I have encountered such one of scenario that I need to connect remote SQL Server (secure behind FW) from LAMP (or MAMP) stack. My db server called db_server was located remotely. Access to db_server was restricted to another server, mid_server. For the development work, I was using my localhost (Mac). So I need to connect db_server from localhost via mid_server.

I divided work into two section – 1) Install and configure SQL Server (mssql) extension, freeTDS, on local to work with PHP/Apache, 2) Establish connection between my local Mac and Remote Secure SQL Server via Middle Ubuntu Server

1. Installing MS SQL module (freeTDS) for PHP on Mac OS X

I found solution in BENJAMIN WALTERS‘s blog. For archival reason, I copied his blog.

Install FreeTDS

• Create the directory /usr/local/freetds
• Download the latest version of freetds (http://www.freetds.org/software.html)
• Open a terminal window
• Untar/zip the freetds file and cd into that directory in terminal
  • i/e cd ~/Downloads/freetds-0.82
• paste this in terminal

  ./configure --prefix=/usr/local/freetds --sysconfdir=/usr/local/freetds/conf/freetds --disable-libiconv --disable-odbc

• type “make “and press enter
• type “sudo make install “and press enter
  • Enter your password
• You’re done with freetds…..

Compile PHP

• Download and untar/zip the latest source (http://php.net/downloads.php)
• Cd into the php directory in terminal
  • i/e cd ~/Downloads/php-5.3.15
• Configure PHP
  • Type “./configure” and press enter
• Type “make” and press enter
• Go into the mssql extension directory
  • i/e cd ~/Downloads/php-5.3.15/ext/mssql
• phpize it! (type phpize)
• Configure mssql to run with freetds
  • Type

    ./configure --with-mssql=/usr/local/freetds

    and press enter

• Type “make” and press enter
• Open finder and go to the mssql module directory (~/Downloads/php-5.3.6/ext/mssql/modules/)
• Copy mssql.so to the extension directory of your php installation
  • MAMP on my machine is located here /Applications/MAMP/bin/php/php-5.3.6/lib/php/extensions/no-debug-non-zts-20090626/
  • Paste the mssql.so into this folder (there should be a bunch of other .so files)
• Go up a few directories to /Applications/MAMP/bin/php/php-5.3.6/conf/php.ini and open it.
• Search for “extension=”
• Paste “extension=mssql.so” on the line below the other extensions
• Restart MAMP!

Test it!!!!!

Configure freetds.conf

• from

  [global]
          # TDS protocol version
  ;   tds version = 4.2

• to

  [global]
          # TDS protocol version
      tds version = 7.0

2. Creating SSH tunnel between Mac and Remote Window Machine

ssh -f -N -L localhost:1433:db_server:1433 user@mid_server

In which ssh will create and send to the background a ssh tunnel (-f option) without executing any remote commands (-N option) that begins at the localhost port 1433 (-L) terminates at the remote address and port (db_server:1433) and authenticates using the remote username at the remote location (user@mid_server).

This will simply forward all request comming on port 1433 of local machine to db_server on port 1433 via mid_server.

See more about SSH tunnel - Wikipedia Article, Rutgers article

Amazon EC2 (Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud) cloud computing infrastructure offered by Amazon. It delivers scalable, pay-as-you-go compute capacity in the cloud. As name suggest the computing power is elastic and can be consumed as needed.

A EC2 machine is nothing but a bare machine. An Amazon Machine Image (AMI) is a machine bundled as an Image, with preconfigured software which you can start at moments notice.

This is rough guide how you can get Django App running in AWS EC2

Part 1: Setup Instance (Virtual Machine) and run it.

1. Sign up for AWS Services (http://aws.amazon.com/ec2)
2. Login to your AWS Management Consol from (http://aws.amazon.com). As of this date (Dec 6 2012) the URL of console is https://console.aws.amazon.com/console/home
3. Select EC2 from the list
4. If not done, click on Launch Instance. For every virtual machine, Amazon calls Instance.
5. A wizard appear you to guide Instance Lunch. Select appropriate option, (I recommand to select Classic as it guides you through process). Go with Wizard – you need to select OS and version, setup data-center option, security rule and create public/private keypair. Important remember you create keypair and download.
6. Create keypair and save in your local drive (make sure you make it safe). You can grant 400 permission to that keypair file.
7. When you finish launching instance, it gives public DNS. It looks something like ec2-xx-xx-xxx-xxx.compute-1.amazonaws.com
8. Go to Instance (from AWS Management Console) and start machine (VM).

