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Are you getting the following error while updating any package in pear?

pear.php.net is using a unsupported protocal – This should never happen.

I got this error right after I upgraded PHP from 5.2 to 5.9 (using CentOS-Testing repo). To resolve this situation, do this.

rm -fr /usr/share/pear/.channels

and then do this

pear update-channels

It should now give you the following output

Updating channel "doc.php.net"
Update of Channel "doc.php.net" succeeded
Updating channel "pear.php.net"
Update of Channel "pear.php.net" succeeded
Updating channel "pecl.php.net"
Update of Channel "pecl.php.net" succeeded

That’s it, your issue is resolved.

All my technical life, I knew and followed this simple rule

New updates to any application or component are meant to improve and fix the bugs present in it. Downloading new updates ensures that you system is up-to-update, has fixes to all those bugs you have been getting annoyed with and more stable.

Unfortunately not every IT department thinks that, especially the one I am facing at work. According to them, the new updates should only be applied IF and only IF they offer some new functionality (duhh!). Hello! what happened to the bug-fixes that are promised with these updates?

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If you are using

yum update

on CentOS and getting the following errors

Missing Dependency: /usr/lib/python2.4 is needed by package libxml2-python-2.6.26-2.1.2.7.i386 (installed)
gamin-python-0.1.7-8.el5.i386 from installed has depsolving problems
Missing Dependency: /usr/lib/python2.4 is needed by package gamin-python-0.1.7-8.el5.i386 (installed)
Error: Missing Dependency: /usr/lib/python2.4 is needed by package libxml2-python-2.6.26-2.1.2.7.i386 (installed)
Error: Missing Dependency: /usr/lib/python2.4 is needed by package gamin-python-0.1.7-8.el5.i386 (installed)

Don’t panic, the solution is simple … just run the following command

yum clean all

Then do

yum update

If you want to install PHP 5.2.x instead of the PHP 1.5.6 offered with default CentOSPlus repo. Please consider installing the utterramblings repo. Setting up this repo is a breeze … just follow these steps

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I have seen people installing Apache, PHP and MySQL from source code on a production server. You should NEVER, NEVER, NEVER install these packages from source on an RPM or DEB based Linux distributions. Did I say “NEVER” enough times to make your realize that it is not a good practice?

Installing from source is bad idea; there are many reasons for this but the major one is that you will be spending a lot of time keeping the system updated. If you love installing from source then I would suggest using a different distribution e.g. Gentoo.

You can build from source if the package is not available in yum but still, try to use “yum” (or “apt-get” on Ubuntu) because it will save a lot of your time when upgrading your packages.

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Earlier, I posted a how-to to Install Webmin on Ubuntu, now im going through the tutorial again but this time for CentOS.

Install dependancies before we proceed to install webmin

yum -y install perl-Net-SSLeay

Download the latest version of webmin

wget http://downloads.sourceforge.net/project/webadmin/webmin/1.500/webmin-1.500-1.noarch.rpm?use_mirror=ignum

Once it is downloaded, install the RPM using the following command

rpm -i webmin-1.500-1.noarch.rpm

No more steps required. Its installed
Go to your browser and access the control panel with valid ssh credentials

I recently felt the urge to have a development testing environment on Linux (LAMP). I tried CentOS first since it is one of the leading industry standard Linux server. I was disappointed to see that CentOS does not have a 5.2.x series of PHP that I could install via “yum” (am not a very advance user so does not wanted to build it by typing long queries in SSH just to find out that I left some core thing in the first place).

I did a bit of research and found out that Ubuntu could be a better choice. Luckily I had the latest version of Ubuntu already shipped via Postal Mail (aka Snail Mail) and this time the CDs DID get through the customs.

For those new to Ubuntu, you can either download it or request FREE cds from Shipit.Ubuntu.com.

Ubuntu 8.10, the latest release, is a breeze to install and start running. I used VMWare Workstation to run it on my Windows installation.

Ubuntu 8.10 Preparing Diskspace (nice graphics)

Ubuntu 8.10 Scanning Files

Ubuntu 8.10 Installing System

Ubuntu 8.10 Shutting Down after complete install