How to find which function does what in Drupal 6

A forum post describes how to find the right function by hacking a core file.

In Drupal 6, inside the theme() function of /includes/theme.inc, change line 617 from this:

$output = call_user_func_array($info['function'], $args);

To this:

$output = '<!-- begin ' . $info['function'] . ' -->' . call_user_func_array($info['function'], $args) . '<!-- end ' . $info['function'] . ' -->' ;

The advice about not doing this on a production site stands.

Unix timezone settings

Time zone stuff in UNIX isn't difficult in concept but it can be tricky to work out how a box is configured.

The current timezone is set by the /etc/localtime file, which is either a symlink, or a hard link, or a copy of a file in /usr/share/zoneinfo. If the file's timestamp is a long time ago it's a fair bet it's been configured this way for a while.

The files in /usr/share/zoneinfo contain the definitions of a time zone -- its offset from UTC and any daylight savings in use. The problem is working out which file is in use. It could be a symlink:

[root@server ~]# ls -l /etc/localtime
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 27 Jun 26 2008 /etc/localtime -> /usr/share/zoneinfo/Etc/GMT

Given the timestamp on the symlink to the GMT zone file is June last year I'd say it's likely that it's been configured this way (ie, GMT) for a long time.

Other boxes don't have symlinked timezone files:

[root@server ~]# ls -l /etc/localtime
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 118 Mar 4 2008 /etc/localtime

They might have a hard link (which is like having a file known by another name -- same contents, more than one name) to a zoneinfo file. You can try to work this out using find:

[root@server ~]# ls -l /etc/localtime
-rw-r--r-- 11 root root 118 Apr 13 2009 /etc/localtime

[root@server ~]# find /usr/share/zoneinfo -samefile /etc/localtime
/usr/share/zoneinfo/GMT0
/usr/share/zoneinfo/Greenwich
/usr/share/zoneinfo/GMT
/usr/share/zoneinfo/Etc/GMT0
/usr/share/zoneinfo/Etc/Greenwich
/usr/share/zoneinfo/Etc/GMT
/usr/share/zoneinfo/Etc/GMT-0
/usr/share/zoneinfo/Etc/GMT+0
/usr/share/zoneinfo/GMT-0
/usr/share/zoneinfo/GMT+0

You can see here that /etc/localtime and all the GMT zone files are hard links to the same file contents -- ie, the file contents that set the time to GMT, showing this box is in GMT.

If /etc/localtime isn't a symlink or a hard link it must be a straight copy of a zone file (or it's totally broken). You can work this out by MD5 summing /etc/localtime's contents against all the possible time zone files it could be. Get the MD5 sum (like an abbreviation of the contents) of /etc/localtime:

[root@server ~]# md5sum /etc/localtime
fcccbcf95c718cf2fdee557763e460be /etc/localtime

Then find other files with the same contents:

[root@server ~]# find /usr/share/zoneinfo/ -type f -exec md5sum {} \; | grep fcccbcf95c718cf2fdee557763e460be
fcccbcf95c718cf2fdee557763e460be /usr/share/zoneinfo/GMT+0
fcccbcf95c718cf2fdee557763e460be /usr/share/zoneinfo/GMT0
fcccbcf95c718cf2fdee557763e460be /usr/share/zoneinfo/Greenwich
fcccbcf95c718cf2fdee557763e460be /usr/share/zoneinfo/GMT
fcccbcf95c718cf2fdee557763e460be /usr/share/zoneinfo/posix/GMT+0
fcccbcf95c718cf2fdee557763e460be /usr/share/zoneinfo/posix/GMT0
fcccbcf95c718cf2fdee557763e460be /usr/share/zoneinfo/posix/Greenwich
fcccbcf95c718cf2fdee557763e460be /usr/share/zoneinfo/posix/GMT
fcccbcf95c718cf2fdee557763e460be /usr/share/zoneinfo/posix/Etc/GMT+0
fcccbcf95c718cf2fdee557763e460be /usr/share/zoneinfo/posix/Etc/GMT0
fcccbcf95c718cf2fdee557763e460be /usr/share/zoneinfo/posix/Etc/Greenwich
fcccbcf95c718cf2fdee557763e460be /usr/share/zoneinfo/posix/Etc/GMT
fcccbcf95c718cf2fdee557763e460be /usr/share/zoneinfo/posix/Etc/GMT-0
fcccbcf95c718cf2fdee557763e460be /usr/share/zoneinfo/posix/GMT-0
fcccbcf95c718cf2fdee557763e460be /usr/share/zoneinfo/Etc/GMT+0
fcccbcf95c718cf2fdee557763e460be /usr/share/zoneinfo/Etc/GMT0
fcccbcf95c718cf2fdee557763e460be /usr/share/zoneinfo/Etc/Greenwich
fcccbcf95c718cf2fdee557763e460be /usr/share/zoneinfo/Etc/GMT
fcccbcf95c718cf2fdee557763e460be /usr/share/zoneinfo/Etc/GMT-0
fcccbcf95c718cf2fdee557763e460be /usr/share/zoneinfo/GMT-0

So it looks like this server's /etc/localtime has the same contents as all the GMT files. This box is in GMT.

Streaming mp3 on Ubuntu linux

sudo aptitude install vlc

FTP client for Linux and Mac

Filezilla is brilliant, and extremely fast.

Taxonomy menu for Drupal

<?php
$vid = 1; /* <---- put correct vocabulary ID here */
$terms = taxonomy_get_tree($vid);
print "<div class=\"item-list\">";
print "<ul>";
foreach ( $terms as $term ) {
$tcount = taxonomy_term_count_nodes($term->tid);
print "<li>".
l($term->name." (".$tcount.")",'taxonomy/term/'.$term->tid, array('title' => $tcount." posts in ".$term->name)).
"</li>";
} /* end foreach */
print "</ul>";
print "</div>";
?>

Linux package managers

• rpm
• yum
• apt-get
• aptitude
  

Install programs on linux in a local directory

No need for root access.

$ ./configure --prefix=/home/user/mypackages
$ make
$ make install

Decode mp4 files on Mac 10.4

Use ffmpegX

Create a Perl module structure

h2xs -cn MyModule

How to use Catalyst to automatically create Perl DBIx::Class modules

UNTESTED:

1. install Catalyst

2. pretend like you're going to create a catalyst app

catalyst.pl MyFakeApp

3.

cd MyFakeApp
./script/myfakeapp_create.pl model MyModelName DBIC::Schema \
MyApp::SchemaClass create=static dbi:mysql:... user password


http://search.cpan.org/~rkitover/Catalyst-Model-DBIC-Schema-0.29/lib/Catalys
t/Helper/Model/DBIC/Schema.pm



one I did earlier

perl ./script/tagindexer_create.pl model RequestDB DBIC::Schema
TagIndexer::Schema create=static
'dbi:mysql:database=request;host=[ip address];port=3306' tagindexer
tagindexer