Happy New Year 2009 - IT Job Life

HAPPY NEW YEAR 2009 to ALL

Its IT Job life

If you are preparing for a career in IT or are new to IT, many of the “dirty little secrets” listed below may surprise you because we don’t usually talk about them out loud. If you are an IT veteran, you’ve probably encountered most of these issues and have a few of your own to add — and please, by all means, take a moment to add them to the discussion. Most of these secrets are aimed at network administrators, IT managers, and desktop support professionals. This list is not aimed at developers and programmers — they have their own set of additional dirty little secrets — but some of these will apply to them as well.

10.) The pay in IT is good compared to many other professions, but since they pay you well, they often think they own you

Although the pay for IT professionals is not as great as it was before the dot-com flameout and the IT backlash in 2001-2002, IT workers still make very good money compared to many other professions (at least the ones that require only an associate’s or bachelor’s degree). And there is every reason to believe that IT pros will continue to be in demand in the coming decades, as technology continues to play a growing role in business and society. However, because IT professionals can be so expensive, some companies treat IT pros like they own them. If you have to answer a tech call at 9:00 PM because someone is working late, you hear, “That’s just part of the job.” If you need to work six hours on a Saturday to deploy a software update to avoid downtime during business hours, you get, “There’s no comp time for that since you’re on salary. That’s why we pay you the big bucks!”

9.) It will be your fault when users make silly errors

Some users will angrily snap at you when they are frustrated. They will yell, “What’s wrong with this thing?” or “This computer is NOT working!” or (my personal favorite), “What did you do to the computers?” In fact, the problem is that they accidentally deleted the Internet Explorer icon from the desktop, or unplugged the mouse from the back of the computer with their foot, or spilled their coffee on the keyboard.

8.) You will go from goat to hero and back again multiple times within any given day

When you miraculously fix something that had been keeping multiple employees from being able to work for the past 10 minutes — and they don’t realize how simple the fix really was — you will become the hero of the moment and everyone’s favorite employee. But they will conveniently forget about your hero anointment a few hours later when they have trouble printing because of a network slowdown — you will be enemy No. 1 at that moment. But if you show users a handy little Microsoft Outlook trick before the end of the day, you’ll soon return to hero status.

7.) Certifications won’t always help you become a better technologist, but they can help you land a better job or a pay raise

Headhunters and human resources departments love IT certifications. They make it easy to match up job candidates with job openings. They also make it easy for HR to screen candidates. You’ll hear a lot of veteran IT pros whine about techies who were hired based on certifications but who don’t have the experience to effectively do the job. They are often right. That has happened in plenty of places. But the fact is that certifications open up your career options. They show that you are organized and ambitious and have a desire to educate yourself and expand your skills. If you are an experienced IT pro and have certifications to match your experience, you will find yourself to be extremely marketable. Tech certifications are simply a way to prove your baseline knowledge and to market yourself as a professional. However, most of them are not a good indicator of how good you will be at the job.

6.) Your nontechnical co-workers will use you as personal tech support for their home PCs

Your co-workers (in addition to your friends, family, and neighbors) will view you as their personal tech support department for their home PCs and home networks. They will e-mail you, call you, and/or stop by your office to talk about how to deal with the virus that took over their home PC or the wireless router that stopped working after the last power outage and to ask you how to put their photos and videos on the Web so their grandparents in Iowa can view them. Some of them might even ask you if they can bring their home PC to the office for you to fix it. The polite ones will offer to pay you, but some of them will just hope or expect you can help them for free. Helping these folks can be very rewarding, but you have to be careful about where to draw the line and know when to decline.

5.) Vendors and consultants will take all the credit when things work well and will blame you when things go wrong

Working with IT consultants is an important part of the job and can be one of the more challenging things to manage. Consultants bring niche expertise to help you deploy specialized systems, and when everything works right, it’s a great partnership. But you have to be careful. When things go wrong, some consultants will try to push the blame off on you by arguing that their solution works great everywhere else so it must be a problem with the local IT infrastructure. Conversely, when a project is wildly successful, there are consultants who will try to take all of the credit and ignore the substantial work you did to customize and implement the solution for your company.

