Awesome – Timelapse video from ISS

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[HowTo]Install ChiliProject on CentOS 5.6 take two

This is a quick guide on how to setup ChiliProject (or redmine) on CentOS 5.6. This is a followup to this post, with some different, slightly better methodology. I’ll likely be iterating on this guide a few times, so check the blog for updates before launching into this. At the time of writing, ChiliProject v1.4.0 is the current stable release, once v2.0.0 comes out, some of this will not apply.

Once again we’re going to go with the tried and trusted:

• Ruby Enterprise Edition (REE)
• Rails
• RubyGems
• Passenger
• Apache
• MySQL

This time we’re going to install REE via rvm and put chiliproject into it’s own user.

Enable the EPEL repository, so we can grab slightly more up-to-date versions of some packages, as well as subversion and git:

su -c 'rpm -Uvh http://download.fedora.redhat.com/pub/epel/5/i386/epel-release-5-4.noarch.rpm'

Same as last time lets install httpd, mysql and the necessary build libraries via the yum repos:

yum install gcc zlib zlib-devel curl curl-devel expat-devel gettext-devel httpd httpd-devel apr-devel apr-util-devel mysql mysql-server mysql-devel openssl openssl-devel make gcc-c++ patch readline-devel ImageMagick ImageMagick-devel libffi-devel libyaml-devel sudo git subversion

Start httpd and mysql and enable them to run on boot:

/etc/init.d/httpd start
/sbin/chkconfig httpd on
/etc/init.d/mysqld start
/sbin/chkconfig mysqld on

Let’s create a user that we are going to put chiliproject under, in this tutorial this user will be called chili.

adduser chili
passwd chili

Depending on your long-term plans I would suggest adding the user chili to /etc/sudoers (using visudo) so you can later disable root logins for a more secure environment. This tutorial will assume you have done so, and at this point are logged in as the chili user. If you choose not to do this, this tutorial will still work just fine executing these as root.

In this example we are going to install just a single version of ruby to use just for our chili user. The following should be done as the chili user, unless otherwise mentioned.

bash < <(curl -s https://rvm.beginrescueend.com/install/rvm)

Add this line to the bottom of .bash_profile

[[ -s "$HOME/.rvm/scripts/rvm" ]] && . "$HOME/.rvm/scripts/rvm"

Log out and log back in.

Ensure rvm is installed and running as a function

type rvm | head -1
Update and reload rvm (just in case)
rvm get head
rvm reload
Install Ruby Enterprise Edition and set it as the default, this may take some time depending on your hardware.
rvm install ree
rvm --default use ree
Install rails version 2.3.5, the mysql gem, and the correct version of the i18n gem
gem install rails --version 2.3.5
gem install mysql
gem install -v=0.4.2 i18n
These are some optional gems you may want to install. rmagick will give you pretty graphs and ruby-openid will enable the ability to activate openid logins.
gem install rmagick -v 1.15.13 --disable-htmldoc
gem install ruby-openid
Install passenger. Follow the prompts and read the last part of the output instructing you to copy-paste some lines into your /etc/httpd/conf/httpd.conf
gem install passenger
rvmsudo passenger-install-apache2-module
While we are editing httpd.conf, let’s go ahead and create a virtualhost entry, edit as neccessary:
<VirtualHost *:80>
        ServerName www.demo.chiliproject.org
        ServerAlias demo.chiliproject.org
        DocumentRoot /home/chili/chiliproject/public
        <Directory /home/chili/chiliproject/public>
                AllowOverride all
                Options -MultiViews
        </Directory>
</VirtualHost>
Finally, let’s download and install chiliproject  (or redmine)to the location in our virtualhost mentioned above. You can simply follow the install guide from this point on, but I will reproduce the commands I do below for your convenience:
cd /home/chili
git clone git://github.com/chiliproject/chiliproject.git
cd chiliproject/
git checkout stable
mysql
create database chiliproject character set utf8;
create user 'chiliproject'@'localhost' identified by 'my_password';
grant all privileges on chiliproject.* to 'chiliproject'@'localhost';
quit
cp config/database.yml.example config/database.yml
vim config/database.yml
cp config/configuration.yml.example config/configuration.yml
vim config/configuration.yml
rake generate_session_store
RAILS_ENV=production rake db:migrate
RAILS_ENV=production rake redmine:load_default_data
sudo /etc/init.d/httpd restart
If all went well, you should  be able to browse to your successful chiliproject installation at this time! If you need help, hop into the Chiliproject IRC Channel and I’m usually around, and there are many other helpful people there just waiting to help you.

