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Category: Life: Work and Techy

Running Jenkins CI for PHP on Amazon EC2 [1/7]

October 26, 2011
2 Comments

Introduction
To ensure code quality for your PHP application, you might want to use a continuous integration service such as Jenkins CI (previously known as Hudson) to run things like PHPUnit, Code Coverage checks, PHP Mess Detector etc. But how do you install and run this cheaply? This series of 7 “easy to follow” tutorials will let you start and stop an Amazon EC2 “Micro” instance (which is free for your first year using Amazon) for testing.

These posts will be published on a daily basis between the 27th of October and 2nd of November inclusive.

  1. Signing up to Amazon EC2 and starting your first image
  2. Preparing PuTTY for Amazon EC2
  3. Connecting to Amazon EC2 using PuTTY
  4. Installing and Configuring Jenkins CI (this is the big/important post)
  5. Make a backup of the Amazon EC2 configuration
  6. Relaunching the Amazon EC2 image

PHP: PHP Programming on Windows using JetBrains PhpStorm and local PHP

October 12, 2011
Comments closed

Here’s some steps which may help somebody else install PHP on their Windows machine to run alongside JetBrain’s PhpStorm for PHPUnit testing

  • Download Windows PHP from http://windows.php.net/download/ . I selected PHP 5.3.8 ‘s VC9 x86 Thread Safe (2011-Aug-23 12:01:10) Installer.
  • Install, with no web server configurations, to C:\Program Files (x86)\PHP
  • Download the appropriate APC module from http://downloads.php.net/pierre/ to match your PHP version. I picked: http://downloads.php.net/pierre/php_apc-3.1.5-5.3-vc9-x86.zip
  • Copy the enclosed php_apc.dll from that .zip file to C:\program files\x86\PHP\ext
  • Download the appropriate XDebug module from http://xdebug.org/download.php to match your PHP version. I picked: http://xdebug.org/files/php_xdebug-2.1.2-5.3-vc9.dll
  • Save the file to c:\program files\x96\PHP\ext (I had to save it as c:\users\richyc and then, from my administrator command prompt (see below) do “cp c:\users\richyc\php_xdebug-2.1.2-5.3-vc9.dll.dll “c:\program files (x86)\php\ext”)
  • Start a command prompt, cmd.exe, with administration rights (Windows->Search->cmd.exe right click and then “Run as administrator”)
  • In the command prompt, enter the following:
    cd “c:\program files (x86)\php\pear”
    php go-pear.phar
    Are you install a system-wide PEAR or a local copy? system
    Accept all defaults
    pear upgrade pear
    pear config-set auto_discover 1
    pecl channel-update pecl.php.net
    pecl config-set php_suffix .exe
    pecl install channel://pecl.php.net/dbus-0.1.1
    pear install channel://pear.php.net/HTTP_REQUEST2-2.0.0RC2 channel://pear.php.net/Net_URL2-0.3.1 pear/XML_RPC2
    pear install pear.phpunit.de/PHPUnit phpunit/DbUnit phpunit/PHPUnit_Selenium phpunit/PHPUnit_Story phpunit/PHP_Invoker
    echo extension = php_apc.dll >> ../php.ini
    echo zend_extension = “C:\program files (x86)\php\ext\php_xdebug-2.1.2-5.3-vc9.dll” >> ../php.ini
    echo xdebug.remote_enable=1 >> ../php.ini
    echo xdebug.remote_host=localhost >> ../php.ini
    echo xdebug.remote_port=9000 >> ../php.ini
    echo date.timezone = “Etc/UTC” >> ../php.ini
  • To test from the command prompt, just try php -m. You should see apc and xdebug (twice) listed.