4.) You’ll spend far more time babysitting old technologies than implementing new ones

One of the most attractive things about working in IT is the idea that we’ll get to play with the latest cutting edge technologies. However, that’s not usually the case in most IT jobs. The truth is that IT professionals typically spend far more time maintaining, babysitting, and nursing established technologies than implementing new ones. Even IT consultants, who work with more of the latest and greatest technologies, still tend to work primarily with established, proven solutions rather than the real cutting edge stuff.

3.) Veteran IT professionals are often the biggest roadblock to implementing new technologies

A lot of companies could implement more cutting edge stuff than they do. There are plenty of times when upgrading or replacing software or infrastructure can potentially save money and/or increase productivity and profitability. However, it’s often the case that one of the largest roadblocks to migrating to new technologies is not budget constraints or management objections; it’s the veteran techies in the IT department. Once they have something up and running, they are reluctant to change it. This can be a good thing because their jobs depend on keeping the infrastructure stable, but they also use that as an excuse to not spend the time to learn new things or stretch themselves in new directions. They get lazy, complacent, and self-satisfied.

2.) Some IT professionals deploy technologies that do more to consolidate their own power than to help the business

Another subtle but blameworthy thing that some IT professionals do is select and implement technologies based on how well those technologies make the business dependent on the IT pros to run them, rather than which ones are truly best for the business itself. For example, IT pros might select a solution that requires specialized skills to maintain instead of a more turnkey solution. Or an IT manager might have more of a Linux/UNIX background and so chooses a Linux-based solution over a Windows solution, even though the Windows solution is a better business decision (or, vice versa, a Windows admin might bypass a Linux-based appliance, for example). There are often excuses and justifications given for this type of behavior, but most of them are disingenuous.

1.) IT pros frequently use jargon to confuse nontechnical business managers and hide the fact that they screwed up

All IT pros — even the very best — screw things up once in a while. This is a profession where a lot is at stake and the systems that are being managed are complex and often difficult to integrate. However, not all IT pros are good at admitting when they make a mistake. Many of them take advantage of the fact that business managers (and even some high-level technical managers) don’t have a good understanding of technology, and so the techies will use jargon to confuse them (and cover up the truth) when explaining why a problem or an outage occurred. For example, to tell a business manager why a financial application went down for three hours, the techie might say, “We had a blue screen of death on the SQL Server that runs that app. Damn Microsoft!” What the techie would fail to mention was that the BSOD was caused by a driver update he applied to the server without first testing it on a staging machine.

High Food Prices

>>>> Traders and hawkers getting away with high food prices - from thestar.com.my
Orginally by: VALLEY VIEW WITH TOMMY LEE

