Burned

Posted on by

From a link you’re pretty sure you found over at Mark’s site, you find Alex King’s blog. Alex King makes WordPress, among other things. The thing among the other things that catches your attention most is this thing called Photos. Photos is kinda like Picasa, only Picasa runs from the client, and you’ve wished for something that runs from the server, where you actually store your photos on the massive (and massively underused) hard drive that you bought at Best Buy because it was a great deal at the time. Anyway, you get excited about Photos because it runs on the server (noted earlier), is pretty much free, and is in a language you kinda understand. So, you attempt to install it.

You’re psyched, because installing PHP applications is often about as simple as copying files to your web server, fiddling with some configuration files, and launching them in your browser. You copy the files, fiddle with the configuration files and launch them in your browser. It doesn’t work. Photos requires something called GD 2.0 or later. You think to yourself that you’ve got a relatively recent version of Redhat. Surely this is a common problem. Surely it must be mentioned in the documentation, perhaps under Frequently Asked Questions. You look; it’s not. Somewhere in the distance, you think you hear somebody laughing at you. This leaves you somewhat–but not completely–daunted, but you’ve installed difficult software in Linux before. “Surely Google will have an answer.”

You follow the rabbit hole a little deeper and find the GD site. You scan over the content, hoping for a quick solution to the problem, but answer is not forthcoming. There are huge chunks of text littered with phrases like “Xpm color bitmap loading” and “clipping rectangle respected in freetype text output.” You take a deep breath and plunge a little deeper, trying to find the text most meaningful to you and take the steps required to install this software. Now, remember, you tell yourself, you saw those lovely Photos screenshots and you know that the much coveted Picasa 2.0 won’t launch until May, and it still won’t run from the server or be free. This is, indeed, worth the effort.

So you download GD. The rabbit hole goes deeper. You have to…config it. Uh, and then you have to write some shell scripts. Update your RPMs. You have to partition your drives and patch your kernel. Compile your binaries. Check your version dependencies. Probably do that once or twice. Okay, not really all of that, but a lot of it.

You go back to your browser, and it seems like it’s working, and now you’re totally stoked. But, just a couple of clicks away, you find that same GD 2.0 message thing again. So you say to yourself, “Self,”–you chuckle because you never get sick of that joke–”perhaps I should do some more reading at the GD site.” You do, only to be shocked and dismayed by the fact that GD 2.0 comes with the latest version of PHP. You’re feeling decidely more daunted and go searching for an easy way to install PHP 4.3.x via a Redhat 9 RPM file. The only plausible solution you find is this, and it still doesn’t work.

You consider patching your version of PHP with a fix available at the GD site, but your version of PHP is even older than that. You consider downloading the source code for the latest version of PHP and building it from scratch. Then you think better of it. Then you try it anyway, only to get an error 15 minutes into the build process. You cry a little. You know that the only possible way you’re going to get PHP 4.3 (mind you: in order to even have GD 2.0, in order to install Photos 4.01) is by installing the Fedora operating system. You consider the data you have saved on your Redhat 9 setup and all the headache you went through to tweak it to your current liking.

You go out for some drinks. You think about it in the car. You come home and do some reading about Fedora and download some ISO images. You stay up too late to write about it.

Then you go to bed.

15 thoughts on “Burned”

  1. Another annal in the never-ending loop of “simple” computer tricks. Kill your computer. Pick up that little Gamecube controller and beat up Mario! It’s just so much simpler! Man… let us know if this thing ever actually works, and if it’s worth the hastle.

  2. Wow that’s quite a journey. If it is any consolation, WordPress is much easier to install than the photos hack, and we’re planning to add multimedia features similar to wpPhotos in a future version, not too far away. Having the latest version of PHP (with bundled GD support) never hurts though…

  3. I installed fedora on 2 machines in the past couple of days … overall i’m fairly impressed with it, as I have been with every redhat install for a while now. Nautilus is much faster than it used to be, and the cd burning support works a little bit nicer … but i think that ‘nicer’ is from the speed boosts, just feels much smoother.

    You no longer have to suffer through the redhat network registration process, and then endure all the update emails from them, which is a nice bonus.

