Frank Vielma's Blog

Rails 3.1.0

Recently, the rails 3.1.0 is now a release version.

It is recommendable to use rvm (you need to install rvm) creating a new gemset so, we can isolate the install from the rest of our environments. We need the follow steps:

• Creating a gemset:

  rvm --create 1.9.2-p180@rails31

• Installing the last rails version (3.1.0) :

gem install rails

• To generate a new project:

rails new project31

• Adding the following lines to the Gemfile file

gem 'execjs'
gem 'therubyracer'

ExecJS. Run JavaScript code from Ruby.
therubyracer. Embed the V8 Javascript Interpreter into Ruby.

• Running bundle:

bundle install

• Starting the new rails application:

rails s

After it, we would see the following lines:

=> Booting WEBrick
=> Rails 3.1.0 application starting in development on http://0.0.0.0:3000
=> Call with -d to detach
=> Ctrl-C to shutdown server
[2011-08-31 09:39:29] INFO  WEBrick 1.3.1
[2011-08-31 09:39:29] INFO  ruby 1.9.2 (2011-02-18) [i686-linux]
[2011-08-31 09:39:29] INFO  WEBrick::HTTPServer#start: pid=11130 port=3000

Release notes
Rails 3.1 sources

Installing MongoDB and php driver in Ubuntu 10.10

MongoDB is a NoSQL (“not only sql”), a non-relational, distributed, open-source, horizontal scalable and document-oriented database written in the C++. It doesn’t have transactions, ACID compliance, joins, foreign keys, or many of the other features belonging to relational database management system (RDBMS). The database is document-oriented so it manages collections of JSON-like documents.

One of the most important feature is than MongoDB scaling very well.

Installation.

• Step 1. Adding the ubuntu repository:

  sudo apt-key adv --keyserver keyserver.ubuntu.com --recv 7F0CEB10

  add at the end of the /etc/apt/sources.list file:

  deb http://downloads-distro.mongodb.org/repo/ubuntu-upstart dist 10gen

• Step 2. Installing mongodb

   sudo aptitude update && sudo aptitude install mongodb-10gen

• Step 3. Verifying installation:

  mongo --version

  MongoDB shell version: 1.8.1

• Step 3. Now, we will installing the PHP driver:

  sudo aptitude install php5-dev php5-cli php-pear && sudo pecl install mongo

  add the dynamic library mongo.so at the end of the php.ini (/etc/php5/apache2/php.ini) file:

  extension=mongo.so

• Step 4. Restart apache and verify if all is ok running the phpinfo() function:

  sudo /etc/init.d/apache2 restart

More info

How to convert DBF to CSV (ubuntu, debian)

There is a perl tool (dbf_dump) that allows to convert dbf files (dBase) to csv (comma-separated values). To install it, we must to install libdbd-xbase-perl:

sudo aptitude install libdbd-xbase-perl

Example:

dbf_dump --fs=","  file.dbf > file.csv

Installing RVM on Ubuntu maverick

In first place, what is RVM ?
RVM is the Ruby Version Manager. It makes installing and managing several different versions and implementations of Ruby on one computer.

Installation.
There are two ways to install and configure RVM.

• As a standard user
• As root

In this post we will do the first one.

In first time, you will need to install zlib and others.

Debian/Ubuntu systems:

sudo apt-get install zlib1g-dev zlib1g libssl-dev libreadline5-dev libxml2-dev libsqlite3-dev

• Step 1. Download and install rvm from sources. It will install in $HOME/.rvm. (You must have installed curl and git)
  bash < <(curl -s https://rvm.beginrescueend.com/install/rvm)
• Step 2. Now, we will complete the install by loading RVM in new shells adding the following line in a $HOME/.bashrc file.

  [[ -s "$HOME/.rvm/scripts/rvm" ]] && source "$HOME/.rvm/scripts/rvm"

• Step 3.Open a new shell or run:

  source $HOME/.bashrc

• Step 4.Test if the RVM’s installation is working.

  type rvm | head -1

  and you should get:

  rvm is a function

Now, assuming that all is working, we could install ruby 1.9.2 as following:

rvm install 1.9.2

We can use ruby 1.9.2 in our system running only:

rvm use 1.9.2

so, we can verify what ruby’s version is running right now:

which ruby

you get:

$HOME/.rvm/rubies/ruby-1.9.2-p180/bin/ruby

But, if we want to return to the initial conditions ? No problem, you need only to run:

rvm system

it will return to the ruby’s system (ruby 1.8.7 (2010-06-23 patchlevel 299) [i686-linux])

Installing Firefox 4 on Debian 6 (Squeeze), Ubuntu 10.04 and 10.10

Firefox 4 is a very important release from Mozilla guys. This version include improvements in performance, standards support, and the user interface.

The simple way to install Firefox 4 on Ubuntu is:

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:mozillateam/firefox-stable
sudo aptitude update && sudo apt-get upgrade

On Debian:

wget http://releases.mozilla.org/pub/mozilla.org/firefox/releases/4.0/linux-i686/en-US/firefox-4.0.tar.bz2
sudo tar -xvjf firefox-4.0.tar.bz2 -C /usr/local
sudo ln -s /usr/local/firefox/firefox /usr/local/bin/firefox4

The steps to add firefox4 to the gnome panel are: Right button over panel -> Add to Panel… -> Custom Application Luncher -> Add -> Fill fields -> Choose an Icon (path to firefox4′s icons /usr/local/firefox/icons/).

