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"Don't be evil." It's a seemingly simple concept. I would even go as far as to say that the majority of people in this country abide by this concept. It also just so happens to be a motto of Google. Does that mean that Google came to be one of the biggest companies in the U.S. by not being evil? Well, I am not sure, but they are definitely getting a lot of help from Web 2.0 based technologies. If you have heard of the phrase 'Web 2.0' but aren't sure what it means, don't be alarmed, you are not alone. There is no clear-cut definition for the phrase but it can be summarized by a few general characteristics. Mainly, it has the basic concept of a "network as a platform," meaning users are delivered and allowed to use the application entirely through a web browser. The users own the data on those sites and are able to exercise control over that data. It has architecture that encourages users to add value to the application as they use it. And finally, it has rich user interface and may have some type of social networking aspects.

Reading on through the remaining six dogmatic tenets, there was a gradual shift in his tenets, moving from those ideas that all developers can incorporate into their practice, to ideas more specific to developers in a UNIX environment. Which, I suppose, is somewhat needed, otherwise the book would be called "The General Development for any Environment Philosophy." So as I have yet to actually develop in the UNIX environment, I cannot say "yes you right, that is what you should do." Instead I see it more of a jump-start to programming in UNIX. I have always wondered how different my earliest programs would be (as far as structure, portability, etc.) if I had written them knowing everything I know now. It was very much a "learn as you go" process and therefore I likely spent more time coding and troubleshooting than I should have. But for me and other developers who have yet to work in a UNIX environment, we can read this book first and have more of a "learn, and then go" approach to programming in UNIX.

The reading has a been a delightful experience as it presents the vague history of the develpoment of Unix throwing light on the more important 'simple goals' of the operating system and the principles in the minds of the people who developed it. It shows the easy ideas that became important granules in the software development.

An interesting part was the 'Small is beautiful' section. It shows the potential advantage of splitting up heavier work into smaller counterparts and how this methodology could be more powerful by making the work less complex and more flexible. I quiet like the idea and agree with most of it but would like to add a few comments.

Seeing that Mike Gancarz explicitly stated in his preface to the book that I would benefit greatly from reading his book, and almost assuming that I had a distrust for the UNIX operating system based only on the fact that I haven't used it yet, I was somewhat displeased to find out that he was right. I have yet to read past chapter four but I am already reaping the benefits that he proposed I would.

He began with an introduction to and a history of the UNIX operating system, citing names of people and places that I didn't particularly think was very beneficial for me to know. He soon thereafter broke down the UNIX philosophy "in a nutshell," listing nine tenets that were seen as dogmatic to UNIX developers and 10 "lesser tenets" that are seen as "not-so-dogmatic" to UNIX developers. Many of these tenets I thought were almost common sense to people in the computing world. I thought to myself, yes Mr. Gancarz your right, those are all very important and thank for listing them out for me. But I thought to myself, "What's the big deal?

[phpwiki]
Taking the time to read up on the GridShib CA and MyProxy CA was very useful. They and phpki ultimately all are backened by an openssl configuration so in a sense are compatible with each other. The decision to use one over the other seems to mainly be about where one stores a cert and how one can retreive it. The GridShib CA has a great way of creating certs that are truely private (client-based key) so I'm guessing there is not a key store in GridShib CA. MyProxy CA would seem to have a keystore since it's backended by Simple CA. This makes it like phpki except that the interface is command-line versus web.

[phpwiki]
weblogin.ac.uab.edu is now using ldaps to access the LDAP service for authentication. Serveral problems existed which had prevented this from working. The default libldap2 binary on debian woody 2.4 is not built with tls enabled. This was the main problem. The fix was to rebuild the openssl source package on the debian build box:

apt-get source libldap2
cd openldap-2.0.23
dpkg-buildpackage -uc -b

and then install resluting libldap2.deb file on weblogin

dpkg -i libldap2-2.0.23.deb

The next step is to tell libldap where to find the trust definition for the UAB ldap SSL interface. This requires the Equifax root. Put that in /usr/lib/ssl/cert/ca-bundle.crt. The location is defined in /etc/ldap/ldap.conf with the values TLS_CACERT (for the bundle file) and TLS_CACERT_DIR (for the hash based files). While I prefer the later only the TLS_CACERT file option seemed to work.

Issues found in PHP4 to PHP5 upgrades:

PHP Faqts page on PHP5

PHP4 to PHP5 Migration Manual

Specific issues identified in PHP5 manual

trac-admin /opt/tracdb/NAME initenv

starting phpwebsite:

mysqladmin -u root -p create itacwebdb

mysql -u root -p
mysql> GRANT ALL PRIVILEGES ON itacwebdb.* TO itacwebdba@localhost
IDENTIFIED BY 'somedecentpassword';
mysql> SET PASSWORD FOR admin@localhost=OLD_PASSWORD('thepassword');
mysql> exit

[the database administrator password must be stored in hash format for V3 mysql libraries -- may need to use this if accessed by PHP4 libraries. ]

As of this week, gridsphere V 2.1.4 and gridportlets are running. Tomcat version is 5.0.X. Apache version is 2.2.2

• gridportlet as SP must be apache protected ->
  
  
  
  • install and configure mod_jk 4.1.30 (as ajp1.3)
    
    
    • 
      Description of Connector Protocol
      
    • be sure mod_jk.so is installed (via RPM)
      
    • create mod_jk.conf in /etc/apache2 and Include in httpd.conf
      
      NOTE: skipped steps to secure WEB-INF Directory

  • Reconfigure gridsphere so that tomcat connector is used (5/10/06)