Simple Postgresql Cron Backup

Here is a very simple method to backup your postgresql DB using a cron job and the pg_dump command. The main problem people encounter when trying to automate the pg_dump command is the password input. Now you could easily create a local user with no password, but why would you want to do that.

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Installing Mongrel with Ruby 1.9

Installing mongrel on ruby 1.9 has caused problems for many different people as has been reported on isitruby19.com.

Running gem install mongrel produces the following error.

http11.c: In function ‘http_field’:
http11.c:77: error: ’struct RString’ has no member named ‘ptr’
http11.c:77: error: ’struct RString’ has no member named ‘len’
http11.c:77: warning: left-hand operand of comma expression has no effect
http11.c: In function ‘header_done’:
http11.c:172: error: ’struct RString’ has no member named ‘ptr’
http11.c:174: error: ’struct RString’ has no member named ‘ptr’
http11.c:176: error: ’struct RString’ has no member named ‘ptr’
http11.c:177: error: ’struct RString’ has no member named ‘len’
http11.c: In function ‘HttpParser_execute’:
http11.c:298: error: ’struct RString’ has no member named ‘ptr’
http11.c:299: error: ’struct RString’ has no member named ‘len’
make: *** [http11.o] Error 1

To install mongrel after receiving this error, just follow these steps: Read the rest of this entry »

Installing MySQL gem for Ruby 1.9.x

As of this writing, the MYSQL gem cannot be installed by simply doing a GEM INSTALL with ruby 1.9.1. In order to install the gem, follow these easy steps.

First download the mysql gem from rubyforge, and unzip it:

sudo wget http://rubyforge.org/frs/download.php/51087/mysql-ruby-2.8.1.tar.gz

 sudo tar -xzvf mysql-ruby-2.8.1.tar.gz

 cd mysql-ruby-2.8.1

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Replace Ruby 1.8.x with version 1.9.x

We recently replaced ruby 1.8.6 on a Ubuntu 8.04 Server with Ruby 1.9.1. Follow these steps to remove the old ruby from the system, but be warned that it may not be as simple for you.

First thing was to remove the old ruby1.8. We had installed this from the Ubuntu package installer so removing it was as simple as running:

sudo apt-get uninstall ruby

or

sudo apt-get uninstall ruby1.8

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ODBC.ini update did not work

After running the same database for quite some time for a rails application, we finally had to change the database in odbc.ini to point to the new server. Alas we changed the odbc.ini file, shut down the old database and relaunched the application. Expecting the application to immediately start talking to the database on reboot (since we just changed an IP) we were surprised to find that the application was not connecting to the database anymore.

The rails application was connecting to SQL Server as detailed in this previous post using ODBC and FreeTDS.
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