When you actually try and run aapt you might get an even scarier looking error:
bash: /home/adrian/Android/android-sdk-linux_x86/platform-tools/aapt: /lib/ld-linux.so.2: bad ELF interpreter: No such file or directory

I had a little bit of a panic before I realised that there is officially no 64bit version of the android SDK. After some quick googling, it turns out you need to install some 32bit compat libraries. This process has been documented over on the Fedora Project Wiki, but I’ve posted it here in case that page changes:

yum install glibc.i686 glibc-devel.i686 libstdc++.i686 zlib-devel.i686 ncurses-devel.i686 libX11-devel.i686 libXrender.i686 libXrandr.i68

There was nothing in the error log (although I’m still twiddling with php-fpm and lighttpd) but I realised that my post title (and URL) ended with “php”. Here’s the rewrite rule:

  url.rewrite-final = (
    # Exclude some directories from rewriting
    "^/(wp-admin|wp-includes|wp-content|gallery2)/(.*)" => "$0",
    # Exclude .php files at root from rewriting
    "^/(.*.php)" => "$0",
    # Handle permalinks and feeds
    "^/(.*)$" => "/index.php/$1"
  )
}

But the problem is with:

"^/(.*.php)" => "$0",

The single unescaped “.” next to “php” will translate to “any character, followed by php”. What we need is:

"^/(.*\.php)" => "$0",

But, as fate would have it, I only found this out because one of my post titles ended with the word “php”. Filed under coincidence.

The quick fix

The quickest way to combine the two is to use something like:

BookPeer::populateObjects($select->from('Books')
                                 ->where('author = ?', 'foo')
                                 ->order('title ASC')
                                 ->query()
                                 ->getDriverStatement());

The magic part is the call to “getDriverStatement” which returns the PDOStatement composed by Zend_Db_Statement_Pdo. The only downside to this is that the query will be executed by Zend_Db’s connection to the database, rather than Propel’s. If you can live with that then you may stop reading. If, like me, this sort of negligent waste of resources keeps you awake at night, then you need a rather unsightly hack.

Sleepless nights

Zend_Db doesn’t support any kind of “setConnection” method, where you pass in a PDO object. While Propel does support this, it only accepts an instance of PropelPDO. Rather than extending Propel, I thought the easiest way around this would be to create a Zend_Db adapter which, upon calling getConnection(), simply delegates back to Propel::getConnection().

The new adapter required a little hacking to get it right. There are a few methods to castrate because, understandably, the abstract adapter does a lot of checking to make sure it’s configured correctly. Instead, we’re using a PDO connection, configured elsewhere so any configuration parameters would simply get in the way.

class App_Db_Adapter_Propel_Mysql extends Zend_Db_Adapter_Pdo_Mysql {
 
   // configuration-less construction
   public function __construct() {
      parent::__construct(array());
   }
   public function getConnection() {
      $this->_connect();
      return $this->_connection;
   }
   // always use Propel's connection
   protected function _connect() {
      if (!$this->_connection) {
         $this->_connection = Propel::getConnection();
      }
   }
   // allow for no parameters to the constructor
   protected function __checkRequiredOptions(array $config) {}
}

Now we can use the Zend_Db factory (or, because the new adapter does not require any configuration, you could technically just instantiate it directly) to get our new adapter. The select object will use that adapter and we’ve avoided duplicate db connection attempts.

The finished article

$config = array('adapterNamespace'=>'App_Db_Adapter');
$select = Zend_Db::factory('Propel_Mysql', $config)->select();
 
BookPeer::populateObjects($select->from('Books')
                                 ->where('author = ?', 'foo')
                                 ->order('title ASC')
                                 ->query()
                                 ->getDriverStatement());

$arrayOfObjects = Zend_Registry::get('stuff');
$object = $arrayOfObjects['key'];
$object->foo();
// of course, I could do:
// $arrayOfObjects['key']->foo();
// but I still need the temporary assignment

Because I decided to put a stdClass object into the Zend_Registry, the code reads a little more fluently:

Zend_Registry::get('stuff')->key->foo();

As far as I’m aware, there is no significant penalty for using stdClass, but the results are much nicer.

• Read MySQL’s documentation on creating SSL certificates – follow Example 1, ignoring the bit about client certificates.
• Make sure the slave can connect to the master on port 3306. For the security conscious, I don’t think this is as bad as it sounds – we restrict access by IP and our master MySQL server will require SSL credentials.
• Modify your master’s my.cnf file to include the ssl-* configuration options as per the Replication over SSL document
• Copy the master’s new ca-cert.pem, server-cert.pem and server-key.pem files to your slave machine
• This is where I fell over – specify your certificate/key files in CHANGE MASTER TO as demonstrated here and not in the my.cnf. For one reason or another, only the CHANGE MASTER TO method works.
• On the DB Master :
GRANT REPLICATION SLAVE ON *.* TO 'slave'@'slave-ip' IDENTIFIED BY 'slavepass' REQUIRE SSL;
FLUSH PRIVILEGES;

• On the DB Slave :
START SLAVE;
SHOW SLAVE STATUS;


By specifying the certificate/key file paths in the CHANGE MASTER TO command, we’ve made sure that the slave tries to connect over SSL – this is important because without this, the slave would send user/pass information in plain text. By specifying REQUIRES SSL in our master’s GRANT we’ve ensured that account can only be used if the client provides the correct SSL details. Similarly, by specifying the slave-ip for the slave user, we’ve further secured the master mysql server.

Along comes wordpress and very deftly puts to shame any half-baked CMS I ever came up with.

Hopefully, wordpress will bolster my rather stop-start blogging career.