Stealth Startup Blog

I had been working on a Drupal page on Linux. We need to run it on IIS, so I had to debug errors caused by moving it.

1) I downloaded Netbeans. If you don’t have JDK, you can download the bundle

http://www.oracle.com/technetwork/java/javase/downloads/jdk-netbeans-jsp-142931.html

2) Download XDebug for your PHP instalation.

Type in elevated command window

> cd C:\Program Files (x86)\PHP\v5.3

> php -i > out.txt

and copy content of out.txt here.

http://www.xdebug.org/find-binary.php

This page gives you tailored instructions for your situation.

For my installation, it was this:

Tailored Installation Instructions

Summary

Xdebug installed: no

Server API: Command Line Interface

Windows: yes – Compiler: MS VC9 – Architecture: x86

Zend Server: no

PHP Version: 5.3.10

Zend API nr: 220090626

PHP API nr: 20090626

Debug Build: no

Thread Safe Build: no

Configuration File Path: C:\Windows

Configuration File: C:\Program Files (x86)\PHP\v5.3\php.ini

Extensions directory: C:\Program Files (x86)\PHP\v5.3\ext

Instructions

1. Download php_xdebug-2.2.0-5.3-vc9-nts.dll
2. Move the downloaded file to "C:\Program Files (x86)\PHP\v5.3\ext"
3. Edit C:\Program Files (x86)\PHP\v5.3\php.ini and add the line
   zend_extension = "C:\Program Files (x86)\PHP\v5.3\ext\php_xdebug-2.2.0-5.3-vc9-nts.dll"

NetBeans prompted me to 4 more lines to php.ini, so I created a section like this

[zend]
zend_extension = "C:\Program Files (x86)\PHP\v5.3\php_xdebug-2.2.0-5.3-vc9-nts.dll"
xdebug.remote_enable=On
xdebug.remote_host="localhost"
xdebug.remote_port=9000
xdebug.remote_handler="dbgp"

Then I was able to debug my project that I had imported as a new project into NetBeans from existing codes.

Following website might give additional details: http://www.domainwebcenter.com/?p=936

1) There is an automated installer from Microsoft: http://www.microsoft.com/web/drupal/

However, you may want to have some more control, like me, and install Drupal yourself.  I tried the one from http://drupal.org/download too. It will be almost same as described below, but it won’t have MS SQL Server support out of the box (it won’t be listed in the image in step 8 below). So I used the Acquia distribution.

Go to this link https://network.acquia.com/downloads and download “Acquia Drupal full install (.zip)”

or you may want to get it from a version control repository
https://docs.acquia.com/acquia-drupal/install/repository

2) Unzip this folder C:\inetpub\wwwroot\ and rename as you wish (or move contents of svn folder except the .svn into C:\inetpub\wwwroot\<FolderName>) I have mine here: C:\inetpub\wwwroot\acquiaSVN

Rename C:\inetpub\wwwroot\acquiaSVN\web.config to C:\inetpub\wwwroot\acquiaSVN\web.config.old, so it will not be used.

3) run inetmgr (type “inetmgr” in windows start menu)

4) if you don’t see that folder listed among your webpages, right click to Default Web Site and refresh…

then click on that folder (acquiaSVN) and click Browse.

5) You will receive the following error messages

6) Create that folder C:\inetpub\wwwroot\acquiaSVN\sites\default\files and copy the C:\inetpub\wwwroot\acquiaSVN\sites\default\sites\default\default.settings.php file to C:\inetpub\wwwroot\acquiaSVN\sites\default\sites\default\settings.php.

Switch to content view in inetmgr software as seen below.

7) Then edit the permissions for this file and folder

Give full control to all users click OK and OK.

Now, when you go back to your drupal site and click the “proceed with installation” link at bottom or go to  http://localhost/acquiaSVN/install.php

You should see no errors :

You need to click on advanced options if you are using a backend database already installed on another machine:

Table prefix is for cases where you would use the same database for multiple drupal installations. You probably wouldn’t do that, you would create one database for each one in your server. This might be put there for people whose host allows them a limited number of databases.

After this step, one final screen will let you set up and admin account and time zone. Then your website will be ready.

Installing Red5 plugin to my Openfire server and enabling it was a breeze using the Openfire  web control console.

Now, I am reading about Real Time Messaging Protocol, and ActiveX controls to embed Flash Media into .Net forms (axShockwaveFlash COM component that you can add to toolbox in Visual Studio).

