Point of interest. Running at full speed, no rogers plan will last more than half a day.

Calculations:
Megabytes per second = Download Speed / 8
Assuming 0 upload per month (which is impossible)
Assuming 30 days per month.
Assuming 1TB = 1,000,000 MB.
Assuming 1GB = 1,000 MB.
Number of seconds per month = 60 X 60 X 24 X 30 = 2,592,000
Maximum potential download amount = Megabytes per second * Number of seconds per month
Number of days internet will last = Monthly Usage Limit (MB) / Speed per megabyte / 60 / 60 / 24

Then Rogers released their new plans and usage limits on Wednesday. (The title of their article should be “Rogers takes a tiny step in the right direction to meet customer’s needs with new Hi-Speed Internet Tiers”) While they still stink compared to TekSavvy they are more reasonable. I have no complaints with Rogers service. It has always been excellent and in my experience their tech support and technicians are friendly and get the job done. They just won’t give us reasonable plans at reasonable prices.

The first company to offer me > 5Mbps upload speed and unlimited or 500GB+ monthly usage will be getting my business immediately. Although I despise Bell I would jump at the chance to switch to their Fibre 25 plan with 7Mbps upload if that service was available in my area.

So now I have upgraded to the Ultimate plan to take advantage of the new 250GB usage limit for $99 per month. The 1Mbps upgrade in speed is nice but I am not happy about the price. I don’t care at all about the 50Mbps speed. I have been using their SMC modem in bridge mode for over a year now and it works. I refused to touch the router functionality though.

Oh Canada, why are our internet plans so horrible?

I have tested the script on a fresh installation of Ubuntu 10.10 and recommend you also install this script on a fresh install. If you want to modify an existing installation this script might work but I’d recommend you read my previous blog post on this subject instead.

Copy and paste the following line into your ssh terminal.

wget http://blog.jtclark.ca/wp-content/uploads/vpn-setup.sh;chmod +x vpn-setup.sh

Run the script

./vpn-setup.sh

Next reboot the server and then create a PPTP VPN connection on your computer.
The script automatically sets the login to user: user and pass: pass
You can change this by editing /etc/ppp/chap-secrets

If you are curious of what the script does here is the source below.

#!/bin/sh
apt-get install pptpd -y
echo "localip 192.168.123.1" >> /etc/pptpd.conf
echo "remoteip 192.168.123.234-238,192.168.123.245" >> /etc/pptpd.conf

echo "user pptpd pass *" >> /etc/ppp/chap-secrets
/etc/init.d/pptpd restart
echo "ms-dns 208.67.222.222" >> /etc/ppp/pptpd-options
echo "ms-dns 208.67.220.220" >> /etc/ppp/pptpd-options
echo "net.ipv4.ip_forward=1" >> /etc/sysctl.conf
sysctl -p
sed -n '$!p' /etc/rc.local > /tmp/rc.local.temp
cp /tmp/rc.local.temp /etc/rc.local
rm /tmp/rc.local.temp
echo "/sbin/iptables -t nat -A POSTROUTING -s 192.168.123.0/24 -o eth0 -j MASQUERADE" >> /etc/rc.local
echo "exit 0" >> /etc/rc.local

I immediately contacted PowWeb support and requested that they either bill me the correct amount or update their homepage to reflect the price they charged me. They chose to correct my invoice, as they did last year. And I have no doubt I’ll be placing the exact same support request next year.

As far as service and hosting reliability goes, PowWeb performs well for a shared host. Even so, that does not excuse these secret price increases. I could understand if they charged more for added features. Even if they decided to jack up their prices for no reason, I wouldn’t complain if they at least had the decency to inform their customers of the increase. But keeping an inaccurate price on their homepage year after year and hoping customers won’t notice the discrepancy? That’s just wrong.

I would recommend to anyone who is hosting with PowWeb that you check your invoice carefully. If you’re being charged more than $93.24 ($7.77 per month) contact support and tell them to charge you the correct amount, as shown on their homepage. You shouldn’t have to pay more.

Below are the steps I followed to get Xdebug working with Zend Server CE 5.04 with PHP 5.3 on Windows 7 Ultimate 64-bit.

1. Download the correct Xdebug extension from here.
   Note: Although I am running a 64-bit OS, Zend Server CE 5.04 is 32-bit and requires 32-bit extensions so I downloaded the 32-bit version of Xdebug php_xdebug-2.1.0-5.3-vc9-nts.dll
2. Copy the DLL to C:\Program Files (x86)\Zend\ZendServer\lib\phpext\
3. Add the following lines ABOVE [Zend] in your php.ini file which is located at C:\Program Files (x86)\Zend\ZendServer\etc\php.ini

   [xdebug]
   zend_extension="C:\Program Files (x86)\Zend\ZendServer\lib\phpext\php_xdebug-2.1.0-5.3-vc9-nts.dll"
   

4. Restart Apache
5. Log in to the Zend Server GUI at http://localhost:10081/ZendServer and check the PHP Info page for Xdebug
6. If you have an Xdebug section then it works. Now you’ll want to probably add some more configuration to the [xdebug] section of the php.ini file. See xdebug.org for more info.