$ssh -i /path/to/keypair.pem ubuntu@ec2-xx-xx-xxx-xx.compute-1.amazonaws.com

$ sudo apt-get install mysql-server mysql-client
$ sudo apt-get install apache2
$ sudo apt-get install libapache2-mod-python
$ sudo apt-get install python-mysqldb
sudo apt-get install libapache2-mod-wsgi

$ wget http://www.djangoproject.com/download/1.0.2/tarball/
$ tar -xvzf Django-1.0.2-final.tzf
$ cd Django-1.0.2-final/
$ sudo python setup.py install

<VirtualHost *:80>
        ServerAdmin webadmin@you.com
	ServerName yourdomain.com
        DocumentRoot /path/to/yourdomain

        Alias  /static  /path/to/template/static/
        <Directory /path/to/template/static>
                Order deny,allow
                Allow from all
        </Directory>

        Alias  /media /path/to/media/
        <Directory /path/to/media>
                Order deny,allow
                Allow from all
        </Directory>

        WSGIScriptAlias / /path/to/wsgi/django.wsgi
        <Directory /path/to/wsgi>
                Order allow,deny
                Allow from all
        </Directory>
        ErrorLog /var/log/apache2/error.log
        LogLevel warn
        CustomLog /var/log/apache2/access.log combined
</VirtualHost>

Create WSGI file to handle Django script. Make sure to put all your Django project files in /path/to/your/project/ location (see wsgi file below). Your django.wsgi file should be in /path/to/wsgi/ folder

import os, sys
sys.path.append('/path/to/your/')
sys.path.append('/path/to/your/project')
os.environ['DJANGO_SETTINGS_MODULE'] = 'yourproject.settings'

import django.core.handlers.wsgi

application = django.core.handlers.wsgi.WSGIHandler()

Enable Apache Virtual Host

$a2ensite yourhost

Hurry, try http://yourdomain.com

Note: Above process is based on Ubuntu 11 (Server), Django 1.4.2

$ brew install libjpeg
$ pip install pil

Make sure you have brew and pip installed. If not, follow process #1 and #2 below first.

1. Install brew with

$ ruby -e "$(curl -fsSkL raw.github.com/mxcl/homebrew/go)"

Source: http://mxcl.github.com/homebrew/

2. Install pip with

$ curl -O http://pypi.python.org/packages/source/p/pip/pip-1.0.tar.gz
$ tar xvfz pip-1.0.tar.gz
$ cd pip-1.0
$ python setup.py install # may need to be root

Source: http://www.pip-installer.org/en/latest/installing.html
Happy coding

And meantime Samsung is busy comparing feature sets to prove superiority. Simple example, having galaxy phone with NFC is like having 10ft longer pant for 5 ft man. Oh, please say 10ft longer pant is better, . A photocopy always is better than master copy, coz they can be created in more number/mass, is that Samsung’s logic?

The Feisty Ad made by Samsung is simply indigestible, so few correction on that from my side. After all Samsung prides longer list, why not some more

Samsung Galaxy is great phone only if iPhone do not exists.

base.width =base.$win.width();

Replace this line with

base.width = (base.$el.width()) ? base.$el.width() : base.$win.width();

ERROR: acube.jpg :
 Fatal error: Call to undefined function wpcf7_add_tag_generator() in /home/himalexc/public_html/wp-content/plugins/contact-form-7/modules/text.php on line 152

I got it right with following changes:

In ngg-config.php.
Find:

require_once( WP_LOAD_PATH . 'wp-load.php');

Replace with:

require_once( WP_LOAD_PATH . 'wp-admin/admin.php');

Sending blog post from iPhone

Have you raised funding?

What makes new users try you?

What competition do you fear most?

What’s the worst thing that has happened?

Will you reincorporate as a US company?

What’s an impressive thing you have done?

Where is the rocket science here?

Why did you pick this idea to work on?

Why do the reluctant users hold back?

Who would you hire or how would you add to your team?

What problems/hurdles are you anticipating?

Who is “the boss”?

What is the next step with the product evolution?

What obstacles will you face and how will you overcome them?

Who needs what you’re making?

How does your product work in more detail?

What are you going to do next?

What do you understand that others don’t?

Where do new users come from?

How big an opportunity is there?

Six months from now, what’s going to be your biggest problem?

What’s the funniest thing that has happened to you?

Tell us something surprising you have done?

Who are your competitors?

What’s new about what you make?

How many users do you have?

Why isn’t someone already doing this?

What are the top things users want?

What is your burn rate?

How do you know customers need what you’re making?

What domain expertise do you have?

What, exactly, makes you different from existing options?

What’s the conversion rate?

What systems have you hacked?

Who would use your product?

How will customers and/or users find out about you?

