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I couldn’t find any good tutorial on how to install Darwing Streaming Server on Ubuntu Hardy.

So let’s get started with a fresh install of 8.04.2 with all the updates.

1. sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get upgrade
2. sudo apt-get install build-essential
3. sudo addgroup –system qtss
   sudo adduser –system –no-create-home –ingroup qtss qtss
4. cd /usr/local/src/
5. Download the latest version at http://github.com/lstoll/dss/tree/master
6. tar -xvf lstoll-dss-984a1365251f36ebf3f60f0d0175fa895a30b9a9.tar
7. cd lstoll-dss-984a1365251f36ebf3f60f0d0175fa895a30b9a9/
8. ./Buildit install
9. cd DarwinStreamingSrvr6.0.3-Linux
10. ./Install
11. If you see Setup Complete! message, you are good to go. Logon to http://servername:1220/ using your browser. Username and password is the ones you entered at step 10.

Ok, now you have Darwin Streaming Server installed on your Ubuntu Hardy box.

Here’s a sample init file for DSS:
[sourcecode language="plain"]
#!/bin/sh
#
# chkconfig: 35 92 12
# description: Quicktime Streaming Media Server
#
# Slight tweak of file create by Larry Underhill 05/20/02
#
# init script to start up the quicktime (Darwin) streaming server
# tested on Redhat 7.2, Fedora Core 4 and CentOS-4.3

# source function library
#. /etc/rc.d/init.d/functions

case "$1" in
start)
if test -r /var/lock/dssd
then
echo "Lockfile /var/lock/dssd exists. Server not started."
failure
else
echo "Starting Darwin Streaming Server: "
/usr/local/sbin/DarwinStreamingServer && touch /var/lock/dssd
echo "Starting DSS Admin Console: "
/usr/local/sbin/streamingadminserver.pl
echo "DSS and DSS Admin Console started…"
fi
;;

stop)
echo "Stopping Darwin Streaming Server: "
[ -f /var/lock/dssd ] || exit 0
echo "stopping…"
killall DarwinStreamingServer && killall streamingadminserver.pl
#ps ax | awk ‘{print $1" " $5}’ | awk ‘/DarwinStreamingServer/ {print $1}’ | xargs -r kill -9 && success || failure
#echo "Stopping DSS Admin Console: "
#ps ax | awk ‘/streamingadminserver.pl/ {print $1}’ | xargs -r kill -9  && success || failure
rm -f /var/lock/dssd
echo
;;

restart)
$0 stop
sleep 1
$0 start
;;

*)
echo "Usage: $0 [start|stop|restart]"
exit 1
esac
exit 0
[/sourcecode]
Save this file in /etc/init.d/dss

Make it executable chmod +x /etc/init.d/dss and make it auto start when booting:

update-rc.d dss defaults
Adding system startup for /etc/init.d/dss …
/etc/rc0.d/K20dss -> ../init.d/dss
/etc/rc1.d/K20dss -> ../init.d/dss
/etc/rc6.d/K20dss -> ../init.d/dss
/etc/rc2.d/S20dss -> ../init.d/dss
/etc/rc3.d/S20dss -> ../init.d/dss
/etc/rc4.d/S20dss -> ../init.d/dss
/etc/rc5.d/S20dss -> ../init.d/dss

Now that we have already installed DSS on Ubuntu Hardy box, next thing is how to broadcast mp3 and video through it. Well, that’s a next post coming up. Enjoy!

DSS Admin Console

Anyone looking to buy web hosting that is of top quality and offered at a reasonable fee will most likely have come across the option of Linux hosting. It is one of the most common cheap hosting plans today; only costing a couple of dollars each month. The Linux software and development itself is open source and hence free. Many like to compare Linux hosting with Windows hosting so let us take a further look at if there is any difference and which one to choose.

These two types of hosting are quite similar in many ways but there are still a few differences that could be worth mentioning. Firstly though, one mistake that many seem to do is focusing too much on the operating system rather than picking web host because of its services and features. We have already mentioned that Linux hosting comes very cheap (so does Windows hosting) and all the features that almost always are included makes the hosting plan even more impressive. Take a look at the Linux hosting plans offered by the largest hosting providers on the market – we are sure that you will like what you see.

Ok, Linux hosting and Windows hosting are quite similar in many ways but is it possible to say that one is better than the other? Historically has Linux been regarded as the stronger alternative among webmasters and it still seems as if it is their top alternative. One reason for this could be that Linux hosting has narrowed its ease-of-use gap and functionality.  Windows hosting is of course not a bad alternative and it can boost with full allowance for use of ASP and ASP.Net. You are probably better off with Windows if you feel more comfortable with ASP when creating websites. If you are not particularly fond of ASP we would like to recommend you picking Linux hosting.

If we look into web servers in Linux we have Apache, lighttpd, nginx and many other open source servers. They are 100% open source and free. For big websites you can have complicated setup like clustering and failover.