Google removing all user-uploaded videos from google video

Google is going to remove all user-uploaded videos from google video in a couple weeks, so this is just a friendly reminder, that if you previously used googlevideo, and have content uploaded there that is not available anywhere else (like youtube, vimeo, dailymotion, etc) Now is the best time to download them before they are gone forever.

You can use keepvid to download the videos in flv format that can easily be uploaded elsewhere.

[HowTo] Install ChiliProject (or Redmine) on CentOS

This a quick and dirty guide to getting a chiliproject or redmine installation up on CentOS 5.5 with the following:

• Ruby Enterprise Edition
• Rails
• RubyGems
• Passenger
• Apache
• MySQL

This is just a suggested method that I would use for testing locally, there are MANY alternate, better ways of doing this. This is just to get you started in the right direction to setup and test ChiliProject/Redmine. In the future I’ll post a full proper tutorial as soon as I get time. In this “tutorial” I assume you are doing things as root on a server intended only to host a single redmine, in general this is not a secure or perfect setup but is fine for internal use.

First, let’s install some prerequisites and the things we want from the centos repositories:

yum install gcc zlib-devel curl-devel expat-devel gettext-devel httpd httpd-devel apr-devel apr-util-devel mysql mysql-server mysql-devel openssl openssl-devel make gcc-c++ patch readline-devel ImageMagick ImageMagick-devel

This will get mysql and apache, as well as the basic tools you should need to build the remaining applications.

Start httpd and make sure there are no errors, configure the server to start automatically

/etc/init.d/httpd start
Starting httpd:                                            [  OK  ]
/sbin/chkconfig httpd on

Same with mysql

/etc/init.d/mysqld start
Starting MySQL:                                            [  OK  ]
/sbin/chkconfig mysqld on

Ensure both are done correctly:

/sbin/chkconfig --list httpd
httpd          	0:off	1:off	2:on	3:on	4:on	5:on	6:off
/sbin/chkconfig --list mysqld
mysqld         	0:off	1:off	2:on	3:on	4:on	5:on

Download, extract and install ruby enterprise edition, if you are not comfortable managing and updating a source installaiton, you should consider using this repository or rvm.

wget http://rubyforge.org/frs/download.php/71096/ruby-enterprise-1.8.7-2010.02.tar.gz
tar xzvf ruby-enterprise-1.8.7-2010.02.tar.gz
./ruby-enterprise-1.8.7-2010.02/installer

Follow the prompts in the installer, the defaults should be fine.

Create some useful symlinks:

ln -s /opt/ruby-enterprise-1.8.7-2010.02/bin/rake /usr/bin/rake
ln -s /opt/ruby-enterprise-1.8.7-2010.02/bin/gem /usr/bin/gem
ln -s /opt/ruby-enterprise-1.8.7-2010.02/bin/ruby /usr/bin/ruby
ln -s /opt/ruby-enterprise-1.8.7-2010.02/bin/irb /usr/bin/irb

Remove the included copy of rails and install the version required by ChiliProject

gem uninstall rails
gem install rails -v=2.3.5

Let’s install passenger:

/opt/ruby-enterprise-1.8.7-2010.02/bin/passenger-install-apache2-module

Once it completes it will give you the following lines to place in the apache config, you can use your favorite editor to add these to /etc/httpd/conf/httpd.conf

