PHP doesn't support dot characters in form names

I've written a PHP proxy script that communicates with an underlying application. I encountered a problem where the script is unable to proxy data that contains dot characters in the form name.

To illustrate:

<?php
   var_dump($_POST);
?>
<form action="test.php" method="post">
   <input name="this.is.a/variable" type="text" />
   <input type="submit" />
</form>

Output:

array(1) {
   ["this_is_a/variable"]=>
   string(0) ""
}

Notice the array key in the var_dump(); dots are converted into underscore.

Solution

I accessed the raw input stream directly instead of using $_POST:

<?php
   $data = file_get_contents("php://input");
   $response = proxy_blah_blah($data);
?>

HOWTO Install Windows XP on Acer 4330

(Image courtesy of Raymond.CC)

I bought an Acer Aspire 4330 a few days ago, but I couldn't install Windows XP. I think it's designed for Vista, but I don't want to use it because it's unusable. Windows XP Setup coredumped after a minutes, and I thought I had to slipstream the installation CD to solve this. Fortunately, a friend told me that all I had to do was to change my SATA mode from AHCI to IDE. The setup then went smoothly.

Installing the drivers is a PITA. The drivers in the provided DVD doesn't work because they're for Vista. I had to download the files from their FTP site.

Unfortunately, they provide multiple drivers for the same device. Do I need to use the driver for Atheros? Or Broadcom? Or Intel? Blah.

I'll continue installing the drivers tomorrow. I still have to finish this router/load balancer that I'm making. Hopefully, our connection would become twice as fast after we combine Bayantel and Globe connections. More on this later.

PHP's New Namespace Separator

I don't like PHP's new namespace separator. I prefer '::' to '\'.

Aaaaargh... why did they choose the escape character?

Slow lighttpd using IPv6

I've been wondering why lighttpd seems to be so slow when IPv6 is enabled. I discovered that I had to bump the minimum and maximum number of FastCGI process (min-procs/max-procs) by twice as much because it appears that lighttpd divides the available PHP processes between IPv4 and IPv6. I dunno why it does that.

How to destroy all gif interfaces in FreeBSD

To destroy all gif interfaces in FreeBSD (vanilla Bourne shell):

for i in `ifconfig -a | grep gif | grep -v '%' | sed -n -e 's/\(.*\):.*/\1/p'`; do
   ifconfig $i destroy
done

Stuck DVD inside MacBook

A DVD got stuck inside my MacBook. What I did was to insert a prepaid card (it's made of plastic that's thin yet durable enough for this purpose) into the DVD slot, pushed it upwards and pressed the eject button. The DVD then came out.

Looking for a used PC

I'm looking for a used Pentium III (or better) PC that I can use as a router/firewall. No need for monitor, keyboard, or CD-ROM. Just a CPU with enough hard disk and RAM. Please contact me if you have one. Cebu area only.

Library dependency woes

One of my Unix workstation is now fucked up due to forced installation of incompatible libraries. I guess I'll have to reformat it in order to start from a clean slate. I'm planning to temporarily transfer my files to my external harddisk, but FreeBSD can't seem to read it although it has been formatted as UFS. I formatted that harddisk on my Mac OS X laptop, thinking that it can be read in FreeBSD, but Mac OS X seems to have a different interpretation of what UFS is. Blah. I guess I need to reformat my external harddisk to FAT32 too. Oh wait. If I format it as FAT32, what would happen with my file permissions? Maybe I'll just use tar or something. Blah, blah, blah.

Google Chrome Browser on Mac OS X

While waiting for a Mac OS X version of the Chrome browser, I've content myself with VMWare Fusion's Unity feature instead:


Cool, huh?

Figlet Preview

Problem:
I wanted to use figlet but I can't decide which font to use.

Solution:
To inspect all fonts visually, simply do:
% cd /usr/local/share/figlet
% for i in `ls *.flf | sed -n -e 's/\(.*\)\.flf/\1/p'`; do echo Phuselage | figlet -f $i; done | less

Your mileage may vary; the font dir may be different on your operating system.

Synchronizing two CVS repositories using Mercurial

We're in a situation where we have access to some of our partner's source code. We need to keep in sync with their repo, otherwise our copy would quickly become stale.

Currently, we can do this manually because our changes are still small. A few months from now, however, our changes will eventually drift away from their code and merging it with our tree would become difficult.

