TechBytes | Technology Bytes

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.

Recently, I talked about getting an error in my mailbox instead of the notification email from Webmin 1.5’s Software Package Update module. Today, I found a hint to its solution on the sourceforge.net email archives.

This is a known bug and it will be fixed in next public release, if you don’t wish to wait, you can do a devel-update of your webmin.

I have wrote yesterday about Webmin 1.5 features. I especially liked the one that will send me a notification when there is any update available to any of the components installed on my Linux box.

To my disappointment, I never got any Software Package Updates module’s email notification, instead I got this in my mailbox

Undefined subroutine &main::list_all_current called at /usr/libexec/webmin/package-updates/update.pl line 12.

I have no clue what this means or how do I fix it. Any one who can help me with this?

Update: A fix is available for this bug

Two new features introduced in Webmin 1.5 that really attracts me are

1. Software Package Updates module, it notifies about new available updates and optionally can send email and/or install security or all updates
2. System Status, collects system information by running a background cron job on your system

The interface has also improved a little, and its slower while loading (figures!), but gives more information in the dashboard.

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?

Read the rest of this entry »

Are you getting this?

There are unfinished transactions remaining. You might consider running yum-complete-transaction first to finish them.

if so, just do this

yum install yum-utils

and then run

yum-complete-transaction

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

Read the rest of this entry »

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.

Read the rest of this entry »

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