Linux RHEL/CentOS 5.5 PHP 5.3 upgrade made easy

Please see the RHEL 5.6 update note HERE 

Just to be honest, this PHP 5.3 upgrade/update has been made painless by the GREAT folks at IUS Community Repo! The real magic is their repository setup and rather helpful "yum-plugin-replace" yum plugin. I have not seen any problem with this update path at all. My needs may be different than yours, so YMMV. This post is adapted from a previous post that focused on another program that just needed a PHP > 5.2 installed.

You must be the root user to execute all the stated commands.

install the IUS and EPEL repository:
wget http://dl.iuscommunity.org/pub/ius/stable/Redhat/5/i386/ius-release-1.0-8.ius.el5.noarch.rpm
wget http://dl.iuscommunity.org/pub/ius/stable/Redhat/5/i386/epel-release-5-4.noarch.rpm
rpm -Uhv ius-release-1.0-8.ius.el5.noarch.rpm epel-release-5-4.noarch.rpm

understand the possible issues with 3rd party repositories and how to use priorities or protectBase

install the IUS yum plugin (if you missed it from the IUS instructions):
yum install yum-plugin-replace

replace the old stock php:
yum replace php --replace-with php53

get an overview of what other php53 packages are available:
yum search php53

if you had the old php and web server running, restart the web server:
service httpd restart

if you had a mysql database server running, restart the mysqld:
service mysqld restart

same goes if you had postgresql running:
service postgresql restart

Call of Duty Black OPS - I'm a cry baby ;)

I have been VERY feed up with the outright blatant cheating being done in "Call of Duty Modern Warfare 2". The continuous auto head shot was the last straw... I was amazed that this was happening on so many servers that had the Valve Anti-Cheat running. Why on earth is this happening? I even found at least one very proud website offering software the whole list of cheat possibilities from the subtle (no recoil, no flinch) to the blatant (auto head shot) as noted above. The software is for ALL versions of the game...

So, COOL Call of Duty Black OPS is released with dedicated servers! Valve has got to be able to handle the cheating now!? Wrong!!! There are many people using the blatant cheats and the subtle cheats.

Naturally, the subtle ones are not the end of the world. However, I DO have issues with the 80 kill, 1 death DB's.

/rant
/crying

Linux RHEL/CentOS 5.5 RoundCube webmail setup for latest stable tar install.

Please see the update note HERE

RoundCube Webmail is a modern webmail server with many capabilities. The stock RHEL/CentOS roundcubemail rpm is WAY out of date. Getting the new (as of this writing) roundcubemail 0.4.2 installed will require a couple other newer core packages (PHP 5.2.1 or higher) that are not standard for RHEL/CentOS 5.5. There is a rather excellent group of people at the IUS Community Project that will help provide the ability to breeze through the install of the latest version with mysql.

1. download the stable version:
   wget "http://downloads.sourceforge.net/project/roundcubemail/roundcubemail/0.4.2/roundcubemail-0.4.2.tar.gz"
2. install the IUS and EPEL repository:
   wget http://dl.iuscommunity.org/pub/ius/stable/Redhat/5.5/i386/ius-release-1.0-6.ius.el5.noarch.rpm
wget http://dl.iuscommunity.org/pub/ius/stable/Redhat/5.5/i386/epel-release-1-1.ius.el5.noarch.rpm
rpm -Uhv ius-release-1.0-6.ius.el5.noarch.rpm epel-release-1-1.ius.el5.noarch.rpm
3. understand the possible issues with 3rd party repositories and how to use priorities or protectBase
4. install the IUS yum plugin (if you missed it from the IUS instructions):
   yum install yum-plugin-replace
5. install the old roundcubemail from epel to get most of the package dependencies out of the way:
   yum install roundcubemail
6. remove the old roundcubemail:
   rpm -e roundcubemail
7. replace the old stock php:
   yum replace php --replace-with php53
8. make sure you have the basics of what you need:
   yum install php53-imap php53-mcrypt php53-ldap php53-xml php53-mysql php53-pspell
9. (re)start the web server:
   service httpd restart
10. (re)start the mysql database server:
    service mysqld restart
11. setup the mysql database:
    echo "CREATE DATABASE roundcubemail; GRANT ALL PRIVILEGES ON roundcubemail.* TO USERNAME@localhost IDENTIFIED BY 'PASSWORD'; FLUSH PRIVILEGES;"|mysql
12. configure roundcubemail per directions
    

How to get a Digi Edgeport/416 working with RHEL/CentOS 5

I had the opportunity to play with an Edgeport/416 16 port DB9 serial to USB converter. I was hoping to just be able to plug and play and use it in a Hylafax fax server setup. The reason for the attempt was to evaluate the potential  replacement of a failing OLD 4 port modem card included in an existing Hylafax fax server setup. Suffice it to say my dreams of plug and play were dashed when no /dev/ttyUSB* device files were created:

