Much research did not reveal anything useful. In forums, there will be suggestions about turning off antivirus and firewalls, changing registry settings, etc. with no cure.

Lightroom does not show any errors, there is no trace in the event log, yet there is something very wrong deep inside.

Normally NAS can be accessed without any issues and there is no indication of any problems.

As a next step I tried to simulate copying the same files from local storage to NAS through Explorer and this is where it become interesting. During copy progress transfer speed would go to zero at some point and network error 0x8007003b would be presented. An Internet search would lead you to yet another wild goose chase.

Coincidently, I just upgraded my router and should have seen 1Gb speeds across all my devices. Strangely enough connection between the local machine and NAS never reached above 100Mb. Running ping to NAS would detect random network packet drops.

We are getting warmer…

Replacing a few ethernet patch cables later NAS talks now with the source machine at 1Gb and no lost packets.

Crossing fingers, and running the “copy files” test again… no more errors, good speed, 300 files transferred without issues.

Let’s hope Lightroom now would be happier as well. And… magic… import now works flawlessly.

Let’s summarize: Lightroom file error handling has room for improvement and is not too user-friendly. If you run into issues while processing files, a) make sure Lightroom is up-to-date, b) look at your hardware and wires, and c) try to simulate problematic operations by some other means, so errors may be surfaced and become more apparent leading you to resolution.

The following links were shared by Adobe Support, but unfortunately did not contribute to the diagnostic:

• https://helpx.adobe.com/ca/lightroom-classic/kb/crash-gpu-directx-enabled.html
• https://helpx.adobe.com/lightroom-classic/help/setting-preferences-lightroom.html#:~:text=Lightroom%20Classic%20can%20display%20menus,Preferences%20and%20restart%20Lightroom%20Classic

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It started all great – new printer arrived in good condition. Installation went well, Windows 10 recognized it and Store has proper apps to use. It appeared we have had a winner.

Note: Printer was connected over Wi-Fi with dedicated IP provisioned on secured locked down network.

After a while I started to notice that printer will not always register properly on restart/wake up and would become unresponsive to print requests. As a scanner it would continue operate without issues and scan as PDF to computer with ease.

Firmware, driver updates, software refresh did not address the issue that sending documents to be printed ended with generic error that printer unable to print. HP Smart was still recognizing printer presence. I was able to print status page, clean print heads, any other maintenance operations just fine, but trying to print from browser, PDF or other apps end up with failure. HP Print and Scan Doctor utility would consistently “fix” port issue.

This was a clue to follow…

When you dig in printer’s settings you will notice WSD port.

WSD is not a port but a ‘port monitor’. WSD devices communicate using a series of SOAP (Simple Object Access Protocol) messages over UDP and HTTPs BUT NOT local IP addresses. Therefore, there is not an IP address for WSD devices.

To find port associated with printer in Windows 10, open the Start menu by clicking the Windows icon on your taskbar. Start typing Control Panel until system finds it in apps and click to open. Select View devices and printers. Select your printer in Printers section and notice that Print server properties is activated in top bar – click to open.

Now the magic…

Scroll through the list of ports. You will see infamous WSD port – ignore it. Look for any ports marked as Standard TCP/IP Port. Check that none of them associated with your printer IP.

Printer IP can be found in your printer’s LED menu for your printer’s network connection. Printer must be setup to use Static IP. If you tap on network icon and drag it down, Info section would be opened and just below printer’s name, you will find printer’s IP Address. Write it down.

Go back to Print Server Properties and Add Port. In next step select Standard TCP/IP Port, click New Port and follow Wizard steps – provide you printer’s IP and Port Name (same as IP), complete other wizard steps. Once finished, a new port will be added into the list.

If port for our IP already existed, click Configure Port and verify that Printer Name or IP Address is correct, Raw protocol is being used, Raw port number is normally set to 9100. Click OK to exit Print Server Properties and save all your changes.

Almost done… but one more step – now we need to tell Windows which port to use.

In Devices and Printers dialog right click on your printer’s icon and select Printer Properties. Navigate to Ports… again. You will notice that port’s list now has check boxes next to ports available and WSD Port is selected. We need to fix that – find your new, just off the press Standard TCP/IP Port. Select it and make sure check box is ticked for it. Click Apply to save your great work.

