Everything seemed complete after configuring my standalone MySQL instance to a LAMP installation, but last night I started playing with the image files. It turns out that I failed to install the php-gd library.

There’s very little feedback when you try to troubleshoot why you can’t read an image. In fact, the error message for reading the BLOB from MySQL was only available on the local Firefox browser:

      The image "http://localhost/ConvertMySQLBlobToImage.php" cannot be displayed because it contains errors.

The fix requires root to install the php-gd library with the yum utility:

yum install php-gd

You’ll need to answer …

While I try to keep things simple, sometimes eliminating options and explanations comes back to haunt me. After posting how to open a Fedora firewall port for a LAMP stack, somebody got trapped by my instructions for installing MySQL on Fedora. They got stuck because they had the following setting in their /etc/my.cnf file:

bind-address=localhost.localdomain

I’d suggested using that bind-address value for a DHCP VMware Fedora installation in Step #7. I was trying to create an example for an isolated testing instance, which is why I set the bind-address to a localhost.localdomain value. They raised the following error when they …

After installing the LAMP stack on Fedora, you need to open port 80 in the Firewall to access the PHP programs on the Fedora instance from external servers. You can open a firewall port by launching the firewall-config application as the root user with the following syntax:

firewall-config

The firewall-config utility opens the following dialog:

Click on the Ports tab, and you’ll see the following:

…

My students wanted an extra credit assignment, so I thought a LAMP configuration and test would be appropriate. The only problem was I hadn’t added it to their course VMware instance. So, here are the instructions to install Apache2, PHP, and MySQLi for a complete LAMP stack when MySQL is already installed.

The post builds on my Fedora Install of MySQL and MySQL Workbench on Fedora posts from last year. It also presumes that you’ve installed a studentdb database but you need to know how to do that let me know (but it hasn’t changed much from the example at the bottom of this old MySQL 5.1 blog post).

You …

We’ve heard lots in recent years about Big Data and the alternative models of data management and processing, like Hadoop and NoSQL. But truth be told, relational databases are still the workhorses of most of today’s small and medium sized businesses. Relational DBs date back over 40 years and SQL skills are fairly common, and they’re known to be highly secure.

MySQL is the world’s second most popular relational database management system (RDMS) and is the most popular open-source version of the database. It’s easily accessible and is often known to be part of the LAMP web development stack, standing for the ‘M’ in the acronym of popular tools, along with Linux, Apache, and PHP/Perl/Python. The fact that MySQL is free, easy to setup and scales fast are some of the main reasons why it’s the best match for many SMBs.

…

A student posed the question about why table names are case sensitive. That’s because case sensitive table names are the default installation, as qualified in the MySQL documentation. You can verify that with the following query:

SELECT CASE
         WHEN @@lower_case_table_names = 1 THEN
           'Case insensitive tables'
         ELSE
           'Case sensitive tables.'
         END AS "Table Name Status";

The default value returned on Linux is:

+------------------------+
| Table Name Status      |
+------------------------+
| Case sensitive tables. |
+------------------------+
1 row in set (0.00 sec)

The default value for the lower_case_table_names value on the Windows OS is 1 not …

Somebody asked how to put PostgreSQL on my Fedora image with Oracle Database 11g and MySQL. It’s fairly simple. You can check for the current download at yum.postgresql.org and then download it like this as the root user:

      yum localinstall http://yum.postgresql.org/9.3/fedora/fedora-20-x86_64/pgdg-fedora93-9.3-1.noarch.rpm

You should see the following output when the download is successful, don’t forget to type y to complete the download:

Loaded plugins: langpacks, refresh-packagekit
pgdg-fedora93-9.3-1.noarch.rpm                              | 5.1 kB  00:00     
Examining /var/tmp/yum-root-2EPf_J/pgdg-fedora93-9.3-1.noarch.rpm: pgdg-fedora93-9.3-1.noarch
Marking /var/tmp/yum-root-2EPf_J/pgdg-fedora93-9.3-1.noarch.rpm to be installed
Resolving …

Join 27,000 others and follow Sean Hull on twitter @hullsean. I was shocked to find this article on ReadWrite: The Truth About DevOps: IT Isn’t Dead; It’s not even Dying. Wait a second, do people really think this? Truth is I have heard whispers of this before. I was at a meetup recently where the […]

Understanding and installling the components of the LAMP stack are the first steps to learning the role of Linux, the Apache Server, MySQL and PHP in developing web applications. To learn more, take the MySQL and PHP - Developing Dynamic Web Application training course.  

You can take this 4-day, instructor-led course as a:

• Live-Virtual Event: Take this class from your own desk, no travel required. Choose from events already on the schedule to suit different time-zones. These events are delivered in English.
• In-Class Event: Travel to an education center to take this class, for example at

The German Unix User Group (GUUG) will hold their annual conference "Frühjahrsfachgespräch" on September 23-26 this year (I know, not really "Frühjahr" anymore, but this is how it is).

The Call for Presentations is still open until May 31st. Talks can be proposed in German and English, and there are slots for longer tutorials as well.

The range of possible topics is broad, so if you think you have anything interesting to share with a very passionate and technical audience of sysadmins and developers, here are some suggestions:

• Operating Systems/Applications: architectures, privilege concepts, new developments, administration, mobile systems
• Relevant new OS Kernel features: new developments in Linux-, BSD- or other Spen …