How to install MySQL Server, PHP and Apache on a Mac

These instructions lead you thru the installation of the latest LAMP Stack on MacOS X Snow Leopard.

1 – Download the installation image from MySQL website here. Then double-click to mount and open the disk image.

2 – Install MySQL Server by double clicking the package “mysql-5.1.*****.pkg” and follow the menu, accepting the default values, unless you want to change something and know exactly what you’re doing.

3 – Install MySQL Startup Item by double-clicking the package “MySQLStartupitem.pkg” and follow the menu.

4 – Install MySQL Preference Pane by double-clicking the file “MySQL.prefPane” and follow the menu. This item will simplify the management of your SQL Server. You can now use the “System Preferences” panel to start and stop the database server.

5 – Enable the php module in your apache config file. You might know that Snow Leopard already ships with Apache 2.2 and PHP 5.3, but it needs a couple of tweaks to make it work smoothly. So, open /etc/apache2/httpd.conf and search for “php5_module”. Remove the comment (#) in front of the line, save and close the file, then restart apache (sudo apachectl restart)

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Installing true-type (ttf) Fonts in Ubuntu

Installing true-type fonts in Ubuntu is an easy task. With literally thousands of free fonts available on the Internet, (from sites such as 1001 Free Fonts or DaFont), who could resist to add that extra spice to their documents or websites.

Ready? Here we go!

First, find and download your desired fonts into ~/Downloads/fonts. You may have to create that directory first. Then extract them and copy to the system fonts directory as follows:

cd /usr/share/fonts/truetype
sudo mkdir customFonts
cd customFonts
sudo cp ~/Downloads/fonts/*.ttf .
sudo chown root.root *.ttf
sudo mkfontdir
cd ..
fc-cache

And that’s it. If you had your favourite graphics program open during this process, you’ll likely need to restart it to see the added fonts.
Have fun!

How to recover a lost Linux root password

Forgot your root password? Nice going. What now? Reinstall the machine from ground up? Sadly enough, I’ve seen this happening all too often while it’s surprisingly easy to change the password knowing the correct procedure. While this doesn’t work in all cases (like if you secured your machine with a GRUB password and forgot that as well), but here’s the procedure in case of a CentOS Linux machine.

Start off by rebooting your system. At the GRUB boot loader screen, move the highlighted entry with the arrow keys to interrupt the boot process. While the current boot entry is highlighted, press E and you can edit the kernel line.

Grub boot loader screen

Use the arrow key to highlight the line that starts with kernel, and press E to edit the kernel parameters. When you get to the screen below, append the number 1 at the end of the line. This will enable you to boot into single-user mode.

Edit GRUB boot loader entry

Next press Enter, then B, and the kernel will boot up into single-user mode. Once there you can run the passwd command, changing the password for user root:

prod-093# passwd
New UNIX password:
Retype new UNIX password:
passwd: all authentication tokens updated successfully

Next time you boot up, use your newly created password to login.

Ubuntu 9.10 (Karmic Koala) beta review

It’s that season again when as usual, Fedora and Ubuntu are prepping up for new releases, with the Ubuntu crew having already released the first beta of Ubuntu 9.10, dubbed Karmic Koala. Although is only a beta release and still needs a bit of polish, there’s plenty to love.

Earlier this year, Canonical announced plans to improve the boot experience, the goal being to get the system up and running smoother and much faster. And Karmic Koala doesn’t disappoint, but the eventual goal of a 10-second startup time will have to wait until Ubuntu 10.04 is released in 2010.

The Ubuntu One client software, part of  the Ubuntu One cloud storage tools, is designed to give you a simple way to backup, synchronize and share files over the web. Ubuntu One offers 2GB of free storage, and a 10GB option sets you back $10/month. Ubuntu One also offers public shared folders that other Ubuntu users can access natively from their PC, while non-Ubuntu users can access them via web browser.

Pidgin messaging client has been replaced with Empathy, something other GNOME distros have done as well. But Empathy isn’t just a new Instant Messaging client. It sports a much-improved framework known as Telepathy. More than just a Pidgin replacement, Telepathy offers video-chat and VOIP support, two things that aren’t even on Pidgin’s roadmap.

If you want to give this new beta release a spin yourself, download is available here. To upgrade from your existing 9.04 version, press “CTL+F2″, then type “update-manager -d”, hit enter and follow the instructions.