   LoadModule passenger_module /opt/ruby-enterprise-1.8.7-2010.02/lib/ruby/gems/1.8/gems/passenger-3.0.2/ext/apache2/mod_passenger.so
   PassengerRoot /opt/ruby-enterprise-1.8.7-2010.02/lib/ruby/gems/1.8/gems/passenger-3.0.2
   PassengerRuby /opt/ruby-enterprise-1.8.7-2010.02/bin/ruby

Restart Apache:

/etc/init.d/httpd restart

In case you don’t have git and svn installed, enable EPEL repositories and get them:

su -c 'rpm -Uvh http://download.fedora.redhat.com/pub/epel/5/i386/epel-release-5-4.noarch.rpm'
yum install git subversion

Now just follow the directions at https://www.chiliproject.org/projects/chiliproject/wiki/Installation (or redmine)

Once you have confirmed it’s working with webrick, add this to your apache conf:

   <VirtualHost *:80>
      ServerName www.yourhost.com
      DocumentRoot /somewhere/public    # <-- be sure to point to 'public'!
      <Directory /somewhere/public>
         AllowOverride all              # <-- relax Apache security settings
         Options -MultiViews            # <-- MultiViews must be turned off
      </Directory>
   </VirtualHost>

In my example setup it would be like the following:

<VirtualHost *:80>
      ServerName www.my.domain.com
      DocumentRoot /var/www/chiliproject/public
      <Directory /var/www/chiliproject/public>
         AllowOverride all
        Options -MultiViews
      </Directory>
   </VirtualHost>

Restart apache and everything should be working as expected :)

This is just a rough guide, hit me up on IRC for specific help. If you are setting up a site for public use, this guide isn’t recommended at all.

May the force of typography be with you

Sometimes it’s hard to not become a full-out font nerd. These images hit two of my favorite things, Fonts & Star Wars!

Click for Big!

GurbaniDB – Translate and Transliterate Sri Guru Granth Sahib

Today the Sikher Project released GurbaniDB, where you can download 52 translations and 22 transliterations of Shri Guru Granth Sahib Ji under a CC-BY-NC-SA license.

As far as I can tell these are entirely machine generated and of pretty poor quality – but that’s the point, these are destined to be used as starting points on a collaboritive effort to create actual usable translations and transliterations. Sign up to help here.

They suggest the use of the Code2000 font, which is actually a pretty ugly Shareware (meaning it costs $5 to use) font. It’s generally uneeded to use these giant Pan-Unicode fonts, as most modern operating systems include the proper regional fonts already. If you have to use one of these I would suggest either GNU Freefont or GNU Unifont. Even better than using these would be to get the regional Unicode fonts for the language you are using, for Gurmukhi the best one is SAAB which is released under the GPL.

So definitely check out this cool project, donate some money or time towards it if you think it’s useful (I do)

Time

Time – Who has it? Cause I sure don’t. This blog has languished mainly due to my distinct lack of time – however I aim to fix that very soon. By next week expect some regular posts with all new stuff!

See ya then!

Beta Testers Wanted.

Looking for some beta testers for custom redmine hosting. Testers get 66% off for life. Join #redmight on freenode irc or contact me

Trustworthiness of Beards

Funny. I’m way to the left :)

Where do you fall on this Chart?

Windows Mobile Font Problem – a better solution

For those of you who have the problem of using SIkhi to the Max or Gurbani Anywhere on your windows mobile phone and the gurmukhi fonts screw your phone up – Good news! I have an easier solution than the one in my last post.

Instead of mucking about in the registry and lots of third-party programs and nonsense, just download the attached zip file which contains modified versions of the fonts, and replace the ones that come with those applications.

Clearer instructions:

1. Install STTM/GA
2. Delete GURAKHAR.ttf and WebAkharThick.ttf from /windows/Fonts (on your mobile device)
3. Copy the files from this post into /windows/Fonts (which have the exact same names as the ones you deleted)
4. Reboot your device

I would really appreciate comments letting me know if this did or did not work for you!