Finally it dawned on me, and I am not sure why or how. But a few weeks prior I had been toying with a Bluetooth stereo headset and had turned on the Audio service in the Bluetooth manager on the services tab.

Problem fixed: I simply turned off the Audio service in the Bluetooth manager, and all is working normally again. However, if I ever need the Audio service I suppose it will break my sound.

Do you have, or did you recently post your email address on a website?

Then the reason is probably because you did not properly protect the email address, and spammers get most email addresses from robot script that harvest email addresses from websites. It is pretty simple really. The robot script hits the largest search engines for certain key words or phrases, to help the spammer hit the most relevent email addresses, and then systematically follows the links to websites. Once the robot gets to the website it then searches all links on the page. Each link it finds on the page that is a “mailto:” is an email address, and in a matter of minutes a robot script can harvest hundreds of emails.

So now you are asking, “What can be done to protect me from these vile robots?”. Well that answer is also simple. Most robot script are not smart enough, yet, to search Javascript code that scrambles an email address and form it back into a valid email address. So here is how to do it:

First, you need to go into the HTML code and insert the Javascript as follows:

var theuser = "username"; // change this to be the username, or portion of the email to the left of the @
var thehost = "your-domain.com"; // change this to be your domain name
 
var themessage = theuser + "@" + thehost;
 
// Now we tell Javascript to bring the pieces of the email address together visually on the screen as a link
document.write("<a href=" + "mail" + "to:" + theuser + "@" + thehost + ">" + themessage + "</a>")

Note: Be sure to substitute username and your-domain.com with your own information.

Now when you view your webpage in your favorite browser (Firefox) you will see the email as a link like you wanted, and the robots will see a bunch of code that most of them cannot form into a valid email address.

useradd -s /bin/false remote_user
mkdir /home/remote_user/.ssh
touch /home/remote_user/.ssh/authorized_keys
chown -R remote_user:remote_user /home/remote_user/.ssh
chmod 755 /home/remote_user/.ssh
chmod 600 /home/remote_user/.ssh/authorized_keys

Add MySQL permissions in the remote MySQL database to allow user connections from localhost.

USE mysql;
GRANT ALL ON db.* TO database_user@127.0.0.1 IDENTIFIED BY 'database_pass';
FLUSH PRIVILEGES;

Now, on the local server (as root) create an RSA key pair to avoide the need for passwords for remote_user. (Simply hit enter for each question encountered.)

ssh-keygen -t rsa

Now transfer the public key file to the remote server from your local server.

scp /var/root/.ssh/id_rsa.pub root@remote_server.com:/tmp/local_server.local_rsa.pub
ssh remote_server.com
cat /tmp/local_server.local_rsa.pub >> /home/remote_user/.ssh/authorized_keys

On the local server, create an SSH tunnel to the remote MySQL database server using the following command.

ssh -fNg -L 3306:127.0.0.1:3306 remote_user@remote_server.com sleep 9999

To use this from PHP you would simply do this:

$remote_server_mysql = mysql_connect( "127.0.0.1", "database_user", "database_pass" );
mysql_select_db( "database", $remote_server_mysql );

Simply use the command below to view the last 100 lines of a log file, and as new entries are added to the file they are automatically displayed on the screen.

tail -f /the/file/name -n -100

Error: Unable to create backup session: Specified file is not accessible

Finally i solved this problem!!!! it was all about wrong permission in some folders!

check that the folders ‘/var/lib/psa/dumps’ and ‘/var/lib/psa/dumps/tmp’ are chmod to 777

/etc/sysconfig/clock

Symlink /etc/localtime to /usr/share/zoneinfo/… to set your timezone.

To set the current system date/time.

date MMDDhhmm

To set the hardware clock.

/sbin/hwclock --systohc

To disable the Internet Explorer Image Toolbar for an entire page add this meta tag:

<meta http-equiv="imagetoolbar" content="no">

To disable the Internet Explorer Image Toolbar for an individual Image do this:

<img src="image.gif" width="250" height="250" galleryimg="no>

Now to handle those who love their “right-click”. For the entire page:

<body oncontextmenu="return false">

And for individual images:

<img src="image.gif" width="250" height="250" oncontextmenu="return false">

Because the project in question was a dynamic site I wanted to make a style sheet switcher that didn’t force a page reload and it seemed like most examples on the net required a page to reload with a new stylesheet. (After PHP or some other scripting language decided which css sheet to render the page with.) This meant additional calls to the server to repopulate data grids and other info, after re-running a query and parsing in PHP. To me this was truly unacceptable load on a server to simply change font sizes on a page.

I found one example that looked attractive to me, so my solution was driven from what I found at http://www.fastfwd.be/journal/28/Prototype_CSS_stylesheet_switcher. However this example switched between two styles, and I wanted a small - medium - large switch.

You can view my sample HERE.

