Install LAMP in ElementaryOS

Just found this tutorial on trying out LAMP in ElementaryOS here. Might as well be blogged here so I can get back at it when trying it in the future.

Elementary Tweaks

Well, I like smaller fonts and I've tried Elementary OS Luna. I like it and I'm searching a way to make the default fonts smaller. Just so I have more spaces to work on, especially when I code and read. Luckily I found a solution to download the tweak and make the fonts/icons custom sizes in Elementary Luna.

This is how I did it. Hope you guys find it useful. Run this in your terminal.

sudo apt-add-repository ppa:versable/elementary-update
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install elementary-tweaks

And if anyone is interested in my setting, here's my screenshot. You can find it in System Settings/Tweaks btw.



Thanks everyone!

USB Driver for Samsung Phones

Recently I tried Android Development and my phone is Samsung Galaxy. When I download Android Studio I can't seem to see my phone connected to the IDE. I just found out I haven't installed the Android USB driver for Samsung Phones. This is the link to download the driver and it works, at least for me. Please comment below on your experiences on setting up Android Studio with your Samsung Phone.

Hosting FTP server in your local machine

I use this method to share some files with my friends across the internet that is too large for Dropbox to handle. I tried hosting SQL data that's around 3G in size so I wanted to try FTP approach.

I installed XAMPP and it has useful stuffs for HTTP and FTP projects. I use it once with my PHP development, but that's it -- nothing FTP related. This is a tutorial on how to basically set-up FTP server locally to host data to be shared by friends, etc.

Once XAMPP is installed, we can directly go to the Control Panel.

Clicking the Admin for FileZilla FTP Server administration might alert you with Security Warning, just allow access to it. Click OK to Connect to Server. We are now presented with the FileZilla server Administration interface. Go to Edit->Users to add users. I usually just add temporary users who can access specific files to be shared periodically, that means I'll disable it once I'm done with the file share and also I don't usually leave FTP server running. Turning it off after use is a good practice.

Adding user is at the right side of the Dialog with Users group box. Click Add and type any user you want, I'm fond of having "test/tset" credentials so we'll use it here. Now check the Password check box to add password to the user. Type in "tset", as in reverse of test. That way it's easy to remember. :D You can of course choose your own username and password. To share file(s) or folder(s) to this user click Shared Folder. Add Shared Folder by clicking Add and browsing for the directory. I normally leave Read permission by default, at least the user can't do damage to the directory. Click OK and we are done!

Now type the credentials we created (test/tset) and you will be redirected to the shared directory we configured. Sample image below for confirmation. Of course, I didn't share my 3G SQL data, lol.

That's it! Have fun everyone!

Can't access IIS 7 from another Computer, not anymore!

Upon fresh installation of my Windows 7 box, I tried to install IIS so I can play with ASP.NET web and web setup project. One problem I encountered after the installation is, although I can access it locally via localhost or the IP Address (192.168.1.32, ie), I can't access it from my other boxes. I had 2 machines and other VMWare installed so I wanted to see from outside of the machine which IIS is installed. Failed miserably.

Not quite though. The simple solution is just to enable the port 80 on my Firewall. For Windows 7 it's in the Control Panel->System and Security->Windows Firewall and clicking the "Allow a program or feature through Windows Firewall". Click the Change settings and check "World Wide Web Services (HTTP)". That's it, brilliant! :)

Unhiding file extensions and display full directory path in Explorer (Windows 7)

This maybe odd and simple but I just want to put this on the net for me to remember. Thing is, there's no menu bar for the explorer in Windows 7 until you accidentally hit Alt button.

The folder options can be seen when hitting the Alt button and going to Tools->Folder options... Also we can find it in the Control Panel and search for Folder options.

Checking the display the full path in the title bar will show the full directory path of the explorer window. This helps me remember what directory is this explorer currently on. Unchecking Hide extensions on the other hand helps me know the file extensions and possibly rename it. Right clicking in explorer and clicking New Text Document is what I usually do when creating a script such as PHP or Python. This way I can rename the new document to be of PHP or Python extension.

Guess that's it, until then. Ciao!

Port forwarding with Zyxel router and XAMPP

Better late than never. I really planned to have a home-based web server so that I can explore a little bit of systems administration, just simply. I'm not really much of an administrator but it would be cool if I know a bit about this stuff. I had a little background with PHP and web development so I think I can handle it. Gladly it's not that difficult. With a little bit of installations and configuration, and we're done.

First off, install XAMPP. Download the application from their website and install. Just accept the default options and we're good to go. I got a little info with XAMPP and Lithium for further exploration here. So accessing the host where you install the XAMPP will get you the web server's default page. In my case, it's localhost and it displays the XAMPP default page. Things are looking good.

I'll give details on installation of XAMPP later in my other blog post.

And now for the port forwarding bit. Port forwarding means you forward a port to a specific server hosting whatever you want. Be it a web server or an SMTP or anything you want. This can be done in the router. I use Zyxel as this is a fee package from my ISP so I'll be dealing with it. I must say if you have a different router than I am, I cannot guarantee a reply (or any help at all). Adding a new server to forward a port to can be done in NAT section under Network. You can login and go to Advanced Wizard to view the configuration. Go to Port Forwarding tab and add the server you want to host. In my case I added 192.168.1.35 (my dev PC) and I'm hosting port 8080 for my Apache Web Server.

That's it, ask a friend to access you public IP and share info with them.