I received the following error in my CodeIgniter web application today: Notice: Use of undefined constant OCI_COMMIT_ON_SUCCESS - assumed ‘OCI_COMMIT_ON_SUCCESS’ in … It turns out that, on MEPIS at least, the packages bc, libaio, even having compiled support for OCI8. Adding those packages, restarting the web server and the error should go away.

Previously, I wrote that MEPIS worked (sound, wired networking, wireless networking) out of the box on my IBM R52. FYI, the wireless card is the Intel PRO/Wireless 2200BG. I’d also previously detailed instructions on Debian “Etch”. What I didn’t state was that I would encounter issues where wlassistant would complain about being unable to get an IP address whilst connected to a standard WEP SSID. However if it alone, it’d mysteriously work later on.

This post helped me install Oracle XE on my developer machine successfully! It worked for my Debian Lenny system previously, and I’ve personally verified it to work with MEPIS 8.0, Ubuntu 9.04 and Linux Mint 7, Linux Mint 8 and Xubuntu 10.04. Oracle Express Edition (XE) This step is optional if you already have an Oracle server to use, but in my experience, it’s far better to have one setup locally.

I recently received a request to build a new CakePHP app. The interface consists of a container 800 by 250 pixels width, with practically no chrome (company name, copyright info) whatsoever. It’s shows calendar entries for a given period, and users can click to view entry details (in a Thickbox). I thought the design was rather simplistic, and gave it no further thought. The project was completed in about 2 days, and I spent an additional 1.

My slow laptop is now running on SimplyMEPIS 8.0. Surprisingly, it doesn’t feel that slow anymore. Maybe it was an OS issue, but I digress. The install process was a breeze. I used mepis-network to setup wireless access, gparted to partition the hard disk into two partitions of 8GB (root) and 2GB (swap) each, and then it installed by itself. Later, it setup grub for me so that if I wanted to boot into Windows, it would comply.

I’ve reverted to KDE 3.5.1 as the KDE 4.1 UI seemed laggier and laggier. Krunner, Kate, and Kdesvn felt slower than at first. There was also an unhelp problem with Kate, my primary text editor. Maybe it was my hardware, I’m not sure. So… old is gold I guess.