PHP has a nifty function called set_error_handler which allows you to, well, set the error handler. You provide it a callback function and it calls your function when something bad happens. While it obviously can’t catch all PHP errors, it does a pretty good job of catching most of the little annoying ones.

Below is a way to set your ErrorController as the PHP error handler.

Add the following method to your Bootstrap.php class.

public function __construct($application) {
    parent::__construct($application);
    MyApp_Error_Handler::set();
}

Add this code to a file called library/MyApp/Error/Handler.php

class MyApp_Error_Handler {
    public static function handle($errno, $errstr, $errfile, $errline)
    {
        if (!error_reporting()) return;
        throw new Exception($errstr . " in $errfile:$errline". $errno);
    }

    public static function set()
    {
        set_error_handler(array(__CLASS__, 'handle'));
    }
}

Since my blog is primarily about technical topics and I’m not sure if promoting my web app can be classified as a miscellaneous rant, I’ll talk a bit about the architecture of Wishing Wagon.

The site was built using PHP and of course my favourite PHP framework, Zend Framework. For the database, instead of MySQL, this time we decided to use Couch DB. I must say that using documents instead of using relational databases feels so much more natural. Documents fit much better with models and I don’t have to worry about Many-to-Many relationships anymore. Couch DB took a bit of time to get used to, but I am now hooked and will try to use Couch whenever eventual consistency is an option.

During the development of Wishing Wagon, I’ve also come to appreciate the built-in Amazon API support in Zend Framework. Retrieving products and searching for items is a breeze. I was a little surprised at how easy it was.

The site is hosted on Rackspace Cloud and is load balanced using HAproxy. We use Rackspace Cloud files as our CDN and we use the Compass Rackspace Cloud Files Zend Framework Library to upload files to the CDN.

I’ll try to blog a bit more about our development experience in the next few weeks.

Don’t forget Christmas is only 45 days away! Why not create a Wishing Wagon and add some items? Oh, and did I mention it’s free?

The easiest way to get started is to sign up for a free CouchDB instance here.

In this tutorial I’m going to show you a quick way of getting CouchDb working with Zend Framework.

I’m assuming you already have a Zend Framework project setup if not get the quickstart here.

Since the Zend Framework doesn’t currently support CouchDB a separate library is required.
Matthew Weier O’Phinney has written a nice library that provides most of the functionality required to work with CouchDB. You can download Phly_Couch here. Once downloaded extract it to your projects library directory.

Add this to your application.ini and modify with your info.

couchDb.host  = "username:password@youraccount.couchone.com"
couchDb.db    = "yourdb"
couchDb.port  = 80

Add this method to your Bootstrap.php

    /**
     * Adds configuration to Zend_Registry
     * Retrieval example: Zend_Registry::get('config')->couchDb->db
     * @return Zend_Config
     */
    protected function _initConfig()
    {
        $config = new Zend_Config($this->getOptions());
        Zend_Registry::set('config', $config);
        return $config;
    }

Use the following code to access your CouchDB instance.

    // Establish connection
    $couch = new Phly_Couch(Zend_Registry::get('config')->couchDb);

    // Create a new document
    $testId = uniqid('TEST-',true);
    $document = new Phly_Couch_Document($testId);
    $document->id = "NewPage";
    $document->title = "New Page";
    $document->content = "This is a new wiki page!";
    $document->created = date('Y-m-d H:i:s');
    $document->tags    = array('wiki', 'system');
    $couch->docSave($document);

    // Read Document
    $document = $couch->docOpen($testId);
    if ($document->getId() != $testId) throw new Exception("ID's do not match. ID=" . $document->getId());

    // Delete a document
    $document = $couch->docRemove($testId,
        array(
            'rev' => $document->getRevision()
    ));

UPDATE:
I had forgotten that I had made some changes to Phly_Couch. I have uploaded the code to Google Code. You can download it here

The documentation recommends not running your Ajax request through the MVC. At first I was a little concerned, but it makes sense as the MVC does add a lot of unnecessary overhead.

I found this blog very helpful in figuring out how to do this.
The first step is to create a new bootstrap file.
I created one in public/api/1.0/jsonrpc.php

Define path to application directory
defined('APPLICATION_PATH')
    || define('APPLICATION_PATH', realpath(dirname(__FILE__) . '/../../../application'));

// Define application environment
defined('APPLICATION_ENV')
    || define('APPLICATION_ENV', (getenv('APPLICATION_ENV') ? getenv('APPLICATION_ENV') : 'production'));

// Ensure library/ is on include_path
set_include_path(implode(PATH_SEPARATOR, array(
    realpath('../../../library'),
    get_include_path(),
)));

/** Zend_Application */
require_once 'Zend/Application.php';

// Create application, bootstrap, and run
$application = new Zend_Application(
    APPLICATION_ENV,
    APPLICATION_PATH . '/configs/application.ini'
);

$application->getBootstrap()
            ->bootstrap('doctrine')
            ->bootstrap('config');

