Software Engineer Training Knowledge, tools, and methods for defining requirements and performing design, implementation, testing and maintenance

Are you have trouble with your PHP powered application? Are you receiving an error that mentions problems with php_sessions? If so, we may have the solution for you!

Recently the webhost Ipower migrated to a new hosting platform called Vdeck 3.0. In so doing, some of the changes have caused certain php powered applications to stop working. I believe this also affects a few other hosts such as Powweb and Ipowerweb, and any Ipower reseller hosts that just upgraded to vdeck 3.0.There are two ways to solve the problem. The best way would be to edit your php.ini file. However, out of fear of breaking all my working PHP applications, I decided to simply made a change in the applications not currently working to fix the issue.

The following is the solution I used.

I created a folder called “phpsessions” outside of my public_html folder. That is to say, if the following is the path to my public_html folder:

/home/users/blah/blah/public_html

then I created:

/home/users/blah/blah/phpsessions/

Next, open up your PHP application and look for the file where you start your sessions using “session_start();”

Look for:

Quote:

Replace with:

Quote:

Hopefully this solution will help others experiencing problems with their PHP applications!

Have you just discovered a mysterious SQLDebugger Windows User Account on your system? Are you wondering what the heck it’s doing there or maybe how it even got there? Have you been thinking about just deleting the SQLDebugger account and crossing your fingers that this does not lead to any nasty side effects? If you’re not running an SQL Server and have no plans of doing any SQL Server Debugging, then go ahead and just delete the SQLDebugger account, it’s safe to do so!

The SQLDebugger Windows user account is created when the SQL Debugger Registry2 DCOM server process (Sqldbreg2.exe) is registered. If you’ve installed SQL Server, then this process will be registered and therefore the SQLDebugger Windows user account will be created on your system. This account is used for connecting to a database server for debugging purposes. In such a case, you may actually want to keep the user account… But what if you haven’t even installed SQL Server… What the heck is SQLDebugger doing on your computer then?

Microsoft Visual Studio .NET applications use SQL Server Debugging to debug SQL Server stored procedures. So guess what that means? If you’ve installed Microsoft Visual Studio .NET, then you’ll have the SQLDebugger Windows user account created on your machine, even if you have no intentions of ever using it. While there is no danger in keeping the SQLDebugger account around, since it was created without your permission or without you even knowing about it and since it serves no purpose unless you are doing database debugging, JUST DELETE IT!

Have you ever been reading a phpBB forum when all of a sudden you were confronted with an advertisement after reading a post? An ad so cleverly situated you just had to take the time to notice it and give it a click just out of respect for how it was delivered so sneakily to you after you finished reading something useful rather than before… If you had not finished reading the post because it wasn’t any good you would have never seen the ad. By placing ads after the first post in a topic in phpBB you are displaying your sponsors only after having earned the right to do so rather than bombarding visitors right away. You are also increasing the chance that your ad gets noticed.

That being said, how the heck do you actually do it?

First, open up “viewforum_body.html”. If you are using the prosilver theme you can find this file here:

styles/prosilver/template/viewforum_body.html

Now search that file for the following text:

<!-- END postrow -->

Right before the line above, paste the following code into the file:

<!– IF postrow.S_FIRST_ROW –>
<div class=”post bg2″>
<div class=”inner”><span class=”corners-top”><span></span></span>

<div class=”postbody”>
<h3>Sponsor</h3>

<div class=”content” style=”text-align: center;”>
THE CODE FOR YOUR AD GOES HERE
</div>
</div>

<dl class=”postprofile” id=”profile0000″>
<dt>
<strong><u>Featured Sites</u></strong>
</dt>

<dd><a href=”http://www.looble.com”>Looble Network</a></dd>
<dd><a href=”http://www.free-games-center.com/”>Free Games Center</a></dd>
<dd><a href=”http://www.software-engineer-training.com/”>Software Engineer Training</a></dd>
<dd><a href=”http://flogger.looble.com/”>Flogger</a></dd>
<dd><a href=”http://www.writerdatabase.com/”>Writer Database</a></dd>
<dd><a href=”http://www.tamramaew.com/”>Tamra Maew</a></dd>
<dd><a href=”http://www.squishyrecords.com/”>Squishy Records</a></dd>
</dl>

<div class=”back2top”><a href=”#wrap” class=”top” title=”{L_BACK_TO_TOP}”>{L_BACK_TO_TOP}</a></div>
<span class=”corners-bottom”><span></span></span></div>
</div>
<hr class=”divider” />
<!– ENDIF –>

Make sure you place your ad code where I have bolded text above. Upload your new file and you are set! Out of love, we highly recommend you at least keep the Software Engineer Training link as one of your featured sites.