Now PHP is configured, we need to configure JetBrain’s PHPStorm to use it:

  • Load PHPStorm
  • Open or create your project
  • Go to File->Settings->PHP
  • In the PHP home section, enter: C:\Program Files (x86)\PHP and select “Xdebug” as your debugger
  • Select “Update include paths”
  • Select PHP->Debug->Xdebug proxy
  • Enter Host: localhost and port: 9000. Leave “IDE Key” empty

Varnish: Unable to start: SHMFILE owned by running…

September 15, 2011
2 Comments

If, when trying to start the Varnish reverse proxy server, you receive an error message such as:
[root@internet634.fbi.gov ]#/usr/sbin/varnishd -d -f /etc/varnish/default.vcl
GeoIP plugin loaded successfully.
storage_file: filename: ./varnish.8QhQpI size 4208 MB.
SHMFILE owned by running varnishd master (pid=2451)
(Use unique -n arguments if you want multiple instances.)

but “ps auxwww | grep 2451” doesn’t show Varnish (in my case, it was dkim-milter on that pid) and “ps auxwww | grep varnish” shows nothing, then you need to manually reset Varnish’s SHMFILE settings.

This is easier done than said! Just go into /var/lib/varnish/[hostname] and delete all the files in there (such as varnish.8QhQPI and _.vsl). Restarting varnish should then be successful.

UK Post code Lookup prices compared

March 19, 2011
2 Comments

Following on from my Voice Over IP Call Costs Compared post, I’m now looking at differing costs of looking up UK Postcodes.

Prices exclude VAT and are based on a single UK Premises address level lookup on a public facing website and buying the smallest credit pack possible for the number of lookups.

Company Price per lookup Minimum purchase Credit length
200 lookups 500 lookups 1,000 lookups 2,000 lookups 5,000 lookups

Postcode Software £0.0300 £0.0300 £0.0176 £0.0176 £0.0176 500 lookups
£15		 12 months
Crafty Clicks
Pay as you go		 £0.0300 £0.0300 £0.0300 £0.0300 £0.0200 300 lookups
£9		 12 months
Crafty Clicks
Monthly plan		 £0.0175 £0.0150 £0.0150 £0.0150 £0.0125 250 lookups
£4.38		 1 month
Postcode Anywhere £0.0500 £0.0500 £0.0500 £0.0400 £0.3300 1000 lookups
£50		 12 months

UK VoIP Call Costs Compared

February 13, 2011
4 Comments

As you might have seen from my recent tweets, I’m looking at changing my VoIP provider (I started off on Gradwell’s Multi User package, moved to VoipFone (which never really “worked right” with my setup) then moved to AAISP), as AAISP don’t currently offer all the facilities I would like (the most important one being sending the “number being called” as the CLI when forwarding VoIP calls to my mobile). But which one to go to? Well, after two long calls to o2 mobiles today, I started to look at call costs as well as the “monthly rates” – and here’s the details of the VoIP call costs and “line rentals” which may be of use to people:

Provider Monthly rate for 01/02 number Monthly rate for 03333 number Peak to o2 mobile Weekend to o2 mobile Peak to 01/02/03 numbers Weekend to 01/02/03 numbers
Gradwell Single User £4.00 £4.00 9.00ppm 6.00ppm 1.25ppm 1.00ppm
Gradwell Multi User £8.00 £8.00 9.00ppm 6.00ppm 1.25ppm 1.00ppm
AAISP £1.00 £1.00 18.33ppm 18.33ppm 1.25ppm 0.83ppm
VoipFone £2.00 £2.00 12.00ppm 12.00ppm 1.00ppm 1.00ppm
Soho66 £2.00 £2.00 10.00ppm 10.00ppm 1.00ppm 0.50ppm
VoIPTalk Standard Tariff £2.99 £2.99 11.90ppm 11.90pm 1.40ppm 1.40ppm
VoIPTalk Prepay Silver Package £6.98 £6.98 9.90ppm 7.90pm 1.00ppm 1.00ppm
DrayTEL Standard Tariff £2.99 £2.99 11.90ppm 11.90pm 1.40ppm 1.40ppm
Sipgate

None Not offered 9.90ppm 9.90ppm 1.19ppm 1.19ppm
AQL

£2.00 £2.00 7.10ppm 7.2ppm 1.00ppm 0.80ppm

All prices subject to VAT, prices may vary yadda yadda yadda. In otherwords, these are the prices I found when I looked – the prices you might be charged and might find may be different.

Correction: 14 Feb 2011 13:41: Previously AAISP’s prices were shown including VAT. This has now been fixed.