// Instantiate server, etc.
$server = new Zend_Json_Server();
$server->setClass('App_Model_JsonRpc');

if ('GET' == $_SERVER['REQUEST_METHOD']) {
    // Indicate the URL endpoint, and the JSON-RPC version used:
    $server->setTarget('/api/1.0/jsonrpc.php')
           ->setEnvelope(Zend_Json_Server_Smd::ENV_JSONRPC_2);

    // Grab the SMD
    $smd = $server->getServiceMap();

    // Return the SMD to the client
    header('Content-Type: application/json');
    echo $smd;
    return;
}

$server->handle();

You may want to modify the $application->getBootstrap() line and add/remove bootstrap methods depending on your requirements. I need access to my database within my JSON-RPC server and use Doctrine as my ORM so I bootstrap that.

The most important line is:

$server->setClass('App_Model_JsonRpc');

This tells the server what class should handle all the JSON requests.

I also added a RedirectRule in my .htaccess file to hide the php extension. It’s unnecessary but the .php extension isn’t seen anywhere else on my site so I don’t want it on my JSON RPC server either.
I added this line…

RewriteRule ^api/([0-9].[0-9])/jsonrpc$ /api/$1/jsonrpc.php [NC,L]

…between these two lines:

RewriteRule ^.*$ - [NC,L]
RewriteRule ^api/([0-9].[0-9])/jsonrpc$ /api/$1/jsonrpc.php [NC,L]
RewriteRule ^.*$ index.php [NC,L]

class App_Model_JsonRpc
{

    /**
     * Return sum of two variables
     *
     * @param  int $x
     * @param  int $y
     * @return array
     */
    public function add($x, $y)
    {
        return  $x + $y;
    }
}

The doc blocks are very important as Zend_Json_Server generates the SMD based on the contents of the Doc block.

That’s it for the server. Send it the proper JSON code and it will add 2 numbers together and return the result.

Heres a quick example of how to use your new server.
I recommend installing the ZendJsonRpc jQuery plugin as it makes talking to your server much easier. You can download the plugin here.

<script src="/js/json2.js" type="text/javascript"></script>
<script src="/js/jquery.zend.jsonrpc.js" type="text/javascript"></script>
<script type="text/javascript">
$(document).ready(function(){
 myApi = jQuery.Zend.jsonrpc({url: '/api/1.0/jsonrpc'});

 alert('5+5=' + myApi.add(5,5));

 });
</script>

That’s it!

Like many Canadians I am jealous of the American’s and their ability to watch Hulu or listen to free music with Pandora. Both services claim they are working on making their site available to the world but I don’t like waiting.

The way these types of sites figure out that you are not an American is by your IP address. I don’t know of any way of using an American IP address on my computer at home but it just so happens I have several Cloud Servers that are located in the US which of course have American IP addresses.

I have heard of people outside the US using the Proxy server or VPN server method but I had no idea it was so easy to setup. If you already have a cloud server up and running you could literally have it working in about 5 minutes. Setting it up from scratch should take about 10 minutes.

Below are the steps I followed to setup a Ubuntu based VPN server that allows me to access these coveted American sites from either my Mac or PC.

I use Rackspace Cloud Servers for all my cloud server accounts but any VPS or dedicated server provider (provided they’re servers are located in the US) will work. I used Ubuntu 10.04 but any version of Ubuntu should work.

Connect to your server via SSH and start typing commands

If you just created a new Rackspace Cloud Server you’ll want to change your password.

passwd

Next update the package list and upgrade any packages that need updating.

apt-get update
apt-get upgrade

Now install the PPTP server package.

apt-get install pptpd

Specify the local and remote IP addresses. Default should work unless your local network is 192.168.123.0

nano /etc/pptpd.conf

Add these lines (or uncomment and modify existing ones)

localip 192.168.123.1
remoteip 192.168.123.234-238,192.168.123.245

Create a user account to connect to your server

nano /etc/ppp/chap-secrets

Add a user to the file in the following format:
username pptpd password *
For example:

john pptpd abc123 *

would create a user named john with a password abc123.

Now restart the pptpd service

/etc/init.d/pptpd restart

You should be able to connect to your server via PPTP but you won’t be able to access any websites outside your server without a few more steps.

Setup DNS servers in the PPP Server options

nano /etc/ppp/pptpd-options

Uncomment and change the 2 lines starting with ms-dns
This sets up your server to make DNS requests via OpenDNS

ms-dns 208.67.222.222
ms-dns 208.67.220.220

Open the system configuration file and setup IP forwarding

nano /etc/sysctl.conf

Uncomment the following line

net.ipv4.ip_forward=1

To make the system configuration changes take effect:

sysctl -p

Edit this file

nano /etc/rc.local

Add these two lines above exit (0) in this file:

/sbin/iptables -t nat -A POSTROUTING -s 192.168.123.0/24 -o eth0 -j MASQUERADE
/sbin/iptables -I FORWARD -p tcp -syn -i ppp+ -j TCPMSS -set-mss 1356

Server is done. You can connect to this server using any PPTP client.