When you want to use non-positional command line arguments together with positional you may use getopts to parse non-positional arguments and than use $OPTIND environment variable set by getopts to access positional arguments.

Of course positional arguments should follow non-positional ones. Let’s assume you plan to have following syntax:

script.sh [options] ARG1 ARG2

At first you have to parse non-positional arguments which will be options in this case with getopts:

while getopts "h:u:p:d:" flag; do
case "$flag" in
    h) HOSTNAME=$OPTARG;;
    u) USERNAME=$OPTARG;;
    p) PASSWORD=$OPTARG;;
    d) DATABASE=$OPTARG;;
esac
done

Than you may want to ensure that required positional arguments were passed:

if [ $(( $# - $OPTIND )) -lt 1 ]; then
    echo "Usage: `basename` [options] ARG1 ARG2"
    exit 1
fi

Later you can access positional arguments using array expansion ${@:START:1}:

ARG1=${@:$OPTIND:1}
ARG2=${@:$OPTIND+1:1}

If you need to get an absolute path of the script folder within the running shell script you may use readlink and dirname commands:

#!/bin/sh
echo $(dirname $(readlink -f $0))

If you experience open_basedir restrictions in PHP 5.3.0 while active open_basedir path should allow script execution this is a known PHP bug: Bug #48744 and Bug #48880.

Source of this issue lies in fopen_wrappers.c and is already fixed in svn.

Here is the patch you can safely apply to PHP 5.3.0 sources to fixing this issue:

--- php/php-src/branches/PHP_5_3/main/fopen_wrappers.c	2009/06/18 06:38:30	282359
+++ php/php-src/branches/PHP_5_3/main/fopen_wrappers.c	2009/07/31 21:09:45	286602
@@ -93,7 +93,7 @@
 
 	p = (char **) (base + (size_t) mh_arg1);
 
-	if (stage == PHP_INI_STAGE_STARTUP || stage == PHP_INI_STAGE_SHUTDOWN) {
+	if (stage == PHP_INI_STAGE_STARTUP || stage == PHP_INI_STAGE_SHUTDOWN || stage == PHP_INI_STAGE_ACTIVATE || stage == PHP_INI_STAGE_DEACTIVATE) {
 		/* We're in a PHP_INI_SYSTEM context, no restrictions */
 		*p = new_value;
 		return SUCCESS;

The best way to use PAM authentication in Apache looks to be external authentication with help of pwauth tool. Unfortunately this tool has quite tricky installation procedure. Here is a great article with detailed information about compiling, testing and installing pwauth under Ubuntu.

If you have a problem with PEAR which comes with PHP 5.2.10 and receiving messages like “pear.php.net is using a unsupported protocal” most probably you have broken PEAR channel data files located at PREFIX/lib/php/.channels/. You need to replace them with files from working installation of PEAR.

Here is an archived .channels/ folder with working data files.

Update: Official solution is simpler – just remove .channels directory and run pear update-channels.

cd `pear config-get php_dir`
rm -r .channels
pear update-channels

It took a while for me to find out how to leave Apache 2.2 running in a foreground, since old -F switch were not available. So, to leave apache in a foreground u need to run it with -D FOREGROUND command line parameter.

/user/bin/httpd -D FOREGROUND

Recently when I decided to move db to new server no clear info found about how to do that.
Very simple.
Old server: FreeBSD 6.2-RELEASE amd64. Mysql: 5.0.51a FreeBSD port: mysql-server-5.0.51a
New server: FreeBSD 7.2-RELEASE i386 Mysql: 5.0.77 FreeBSD port: mysql-server-5.0.77_1

As far as I had a default directories and conf’s of mysql, copying of /var/db/mysql to new location did work. Both sides mysql servers should be stopped during transfer. Extra check of /var/db/mysql to be owned and chmoded to 700 to mysqld server’s user.
That was easier than I thought.

Ever wanted to use XDebug for remote debugging in Zend Studio for Eclipse instead of standard Zend Debugger? Here is a good post about how to do this.

A simple JavaScript solution for recursively setting timeout and running some operation periodically with maximum number of iterations support and only anonymous functions.

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(function(){
    var t_count = 0;
    (function(delay, count) {
        setTimeout(function() {
            if (count && ++t_count > count) return;
            // do your stuff here
            setTimeout(arguments.callee, delay);
        }, delay);
    })(200, 10);
})();

If you will omit second argument to anonymous function than operation will run infinitely.

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(function(){
    var t_count = 0;
    (function(delay, count) {
        setTimeout(function() {
        //...
        }, delay);
    })(200);
})();

Its even possible to constantly increase delay between operations.

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(function(){
    var t_count = 0;
    (function(delay, count) {
        setTimeout(function() {
        //...
        }, delay * 0.5);
    })(200);
})();

What’s the difference between function(){}() and (function(){})() JavaScript constructions? Both are right away executed anonymous functions. I have asked this question to myself mainly because of context where I have used them and they seemed to be equal to me:

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var f1 = function(){
    return 'value1';
}();
 
var f2 = (function(){
    return 'value2';
})();

I was assigning return value from function to a variable and it worked the same good for both versions with and without extra set of parentheses. After playing a bit and investigating jQuery code it become clear to me that the difference is in a standalone execution. Function with extra set parentheses you can be executed anonymously while variant without parentheses can only be used in a right side of assignment.

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// does not work (syntax error)
function(){
    return 'value1';
}();
 
// works fine
(function(){
    return 'value1';
})();