    On the down side, It just crashed on me (about 30 minutes ago). I suspect its a kernel issue, i saw the same with Redhat 8 and 9 on that box as well (Dual 2.0 Ghz Xeon with 2GB of ram), an update solved the problem in both cases. But, be warned that it has crashed on me once in 2 days, an event that was marked with many cusses. ;-)

    Anyway … with yum, there is a clear upgrade path from version to version. Or at least, that is the gist I have gotten from reading the docs. Much like debians ‘dist-upgrade’ option … so keeping up to date with releases should be a little easier.

  4. Matt, he’s talking about my photo database (which requires GD 2), not the photos hack (which doesn’t require any image libraries since it doesn’t creat thumbnails).

  7. Mike, good to know that you’ve had some good success…though, I have to admit that Sean’s note about Debian makes it sound REALLY intriguing. :) Maybe when I’m not such a Linux pansy, I’ll try installing it.

  8. Don’t use debtakeover =)

    Unless you have crazy hardware, Debian GNU/Linux is very easy to install.
    You will want to install a testing/unstable system, b/c Debian stable (woody) is extremely stable, and therefore not cutting edge.

    There are some alternative “easy” distros based on Debian.
    Libranet http://www.libranet.com/ and of course Knoppix http://www.knopper.net/knoppix/index-en.html are good examples.
    http://www.linuxmafia.com/faq/Debian/installers.html has a large list.

    Once you learn how to use apt-get and dpkg, you will never leave Debian GNU/Linux.

  10. Problem I have with debian is, that to be current you have to run testing and unstable … and from my experience testing and unstable are both very unstable, when compared to redhat’s current desktop offering … which is fairly cutting edge (at least more so than Debian Woody ;-) ).

    My other issue with debian is that you are at the mercy of the debian package maintainers. Lets use “Webmin” as an example. When you install it via apt-get you get an older version, and not the complete webmin install. Its a very barebones install with a debian theme applied to it. Its typically better to forget about the debian package and download it from the website and install it yourself.

    I’ve messed with debian a good bit, ran it for 2 years on my powerbook and I have it running on my UltraSpac as well. And i’ve found that many packages drift from what is ‘normal’ for the program in question. Zope is another prime example, placing things in different directories than a default install would place them … Also, with all its components split up into packages I find it to be more difficult to maintain over time than just doing it by hand.

    I am /NOT/ trying to start a distro war here. Its an ‘each to his own’ type of thing, and I happen to find that redhat is much easier to maintain on both the desktop and the server than debian is. Just wanted to give Ken an alternate viewpoint and something to ponder … But, by all means give debian a try and see what you think. Not at all trying to discourage someone from giving it a go.

    On the topic of mepis: Still haven’t given it a try, mostly because i’m not a fan of KDE, which all the screen shots seem to have ;-) … I really should though. Its based outta where I live, at somepoint I think I might email the `em and see if we can get a demo at a lug meeting.

  11. Altp – I won’t start a distro war. To each his own.
    Debian has been great for me, and testing/unstable have been perfectly stable.

    I also like the totally open and non-corporate attitude.

  13. So, so funny. I don’t understand half of what’s going on and it’s still great. Very well written and lots of fun to read Ken!

  14. After your post I became interested in Alex Kings ‘photos’ .
    Then I looked at the pretty screenshots http://www.alexking.org/index.php?content=software/photos/content.php&page=screenshots .

    Requires http://www.alexking.org/software/photos/documentation/index.php?show=requirements PHP & MYSQL. Time to put that unused 1.5GB of hosting space to good use.

    I had the installation up and ready when I decided to take a quick look at the documentation. Then I noticed this little topic:
    Can I run photos on a Remote Web Server? http://www.alexking.org/software/photos/documentation/index.php?show=remote_server

    Always read the documentation. =) They would have killed my account quick when I began to process a few hundred MB of images.

  15. Hello,

    I’m currently having the same problem.. i have a good working RH 9 install, and i want to upgrade to GD2 .

    i’m stuck wiht PHP Version 4.2.2,

    tried a downloaded php-4.3.3-4.1.i386.rpm , tried installing gd-2.0.22.tar.gz, even tried php-4.3.4.tar.tar

    It all installs great, but when i restart apache, and look at a phpinfo(); it still says version 4.2.2

    Is it totally imposible to use GD2 width RH9?

    any ideas would be great