So, here we go:
First, I started by defining my style sheets:

site.css
 
body,html {
    margin: 0;
    font-family: Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;
    font-size: 100%;
    color: #000;
}
 
.header {
	font-size: 120%;
}
 
#head {
	width: 600px;
	height: 120px;
	padding: 15px;
}
 
/* Page Structure */
#styleSwitcher {
	float: right;
	position: absolute;
	top: 50px;
	left: 300px;
	height: 33px;
	width: 60px;
	background: url(images/style_switcher_small.gif); /* I also created a medium and large */
	background-repeat: no-repeat;
}
 
#styleSwitcher a {
	float: left;
	padding: 2px;
	width: 16px;
	height: 30px;
	text-decoration: none;
}

Now make two copies of this sheet, but change the font-size in the body,html portion of the sheet to be 90% and rename the background image for styleSwitcher to ‘medium’ in one (site_minux_10.css) and 110% and rename the background image for styleSwitcher to ‘large’ in the other (site_plus_10.css). I put all three style sheets in a directory appropriately named ’styles’.

Second, I created an image that displayed the sizes in a meaningful way for the selector. I actually made three of them, so the style sheets would change it depending on which style sheet was selected.

I put these images into a directory named ‘images’.

Third, let’s get all of our magical Javascript ready for it’s task. We will need the Prototype framework, and a small bit of our own magic that uses it. You can download the newest version of Prototype HERE. (Please note that we are going to be using evalJSON(), so this means we need at least version 1.5.1 of the framework.)

Now we will put together own own script file:

main.js
 
Event.observe(window, 'load', function() {
	var valueElement = "rel";
	var browserName = navigator.appName;
 
	// define where the active style sheet needs to be changed
	var styleObj = $$('head link[type=text/css][rel=stylesheet]')[0];
 
	// create array of the links with class loadStyle
	$$('a.loadStyle').each(function(a) {
		// create observers for each link
		Event.observe(a, 'click', function(event) {
			// when a click happens and the rel element has a value
			if(a.hasAttribute(valueElement))
			{
				// create a JSON string out of the rel value for use
				var valueObj = new String('{'+ a.getAttribute(valueElement) +'}').replace(/(\\[|\\])/g, '"').evalJSON();
 
				// catch possible problem
				if(typeof valueObj.sheet == 'undefined') return alert('Sorry, no stylesheet defined'); false;
 
				// if no problem, change the style sheet
				if(typeof styleObj !== "undefined")
				{
					if(browserName == 'Microsoft Internet Explorer')
					{
						document.styleSheets[0].href = valueObj.sheet;
					}
					else
					{			
						styleObj.setAttribute('href', valueObj.sheet);
					}
				}
				else return alert('switchStyle: stylesheet definition not found on this page'); false;
			}
			Event.stop(event);
		}, false);
	});
});

I put both the Prototype and this file in a directory appropriately named ‘js’.

Fourth, we now are ready for the HTML that you can get from the download file or from the sample HERE.

Please note that in the HTML we are not defining all three stylesheets. I found that Internet Explorer did not like switching between the three stylesheets when they are all defined in the HTML, while Firefox happily accepted it. This causes a slight blip on the screen when switching to a style initially, but due to cache you do not need to load the same sheet twice.

Of course this will go into the root of the public_html.

Fifth, now that we have the switcher in place working fine wouldn’t it be nice if the site remembered what size the visitor selected? Of course it would! So here is how I implemented Cookies to remember:

In the main.js file I added a few small lines of code to our existing javascript, and added two functions borrowed from http://www.quirksmode.org/js/cookies.html for the actual cookie handling:

main.js -(new and improved with cookies)
 
Event.observe(window, 'load', function() {
	var valueElement = "rel";
	var cookieName = 'geekyStyles';
	var browserName = navigator.appName;
 
	// define where the active style sheet needs to be changed
	var styleObj = $$('head link[type=text/css][rel=stylesheet]')[0];
 
	// create array of the links with class loadStyle
	$$('a.loadStyle').each(function(a) {
 
		// base current style based on previous visit from cookie
		if(readCookie(cookieName))
		{
			var pastStyle = readCookie(cookieName);
 
			if(browserName == 'Microsoft Internet Explorer')
			{
				document.styleSheets[0].href = pastStyle;
			}
			else
			{			
				styleObj.setAttribute('href', pastStyle);
			}
		}
 
		// create observers for each link
		Event.observe(a, 'click', function(event) {
			// when a click happens and the rel element has a value
			if(a.hasAttribute(valueElement))
			{
				// create a JSON string out of the rel value for use
				var valueObj = new String('{'+ a.getAttribute(valueElement) +'}').replace(/(\\[|\\])/g, '"').evalJSON();
 
				// catch possible problem
				if(typeof valueObj.sheet == 'undefined') return alert('Sorry, no stylesheet defined'); false;
 
				// if no problem, change the style sheet
				if(typeof styleObj !== "undefined")
				{
					if(browserName == 'Microsoft Internet Explorer')
					{
						document.styleSheets[0].href = valueObj.sheet;
					}
					else
					{			
						styleObj.setAttribute('href', valueObj.sheet);
					}
 
