Jeremy Heslop » howto

Adding pdftk to 1and1 shared hosting

jeremy — Wed, 11 Nov 2009 21:12:47 +0000

There are some cases where you might need a powerful pdf toolkit to use with php. 1and1 does not come with any built in pdf processors or pdf libraries built into php. Here is the process I used to integrate phptk into my 1and1 shared hosting account.

Requirements: 1and1 shared plan that has ssh support

- Download pdftk deb file for debian etch (http://packages.debian.org/etch/i386/pdftk/download):

wget http://ftp.us.debian.org/debian/pool/main/l/pdftk/pdftk_1.40-2_i386.deb

- Extract the pdftk deb file:

ar xv pdftk_1.40-2_i386.deb

- Extract the data.tar.gz file:

tar xvzf data.tar.gz

- Download libgcj deb file for debian etc (http://packages.debian.org/etch/i386/libgcj7-0/download):

wget http://ftp.us.debian.org/debian/pool/main/g/gcj-4.1/libgcj7-0_4.1.1-20_i386.deb

- Extract the libgcj deb file:

ar xv libgcj7-0_4.1.1-20_i386.deb

- Extract the data.tar.gz file:

tar xvzf data.tar.gz

- Create a script to link libgcj for pdftk (use nano or vi):

#!/bin/bash

LD_LIBRARY_PATH="usr/lib:$LD_LIBRARY_PATH" usr/bin/pdftk $*

- Chmod the pdftk script so it can run:

chmod 755 pdftk

Now you can run pdftk from your main directory and process files from php or cronjobs.

Adding PECL Uploadprogress to 1&1 shared hosting for Drupal FileField

jeremy — Wed, 27 May 2009 20:25:46 +0000

Drupal 6.x is the platform we use to build great websites. There are modules FileField and ImageField 3.0 that allow the ability to update a progress meter when uploading a file. This requires installing a PECL extension to PHP called uploadprogress. Here is the process I used to get it working on a 1and1.com hosting package. You will need a hosting package with ssh support currently the Business and Developer packages do.

Download PECL uploadaccess to your 1&1 account
Extract the package
tar xvzf uploadprogress-1.0.0.tgz
Go into the directory
cd uploadprogress-1.0.0
Run phpize5
phpize5
Change php-config to php-config5 in configure script
sed -i 's/=php-config/=php-config5/g' configure
Change include directives in Makefile
sed -i 's#-I/usr/local/include/php#-I/usr/include/php5#g' Makefile
Run make and make test
make make test
Make new extensions folder for new extension to go in
mkdir ~/extensions
Copy uploadprogress extension to new folder
cp .libs/uploadprogress.so ~/extensions/
Create new php.ini under your main folder (or under a single subfolder for just that application) to add new extension_dir then add this code to the file
extension_dir=/kunden/homepages/6/d87663654/htdocs/extensions/ extension=uploadprogress.so

That should be it. You should now be able to see the “Upload progress Enabled (PECL uploadprogress)” on the admin/reports/status page in Drupal.

Links that helped me with the above info:

Online Banking Setup for GnuCash 2.2.6 under Windows XP

jeremy — Fri, 19 Sep 2008 15:23:50 +0000

Since my linux raid decided to futz up (read I screwed it up) I’ve been using my Windows partition out of necessity until I have the time to rebuild my software raid 5 and gentoo. Until then we’ve been using GnuCash under Windows which has worked ok, but it is not as nice as the linux version by far. We use GnuCash for our business and it is critical that we have all the functions working in it. One of the things that I really missed was online banking. I could pull in all the transactions and clear them under GnuCash as well as making reconciling alot easier. The reason that GnuCash could not connect to my online bank was that the version of libofx it was saying it was an older version of Quicken and thus was denied from my bank. I read some more online and …

found that you could compile libofx with a new APPVER or binary replace the version in the library file. So I took the easy way out and replaced the string in the .dll file. Here is how I did it:

Downloaded xvi32 hex editor (free)
Opened “C:\Program Files\gnucash\bin\libofx-3.dll” under XVi32
Searched for 1200 as a text string
Found the string that says APPVER right after it and clicked on the 2 of 1200 and hit 5 to make it 1500
Saved the file, started up GnuCash and voila!

In all this I am assuming you already know how to setup GnuCash for Online Banking. If not you can check it out on their ofx setup page. That is it for now. Hope you find this useful as I’m sure I’ll have to come back to this at some point in time in the future!

And remember if you use GnuCash for tracking your expenses and income make sure you have a backup off-site. I recommend Mozy for windows and Mac, but any way you do it you’ll be thankful you did.

Setting up Azureus and SafePeer in Linux

jeremy — Fri, 19 Oct 2007 13:32:30 +0000

So there are tons of utilities to keep the SafePeer plugin up-to-date in Windows (like BlueTack’s Blocklist Manager), but Linux and the Mac have been left out in the cold. We’ll I found a way to get those 190k+ ips blocked in azureus without having to use Peerguardian or MoBlock (MoBlock is still safer in my mind) in Linux. First we need to download the lists like we would for MoBlock. Here is the script I use:

#!/bin/bash


mkdir -p backup

mv *.txt backup/

rm *.7z
wget http://peerguardian.sourceforge.net/lists/ads.php http://peerguardian.sourceforge.net/lists/edu.php http://peerguardian.sourceforge.net/lists/p2p.php http://peerguardian.sourceforge.net/lists/spy.php http://peerguardian.sourceforge.net/lists/gov.php
for list in `ls *.7z`; do

        7z -y x $list

done

cat *.txt > all.txt

This moves the old lists into a backup folder, removes the old downloaded files, re-downloads the lists (you can add or remove the lists you want that MoBlock can read), extracts then and then concats them all together to make a master all list. Then you need to setup Azureus’s SafePeer settings to find this new list.

Under SafePeer settings:
- Uncheck Enable asynchronous loading
- Uncheck Enable periodic update

Under Blocklist settings:
- Clear out the Blocklist URL
- Browser for the all.txt file to add as your Cache file

That is it. You should see the IPs number at the bottom of azureus be 197,000+ ips. If not make sure you selected the correct location of the all.txt file. Good Luck and happy downloading.

How to Quit Facebook

jeremy — Tue, 02 Oct 2007 23:26:23 +0000

So are you addicted to facebook? Do you find yourself aimlessly looking through everyones posts over and over again and trying out new apps in hopes your friends will to. Well it might be time to get a grip on reality, Check out “How to Quit Facebook” on wikiHow to find out how you can quit facebook.