I have endured reckless taxi drivers cutting into my path or slowing down in search of customers along congested roads.
Then there are the ruthless ones who overcharge or take you on a whirlwind tour of the city so that their taxi meters show a higher rate.
But for all these bad things we say about them, I sometimes sympathise with them for the hardship they endure to put food on the table for their families.
Not only do they have to put up with the scorching sun or pelting rain and hours of weaving through massive traffic jams, they also risk being robbed and in some cases also murdered by their passengers.
This is the stark reality that cabbies have to go through to make ends meet. I have yet to step into a taxi and not have to listen to the driver complaining of the high cost of food nowadays.
They are very mindful of the RM40 to RM50 daily rental fee for their vehicles which are leased from consortiums. On bad days, after deducting expenses, they could still be short of money to pay for the rental.
How are they going to survive if they have a family to feed. Their story is typical of the many poor families who have their finances stretched to the limit or in the worse scenario have none to stretch at all.
Sometimes I do not blame the desperate cabbies who resort to unethical ways to run up their meters as they need to ensure there is food on the table for their families.
Most cabbies are glad if they can take home RM100 a day after deducting costs which included the rental, petrol and other incidentals. Besides the lease of their vehicles, they also have to take care of repair bills and replace worn out tyres.
Penangites like me who have moved down to the Klang Valley have found the price of food quite difficult to swallow.
The char koey teow, chicken rice, and wantan noodles here are not only ummatchable in terms of taste, the price is also higher.
A plate of char koey teow here costs between RM4.50 and RM6 whereas in Penang, I could enjoy a much tastier plate for much less or at the same price but with keh leow” (more ingredients).
Just last week, I had a plate of nasi kandar and I nearly choked when the bill came to RM10.10. On the plate, was a small piece of chicken, a tiny slice of fish, a hard boiled egg and two ladies fingers.
When I asked if they were aware that other nasi kandar operators were lowering prices, he gave me a blank stare.
I paid the bill and told myself never to return to this outlet again.
If food prices continue to increase or remain expensive, the cost of living would definitely spiral upwards. There will come a day when we have to pay RM8 to RM10 for a plate of our favourite char koey teow.
But the government is hardly doing anything to get food prices down other than getting the big merchants like Giant and Tesco hypermarkets to lower their prices. The reply from Domestic Trade and Consumer Affairs Minister Datuk Shahrir Abdul Samad is most amusing.
He has the audacity to ask consumers to be patient with the current high cost of goods. How can one be patient when your baby is crying because she is hungry?
I have been living and working in the Klang valley for 10 months now and having been pampered by the good food which are much cheaper back home, it is difficult to adjust to living in this city.
While I am still coming to terms with having to pay almost double for my breakfast, lunch and dinner and even after the several reduction in fuel price, there do not seem to be any cut in the cost of food and services.
Being a bachelor is also no consolation as expenses are much higher being alone as you cannot share expenses with anyone.
I used to pay RM1 per piece for my shirt or trouser pants to be pressed but now it costs me RM1.50 per piece - a whopping increase of 50%.
Expensive dinners and lunches are things of the past for me at the moment, and boozing with friends is now kept to a minimum so much so that I am now dubbed anti-social.
With such gloomy times looming, a mechanism should be set in place to check price increases, especially for food items.
Traders and hawkers increase prices at their whims and fancy because there are no clear guideline or mechanism to check abuses of profiteering.
It is disappointing for Shahrir to say that he is willing to give the benefit of the doubt to traders who do not lower the prices of goods despite the petrol price reductions.
He seems to be siding with the manufacturers who explained that prices of goods will only come down around the first quarter of next year as they are still using materials bought previously.
Come on Mr Minister, your ministry can do better than to side with traders who were quick to respond to petrol price increases. They literally increase prices overnight.
There had been five downward revisions of the pump price of petrol since the 78 sen increase in June but food prices still remain high.
A colleague who used to pay RM1.10 for a cup of tea in Section 14, Petaling Jaya, before the fuel increase says it costs RM1.30 now. This is almost a 20% increase.
The government should seriously consider some price control initiatives if it has the welfare of people at heart.
You can never, never find shopkeepers or hawkers who would voluntarily lower the prices of goods unless there is pressure from the government.
The various agencies or ministries concerned should get their people to go to the ground to check on food prices and any unnecessary increases should see these trades hauled up and punished.
Mr Minister, spare us the excuses and get the whip cracking

I WANT YOU!

It works!!!

1. Be very good at your job

A prerequisite to almost anything related to your career and not only in headhunting business. Your pay and promotion will largely depend on how well you can perform in your job. Continuously deliver best-in-class performance that will build up your reputation.

Build a round which is rounder than a round. Teach a parrot to speak Chinese. Make Jack Sparrow an ally to Davy Jones. Mesmerize your boss, your management and your competitors with your breakthrough achievements.