Dec 15 11:58:32 tsas3 kernel: usb 3-1.1.1: new full speed USB device using uhci_hcd and address 6
Dec 15 11:58:32 tsas3 kernel: usb 3-1.1.1: configuration #1 chosen from 1 choice
Dec 15 11:58:33 tsas3 kernel: usb 3-1.1.2: new full speed USB device using uhci_hcd and address 7
Dec 15 11:58:33 tsas3 kernel: usb 3-1.1.2: configuration #1 chosen from 1 choice
Dec 15 11:58:33 tsas3 kernel: usb 3-1.1.3: new full speed USB device using uhci_hcd and address 8
Dec 15 11:58:33 tsas3 kernel: usb 3-1.1.3: configuration #1 chosen from 1 choice
Dec 15 11:58:34 tsas3 kernel: usb 3-1.1.4: new full speed USB device using uhci_hcd and address 9
Dec 15 11:58:34 tsas3 kernel: usb 3-1.1.4: configuration #1 chosen from 1 choice
Dec 15 11:58:34 tsas3 kernel: usb 3-1.2.1: new full speed USB device using uhci_hcd and address 10
Dec 15 11:58:34 tsas3 kernel: usb 3-1.2.1: configuration #1 chosen from 1 choice
Dec 15 11:58:35 tsas3 kernel: usb 3-1.2.2: new full speed USB device using uhci_hcd and address 11
Dec 15 11:58:35 tsas3 kernel: usb 3-1.2.2: configuration #1 chosen from 1 choice
Dec 15 11:58:35 tsas3 kernel: usb 3-1.2.3: new full speed USB device using uhci_hcd and address 12
Dec 15 11:58:35 tsas3 kernel: usb 3-1.2.3: configuration #1 chosen from 1 choice
Dec 15 11:58:35 tsas3 kernel: usb 3-1.2.4: new full speed USB device using uhci_hcd and address 13
Dec 15 11:58:36 tsas3 kernel: usb 3-1.2.4: configuration #1 chosen from 1 choice
Dec 15 12:00:31 tsas3 kernel: usbcore: registered new driver usbserial
Dec 15 12:00:31 tsas3 kernel: drivers/usb/serial/usb-serial.c: USB Serial support registered for generic
Dec 15 12:00:31 tsas3 kernel: usbcore: registered new driver usbserial_generic
...

A bit of google-foo lead me to a blog entry from pjtsubaru and other references including a non-commented Redhat request for enhancement bug against RHEL 5.5.

Finally, I recalled the recent RHEL/CentOS mainline kernel tracker announcement from the GREAT folks at ElRepo. Installed the kernel-ml, reboot and ttyUSB serial port love:

Dec 15 13:06:08 tsas3 kernel: usb 3-1.1.1: Edgeport TI 2 port adapter converter now attached to ttyUSB0
Dec 15 13:06:08 tsas3 kernel: usb 3-1.1.1: Edgeport TI 2 port adapter converter now attached to ttyUSB1
Dec 15 13:06:08 tsas3 kernel: io_ti 3-1.1.2:1.0: Edgeport TI 2 port adapter converter detected
Dec 15 13:06:08 tsas3 kernel: usb 3-1.1.2: Edgeport TI 2 port adapter converter now attached to ttyUSB2
Dec 15 13:06:08 tsas3 kernel: usb 3-1.1.2: Edgeport TI 2 port adapter converter now attached to ttyUSB3
Dec 15 13:06:08 tsas3 kernel: io_ti 3-1.1.3:1.0: Edgeport TI 2 port adapter converter detected
Dec 15 13:06:08 tsas3 kernel: usb 3-1.1.3: Edgeport TI 2 port adapter converter now attached to ttyUSB4
Dec 15 13:06:08 tsas3 kernel: usb 3-1.1.3: Edgeport TI 2 port adapter converter now attached to ttyUSB5
Dec 15 13:06:08 tsas3 kernel: io_ti 3-1.1.4:1.0: Edgeport TI 2 port adapter converter detected
Dec 15 13:06:08 tsas3 kernel: usb 3-1.1.4: Edgeport TI 2 port adapter converter now attached to ttyUSB6
Dec 15 13:06:08 tsas3 kernel: usb 3-1.1.4: Edgeport TI 2 port adapter converter now attached to ttyUSB7
Dec 15 13:06:08 tsas3 kernel: io_ti 3-1.2.1:1.0: Edgeport TI 2 port adapter converter detected
Dec 15 13:06:08 tsas3 kernel: usb 3-1.2.1: Edgeport TI 2 port adapter converter now attached to ttyUSB8
Dec 15 13:06:08 tsas3 kernel: usb 3-1.2.1: Edgeport TI 2 port adapter converter now attached to ttyUSB9
Dec 15 13:06:08 tsas3 kernel: io_ti 3-1.2.2:1.0: Edgeport TI 2 port adapter converter detected
Dec 15 13:06:08 tsas3 kernel: usb 3-1.2.2: Edgeport TI 2 port adapter converter now attached to ttyUSB10
Dec 15 13:06:09 tsas3 kernel: usb 3-1.2.2: Edgeport TI 2 port adapter converter now attached to ttyUSB11
Dec 15 13:06:09 tsas3 kernel: io_ti 3-1.2.3:1.0: Edgeport TI 2 port adapter converter detected
Dec 15 13:06:09 tsas3 kernel: usb 3-1.2.3: Edgeport TI 2 port adapter converter now attached to ttyUSB12
Dec 15 13:06:09 tsas3 kernel: usb 3-1.2.3: Edgeport TI 2 port adapter converter now attached to ttyUSB13
Dec 15 13:06:09 tsas3 kernel: io_ti 3-1.2.4:1.0: Edgeport TI 2 port adapter converter detected
Dec 15 13:06:09 tsas3 kernel: usb 3-1.2.4: Edgeport TI 2 port adapter converter now attached to ttyUSB14
Dec 15 13:06:09 tsas3 kernel: usb 3-1.2.4: Edgeport TI 2 port adapter converter now attached to ttyUSB15
Dec 15 13:06:09 tsas3 kernel: usbcore: registered new interface driver io_ti
Dec 15 13:06:09 tsas3 kernel: io_ti: v0.7mode043006:Edgeport USB Serial Driver