We have a few production servers at work, and we have a central bitbucket repository to store our core code. Once we make a change on our testing server (!), we used to have to commit, push changes to bitbucket, and then ssh into each server, then pull changes, and update each repository. A pain in the backside! Enter Capistrano. A ruby ssh automation tool. In a few simple steps you can create a recipe file that will let you do this all with one command.

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Fed up with having to type your password in each time you log into a server over SSH? Me too. Down with passwords, and in with public key authentication!

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Our internet connection via our landline has been dead since Tuesday afternoon, so I’ve needed an alternative connection in the meantime to give me my twitter fix!

I’d kept an eye on the o2 pay-as-you-go mobile broadband for a while, because it offered the cheapest, noncommittal setup. A one off £20 for the USB dongle, and then as little as £2 for 500MB for a 24 hour period.

So I plug in the dongle and we get a nice little installer to set everything up; installing drivers and the o2 Mobile Connect application. The annoying thing is that if you install going this route, you can only connect if you have this app open. You can’t just use system preferences. Also, turns out this ‘handy’ installer program then blocks you from getting to the installation files again, and the dongle will refuse to do anything unless Mobile Connect is open (you’ll get a red light on the dongle when it’s being evil).

So, what can you do?

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Here’s a simple solution to redirect users to a maintenance page in Apache. This rewrite rule can stay in your config (<VirtualHost> or .htaccess) all the time; all that you need to enable it is to create the file maintenance.html.

The first rewrite condition checks to see if the file exists, and only if it does, will it redirect all traffic to it. The second rewrite condition is there to prevent an infinite loop, by only redirecting traffic to files other than maintenance.html.

RewriteEngine On

RewriteCond %{DOCUMENT_ROOT}/maintenance.html -f
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !/maintenance.html
RewriteRule ^.*$    /maintenance.html [L]

I’ve now changed my slice from running lighttpd to nginx. Here’s the simplest way, in around 6 commands, to get PHP up and running via FastCGI.

Install and setup

Install PHP 5:

sudo aptitude install php5-cgi

Install nginx:

sudo aptitude install nginx

Create PHP 5 FastCGI start-up script:

sudo nano /etc/init.d/php-fastcgi

Inside, put:

#!/bin/bash
BIND=127.0.0.1:9000
USER=www-data
PHP_FCGI_CHILDREN=15
PHP_FCGI_MAX_REQUESTS=1000

PHP_CGI=/usr/bin/php-cgi
PHP_CGI_NAME=`basename $PHP_CGI`
PHP_CGI_ARGS="- USER=$USER PATH=/usr/bin PHP_FCGI_CHILDREN=$PHP_FCGI_CHILDREN PHP_FCGI_MAX_REQUESTS=$PHP_FCGI_MAX_REQUESTS $PHP_CGI -b $BIND"
RETVAL=0

start() {
      echo -n "Starting PHP FastCGI: "
      start-stop-daemon --quiet --start --background --chuid "$USER" --exec /usr/bin/env -- $PHP_CGI_ARGS
      RETVAL=$?
      echo "$PHP_CGI_NAME."
}
stop() {
      echo -n "Stopping PHP FastCGI: "
      killall -q -w -u $USER $PHP_CGI
      RETVAL=$?
      echo "$PHP_CGI_NAME."
}

case "$1" in
    start)
      start
  ;;
    stop)
      stop
  ;;
    restart)
      stop
      start
  ;;
    *)
      echo "Usage: php-fastcgi {start|stop|restart}"
      exit 1
  ;;
esac
exit $RETVAL

Make start-up script executable:

sudo chmod +x /etc/init.d/php-fastcgi

Launch PHP:

sudo /etc/init.d/php-fastcgi start

Launch at start-up:

sudo update-rc.d php-fastcgi defaults

That’s it. All installed and ready to go.

Test

In your server config, add the following:

location ~ \.php$ {
    fastcgi_pass    127.0.0.1:9000;
    fastcgi_index   index.php;
    fastcgi_param   SCRIPT_FILENAME /var/www/nginx-default$fastcgi_script_name;
    include         fastcgi_params;
}

Restart nginx:

sudo /etc/init.d/nginx restart

Create a file in your web root (in the example above, /var/www/nginx-default/test.php):

<?php

phpinfo();

Visit the page in your browser and you should see the standard PHP info page. And you’re done.

Source: Aberration

Here’s how I do some basic authentication for a controller in CodeIgniter. It basically consists of creating a new class that extends the default Controller class. You then sub-class this on any controller that requires authentication.

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Add this to the bottom of your lighttpd.conf file:

$HTTP["url"] =~ "/\.(git|svn)/" {
    url.access-deny = ( "" )
}