The Jingle implementation that exists in Spark supports voice chat without Flash. At least I can port that to my C# forms client implementation. However there seems to be a long delay. It may be due to my underpowered test server and hopefully improved when I start using our real server. If the delay is due to bandwidth, using better codecs to compress might solve the problem.

I have found out that ffmpeg supports flv and swf, and there are ways to use ffmpeg inside .net: calling ffmpeg.exe, using ActiveX control, external ActionScript API for C# (tutorial uses an instant messaging application, so should be useful)
http://help.adobe.com/en_US/ActionScript/3.0_ProgrammingAS3/WS5b3ccc516d4fbf351e63e3d118a9b90204-7cb0.html, http://help.adobe.com/en_US/ActionScript/3.0_ProgrammingAS3/WS5b3ccc516d4fbf351e63e3d118a9b8fc4e-8000.html [Code and Samples]

Resources:
Compiling Spark for Dummies:
http://www.igniterealtime.org/community/docs/DOC-1521

Spark client secure audio/video with Red5 plugin:
http://www.igniterealtime.org/community/docs/DOC-1633

Red5 Plugin Readme:
http://www.igniterealtime.org/community/docs/DOC-1518

Red5 Linux Setup:
http://www.igniterealtime.org/community/docs/DOC-1520

Simple C# and Flash interop:
http://bojordan.com/log/?p=269

Note:

Need to check DirectShow [or this? which is latest documentation] and OSMF [tutorial] as well.

F-IN-BOX is a developer’s library (for $300) to enhance Macromedia Flash Player ActiveX features. It does not use its own engine to display movies but provide a wrapper around official swflash.ocx/flash.ocx code instead. Thus it is possible to avoid certain Macromedia Flash Player ActiveX limitations.

The XMPP protocol has many implementations in many projects, sometimes together with other protocols. Which implementation is the best to build up on.  Among c open source implementations listed, jabberd14 and jabberd2, latter seems to be more recent, more widely adopted, and hence have better community support,  so I played with jabberd2 for a while. Then I also looked at Java implementations. Openfire seems to be more complete than Tigase. It also has a company behind it, rather than a single developer. So currently I am using Openfire.

On the client side development I plan to continue implementing from scratch. Because client program is to be distributed to users and except LGPL opensource, using an open source code would require me to open my source as I had mentioned here. Still, when I am stuck about solving an issue, I can check how they had solved it in one of the open source clients. A well established XMPP client project is: Empathy but it is targeting Linux where as we target customers on Windows initially . LGPL is more common among softare libraries, and there are a few XMPP libraries with LGPL, I initially considered the only C++ one, QXMPP, but now I am using jabber-net and ported my C++/CLI client code to C# as well since utilizing examples for this C# library was easier when I coded in C# as well.

libjingle is a library implementing a useful extention of XMPP protocol, named jingle. Jingle is for initiating and managing peer-to-peer media sessions between two XMPP entities to be used for a wide variety of application types (e.g., voice chat, video chat, file transfer). Luckily, libjingle is made available under a Berkeley-style license, which means you are free to incorporate it into commercial software. Using libjingle, I won’t waste time on the obstacles I would face, like reverse NAT traversal problem I had faced with my own client. As an example, (as described here) libjingle already implements STUN to solve this problem.

Resources:

Comparison of XMPP and other IM Protocols

jabberd2 home page.

Developer documentation for jabberd2.

jabberd2 install guide.

jabberd2 architecture doc. Especially required database tables given at the end.

precompiled windows binaries and suse rpms.

All server implementations list from official website.

I was initially thinking I would have to make my program open source if I was using GPL source. GPL requires you to make your source code available only if you are distributing your program. This is a loop-hole benefitting people developing server software for their own use. This loophole is later filled by AGPL, but most software still uses GPL, including XMPP servers I am inquiring about. So I can develop our server on top of open source projects. I would gladly send them patches when I make improvements to their code. I only like not being forced to open all of my source since this might cause security flaws in my code to be detected by hackers.

There is also LGPL, which allows proprietary code to be built upon open code even if you are distributing your program to users. This licence is much less commonly used.

I will be reading RFCs from IETF standardization committee to learn about the XMPP protocol. However there are preceding protocols to read about. For a few days you will be seeing short summaries from those protocols I will read. Later you may see some info about open source implementations of XMPP.