Note: This last step most likely would need to be repeated every time a new driver update is installed as HP will revert your choices back and make printer inoperable again.

Switch to General tab and hold your breath in excitement while enjoying your beautiful test page being printed.

I have no idea why HP Printer Setup utility or HP Smart cannot configure printer properly for static IP use. It does see the printer. It communicates with it. HP Scan and Capture utility works just fine.

I cannot fathom why HP Smart drivers end up being not so smart.

I hope this little writing of mine helped someone avoid pain trying figure out why lovely HP printer is not so loving.

PS: Printer can be stubborn. One more thing to try is to assign static IP on the printer itself using direct configuration via touch screen.

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SearchWP is a nice WordPress plugin which allows to extend WordPress search capabilities to various content format beyond just page text.
Here I am focusing on PDF indexing specifically. If you have any PDF files published and want them be indexed SearchWP-XPDF extension can be deployed.

Issue

Problem is that SearchWP developers decided to rely on deployment of direct code from FooLabs.  If it is not deployed as a drop-in, functionality would be disabled.
Drop-in option is not always possible and in fact unnecessary for this plugin to function.

In distros like CentOS  PHP XPDF support is available out of the box and can be enabled by installing poppler_utils.

Solution

• • Install SearchWP Xpdf extension as you would normally do
  • In WP Dashboard warning would appear – “SearchWP Xpdf Integration requires you to download and install Xpdf…”
  • SSH to your server
  • Install poppler_utils using yum# yum install poppler_utils
  • Refresh your WP Dashboard page. Warning would not go away because code specifically looking for physical location instead of verifying XPDF support by OS
  • Now we do some hacking:
    • in your WP installation, navigate to /plugins/searchwp-xpdf/ and open searchwp-xpdf.php for edit
    • Look for “// see if Xpdf exists”
    • Comment out what follows

      /*
      // see if Xpdf exists
      if ( $continue && file_exists( $this->xpdfPath ) ) {
      echo 'Xpdf (pdftotext) was found, continuing<br />';
      } elseif ( $continue ) {
      echo 'Xpdf (pdftotext) was not found, aborting<br />';
      $continue = false;
      }
      */
      

    • Next look for function admin_notice()
    • Comment out content of the function to suppress Admin notice

      function admin_notice() {
      /*
      ...
      <?php }
      */
      }
      

  • Refresh WP Dashboard
  • Warning would now go away
  • Run indexing, PDF files should now be indexed properly

Footnote

I did actually reach out to SearchWP team back in May 2017 and solution was acknowledged, but almost year later plugin still relies on custom drop-ins.

Enjoy.

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I have previously discussed Steps to update MySQL to 5.5 and now its time to look at PHP

Introduction

If you run VPS or dedicated server with CentOS 6.x installed often you will find that default setup would include somewhat antiquated PHP and MySQL versions – 5.3 and 5.1 respectively.

Unfortunate situation dictated by the fact that main distro package used in such environment does not include latest versions.

If SSH and Linux management is allowed, it does not take long to bring environment up to date.

Note: it is much easier to update packages right away once server is still fresh and there is not much other software installed.

Update PHP to 5.5 on CentOS from SSH

Make sure you have root access to underlying Linux and open SSH session.

• Check version of PHP installed. Let’s assume PHP 5.3 or 5.4 is present. You should see something similar to the following output

  # php -v
  PHP 5.4.17 (cli) (built: Jul 23 2013 00:02:04)
  Copyright (c) 1997-2013 The PHP Group
  Zend Engine v2.4.0, Copyright (c) 1998-2013 Zend Technologies
  

• Default CentOS repo accessible with yum would not have proper PHP version and you would need to add Webtastic repo with

  # rpm -Uvh http://mirror.webtatic.com/yum/el6/latest.rpm

• As mentioned above we are interested in latest stable version of PHP 5.5. Let’s make sure it is in fact available for installation

  # yum list available | grep php55

  then examine output to make sure php55w packages are present.