					// set a 30 day cookie to remember the latest selection
					createCookie(cookieName, valueObj.sheet, 30);
				}
				else return alert('switchStyle: stylesheet definition not found on this page'); false;
			}
			Event.stop(event);
		}, false);
	});
});
 
// cookie functions by http://www.quirksmode.org/js/cookies.html
function createCookie(name,value,days)
{
	if (days)
	{
		var date = new Date();
		date.setTime(date.getTime()+(days*24*60*60*1000));
		var expires = "; expires="+date.toGMTString();
	}
	else var expires = "";
	document.cookie = name+"="+value+expires+"; path=/";
}
 
function readCookie(name)
{
	var nameEQ = name + "=";
	var ca = document.cookie.split(';');
	for(var i=0;i < ca.length;i++)
	{
		var c = ca[i];
		while (c.charAt(0)==' ') c = c.substring(1,c.length);
		if (c.indexOf(nameEQ) == 0) return c.substring(nameEQ.length,c.length);
	}
	return null;
}

Viola! A completed Style Switcher using CSS, Prototype, HTML, and dabble of DOM.

To download all of the files for this, you can get them HERE.

Enjoy!

My team and I were troubleshooting this problem for a few days trying to narrow down the problem. We looked at folder permissions, script permissions, database connectivity, and almost anything else we could think of. Then we stumbled across the error message given by PHP (who would have thought to look at the error message?) that said function move_uploaded_file will not work in safe_mode.

Now looking at the PHP info the main php.ini was set with safe_mode off. However, I found that the httpd.conf for the individual domains on a Plesk managed server carries a declaration for PHP safe_mode, and it was turned on. Upon further investigation I found that in the Plesk interface for the domain there is a checkbox beside the PHP setting that allows safe_mode to be turned on and off.

Mission accomplished!

I found a few places that had ideas and hints to make this work, but finally used the directions I found at http://www.howtoforge.com/installing_php_mssql_centos5.0 (slightly altered to fit my means) and will duplicate here so I can easily find it later.

At first I thought I needed to recompile PHP, but as it turned out I only needed to pre-compile it so that I could fetch the mssql.so, and then manually edit the php.ini to use it.

NOTE-1: You should be running as SuperUser or using sudo to perform these tasks.
NOTE-2: RPMForge was installed and running on my system, so I didn’t need to do the next couple of steps.

1. First you need to activate the RPMForge custom repository (formely known as Dag Wieers):
http://dag.wieers.com/rpm/packages/rpmforge-release/

2. Grab your specific RPM and install it:

wget http://dag.wieers.com/rpm/packages/rpmforge-release/rpmforge-release-*.rpm
rpm --install rpmforge-release-*.rpm

3. Next step is to install freetds, freetds-devel, php-devel, and the Development tools.

yum groupinstall ‘Development Tools’
 
yum install freetds freetds-devel --enablerepo=rpmforge
yum install php-devel

4. Next we alter the php.spec file, which contains the php configuration for compiling.

vi /usr/src/redhat/SPECS/php.spec

5. If you don’t have the php.spec file, you can download the php src rpm.

wget centos.mirrors.skynet.be/pub/centos/5/os/SRPMS/php-5.1.6-5.el5.src.rpm
 
rpm –install php-5.1.6-5.el5.src.rpm

6. And then do an updatedb and locate php.spec.

7. Edit the CFLAGS= line (~line 363) of the php.spec file - remove “-Wno-pointer-sign”.
Then add the following piece of code to it:

Group: Development/Languages
Requires: php = %{version}-%{release}, php-pdo
Summary: A module for PHP applications that use the MSSQL database.
provides: php_database
BuildRequires: freetds-devel
 
%description mssql
The MSSQL package contains a dynamic shared object that will add
support for accessing MSSQL databases to php.

8. Start building your php rpm:

rpmbuild -bb ./php.spec

NOTE: If you are asked for some dependencies, just yum install them. I was asked for the following list of dependencies:
bzip2-devel, curl-devel, db4-devel, expat-devel, gmp-devel, aspell-devel, httpd-devel, libjpeg-devel, libpng-devel, pam-devel, openssl-devel, sqlite-devel, zlib-devel, pcre-devel, krb5-devel, libc-client-devel, cyrus-sasl-devel, openldap-devel, mysql-devel, postgresql-devel, unixODBC-devel, libxml2-devel, net-snmp-devel, libxslt-devel, libxml2-devel, ncurses-devel, gd-devel, freetype-devel, freetds-devel

9. Now you need to go to the place where the build is kept.

cd /usr/src/redhat/BUILD/php-5.1.6/ext/mssql/

10. Now we are going to make the mssql module without having to rewrite the php binary: (This takes a few minutes, relax.)

phpize
./configure --with-mssql
make
make install

11. Next look for the mssql.so file to make sure it is in the module directory “/usr/lib/php/modules/”, and specified in your php.ini. Or copy it to the specified location if needed.

12. Final Steps

vi /etc/php.ini

13. Add the following to the php.ini

extension=mssql.so

14. Save the php.ini using “:w!” or “Ctrl+ZZ” and restart Apache:

/etc/init.d/httpd restart

All should work now.