =8192
memcache.default_port = 11211

3. Download the necessary php_memecache.dll file from the following location.

http://downloads.php.net/pierre/

For windows 7 I used the following file:

http://downloads.php.net/pierre/php_memcache-cvs-20090703-5.3-VC6-x86.zip

4. Unzip the php_memcache.dll file and put it into your php ext folder. Usually C:/xampp/php/ext/

5. Download memcached for windows here (make sure it’s the win32 binary):

http://code.jellycan.com/memcached/

6. Unzip and put the memcache.exe file into a desired directory (e.g. c:/memcached/)

7. Open command line in Windows Administrator Mode.

Click start, type in ‘Search programs and Files’ box, wait for the program cmd.exe to appear, right hand click on the icon and select run as administrator

8. Install the memcache service

Type the following into the command line

c:\memcached\memcached.exe -d install

If you dont get any errors it means it’s worked.

9. Start memcached

Type the following into the command line

c:\memcached\memcached.exe -d start, or net start “memcached Server”

10. Restart Xampp Apache

11. Test Memcache

Create a php file and paste the following code. Then go to the page. If you do not see any errors then it has worked.

<?php
$memcache = new Memcache;
$memcache->connect('localhost', 11211) or die ("Could not connect");

$version = $memcache->getVersion();
echo "Server's version: ".$version."<br/>\n";

$tmp_object = new stdClass;
$tmp_object->str_attr = 'test';
$tmp_object->int_attr = 123;

$memcache->set('key', $tmp_object, false, 10) or 
die ("Failed to save data at the server");
echo "Store data in the cache (data will expire in 10 seconds)
<br/>\n";

$get_result = $memcache->get('key');
echo "Data from the cache:<br/>\n";

var_dump($get_result);
?>

12. Just in case it doesn’t work: One other thing I did was to run the C:/memcached/memcached.exe file as administrator. This opens the ports on the windows firewall which might solve some problems.

Enable mod_rewrite in xampp

For some reason my install of XAMPP didn’t have mod_rewrite automatically enabled? Not really sure why  but basically below are the instructions on how to enable .htaccess mod_rewrite in xampp.

1. Go to the directory of installation <C:\xampp>\apache\conf

2. Open and edit httpd.conf in a text editor

3. Find the line which contains

#LoadModule rewrite_module modules/mod_rewrite.so

and (uncomment) change to

LoadModule rewrite_module modules/mod_rewrite.so

4. Find all occurrences of

AllowOverride None

and change to

AllowOverride All

I think it appears 2 or 3 times on the configuration file.

5. Restart xampp

That’s it you should be good to go.