2. Back your claim with facts and figures

Will you be able to back your reputation with credible facts, figures and evidence? Can you prove that a certain significant result achieved by the company for the past 3 months is spearheaded by you and not by some Tom, Dick and Harry?

Perhaps without realizing it, someone has been stealing the figures and claim them as their own. Maybe, it’s your old good buddy Kumar. It can be even your boss Ming Cheng who wants to take credit for your hard work and effort. Don’t let your hard work be undone.

3. Play only for the champions, and in the champions league

The world’s best soccer players play in the English Premier League or Spanish La Liga rather than the Scottish or Italy’s second division. They also play in the Champions League. Similarly, the industry’s cream of the crop will either play for the market leader. And so must you. Choose a company sitting on top of the industry’s ladder. If you see the company is falling off the rung steeply, you know what to do.

4. People must know you are good and knowledgeable

Accept invitation to be a keynote speaker for events. Speak on behalf of your company. Present your research findings on conferences or speaking circuits. Be in the judging panel for college competitions, or even reality shows. Contribute articles to the local magazines, newspapers or internet publication. Blog. Back your knowledge with facts, figures and evidence. Leave traceable marks that will lead influential people to you.

5. Network, network, network

Make your face familiar with the networking events, especially those related to your industry and specialization. Exchange business cards, trade ideas and share your point of views on the industry’s future direction. Play football friendly matches with your vendors, clients or even competitors. Join their weekly bowling challenge. At the same time, stay as a ‘passive’ job seeker. Let people know what you are doing, without telling directly you’re actively seeking for a job. Headhunters loves this type of people, who are good in their job but do not seem desperate enough to leave.

5. Be a "performer"

But all the hardwork and smartwork that you have done may not be complete without this last method. OR this method also proven if all the hardwork and smartwork you have done does not return as your expectation, then try this last method.

It requires you to be an entertainer, presenter and of course YES MAN attitude. You will see this kind of people anywhere in the working industry, you hate them a lot. They dont know shit about his/her duties BUT he/she goes up easily and well liked among among all. Here's how:
- when your boss tell LAME jokes, please laugh eventhough its not funny.
- always take credit from other people work.
- smile in front of your friend but stab them hard behind you, tell bad stories about him/her infront your superior or your colleagues.
- always pour negative aura to your colleagues, demotivate them so when they resign you have better chance to move up without any toough competition.
- always highlight small chunk of task to your superior, ask question that you already know the answer, get notice!

That's not it, there are lot more. Like it or not this way is proven method, eventhough it is not honest and no credibility but who cares at the end of the day, as long as the goal achieved.

Apache - SLES 10

In this Session I will explain how to setup and configure the Apache Web server in SLES 10. I will also explain what virtual hosts are and how you can create them in Apache.

So, first let's see how to enable Apache in SLES 10.1.

1. After you have a default installation of SLES the Apache web server is installed on your server, but it is not enabled by default. To enable the Apache web server, open YaST and go to Network Services. In the left panel you see "HTTP Server", click it to open the configuration screen.

A screen comes up to tell you there are some packages that need to be installed, click continue and the packages will be installed. When asked, insert the right installation Disks.. After these packages are installed, the HTTP Server Configuration screen comes up

2. In the Configuration screen you can configure the most important settings.

First of all, make sure to Enable the HTTP Services, don't forget it or your server will not work at all.

The second thing to configure is the ip address and the port number the HTTP Server will listen on. You can choose to select All Addresses but this is not very safe. Typically you should use a separate ip address for your web server. You can also choose the port number the server should listen on, the default port is 80.

If you have a private web server, you can choose a different port here. Tell only the people that use the server what the port is so you have a little security.

The second TAB contains all the modules installed that Apache can use.

For now, leave this as default and click the Default Host TAB.

In this TAB we have a lot of important setting we can do.

Lets start with the Document Root.

This is the directory where you put all of the web server files. Normally, this directory contains the index file for your website.