A distributed version control system is in order. Here's how I did it:

+-----------------+         +------------+                 +------------+         +----------------+
| Upstream        |         | Immutable  |                 | Working    |         | Local          |
| CVS repository  |-------->| Mercurial  |---------------->| Mercurial  |-------->| CVS repository |
+-----------------+ import  | repository | Mercurial pull  | repository | export  +----------------+
                           +------------+                 +------------+
                                                               |^
                                                               ||
                                                               ||
                                                               v|
                                                              User

In theory, exporting it back to CVS is no longer needed. In practice, however, I needed to maintain "compatibility" with my fellow developers who only use CVS. I hope we'll eventually migrate away from CVS though because merging lots of files is really time consuming. Merging/branching is CVS' main weakness.

MySQL: How to merge two databases

I'm currently managing a couple of databases in a production server. The problem: I need to know what new tables were created from Database 1 and merge them to Database 2.

Here's the solution:

0. Backup the target database.
% mysqldump -h [HOST] -P [PORT] -u [USERNAME] -p[PASSWORD] Database2 > Database2.sql

1. Extract the table names from the source and target databases.
% echo show tables | mysql -h [HOST] -P [PORT] -u [USERNAME] -p[PASSWORD] Database1 | sed '1d' > one.tables
% echo show tables | mysql -h [HOST] -P [PORT] -u [USERNAME] -p[PASSWORD] Database2 | sed '1d' > two.tables

2. Perform the merge.
% mysqldump -h [HOST] -P [PORT] -u [USERNAME] -p[PASSWORD] Database1 \
`diff --unchanged-line-format='' --new-line-format='%l ' two.tables one.tables` | \
mysql [HOST] -P [PORT] -u [USERNAME] -p[PASSWORD] Database2

Unix/Linux Tip: Syntax check your PHP files

If you wish to syntax check (lint) all the PHP files in your current directory, simply do:
    for i in `ls *.php`; do
        php -l $i
    done

Fedora/Redhat Linux: C/C++ : unfound library "mysql.h"

If you encounter this problem while compiling an application that links to MySQL, you can fix this by simply installing mysql-dev:
    # /etc/init.d/mysqld stop
    # yum install mysql-dev

FreeBSD Tip: How to delete all IPv6 address in an interface

You can delete all IPv6 addresses in an interface using the following command (vanilla Bourne shell):

while i="`ifconfig le0 | grep inet6 | grep -m 1 -v '%'`"; do
    ifconfig le0 $i delete
done

Note: replace le0 with your interface name.

Bridge problem with FreeBSD 7.0-RELEASE

Problem
The FreeBSD Handbook states that "if the bridge host needs an IP address, then the correct place to set this is on the bridge interface itself rather than one of the member interfaces."

With FreeBSD 6.x and FreeBSD 8.0-CURRENT, setting the IP address on the bridge works without any problem. With FreeBSD 7.0-RELEASE, however, this does not work. The OS doesn't even properly boot when the IP address is set via /etc/rc.conf.

Solution
This is probably a temporary solution, but try setting the IP address to one of the member interface. This is in direct opposition to the advice given in the Handbook, but it works for me.

If this is a bug (which I suspect it is), a patch probably exists somewhere. Please feel free to leave a comment.

JPEG support for ImageMagick

Problem
On Debian Linux, there seems to be no out-of-the-box support for JPEG in ImageMagick.

Solution
First, install libjpeg62-dev library. libjpeg62 doesn't work because it doesn't include the necessary development files. Next, download ImageMagick's source and compile it manually. Use ./configure --with-jpeg=yes for configuring.

How to Show All CVS Tags

Here is a useful Perl script for displaying all tags in a CVS Repository.

OpenLaszlo IDEforLaszlo Eclipse plugin

Syte GMBH has provided an update for IDEforLaszlo plugin to support OpenLaszlo 4.0.10 and OpenLaszlo 3.4. IDEforLaszlo has been stale for quite some time now, and I'm glad that someone has offered their time and effort for this project. I'll be checking it out later.

IDEforLaszlo can be found at http://www.syte.ch/en/laszlo.xml.

Technical Humor

Yeesh, I found the links for the April 1 RFCs. Here's a dose of highly technical humor:

• RFC 5241 — Naming Rights in IETF Protocols. A. Falk, S. Bradner.
• RFC 5242 — A Generalized Unified Character Code: Western European and CJK Sections. J. Klensin, H. Alvestrand.
  

WARNING: Reading the above documents may result in nosebleed.