Compdigitec Labs » 2009 » May

Solving “XAMPP: Couldn’t start MySQL!”

admin — Sun, 31 May 2009 00:50:59 +0000

XAMPP for Linux is a convenient package for installing the AMPP stack (Apache, MySQL, PHP, Perl) of web server software, but it also has its own share of problems. One such error is the generic and uninformative error of “XAMPP: Couldn’t start MySQL!“. This can confuse users because it does not say anything about there error. This error is caused by permission errors because it is not able to write to a directory. Here is how to fix it.

Open a terminal.
Once the terminal has loaded, type “sudo chown -hR root /opt/lampp“. (Note: replace /opt/lampp with the XAMPP install director(y.
(Update from comment #7, untested) Type “sudo chmod -R 777 /opt/lampp“.
Restart XAMPP with “sudo /opt/lampp/lampp restart“.
Exit the terminal (right-hand corner X or type exit).

Alternate solution for those who could not get the above working:

Re-download the LAMPP package from http://www.apachefriends.org/. (wget http://downloads.sourceforge.net/sourceforge/xampp/xampp-linux-1.7.1.tar.gz -O /tmp/xampp-linux-1.7.1.tar.gz)
Navigate to /opt/lampp/htdocs (or where-ever you store your documents) and back it up to another location. (mkdir /tmp/htdocs followed by cp -r /opt/lampp/htdocs/*/tmp/htdocs/)
(optional) Also back up the configuration directory and the phpmyadmin configuration (mkdir /tmp/etc followed by cp -r /opt/lampp/etc/*/tmp/etc/ followed by cp /opt/lampp/phpmyadmin/config.inc.php /tmp/)
Delete the entire LAMPP tree (sudo rm -rf /opt/lampp)
Re-extract the LAMPP tree from root (tar xvfz /tmp/xampp-linux-1.7.1.tar.gz -C /opt)
Restore htdocs folder to /opt/lampp (sudo cp -r /tmp/htdocs/* /opt/lampp/htdocs/)
(optional) Restore configuration folder and phpmyadmin config (sudo cp -r /tmp/etc/* /opt/lampp/etc/ followed by sudo cp /tmp/config.inc.php /opt/lampp/phpmyadmin/config.inc.php)

Disable annoying update manager behaviour in Ubuntu 9.04

admin — Sat, 16 May 2009 01:41:50 +0000

After the upgrade to Ubuntu 9.04, the update manager will consistently try to pester you with upgrades, even if you select to not check for updates to Ubuntu. This behaviour annoys users because it attempts to force people to upgrade packages when they might be doing something important on the computer and also always comes up when you least expect it. You can revert this behaviour to the previous way of showing a notification in the system tray:

The Ubuntu Update Manager

Open a terminal.
Enter “gconftool -s --type bool /apps/update-notifier/auto_launch false“.
Type “exit” to exit the terminal.

Fixing “There was an error creating a child process for this terminal”

admin — Wed, 13 May 2009 00:30:00 +0000

Update (2009-08-27): If you are missing mountdevsubfs.sh.dpkg-dist, you can download it here.

After a recent upgrade to Ubuntu 9.04 on a computer, GNOME Terminal and xterm stopped working suddenly by displaying an error message that read “There was an error creating a child process for this terminal.” This is caused by a bug resulting from the unauthorized changes to mountdevsubfs.sh. To fix it, take the following steps:

Switch to a terminal that works by pressing Ctrl+Alt+F1 twice. (press Ctrl+Alt+F7 to restore desktop)
Login to Ubuntu (type in your username followed by your password).
Enter “sudo mv /etc/init.d/mountdevsubfs.sh /etc/init.d/mountdevsubfs.sh.old“to move the old mountdevsubfs.sh out. (Type in your password, again).
Enter “sudo cp /etc/init.d/mountdevsubfs.sh.dpkg-dist /etc/init.d/mountdevsubfs.sh” to restore the dpkg backup.
Shutdown and restart the computer by typing “sudo shutdown now -r“.
(OR) Press Ctrl+Alt+F7 and shutdown through the GUI.

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