How to install PHP from source on CentOS
I have recently installed PHP 7 from source on a fresh minimal CentOS 7 box. No previous version of PHP was installed, and I thought I’d give 7 a spin. There were a few pitfalls I hadn’t come across before, so here’s what worked for me. Downloading and extracting the source code It sounds crazy, but this was the hardest part of the whole installation! There were two problems I’ve encountered here. The first was that PHP offer downloads via a mirror. A direct link may look something like...
read moreUpgrade Trouble: when WordPress is asking for FTP details, but there’s no FTP server on your system
I was working on a CentOS 7 server the other day that had a LAMP stack installed. It was used to host only a single instance of WordPress. Upgrading themes and plugins from the admin interface worked fine, but curiously, WordPress core upgrades did not. Instead, WordPress was asking for FTP details every time, which also prevented auto upgrades from being installed. This didn’t make any sense because there was no FTP server installed on the box, nor had there ever been one. But it did indicate that WordPress had an issue with...
read moreHow to install Python 3 from source in CentOS
CentOS 6 comes with Python 2.6 installed, and CentOS 7 comes with Python 2.7. But right now, Python 3.5 is all the rage, so I thought I’d install it alongside Python 2.x on the same machine. Here’s how I did it. I’m using a CentOS 6 32 bit system here, but I’ve tried the same on a CentOS 7 64 bit rig. You need to be root or have superuser privileges to do this successfully. First, we’ll download the package from http://python.org. Head over to the downloads section, then scroll to the bottom and find direct...
read moreHow to extract tar.xz files on CentOS
I’ve recently come across a tarsal files that used xz compression (namely the Python source code). This means that my usual way of extracting a tarsal via the command line using the following command did not work: tar -zxvf Python* gzip: stdin: not in gzip format tar: Child returned status 1 tar: Error is not recoverable: exiting now That had me stumped! Turns out that files with a tar.gz ending can be extracted this way (because the use gzip compression, specified by the z parameter). If tar is instructed to use this format on a tar.xz...
read moreHow to fix problems with Logitech Unifying Receivers
I’ve recently bought a new Logitech K360 keyboard for my HP Z600 workstation. I also had a Logitech M325 mouse, both of which came with Unifying USB receivers. I could plug both receivers in, and both devices would work great. However, I heard great things about these little receivers and wanted to free up a USB port, and thought I’d connect both devices to the same receiver. Apparently you can connect up to 6 devices to one receiver and store any spare ones inside the mouse or keyboard. Being an all-efficient belt-and-braces...
read moreHow to launch a Mac App with Command Line Parameters from the Dock
In this video I’ll show you how to launch a Mac App from the Command Line, so that we can pass parameters. I’ll also explain how to wrap up such a command into your own app and add an icon to it, so that you can launch it from the dock with a single click. This can be useful if you need to convince Google Chrome or any other app to launch with certain parameters and modify its behaviour somehow. In my example I’m using Blender, and I’m using a startup parameter to change its default render engine upon launch. The same...
read moreHow to boot CentOS 7 into Command Line or GUI Mode
In CentOS 7 we can use the systemctl command to select which mode the OS boots into. If you have a GUI like Gnome or KDE installed, it’s easy to boot directly into your preferred environment. To find out what mode CentOS is currently using, use this: systemctl get-default This will give you one of two “targets”, either multi-user.target (the command line), or graphical.target (the Windows-like GUI) To change from one to the other, use one of these commands: systemctl set-default multi-user.target systemctl set-default...
read moreHow to boot CentOS 7 into Command Line or GUI Mode
In CentOS 7 we can use the systemctl command to select which mode the OS boots into. If you have a GUI like Gnome or KDE installed, it’s easy to boot directly into your preferred environment. To find out what mode CentOS is currently using, use this: systemctl get-default This will give you one of two “targets”, either multi-user.target (the command line), or graphical.target (the Windows-like GUI) To change from one to the other, use one of these commands: systemctl set-default multi-user.target systemctl set-default...
read moreHow to kill a Mac App via the Command Line
Sometimes it’s’ necessary for us to force-close an app on our Mac if it’s no longer responding to our commands. Usually we’d do that by pressing CMD+OPT+ESCAPE, which brings up a handy window from which we can choose a troublesome app. But sometimes, this keyboard combination won’t work – for example, if we’re dealing with a remote Mac to which no physical keyboard is attached. In such cases, we can choose to force-close an app via the command line. Let me show you how to do that. Connect to your Mac...
read moreHow to make Notes App sync properly on iOS
Have you ever wondered why some notes seemingly sync just fine between your iOS devices, but others do not? Wether a note is not fully updated, or you find a duplicate entry in the list, it can be an exercise in frustration. But fret not, it doesn’t have to be! This is not a bug in the Notes app; it’s the way we’re using it. Let me show yo what you can do to avoid such problems, and how they can happen in the first place. Why do we sometimes get random duplicate notes? This has to do with the way the app stores data in the...
read more