Installing Geonode in a debian lenny platform

GeoNode is an open source platform that facilitates the creation, sharing, and collaborative use of geospatial data.

• Step 1. In first time, you need to install and purge some packages:

   sudo aptitude install git-arch subversion libgeos-dev gdal-bin g++ make ant zlib-bin zlib1g-dev libreadline5-dev tcl8.5-dev tk8.5-dev libssl-dev libsqlite3-dev libbz2-dev libgdbm-dev
   
   sudo aptitude purge gij-4.3 bsh bsh-gcj java-gcj-compat java-gcj-compat-headless libbcel-java libhsqldb-java libhsqldb-java-gcj libjaxp1.3-java libjaxp1.3-java-gcj libjline-java liblog4j1.2-java libmx4j-java libregexp-java libservlet2.4-java libxalan2-java libxalan2-java-gcj libxerces2-java libxerces2-java-gcj openoffice.org openoffice.org-base openoffice.org-evolution openoffice.org-filter-mobiledev openoffice.org-gcj openoffice.org-java-common openoffice.org-officebean openoffice.org-report-builder-bin openoffice.org-writer2latex

• Step 2. Install sun-java. You need modfy /etc/apt/sources.list and add non-free to the Debian Lenny repositories:

  deb http://volatile.debian.org/debian-volatile lenny/volatile main
  deb-src http://volatile.debian.org/debian-volatile lenny/volatile main
   
  deb http://mirrors.kernel.org/debian/ lenny main non-free
  deb http://security.debian.org/ lenny/updates main non-free

  and run:

  sudo aptitude update
  sudo aptitude install sun-java6-jdk

• Step 3. Download, compile and install python 2.6.

  wget http://python.org/ftp/python/2.6.6/Python-2.6.6.tar.bz2
  tar -xvjf Python-2.6.6.tar.bz2
  cd Python-2.6.6
  ./configure --with-threads --enable-shared
  make -j 2
  sudo make install
  sudo ln -s /usr/include/libpython2.6.so.1.0 /usr/lib/
  sudo ln -s /usr/include/libpython2.6.so /usr

  To run python -V and you would get:
  Python 2.6.6

• Step 4. Download, compile and install maven

  wget http://www.carfab.com/apachesoftware//maven/binaries/apache-maven-2.2.1-bin.tar.gz
  sudo tar -xvzf apache-maven-2.2.1-bin.tar.gz -C /usr/local/

  Add at the end of ~/.bashrc file

  export PATH=$PATH:/usr/local/apache-maven-2.2.1/bin/
  export JAVA_HOME=/usr

  and run:

  source ~/.bashrc

  so, you would to get when run mvn -v:

  Apache Maven 2.2.1 (r801777; 2009-08-06 14:46:01-0430)
  Java version: 1.6.0_22
  Java home: /usr/lib/jvm/java-6-sun-1.6.0.22/jre
  Default locale: en_US, platform encoding: UTF-8
  OS name: "linux" version: "2.6.26-2-686" arch: "i386" Family: "unix"

• Step 5. Installing geonode. The first thing is clone the repository:

  git clone git://github.com/GeoNode/geonode.git geonode

  then,

  cd geonode
  git submodule update --init
  python bootstrap.py --no-site-packages
  source bin/activate
  paver build
  django-admin.py createsuperuser --settings=geonode.settings
  paver host

Development GeoNode should be running at http://localhost:8000/

Installing a VM (Virtual machine) with VirtualBox

VirtualBox is a cross-platform virtualization application. In this post, we will use it in a Ubuntu (maverick) platform (host OS) and we will install Debian as a guest virtual OS in a following post. At first, you must to download it from:

http://www.virtualbox.org/wiki/Linux_Downloads

• Step 1. As an user with the necessary privileges to install packages (root or sudo user), run:

  sudo dpkg -i virtualbox-4.0_4.0.4-70112~Ubuntu~maverick_i386.deb

  VirtualBox will be installed in the Applications -> System Tools -> Oracle VM VirtualBox.

• Step 2. Now, you need to run the Oracle VM VirtualBox and to create a new virtual machine (VM) doing click in the New button or Ctrl-N
  
• Step 3. Click in the Next button:
  
• Step 4. To choice a VM name and OS type. We choice: Name: debian_test, Operating System: Linux, Version: Debian.
  
• Step 5. To select the amount of RAM. We choice 400 MB.
  
• Step 6. Virtual Hard Disk. Here we will use a new virtual hard disk with the recommended size, 8GB.
  
• Step 7. After it, VirtualBox show you a Wizard to create a new disk virtual. Click Next and select the Hard Disk Store Type. By default the storage type is a dynamically expanding storage.
  
• Step 8. The following step is to select the location where we want to save our virtual disk and select the size of it.
  
• Step 9. At the end, the wizard show you the summary. Now, we can see in the VirtualBox Manager out VM.
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