Calvin Buckley

Optimize Your IBM i Web Application Using FastCGI

/0 Comments/in /by

(Co-written with Alan Seiden)

FastCGIFastCGI speeds up web applications by pre-starting and managing jobs for popular languages such as PHP. FastCGI can be configured to handle any language that supports the FastCGI interface, as shown in this FastCGI configuration for node.js. When it comes to PHP, you can trust tools such as Seiden PHP+ siteadd to set good FastCGI defaults. You can also customize fastcgi.conf to accommodate higher traffic, multiple environments, and to solve problems. Read on as we explain how FastCGI works and how to configure it.

Read more →

Calvin Buckley

How Update-Alternatives Manages Multiple Versions of Python, Node.js, and other Open Source Packages

/2 Comments/in /by

parallel versionsAfter a friend installed Python 3.9 side-by-side with Python 3.6, he asked, “I noticed that the newer version, Python 3.9, became the default on my IBM i system. How did the default version get set?” We explained how IBM used the update-alternatives program to set the default version of Python and other open source software packages.

Read more →

Liam Barry Allan

Visual Studio Code, IBM i & PHP

/0 Comments/in , /by

Visual Studio Code 1.35 iconEvery post about Code for IBM i thus far has been how it can be used for writing RPG, CL, COBOL, etc. But what about other languages? Of course, PHP is another one of those very popular languages on IBM i. Calvin wrote a little while ago about how it’s possible to use RDi to write PHP code on the server, which is great. I think we can take it up a notch, which brings us to this post.

Read more →

Calvin Buckley

Solving “curl#6 – getaddrinfo() thread failed to start”

/4 Comments/in , /by

Curl-logoIf you download files onto your system using PHP, Yum, RPM, or other tools, there’s a good chance curl is involved.

The version of curl provided in IBM i PASE uses multiple threads to speed up common tasks such as DNS lookups. When threading support is not available, however, curl fails.

Read more →

Calvin Buckley

Reading and Writing Physical Files in a Shell using Rfile

/4 Comments/in /by

Want to read source member data from within an IBM i shell environment, such as SSH, QShell, or QP2TERM? Need to copy records from a text file to a physical file? Want a quick way to upload a save file without needing FTP?

IBM i’s Rfile command can do all these things easily. Rfile is designed to be easy to integrate into scripts, so it’s a great tool to have at hand.

Read more →

Calvin Buckley

Detecting Memory Leaks in PHP Extensions During Development

/4 Comments/in /by

memory leakWhen a PHP extension has a memory leak, mysterious crashes can result, forcing users to restart the web server for relief.

As official maintainers of the ibm_db2 and PDO_IBM extensions, we’ve been on a quest to find and eliminate any memory leaks from these popular PHP modules.

With such a comprehensive goal, we needed a strategy. For extensions that have comprehensive test suites we decided that, in addition to reviewing the usual regression tests, why not also use the tests to detect leaks?

What follows is a technical look at how we do it.

Read more →

Calvin Buckley

Sending Email from PHP on IBM i

/0 Comments/in /by

With reliable email functionality being one of the top concerns of IBM i PHP users, we’ve made sure that Seiden PHP+ includes everything you need to send email. The PHP mail() function works well, as do components such as Zend\Mail and PHPMailer.

Over the past couple of years, we’ve been hearing from disappointed PHP users that mail() didn’t work in other community PHP distributions (and some builds of Zend Server). PHP mail() requires an external program that implements the sendmail interface. If your PHP distribution lacked sendmail or equivalent, you might have received a cryptic error message such as:

This article discusses your options for sending email using Seiden PHP+.

Read more →

Richard Schoen

Welcome Back, MariaDB!

/0 Comments/in , , /by

Getting Started with MariaDB on IBM i

MariaDBMySQL and MariaDB have long been databases used in the Linux world for popular web apps in PHP and other languages. The collective development components—Linux, Apache, MySQL and PHP—are often called the LAMP stack. When PHP was released on IBM i in 2006, the combination of IBM i, Apache, MySQL and PHP became known as the iAMP stack.

Read more →

Calvin Buckley

Looking at Network Connections on IBM i with NETSTAT

/0 Comments/in /by

If you’re running web applications, database servers, FTP, SSH, or other network programs, the IBM i NETSTAT command can tell you what is connecting to your system, which ports are in use, which programs are listening for network connections, and more.

Read more →

Alan Seiden

Q&A: IBM i ODBC Driver

/4 Comments/in , , /by

Stephanie Rabbini

I recently caught up with Seiden Group CTO Stephanie Rabbani about the ODBC driver that’s quickly becoming standard for open source and web connections on Db2 for i.

Read more →