• Depend on your current configuration, you may need some additional PHP libraries (full list can be found here), so please take a note of what packages you have installed and setup in your system before proceeding with next step
• Now you can install the new PHP 5.5 core and packages. Options below is most basic and commonly used configuration for 64bit system

  # yum install php55w.x86_64 php55w-cli.x86_64 php55w-common.x86_64 php55w-gd.x86_64 php55w-ldap.x86_64 php55w-mbstring.x86_64 php55w-mcrypt.x86_64 php55w-mysql.x86_64 php55w-pdo.x86_64

  Once operation is completed, run PHP version check again, you should see that PHP version is now 5.5

  # php -v
  

Potential problems:

PHP Upgrade fails with dependency error “Error: php55w-common conflicts with php-common-5.3.3-23.el6_4.i686”

Since there is previous version of PHP present and we did not do clean uninstall, dependency resolution procedure may become “confused” and could not figure out what to do with common package.

Try the following two commands before you attempt installing PHP again

# yum install yum-plugin-replace
# yum replace php-common --replace-with=php55w-common

First will ensure that we do have replace option support and then update php-common package before we update PHP core

php -v command shows ionCube compatibility error

Simply put, ionCube extension is older version and not compatible with new PHP version.

What is the ionCube in the first place and why we better keep it?

ionCube is an PHP code encryption extension usually used with Zend Engine and allows protect otherwise open text PHP code from direct access and analysis. Many commercial PHP products would come encrypted and without this extension you may no longer will able to use them.

Let’s assume ionCube is here to stay and let’s see what we can do to reanimate it.

• Visit ionCube download section and get two files: Loader Wizard or loader-wizard.php (do not confuse it with Loader Installer) and Loader package for Linux 64-bit
• Unpack Loader package along with loader-wizard.php into web server folder which you can later access from your browser
• Open loader-wizard.php in your browser and follow steps presented
• Once all steps are completed and wizards verifies the location of the required ionCube extension file, restart Apache and verify PHP version again. You should see ionCube is now loaded successfully

  # service httpd restart
  # php -v

In some cases PHP would unable to load proper version of ionCube
Try the following:

• visit /etc/php.d folder and look for 00-ioncube-loader.ini or similar
• if located open for edit and check what zend_extension file is referenced to make sure proper version of the loader is used

php -v command shows timezone warning

PHP Warning: date(): It is not safe to rely on the system's timezone settings

This message easily to notice when you run php -v after upgrading to latest version of PHP as it is no longer set by default.

• For CentOS locate system php.ini typicaly found /etc/php.ini
• Open it in a text editor
• Find the following line

  date.timezone=

• If line is commented out, you need first uncomment it
• Visit PHP.net and locate the time zone you want to run your server in
• Use string name of the time zone desired. Please note that you need to enclose name in double quotes

  date.timezone="America/New_York"

• Since you are editing PHP settings, you may as well increase PHP memory limit to 512M by changing

  memory_limit=512M

• Save your changes and exit out of text editor
• Restart Apache

  service httpd restart

Final thoughts

While not strictly necessary, I would recommend reboot your server. This may help with some phantom issues encountered rarely due to some ongoing active processes.
Don’t forget to log off and close your SSH session

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There are several discussions on the topic suggesting that garbage collection mechanism does not close open files in some cases (ex: ConsoleOutput code).

While it is always good to clean up after yourself when working with file handlers in any code, modifying the production code to address this issue may not be quick solution.

Way around it is to increase file limit in Linux

Using ulimit (SSH)

Note: This may not be very reliable method as most systems would not allow it. But if allowed would be easiest method to address the issue

First, check what the current limit is set to

# ulimit -n

Then if value is too low, try to increase it to desired level by calling (ex: increase from 1024 (default) to 4096)

# ulimit -n 4096

To ensure your system allows root level update using method above and not just updates the session values, restart your SSH session then verify new value is set by calling first command again. If changes reverted back to original, go with the next step.

Adjust limits.conf

This is more “low level” approach – modify values in limits.conf

# vi /etc/security/limits.conf
* soft nofile 1024
* hard nofile 4096

Note: Read the settings format outlined in the file before saving. * may or may not be required.

and

# vi /etc/sysctl.conf
fs.file-max=4096

Reload changes

# sysctl -p

VI command

:w – Save edit
:q! – Exit without save
A – Switch into Insert mode
Esc – Exit insert mode

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DISCLAIMER: These particular steps were tested when upgrading default MySQL 5.1 part of CentOS 6.5 with Plesk 12.