In Windows hosting we have IIS. Mostly it is used to host .NET (old same ASP). Unlike in Linux, in IIS you are more or less stuck with .NET and there’s not much chance to scale.

Most of the successful websites run free and open source servers and applications. Good examples will be Google, Facebook, Flickr, Twitter, Yahoo and such.

So if you are buy web hosting consider linux hosting as an alternative. If you don’t have any particular reason for going windows hosting go for linux hosting!

Active Endpoints is a provider of cost-effectively and flexibly use all of the web services infrastructure that has been installed in companies over the last few years to create composite applications.

Active Endpoints is the world’s first all-in-one, standards-based visual orchestration system.

Active is the only SOA-based process orchestration and business process management (BPM) system that allows enterprises and developers to:

1. Automate business processes
2. Collaborate across IT and business boundaries
3. Control the overall state of the business
4. Adapt rapidly and easily to change

Ok, so what’s SOA? What’s BPEL? What is Business Process Management?

SOA – Service Oriented Architecture provides enterprises a design framework to deploy new application in a more faster and economic way. You can say that SOA is a bunch of different business services that can communicate with each other.

Web Services Business Process Execution Language(BPEL) – Web service interactions can be described in two ways. Executable business processes model actual behavior of a participant in a business interaction. Abstract business processes are partially specified processes that are not intended to be executed. An Abstract Process may hide some of the required concrete operational details. Abstract Processes serve a descriptive role, with more than one possible use case, including observable behavior and process template. WS-BPEL is meant to be used to model the behavior of both Executable and Abstract Processes. ( taken from Wikipedia )

Business Process Management, well in short it’s a process where organizations satisfy their clients by studying and enhancing their products or services.

Now Active Endpoints let’s you do all these three things. There’s a free trial, you can download it at http://www.activevos.com/download-trial.php by filling out some forms.

If you opt to purchase the software, they give you two options:

1. You buy the software for Development Environment. ActiveVOS is $5,000 per CPU socket.
2. You buy the software for Deployment Environment. ActiveVOS is $12,000 per CPU socket when the Deployment licenses are ordered with a first-time purchase of Development licenses. Subsequent ActiveVOS deployment purchases are $25,000 per CPU socket.

Support is given at annual fee of 20% of total license fees. If you need training,  a 5-day skills transfer program geared specifically to your project teams needs. Includes 5 days on site for $10,000 plus travel and expenses.

You can follow them via their online blog at http://www.vosibilities.com/

If you happened to be using TMNet(Malaysia’s leading(?!) ISP) DNS servers you probably know how much do they suck. Well here’s a small tip from me for those in need: a small list of publicly available DNS servers to make a switch.

1. OpenDNS – http://www.opendns.org – pretty much solid dns servers, highly recommended by many people.

2. ScrubIt – http://scrubit.com – Haven’t used myself, found in the net.

3. gtei.net – nosite – One of the advantages of these servers –> IP numbers easy to remember!
a) 4.2.2.1
b) 4.2.2.2
c) 4.2.2.3
d) 4.2.2.4
e) 4.2.2.5
f) 4.2.2.6

Cool, ah?

Others you can get at http://www.dnsserverlist.org/

In our first part on how to create WordPress(WP) theme we’ve covered basic installation of WP and also got to know where are the theme files located.

Before we proceed any further let’s take a look into different WP layouts.

This one will be most common layout used among bloggers. It’s very basic layout, designing and customizing this kind of theme is much easier than the most.

This is what we call two column WP layout. Because you have two columns – Main and Sidebar.
It has a header, where we usually put our logo, blog name and tag lines. Also it’s a common practice to put navigation bar there as well.

Then a sidebar, its where we have blog categories, blogroll, may be some ads and things like that.

The main part is where we have our blog posts shown, it will contain posts with details like date published, author and if there are comments to the posts.

Lastly we have footer, usually people want to put some Copyright/Copyleft, site credits.

Also we have another popular layout with three columns. This one can be in two variations, it differs from each other on the sidebars positions.

In the first layout, we can see that sidebars are kept at both sides, so that the main part(the part where you have your blog posts) is kept in the center.

And the second layout is where we like to have our sidebars on the right or the left side of the blog.

So these are more or less standard WP theme layouts you will see in the blogosphere. These types of layouts are common ones but of course there are other types.

So, I have covered basic WP layout types. My next blog post will be about WP theme files and their functions.

Please make sure you have the following:

1. Working WordPress blog installed. It can be on your workstation(local webserver) or hosted in the internet.
2. Basic HTML and CSS knowledge.
3. Your favorite text editor. You can use Macromedia Dreamweaver or any kind of IDE tool at that point. As long as you are comfortable and can manipulate text.
4. Graphical FTP client or knowledge of command line FTP.
5. Covered my previous posts

If you have any other tips or suggestions please drop your comments, I really appreciate your feedback!

Reminder: This post is a 2nd post in a How to create WordPress Theme series. If you want to get updated make sure you subscribe to my RSS feed at http://www.jusupov.com/feed/