Then there is the Include path.

This is the path where the primary apache configuration file (/etc/appache2/httpd.conf) can call other configuration files from. So if you have other configuration files that also need to be loaded from within the httpd.conf file, you should place them in this directory.

Server Resolution.

For myself, I think this is a very cool option that Apache has. It listens to the IP Address you connect to and then knows what web site it should present to you.

This can be used when you would like to have more then one website reside on the same web server. Normally this can't be done or you should do something with the port numbers of these sites.

Now you can tell the Apache that you will host two websites on the server, and that you will connect to them with a separate IP Address.

Website One:

It has the ip address 10.10.10.1. The document root is /srv/www/htdocs/site1.

Website Two:

It has the ip address 10.10.10.2. The document root is /srv/www/htdocs/site2.

When you enter 10.10.10.1 in a browser it will show you website one, and when you enter 10.10.10.2 it will show you website two.

The last TAB will show you the Hosts or website that reside on the web server.

You can run more than one website on one web server. This is called Virtual Hosting. If you would like to host another site on the server, this is the place to configure it. I will come back to explain this option later.

Click Finish and the settings will be saved.

3. Now you have configured the basic settings for your http server. You will need to check if the services are running. To do this, open a terminal window and enter: rchttpd status

In my case you see the apache2 server is running.

The final thing to do is create an index file in the document root directory.

Create a new file called index.html in the /srv/www/htdocs/ directory. Open the file with vi and enter some text in it, save and close the file.

Now you are almost there, you only have to set the rights to the /srv/www/ directory so that other users may read the files.

4. To set the appropriate file rights open a terminal window.

Change the Directory to /srv and enter: chmod -R 755 www

The -R option will set the 755 rights to all the files and directories under the www directory.

Now it's time to test and see if the Web server is working.

5. Open a web browser and enter the ip address you configured.

Notice that the text you entered in the index file is displayed.

6. Now we will make a second web site to run on the same web server. This is called a virtual host.

In YaST open the HTTP Server configuration screen.

To create a second website on this server click the TAB Hosts.

The host in the list is the website we just created.

Before we click the ADD button to create a second host on this web server we first add a secondary ip address to the servers NIC.

Open YaST, Network Devices and click Network Card

Click Next

Click Edit to add a secondary ip-address to the Network card.

When you click Edit, the screen shown below comes up.

In here, click the Advance button and from the drop down button select Additional Address.

In the next screen click Add

In this window you can enter the secondary ip address for you network card. Click OK, OK and Next Next to save the settings.

Now go back to the HTTP Server Configuration screen in YaST. In the first TAB Make sure that the Listen IP is set to All Addresses

Now go to the Host TAB. Click Add.

Enter the Host name of the Virtual Web server. I entered: sles2

Give the Document root for the web server. In my case: /srv/www/htdocs/sles2/. In here I have created an index.html filee and entered the text: Dave Simons SLES2 in it.

Also enter an email address for the web server.

Enter the secondary ip address you created earlier (192.168.1.11) and select the last radio button.

Click Next, and in the following window click OK to save you settings.

Now you see that you have 2 Hosts.

Click Finish to save the settings.

Now its time to test your virtual host.

Open a web browser and enter the URL: HTTP:\\192.168.1.10.

This is the default web site that's created during the installation of the HTTP Server.

To test the virtual host we just created, we have to enter the secondary ip-address 192.168.1.11 in the URL of your web browser.

Now you see a different web site, this is the text I entered in the index.html file of the virtual host we created. The index.html file in residing in /srv/www/htdocs/sles2/

In my test lab I used ip addresses to test connectivity to the web server. You can also create a dns record to use you dns names in the browser.

In the above examples I created 2 web sites. One was the Default and the second was the virtual website. I created them with YaST.

There is also the option to configure your apache 2 server from the configuration files.

The most important is /etc/apache2/httpd.conf.

