A nerds discoveries

Some time it is necessary to fool your PHP application to test functionality related to a “current date”.

Fooling php cli is simple using faketime:

Say you have this PHP script:

Rendering this script with php through faketime will give you results like this:

The same can be achieved using the datefudge command:

Faking time for a webapplication

Faking time for a web application is not that simple since apache will fork a process for each request and thus create a new php processes.
In this post I will show you how to use FakeTime Preload Library to fake time system wide while running tests on a web application.

First I need to install faketimelib as described on the librarys homepage.
In short:

For the demonstration I will use a php script like this:

Running this script should yield something like:

Now I create a file in my home folder, faketimerc, with a new future time. I will use this file in different ways to show how I can manipulate the time.

If you now create an environment variable, FAKETIME, give it a future time, and running the same script would yield something like this:

As you can see, the processes you run while the environment variable is set to a future time will get a fake time. Once the variable is unset new processes will get normal time.

This can be achieved also by creating a file. “.faketimerc” in your home folder:

If you want to change time for a php application that runs though apache you may want to set the fake time system wide so that the php processes spowned use the faked time. To do this you need to create a file, /etc/.faketimerc, just the same as the one I created in my home folder.

I will use w3m for this demonstration. I assume a normal ubuntu server with apache2 installed.

As you can see, the date command and when rendering the script with php, gives me the fake time, but when rendering the script through apache I loose the fake time. This is because the environment variable LD_PRELOAD is not set for the apache process.

To fix this I need to set LD_PRELOAD for apache by editing /etc/apache/envvars. Lets test it again:

Fake time!

PS! If you also want your PostgreSQL server to use fake time:

In case you should wonder what is the difference between the /usr/bin/ubuntu-vm-builder and /ur/bin/vmbuilder, there is no difference.

Both scripts use the same python VMBuilder library, and contain accactly the same code…

You want to create a VirtualBox with Ubuntu 10.04.3 using Veewee, but there is no ubuntu-10.04.3 template?

Here is what you can do:

Download (git clone) a copy of veewee from GitHub and copy the templates.

To verify that you have the new templates:

Recently I discovered that the virtual server I was working on did not give me the usual bash completion I’m so used to on my Kubuntu workstations. Working on git repositories and upgrading web applications made this to an itch I just had to scratch.

After a bit of searching it appeared that I was missing a file: /etc/bash_completion. Next I discovered that there is a /etc/bash_completion.d/ directory and under this a file named ‘git’. I copied the bash_completion file from my workstation and followed the instruction in /etc/bash_completion.d/git and suddenly I had bash completion and a prompt that gave me branch name and the status of the git repository I was currently in.

Just to give you a hint, here is the comment from the /etc/bash_completion.d/git file:

I think I like this:

Wish you could set up an account in Thunderbird manually?

You’re not alone.

The trick: Hit the “stop” button as soon as you enter the automatic setup window and set your settings manually. If you wait to press “stop” it will not stop and the best thing you can do is to cansel and start over again.

Ref: http://www.givesatisfaction.com/mozilla_messaging/topics/can_t_setup_an_imap_connection_in_thunderbird_3

Taglist uses exuberant ctags, which supports many languages including PHP. I use vim on a daily basis to edit PHP files. Often classes and functions have PHPDoc and some like to use the words ‘class’ or ‘function’ in their comments. Fair enough, but ctags regex strings ignores that lines may have a preceding ‘*’ or ‘//’ and thus create tags of funny classes and functions. In some cases browsing large files of PHP source code with taglist is pointless.

The solution to this is writing your own ctags configuration file (~/.ctags) and letting ctags know what regex strings You want to tag your PHP files with:

I’ve used MyPasswordSafe for some time, but after I installed Kubuntu Karmic Koala AMD64 it would’nt start. I googled the Internet for a better program and settled with KeepassX.

Next trouble was to move my passwords from MyPasswordSafe to KeepassX. Both programs can export/import XML files, so I made a PHP file that did the job. I even created a project on githut for it.

I work as an consultant and thus write code for different customers that may have quite different coding standards and license policies. Adapting to a customer often involves changing many files in the vim config files and plugins, but after I initialized a git repo in my ~/.vim folder I only have to change branch for each customer I work for. git br (git branch) gives me a neat list of predefined customer settings to choose from. Then its just git co [customer] and start to work.

My college came by my desk today wanting to know how to go back in time with vim. He had been undoing and redoing a lot and suddenly realised he had messed up his buffers. I had never heard about going back in time with vim, but Google had the answer on this post: lifehacker.com/202093/go-back-in-text-file-time-with-vim-70.

Apparently the past is but a

away!