Assumptions:

• you are familiar with SSH
• and have SSH root access
• Webtastic repo is used
• Prior MySQL installation exists (check $ rpm -q mysql mysql-server)

Core update

• Enable repo – Webtatic EL6 for CentOS/RHEL 6.x

  $ rpm -Uvh http://mirror.webtatic.com/yum/el6/latest.rpm

• Install 5.5 side-by-side, replace engine and resolve dependencies

  $ yum install mysql.`uname -i` yum-plugin-replace
  $ yum replace mysql --replace-with mysql55w

• And the last step system DB structure need to be updated
  This is very important especially if your Plesk backup start failing with the error

  Not all the data was backed up into XXXXXX successfully. 
  mysqldump: Couldn't execute 'SHOW FUNCTION STATUS WHERE Db = 'XXXXX'': 
  Cannot load from mysql.proc. The table is probably corrupted (1548)
  

  $ service mysqld start
  $ mysql_upgrade -u root -p

  If for any reason this fails with error

  Looking for 'mysql' as: mysql
  Looking for 'mysqlcheck' as: mysqlcheck
  FATAL ERROR: Upgrade failed

  try the “backdoor”

  $ mysql_upgrade -uadmin -p`< /etc/psa/.psa.shadow `

  If after that error still present itself try to force upgrade by running the same command with extra key

  $ mysql_upgrade -uadmin -p`< /etc/psa/.psa.shadow ` -f

At that point you all set but it is recommended that MySQL service is restarted

$ sudo service mysqld stop
$ sudo service mysqld start
$ sudo service mysqld status
mysqld (pid NNNN) is running...

Enjoy

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Cannot install applications because the certificate for …. is not valid.

Before you go all nuts and start blaming your recent beautiful change you just made, first stop for a second and think if you just improved experience on your phone (nice round red “hung up” button instead of square one I think worth it on its own… along with dozen other changes and fixes) by installing iOS 7.1 update.

If so you found your culprit – in this recent update apps can not longer be downloaded from http:// location. Your download link must use https:// and self-signing certificate would not help you here.

If you have SSL certificate in place, simply adjust your link, if not, then get one and enable https support for your site.

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Google has announced that it is dropping seven more products in an effort to simplify its range of services. (BBC)

The seven latest products earmarked for the chop are as follows:

• Google Wave – an attempt to combine email and instant messaging for real-time collaboration
• Google Bookmarks List – a service which allowed users to share bookmarks with friends
• Google Friends Connect – allowed webmasters to add social features to their sites by embedding a snippet of code
• Google Gears – much-hyped effort to maintain web browser functionality when working offline
• Google Search Timeline – a graph of historical query results
• Knol – a Wikipedia-style project, which aimed to improve web content
• Renewable Energy Cheaper than Coal – a project which aimed to find ways to improve solar power

As user of WordPress platform “closest friend” from the list is gGears, fortunatelly WP discontinued its support for it some time ago.

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After some research and looking around the running processes a problem happened to be very simple – not closed properly GarminLifetime.exe or GarminMapUpdater.exe – killing it solved the problem.

One would think that updater would detect concurrent access to the device, but…

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I went with Linksys E4200 – nice piece of machinery. Everything now is flying! I am using Linksys products for many years and this upgrade did not disappoint me, setup was a easy, my network is now on true gigabit speed and wireless with dual band and much stronger signal.

Well, not everything is happy about the change at first…

My good old Wii refused to stay connected via WiFi loosing signal at random. I think it may be something to do with dual band wireless. I could have made two network on different bands, but I went with simple hardware solution – wired USB adapter – and this problem was solved.

Second problem was Sony BDP-S350 player not seeing network.
On the surface everything is OK and there is proper address and all, but no BD content or updates could be loaded.
Solution is simple though – static IP address – as described here.

Please note that for me just assigning static IP address at BDP level helped resolve the issue.

After this last issue, everything back to normal and adoption of the new router is complete!

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