In this file there are a lot of includes, this means that it reads other configuration files.

One of the include statements is the Virtual host statement: Include /etc/apache2/vhosts.d/*.conf

It reads all the conf files in the Include /etc/apache2/vhosts.d/ directory. If you look in this directory you also see a file "YaST2_vhosts.conf". This is the file that contains the virtual hosts we created in YaST.

There is also a file called /etc/srv/www/htdocs/listen.conf.

In this file you can configure on what port the web server is listening for requests. As you all will know the default web server port is 80. Sometimes it can be very useful to choose a different port for your web site. Lets assume you have a site that's more private the a default web site. You can choose to change the port to a different value so it's harder to find for the basic users.

Finally, you can see if the web server is running and you can reload the web server.

To check if the server is running, open a terminal window as the user root and enter: rcapache2 status.

In the above screen you see the server is running.

To restart the apache web server you have 2 main commands: "rcapache2 restart" and "rcapache reload".

The first one will stop apache and restart it, no matter how many clients are using the web server.

The preferred way to restart the web server in a production environment is to use the second command. So if you have to reload the web server because you have done some changes in the configuration use "rcapache2 reload" This will not disconnect the uses that are currently connected.

The restart command.

The reload command:

You can see the difference in the terminal windows. The restart command will also restart the child processes of Apache.

So, I hope that this Session has given you some more detail in how you can configure and install Apache as a web server in SLES. Its really a great web server to use.

PHP 5 and MySQL

This guide is intended for beginners who wanted to install PHP 5 and MySQL Community version 5 and make it work with Apache 2.2 . Installation will be done locally, so that you can test web application such as Wordpress before going live. This is quite a long guide so prepare yourselves for a ride!

Prerequisites : You had already installed Apache 2.2 locally on Windows. If not, please read my previous Apache 2 installation guide and come back later to continue with this post.

Install PHP 5 on Windows

1- Download the latest Windows PHP Binaries (MSI file) from this page. I choose the eZNetworking mirror because it is the closest one to Malaysia. Choose a mirror that is nearer to your country for a faster file download. The latest PHP version that I downloaded is 5.2.4. Save the file to your Desktop.

2- Right click on the file and click “Install“.

3- Click “Next ” once the Welcome page is displayed.

4- Select “I accept the license agreement” and click “Next “.

5- Change your PHP installation path OR just accept the default path - C:\Program Files\PHP\ and click “Next “.

6- On the Web Server Setup screen, select the Apache 2.2.x Module and click “Next “.

7-On the Apache Configuration Directory screen, browse for the Apache configuration directory (conf) OR just enter C:\Program Files\Apache Software Foundation\Apache2.2\conf\ and click “Next ” to proceed with the installation.

8- For now, accept the default selection and click “Next”.

9-Click “Install ” to install PHP 5 on Windows.

10- Click “Finish ” once completed. PHP 5 is successfully installed.

11- Start your Apache 2.2 server using the “Monitor Apache Servers” console (Start -> Apache HTTP Servers 2.2.4 -> Monitor Apache Servers ). You can see that PHP was successfully installed by checking the Apache status at the bottom of the console.

Test your PHP 5 Installation

1- Open up your Windows Notepad. Type in “” inside the file. Save this file as “info.php” inside your Apache root directory, C:\Program Files\Apache Software Foundation\Apache2.2\htdocs .

2- Open up your web browser. In the address bar, type in your web server domain name plus info.php as the file name. Example: http://www.syahid.com/info.php . You should get a PHP configuration page just like the one below.

Congratulations! You have successfully installed and test PHP 5 on Windows!

Tell Apache 2.2.x to Support PHP Index File

What happens if you change your index.html (default web server homepage) to index.php and try to access your homepage? Apache will not recognize it and you won’t see anything displayed on the page. To make sure Apache recognizes index.php as a default homepage too, follow the instructions below.

