Testing mysql database connection using php mysqli

Sometimes you do not have mysql client in your web server to test mysql connection to database server. Using this method, you can use php, which will be available in all php based web server, to test your connection. This method is very easy to implement, just one line to do the testing. Thank you to Mr Guus for this awesome method

We are going to use var_dump with mysqli_connect functions, available in php.

$ php -r 'var_dump(mysqli_connect("10.0.0.10", "myuser", "mypassword", "mydatabase"));'

whereby 10.0.0.10 is my database ip address, myuser is my database username, mypassword is my database password, and mydatabase is the name of my database. Php -r is an option to run php command without the script tags

If the command does not throw any error, then your database connection is good to go.

Update DNS Server Information on Linux CentOS 7

To update the DNS server that the operating system will refer to, please follow below easy steps

1. Edit /etc/resolv.conf. In this example I use nano text editor. If you do not have nano, you can install it by running "yum install nano -y"
# nano /etc/resolv.conf

2. Type in "nameserver" followed by a space, and followed by your DNS server ip address. Please remember that the sequence of the entry is important. So please put your primary DNS server on top of your secondary server in the /etc/resolv.conf. In this example, my primary DNS is 192.168.1.1 and my secondary DNS is 192.168.1.2
nameserver 192.168.1.1
nameserver 192.168.1.2

3. Save and exit. For nano, you can simply press Ctrl-x, y and Enter.

4. Check if you have added the configuration correctly
# cat /etc/resolv.conf
nameserver 192.168.1.1
nameserver 192.168.1.2 

Update Proxmox Network Configuration Without Restarting

In proxmox 6.1-7, if you make any changes to network configuration using the web interface, you either have to reboot the box, or press the "Apply Configuration" button to apply the changes. But the "Apply Configuration" button needs a package named ifupdown2 from proxmox repository to operate correctly.

So in order to make the button usable, so that we do not have to reboot the box every time we change proxmox network configuration, please follow below simple steps

1. Enable pve no-subscription repository, and disable proxmox default enterprise repository by referring here

2. Update proxmox package information
# apt update

3. Install ifupdown2
# apt install ifupdown2 -y

4. Now you can change any network settings in the proxmox web ui, and apply the configuration by pressing "Apply Configuration" button like below

Using Openvpn Client in Alpine Linux

Installing openvpn client in alpine linux is very easy. Just follow below command

# apk add openvpn

To use it, just run the command against an openvpn configuration file

# openvpn myopenvpnconfig.file

The first time you are using openvpn client, you will probably get this error:

ERROR: Cannot open TUN/TAP dev /dev/net/tun: No such file or directory (errno=2)

What you can do is just give 666 permission to /dev/net/tun

# chmod 666 /dev/net/tun

and rerun the openvpn command

# openvpn myopenvpnconfig.file

Once you get this message "Initialization Sequence Completed", you should be able to access your remote server

Run a Joomla CMS in Podman Pod

One of the special feature of podman over docker is, podman has the concept of pod. Pod is a feature to group containers together. One example is, is lets say we want to deploy a joomla stack. The stack can be deployed in a pod, so that the containers can be managed together, without having to operate on each single component of the stack.

To create a pod with port 8080 on localhost will be redirected to port 80 in a pod
$ podman pod create --name mypod --publish 8080:80

Next, create a container for database that belongs to our pod above
$ podman run -dit --pod mypod -e MYSQL_DATABASE=joomla -e MYSQL_USER=joomlauser -e MYSQL_PASSWORD=joomlapassword -e MYSQL_ROOT_PASSWORD=rootpw --name mariadb docker.io/library/mariadb 

Check whether your mariadb container is ready, by viewing its logs
$ podman logs -f mariadb

After that create a joomla container. Since both the containers are in the same pod, joomla container can refer to mariadb with just 127.0.0.1 since both of them share the same network namespace in a pod
$ podman run -dit --pod mypod -e JOOMLA_DB_HOST=127.0.0.1 -e JOOMLA_DB_USER=joomlauser -e JOOMLA_DB_PASSWORD=joomlapassword -e JOOMLA_DB_NAME=joomla --name joomla docker.io/library/joomla

Similar to mariadb container, you can check whether your joomla container is ready by viewing its logs
$ podman logs -f joomla

Start a browser, and browse to http://0.0.0.0:8080. You should be able to access the joomla web interface. Continue with the installation using the web interface. Make sure you put 127.0.0.1 for the database host information in the web installer.