Subversion (SVN) is a version control system used to maintain current and old versions of files such as source code, web pages and documents. It can be downloaded for free at http://subversion.tigris.org.The following are the current features listed on the official website:

• Most current CVS features.Subversion is meant to be a better CVS, so it has most of CVS’s features. Generally, Subversion’s interface to a particular feature is similar to CVS’s, except where there’s a compelling reason to do otherwise.
• Directories, renames, and file meta-data are versioned.Lack of these features is one of the most common complaints against CVS. Subversion versions not only file contents and file existence, but also directories, copies, and renames. It also allows arbitrary metadata (”properties”) to be versioned along with any file or directory, and provides a mechanism for versioning the `execute’ permission flag on files.
• Commits are truly atomic.No part of a commit takes effect until the entire commit has succeeded. Revision numbers are per-commit, not per-file; log messages are attached to the revision, not stored redundantly as in CVS.
• Apache network server option, with WebDAV/DeltaV protocol.Subversion can use the HTTP-based WebDAV/DeltaV protocol for network communications, and the Apache web server to provide repository-side network service. This gives Subversion an advantage over CVS in interoperability, and provides various key features for free: authentication, wire compression, and basic repository browsing.
• Standalone server option.Subversion also offers a standalone server option using a custom protocol (not everyone wants to run Apache 2.x). The standalone server can run as an inetd service, or in daemon mode, and offers basic authentication and authorization. It can also be tunnelled over ssh.
• Branching and tagging are cheap (constant time) operationsThere is no reason for these operations to be expensive, so they aren’t.Branches and tags are both implemented in terms of an underlying “copy” operation. A copy takes up a small, constant amount of space. Any copy is a tag; and if you start committing on a copy, then it’s a branch as well. (This does away with CVS’s “branch-point tagging”, by removing the distinction that made branch-point tags necessary in the first place.)
• Natively client/server, layered library design Subversion is designed to be client/server from the beginning; thus avoiding some of the maintenance problems which have plagued CVS. The code is structured as a set of modules with well-defined interfaces, designed to be called by other applications.
• Client/server protocol sends diffs in both directionsThe network protocol uses bandwidth efficiently by transmitting diffs in both directions whenever possible (CVS sends diffs from server to client, but not client to server).
• Costs are proportional to change size, not data sizeIn general, the time required for a Subversion operation is proportional to the size of the changes resulting from that operation, not to the absolute size of the project in which the changes are taking place. This is a property of the Subversion repository model.
• Choice of database or plain-file repository implementationsRepositories can be created with either an embedded database back-end (BerkeleyDB) or with normal flat-file back-end, which uses a custom format.
• Versioning of symbolic linksUnix users can place symbolic links under version control. The links are recreated in Unix working copies, but not in win32 working copies.
• Efficient handling of binary filesSubversion is equally efficient on binary as on text files, because it uses a binary diffing algorithm to transmit and store successive revisions.
• Parseable outputAll output of the Subversion command-line client is carefully designed to be both human readable and automatically parseable; scriptability is a high priority.
• Localized messagesSubversion uses gettext() to display translated error, informational, and help messages, based on current locale settings.
• Repository mirroringSubversion supplies a utility, svnsync for synchronizing (via either push or pull) a read-only slave repository with a master repository.

For those using Windows, you should also install TortoiseSVN. TortoiseSVN will allow you to easily interact with Subversion directly through Windows Explorer. While viewing files saved on your system, if you right-click the screen you’ll see some new commands that will allow you to connect to your SVN repository and add or checkout files.

In order to use TortoiseSVN you need to first install Subversion and set up a Subversion repository where the program can keep the copies of the documents that you’ve checked in. Subversion will then only save differences between versions of files that you’re storing in its repository. This is much more efficient than making copies of all files and ending up with multiple copies of the same files.

To create a repository, at a command prompt issue the following command:

svnadmin create –fs-type=fsfs /data/SvnRepository

The directory specified above should be an empty directory!

The next step once everything is installed is to just play with it and figure out how to work it before using it on an actual project. Remember, always play before work!