1- Rename your index.html to index1.html and info.php to index.php (for testing purposes only!).

2- Edit your Apache configuration file, C:\Program Files\Apache Software Foundation\Apache2.2\conf\httpd.conf by opening it with Windows Notepad.

3- Find a line that starts with “DirectoryIndex index.html…“. Add index.php at the end of the line . Save the file and restart your Apache Server from the “Monitor Apache Servers” console.

4- Load your Internet browser again. Type in your web server address e.g http://www.syahid.com. You should get a page similar to the info.php page above. Index.php now is recognized as a default Apache homepage, just like your normal index.html page.

Install MySQL 5.0 Community Edition on Windows

1- Download MySQL 5.0 Community Edition to your Desktop from here. If you want to download from a different mirror, click here. Make sure you always download the “Complete package “. Current version during this post was written is 5.0.45.

2- Unzip mysql-5.0.45-win32.zip (the downloaded mysql file) to get Setup.exe. Double click Setup.exe to start installing MySQL. Click “Next ” when you are prompted as below.

3- Select “Typical” for Setup Type and click “Next ” again.

4- Click “Install ” to proceed with the installation process.

5- The setup activity will show you some advertisement. Read it if you wish and click “Next “.

6- Tick “Configure the MySQL Server now” and click “Next ” two times.

7- Click “Standard Configuration” to ease installation process and click “Next ” again.

8- Tick “Install As Windows Service” to make MySQL auto-startup with Windows and “Include Bin Directory in Windows PATH ” to make MySQL system files automatically available for other application.

9- Tick “Modify Security Settings” and enter a root (Administrator) password to secure your MySQL installation. Don’t skip this step! Click “Next ” again.

10- Click “Execute” to start the MySQL Configuration process. Once finished, click “Finish ” to end configuration.

11- Make sure MySQL runs automatically after installation. You can check the status from Administrative Tools Services snap in (Start -> Programs -> Administrative Tools -> Services ), also available via Control Panel.

12- (OPTIONAL) Open your DOS command prompt (Run -> cud). Type in “net stat -na“. Check out ports opened by MySQL (3306) and Apache (80) . That means the services are up and running.

13- (OPTIONAL) Run some of MySQL commands to further ensure that the installation is a success. Check out and follow the commands as pictured below. User account is root and password depends on what you have entered previously during your MySQL configuration.

14- IMPORTANT: Reboot your machine! This is to ensure all MySQL system files are rss-read by Windows as environment variables.

Configure PHP 5 to Work with MySQL with MySQL PHP Extension

Previously, we have installed PHP with minimal modules / extension. To add MySQL support to PHP, you need to change your PHP installation - by adding the MySQL extension on top of your PHP installation. Please make sure that your original PHP 5 MSI installer still remains at its original place .

1- Open the Add / Remove Programs console via Windows Control Panel. Find the PHP 5.x.x entry and click “Change “.

2- Click “Next ” once you are prompted the Welcome page.

3- Click the “Change ” button to proceed.

4- Select Apache 2.2.x as shown in the picture below. Click “Next ” once again.

5- Select your Apache configuration directory (conf) - the directory where your httpd.conf resides. Click “Next ” once done.

6- On the “Choose items to install” screen, click on the plus (+) icon next to Extensions to expand the list.

7- Select on the “X” next to “MySQL” and select “Entire feature will be installed on local hard drive”. Click “Next” again.

8- Click the “Change” button to save all the PHP configuration changes.

9- Finally, restart your Apache 2.2 web server! You can check out that the MySQL extension support for PHP was successfully installed by checking out the info.php / index.php page that was created before.

Congratulations! Give yourself a pat on the back to finally manage it here. Now you can run almost many web applications that depends on Apache 2.2, PHP 5 with MySQL 5 database support. If any of those app complain about any missing extensions, remember that you can always reconfigure PHP by following the steps above.

Whew! This is quite a long guide but I really hope that someone out there will benefit from it!