Why did your team get together?

In what ways are you resourceful?

What is your distribution strategy?

What has surprised you about user behaviour?

What part of your project are you going to build first?

What resistance will they have to trying you and how will you overcome it?

How are you understanding customer needs?

What’s the biggest mistake you have made?

Who might become competitors?

What do you understand about your users?

What is your user growth rate?

What are the key things about your field that outsiders don’t understand?

Who is going to be your first paying customer?

If your startup succeeds, what additional areas might you be able to expand into?

Who would be your next hire?

How do you know people want this?

Would you relocate to Silicon Valley?

What do you know about this space/product others don’t know?

How much money could you make per year?

How long can you go before funding?

How will you make money?

Will your team stick at this?

How much does customer acquisition cost?

How did your team meet?

Who in your team does what?

How are you meeting customers?

How many users are paying?

How is your product different?

Are you open to changing your idea?

How do we know your team will stick together?

What is your growth like?

Source: TechCrunch

I am in same dilemma that I can program software as good as of those programmers from Europe or US, but I still get paid 3/4 times less. Nepalese engineers are equally competent and smarter as their global counterpart. There are many engineers working across the globe, and also, there are engineers who are working for global companies from Nepal. There are many Nepalese like my lecturer and me. But we still do not have presence in global map. Ironically we are discriminated within/out of country. Here, ‘I’ and ‘My Lecturer’ represents fellow Nepalese engineers, professionals and businessmen.

This insisted me to think why Nepal is not been able to draw map in global IT landscape. Generally, IT industry of Nepal depends on white-level out-sourcing (sub contracting) job. Basically it is project basis, service oriented and short-term contract. Looking at economic level of our country, service-type job makes sense. However the nature of service we perform will not uplift the industry much higher. Country like ours never can compete globally because we simply lack volume. In economic term we lack labor endowment factor, we do not have population and capacity like India and China, where one company employee hundred thousand people. So, we have to learn lesson from smaller countries like Israel, Indonesia, Malaysia, Singapore, Korea and Chile. These countries are focusing on innovation and product development beating global competition. One of first social networking site, Friendster, was build by Malaysian. Facebook, todays top ranking social network site, came later and bought verities of social network related IP (Intellectual Property) right from Friendster, worth million dollars. One of most popular IM (Instant Massaging, or chat software) is build in Indonesia. Israel is R&D hub; Chile is producing batches of IT entrepreneurs who are innovating industry. Fact that other countries are ripping benefit from booking industry, and, we read copy-paste story about them in Kantipur Daily, a week later.

Why we left behind? Answer is clear; we lack third E (Exposure). Nepalese people with exposure can do much better. My Lecturer realized lacking of third E (Exposure) and went to USA for further study. He worked for one of top company in USA and gained the exposure. Then he returned Nepal and started business with equity of Rs. 50,000, and now he oversees 18 ventures, which have annual turn over of Rs. 20 billion. He has run many projects in Lumbini in capacity of owner. Once in time, he used to be highly discriminated in the same place. Rundra Panday established software company, D2Hawkeye, in 2000. He focused medical industry build software to assist Medical Industry. Later sold company to Verisk Health in more than $100 million. He lived and studied USA, and he had US citizen on board. This is key, third E (exposure) to his success.

Example of My Lecturer and Rundra Pandey is hope for me (me = fellow working professionals) that we can make presence in global map. It is difficult but not impossible. Growth of our industry and individual complement each other. Looking history of IT industry of Nepal, we are relatively younger than India, China, Indonesia or Singapore. So it is natural for us to have lower exposure. But we cannot afford to wait so long to go edge. There are various groups of people who actually can play catalyst growth:

1. People like my lecturer and Rudra Pandey – They have exposure at international level and they can sale better.
2. People like me (thousands of IT programmers, designers living and working in Nepal) – We need to utilize our foreign network, and make combined effort with their exposure and our expertise.
3. Government – To some extend, Govt. of Nepal, by introducing IT friendly policies (easy accept/pay money globally) to facilitate global scale marketing and exposure, can boost growth

My Lecturer: Bijay Rajbhandary, Chairman of CE. Initially he started CE with equity of Rs. 50,000, now he oversee 18 ventures, among them Ace Institute Management is one. His ventures have annual turnover of Rs. 20 billion. He is Director and Adjunct Faculty at Ace Institute Management and teaches Project Management to EMBA. His profile – http://www.ce-construction.com/management.php#bijay

Rundra Pandey: Executive Chairman of Deearwalk, Inc, company he founded after selling D2Hawkeye. His profile -http://www.deerwalk.com/executive_team#rudra_pandey