Using the dscl Utility

With the wonder of Google searching and the generous comments of others I found out about the dscl utility.

Listing Host Entries

To see what is listed for your hosts at any time just run this command:

dscl localhost -readall /Local/Default/Hosts

Adding a New Entry

In this example I am going to have the snow.ftd host point to my 127.0.0.1 IP address:

sudo dscl localhost -create /Local/Default/Hosts/snow.ftd IPAddress 127.0.0.1

You should now be able to ping snow.ftd and have it resolve to your local computer.

Removing an Existing Entry

If you decide you do not want an entry anymore just run this command to remove it:

sudo dscl localhost -delete /Local/Default/Hosts/snow.ftd

Reading the BSD Flat File

It was also noted that you can read the BSD flat file using this command:

dscl localhost -readall /BSD/local/Hosts

Step 1: Download Needed Files

The first step is to download all the files you will need. Since the downloads usually take some time we’ll get them out of the way first.

For my installation I wanted to get more familiar with the Server edition of Ubuntu and to require fewer resources. You should be able to do a similar installation with the Desktop edition.

• Download VirtualBox – The official VirtualBox download page.
• Download Ubuntu – To download the Server edition you will need to find a mirror that hosts the installer images. Once you find a mirror navigate to the 9.10 directory and find the download link for the ubuntu-9.10-server-i386.iso file.
• Download ColdFusion – The official Developer Edition Download is available on the Adobe ColdFusion page. Download the Linux 32 bit installer.

Step 2: Install VirtualBox

Once you have downloaded all the files, run the VirtualBox installer.

If you would like to learn more about VirtualBox the installation comes with a user manual or you can download a pdf copy from their download page.

Step 3: Create an Ubuntu Virtual Machine

Click the New icon in VirtualBox to start the wizard for adding a new VM.

1. Click Next to start the wizard.
2. Enter Ubuntu CF for the Name of the VM.
3. Select Linux and Ubuntu in the OS Type drop downs.
4. Click Next.
5. Click Next to accept the default amount of RAM. (You can adjust if you want to…)
6. Click Next to create a new hard disk image to use for the VM.
   1. Click Next to start the wizard .
   2. Click Next to create a dynamically expanding storage.
   3. Click Next to accept the default name and size.
   4. Click Finish to accept the choices for the disk image.
7. Click Finish to end the wizard.

Step 4: Install Ubuntu

Now that there is a VM setup to hold the guest Ubuntu system we need to install Ubuntu on it.

In VirtualBox Double Click on the Ubuntu CF listed in the left column to start up the VM. Since this is the first time you are starting the VM it will bring a up a First Run Wizard to guide you in setting up the new VM.

1. Click Next to start the wizard.
2. Change the Media Source to Image File and click the Other... icon.
   1. Click the Add icon along the top.
   2. Select the ubuntu-9.10-server-i386.iso file we downloaded earlier.
   3. Click Select with the ubuntu-9.10-server-i386.iso item selected.
3. Click Next to continue.
4. Click Finish to end the wizard.

The VM should now startup and bring up the installation the Ubuntu. I’m not going to go into the details of installing Ubuntu here, so just continue with the next step once Ubuntu installation is complete. Also, since we are going to be using apache you may wish to have the setup create a LAMP server configuration when choosing features or you can install it manually afterwards.

Step 5: Setup Guest Additions

In order to have the Shared Folders work we will need to install the Guest Additions.

Before we install the Guest Additions we will need to install dkms:

sudo apt-get install dkms

To mount the Guest Additions disc image to the VM press Command + D or select Devices > Install Guest Additions... from the VM menu. Then install the Guest Additions by running:

cd /cdrom

sudo sh ./VBoxLinuxAdditions-x86.run

Step 6: Setup Shared Folders

One of the goals when creating the virtual machine was to be able to edit the files natively but run them on the guest operating system that reflects the production environment.

With shared folders we are able to use a local directory as a share on the guest VM.

Before we add the shared folder we need to have a folder to share. For this example I’m using the directory I created at /Users/randy/Documents/cf9/.

With the VM powered off edit the Settings and select the Shared Folder icon.

1. Click the Add a new shared folder definition icon on the right side.
2. Enter the Folder Path (/Users/randy/Documents/cf9/) or select Other... from the drop down and locate the directory.
3. Enter the name you would like the share to be referenced as in the Folder Name field. In this case I am going to call it cf9.

Now that we have the shared folder available to the VM we want it to mount the share each time the VM starts. To do this we startup the Ubuntu VM and edit the /etc/fstab file and add the following line at the end of the file (note that you will need to change the username to match your user):

cf9	/home/randy/Documents/cf9	vboxsf	uid=randy,gid=users	0	0

You will also need to create a blank directory at /home/randy/Documents/cf9 that the share will mount to.

The next time your VM is started it should have access to /Users/randy/Documents/cf9 on the host machine at /home/randy/Documents/cf9 on the guest machine.

