By Niccolò Favari on March 10, 2010
After just a couple of months of hosting with MediaTemple Grid Service (gs), I’ve decided to switch to their Dedicated Virtual (dv). Mainly because there’s Plesk; my clients need to have their control panel and I can be in control of every detail about the hosting.
It’s a whole new experience and I have to say that I got used to the (gs) control panel. In a way, I miss it. But Plesk, even if it’s not the latest version (8.6 vs 9.3) is powerful. Anyway I got SSH access too, just in case (you can get it in grid service too).
Posted in Hosting | Tagged dv, gs, Hosting, MediaTemple
By Niccolò Favari on February 22, 2010
The Linux Professional Institute (LPI) certifies Linux System Administrators. Even if you’re not interested in the certification itself, you may still be interested in learning Linux in general and the following tutorials, from IBM’s DeveloperWorks, will help you.
These tutorials serve as a comprehensive self-study guide so you can take the exams with confidence.
IBM DeveloperWorks – Linux LPI Tutorials. Here’s an example of what you may find.
LPI exam 101 prep: Hardware and architecture
- Topic 101. Learn to configure your system hardware with Linux. By the end of this tutorial, you will know how Linux configures the hardware found on a modern PC and where to look if you have problems.
Posted in Linux
By Niccolò Favari on February 21, 2010
I’m using Ubuntu Linux 9.10 (Karmic Koala) with Virtualbox 3.1.4 and I’ve noticed a huge slow down in how my Windows XP guest system run.
Slow Windows XP guest under Linux Host
I remember being able to obtain a “close to real” performance using two cores and an old version of Virtualbox on my Ubuntu host (it was like a year and a half ago so I’m not sure about the version numbers). Anyway this situation quickly changed: newer versions came out and my new virtual machines became way too slow. Blame it on the kernel, blame it on newer virtualbox, whatever! It just wasn’t flying anymore.
Posted in Tips n Tricks | Tagged Optimization, Performance, VirtualBox, Virtualization
By Niccolò Favari on January 20, 2010
I use the Bitnami LAPPstack on my Linux system to develop my apps. It’s fast, lightweight, and doesn’t get in the way messing up with my system. I start it, restart it, stop it… whenever I want.
One thing it doesn’t have, apart the XDebug extension (I wrote an article on how to get it working: Configure XDebug with Bitnami PHP Stacks on Linux Ubuntu ), is the PL/pgSQL language configured inside the postgresql DBMS. Meaning that if you try to create a stored procedure and a trigger using that language, you’re going to get an error similar to this:
Posted in PostgreSQL | Tagged Linux, PL/pgSQL, PostreSQL, stored procedures, triggers
By Niccolò Favari on January 19, 2010
Fact is that if you want to develop something more than a dynamic menu in php, you’re going to need a debugger. You’re going to need it badly and you don’t even know it (shame on you!).
So let’s start from the beginning. You got bitnami lapp (or lamp) stack because it’s cool and doesn’t need so much configuration (if any at all). So you’re basically ready to start coding.
You realize you need a debugger. You search for it and you find out about xdebug. Cool. Then you approach the Xdebug download page and you see only sources and many windows binaries. Not cool.
Posted in Linux, PHP | Tagged bitnami, lamp, lapp, Linux, netbeans, PHP, ubuntu, xdebug
By Niccolò Favari on January 16, 2010
I’ve made the switch. Actually double.
Italian vs English
The first thing you’re going to notice (or maybe not) is that from now on I’ll be writing my posts in English. This is purely because of the audience. Antonio Lupetti pointed out in an interview, asking if he “[...] thinks that English language has really made the difference?” the following:
Posted in Blogging
By Niccolò Favari on January 3, 2010
Dopo aver smanettato per giorni con temi e aspetto di Ubuntu Linux, mi sono ritrovato con un obbrobrio di interfaccia utente. L’unica cosa che volevo fare era reinstallare Ubuntu da zero e ricominciare.
Il problema
Mi mancava l’interfaccia pulita, la leggerezza di un sistema appena installato. I puntatori del mouse erano inconsistenti, così come i bordi delle finestre. Persino i menu. Avevo personalizzato (e devastato) così tanto l’interfaccia utente che sembrava di usare un Mac OS versione Chernobyl.
La prima, ovvia, soluzione era quella di reinstallare il sistema. Il fatto è che avendo una partizione dedicata per /home, tutti i miei settaggi, compreso l’aspetto di gnome, sarebbero riapparsi come per magia sul nuovo sistema operativo.
Posted in Linux | Tagged gnome, Linux, ubuntu
