richardschoen / howtostuff

This repository contains a general list of how to items for any language similar to gist style articles but focused in a repo

Howto Stuff

This is a general list of how-to items.

List of Examples

Installing Python Web Based IFS Git Repository Viewer on IBM i
https://github.com/richardschoen/howtostuff/blob/master/pythonwebgitvieweribmi.md

How to set up IBM i Access ODBC Driver for Windows to use an SSL Certificate
https://github.com/richardschoen/howtostuff/blob/master/ibmi_acs_odbcssl_windows_issue_.md

howtostuff's Issues

missing python.h

hello Richard.

on some systems you need to compile regex so also:

yum install python3-devel

Missing / Incorrect Instructions

First ;let me say what a useful document this is - even though it caused me some grief.

1. The instructions for setting the root password say not to start the server. But if you do not start it the request generates a "can't find the server" error. If you start the server first however the password change works. In case anyone gets stuck it might be good to mention that the default password is blanks (just hit <enter) - I needed that to shut the server down before I got the password change to stick.

2. The instructions for editing my.cnf fail to mention that the directives must be preceded by [mysqld]. Took me a while to dig that out of the mariadb docs.

3. Were sone of the instructions cloned from a postgres document? There is mention of the instal going into a postgres directory

It would also be useful to be warned that everything within the tool and all of the commands are "mysql" - which is a tad confusing since one just installed Mariadb. I know it is the new incarnation of mysql but ...

Suggest removing !includedir line from my.cnf

A client's MariaDb startup failed after an upgrade to IBM i 7.4 and an IPL. MariaDB reported that it couldn't find the directory /QOpenSys/etc/mariadb/my.cnf.d.

The config file /QOpenSys/etc/mariadb/my.cnf included this line:
!includedir /QOpenSys/etc/mariadb/my.cnf.d

I solved the problem by creating the my.cnf.d directory:
mkdir /QOpenSys/etc/mariadb/my.cnf.d
and then MariaDb was able to start.

A simpler solution would have been to remove the !includedir line from my.cnf, since they had no need for the optional my.cnf.d directory.

I suggest we add the step of deleting or commenting out the !includedir line, for people who haven't added any fles inside that directory. Otherwise, the empty my.cnf.d directory may be pruned by MariaDb updates and cause the error.

Example of commenting out the line:
#!includedir /QOpenSys/etc/mariadb/my.cnf.d

Type in description

Hello Richard,

a small typo:

mkdoc serve --dev-addr=0.0.0.0:8555

maybe:

mkdocs serve --dev-addr=0.0.0.0:8555

Migration from older database servers

This is lightly touched on (mysqldump is mentioned once), but this is probably pretty important for people i.e. stuck on ZendDBi.

I would put it something like, considering that the way I write tutorials is significantly different (comments in <>):

---

You first want to dump the old database using mysqldump. This will dump out the database into SQL DDL/DML. You'll probably want to use the database's root account, as that has permission to dump everything in the database.

We'll dump all databases, since that's what you likely want when migrating or backing up. (If you want to only dump specific databases, use --databases foo bar xyzzy .... Other options are more contextually dependent and out of scope for this article.) In addition, it may make sense to use the old mysqldump command too, so we'll explicitly specify it. <XXX: the path to the binary for zenddb/old zend server> Run the following, adjusting as needed for your old MySQL setup <XXX: perhaps ports?>:

$ /path/to/bin/mysqldump -u root -pPASSWORD --all-databases > path/to/dump.sql

Since mysqldump outputs the SQL to standard output, we'll redirect it to a file. Said file also functions as a backup of your database; it might be good to get in the habit of running it on your new database too!

[...]

Once the server is set up, we can restore any old database dump. Since the dump is just SQL, we can easily restore it using the mysql command, which takes in SQL.

We'll run the following, adjusting as needed for your MariaDB setup <XXX: perhaps ports?>:

$ # We'll specify the absolute path to make it obvious that this is new MariaDB
$ /QOpenSys/pkgs/bin/mysql -u root -pPASSWORD <  path/to/dump.sql

The contents of your old database should now be available.