Step 7: Enable Port Forwarding

To setup the port forwarding you will need to stop the VM. In the terminal run the following commands to setup the port forwarding. (Note that "Ubuntu CF" needs to match the name of the VM created above.)

VBoxManage setextradata "Ubuntu CF" "VBoxInternal/Devices/pcnet/0/LUN#0/Config/guesthttp/Protocol" TCP
VBoxManage setextradata "Ubuntu CF" "VBoxInternal/Devices/pcnet/0/LUN#0/Config/guesthttp/GuestPort" 80
VBoxManage setextradata "Ubuntu CF" "VBoxInternal/Devices/pcnet/0/LUN#0/Config/guesthttp/HostPort" 8580

This will change the VM settings to have the guest port of 80 (which is the default apache port) of the guest forwarded to port 8580 on the host. Without this you would not be able to talk to the guest operating system.

Step 8: Install ColdFusion

Since we already downloaded the installer for ColdFusion we just need to get that file to the VM. Luckily we already setup a shared folder so if you move the installer to the /Users/randy/Documents/cf9/ directory it will be available in the VM.

To run the ColdFusion installer:

cd /home/randy/Documents/cf9/

chmod +x ColdFusion_9_WWE_linux.bin

sudo ./ColdFusion_9_WWE_linux.bin

This should start the installer. During the installation, apache should be configured to run with ColdFusion.

Step 9: Test Environment

To test that the development environment is working correctly you should be able to place an index.cfm file in your /Users/randy/Documents/cf9/ directory. Make sure that you place some CFML in the file to test that ColdFusion is doing it’s thing. Then visit http://localhost:8580/ in a browser on your host to test out the new development environment!

This is not a completely automated solution, there is more that you could do to improve the process, but it should save a lot of the time normally spent updating WordPress.

Note: the provided script will only work if you do the WordPress install using subversion and in the domain/sub-domain’s html/ directory.

Installing WordPress

Yes, there is a 1-click install for installing WordPress on the (gs), but I don’t use it. Here is how I install WordPress on a domain or sub-domain (ex: blog.site.org):

1. Ensure that you have an alternate domain or sub-domain created that has an empty html/ directory.
2. Find the latest tag listed in the WordPress repository. (ex: 2.8.3)
3. SSH into the (gs) as the serveradmin.
4. cd domains/blog.site.org/html
5. svn checkout http://svn.automattic.com/wordpress/tags/2.8.3/ ./ --force

Once the svn checkout is complete you should be able to visit the install page (ex: blog.site.org/wp-admin/install.php) and finish the installation of WordPress like normal.

I also suggest you take steps to harden your WordPress install.

Upgrading Many WordPress Installs at Once

When you learn of a new version of WordPress you can do the following to easily upgrade all of your installations at once.

1. SSH into the (gs) as the serveradmin.
2. You will need to upload the updateWP bash script to your serveradmin home directory (~/) if it does not already exist.
3. Run the bash script with the new version number: ./updateWP.sh 2.8.4
4. The script will look at each of your domains to see if you have WordPress installed. If it finds WordPress it will switch to the new tag.
5. After all the installs are updated you can view the updateWP.log to see all of the installations that were completed. On some tags you may need to go to each of the /wp-admin/ page and manually tell it to update the database. You can check if this is necessary by visiting one of your WordPress install’s /wp-admin/ directory.

Using the Sun Java

I started off by doing your standard Google search and came up with this page listed promently on the Ubuntu community site:

https://help.ubuntu.com/community/EclipseIDE

I followed the instructions to get the Java 6 from Sun installed on the system. But I stopped after the install of Java 6 since my install is basically a download of eclipse it wasn’t going to have the /etc/eclipse/java_home that was described on the community page.

With a little more searching I came across this page which gave a brief description his installation. From his post I edited my ~/.bashrc file and added in the export JAVA_HOME=/usr/lib/jvm/java-6-sun/ so that my default JAVA_HOME would be the sun java.

Getting Eclipse

To get the latest eclipse distribution I went to the eclipse download page and downloaded the eclipse classic, my preferred base distro. Once I had the file I extracted the eclipse directory. I’m not a linux guru and didn’t know the ‘best’ place to put the eclipse directory so i put it in /opt/.

Running Eclipse

Once I had the application in the directory I decided to add it to my applications menu. I did so by right clicking on the ‘Applications’ menu and selecting the ‘Edit Menus’ option. From there I went into the Applications > Programming menu on the left side and created a ‘New Item’. I chose the type of ‘Application’ and a name of ‘Eclipse’. For the command I entered ‘/opt/eclipse/eclipse -vm /usr/lib/jvm/java-6-sun/bin/java’ just to make sure that eclipse was being loaded with the correct jvm.

Using Eclipse

So far I have not had any problems with any of the plugins that I commonly use (CFEclipse, Subclipse, etc) that aren’t found on all system.

That’s what I did to get Eclipse 3.4 Ganymede running on Ubuntu 8.04.1 Hardy Heron, so enjoy!