Adventures in IT

I've now nearly fully given up on suckling from the breast of Microsoft. My little Linux laptop is now a fully functioning development box. I must say that so far I have had no separation anxiety as a result of leaving behind the sweaty manboobs of Microsoft and moving on to a more solid diet. Anyway installing PHPmyadmin is a cinch. I used Kpackagemanager (the Ubuntu version is Synaptic) to get the package. In retrospect I prefer the Debian apt-get approach of the command line but I like the GUI for its ability to search through all packages to discover cool new toys. The only trick to installing PHPmyadmin is that you need to reconfigure it once it is up. Jump to a Konsole and run the command: sudo dpkg-reconfigure -plow phpmyadmin This will give you the configuration options that the GUI installer does not. Specifically it sets up the config files so that Apache knows to alias the /phpmyadmin directory to the proper /etc/phpmyadmin. If for some reason (as was the...

My job title is "PHP developer" but because I'm the only person in the office familiar with Linux I get roped into administering the LAMP stack and other systems roles. Yesterday I was asked to investigate methods of monitoring individual bandwidth use. I've installed Squid proxy server so that all traffic is getting routed through my pet Linux box that I keep spare just for such occasions. Right, now I'm asked to install software to filter out sites not related to work (like OkCupid... uhoh). So I find a program that slots into Squid and install it. Bang! Facebook and all other sites mysteriously get replaced with a kitten (from icanhazcheeseburger.com) chewing network cables captioned as "Ohnoes!!!1 kitty is eating my megahurtz!". Putting me in charge results in silliness. I hope they do it less often. Anyway, despite my best efforts to make the access denied picture cute and adorable my users still hate me. It's tough being a webslave. A li...