PEAR is PHP’s equivalent of Perl’s CPAN. It offers hundreds of ready-to-use code modules that can make projects go much more quickly than having to hand code everything. However, it never seems like PEAR is easy to get running.

Installing the Needed Software

In Ubuntu, installing the following packages will quickly get you started with PEAR: php5-cli, php5-dev, and php-pear.

Make sure that you read the next section about problems with using PEAR to install PEAR packages if you are running 9.10, Karmic Kaola.

Here’s an example of how to quickly install those packages from the terminal.

[chris@rommie ~]$ sudo apt-get install php5-cli php5-dev php-pear
Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree
Reading state information... Done
The following extra packages will be installed:
autoconf autoconf2.13 automake automake1.4 autotools-dev libltdl-dev libssl-dev libtool m4 php5-common shtool zlib1g-dev
Suggested packages:
autobook autoconf-archive gnu-standards autoconf-doc gettext libtool-doc automaken gfortran fortran95-compiler gcj php5-suhosin
The following NEW packages will be installed:
autoconf autoconf2.13 automake automake1.4 autotools-dev libltdl-dev libssl-dev libtool m4 php-pear php5-cli php5-common php5-dev shtool zlib1g-dev
0 upgraded, 15 newly installed, 0 to remove and 5 not upgraded.
Need to get 0B/8,690kB of archives.
After this operation, 27.7MB of additional disk space will be used.
Do you want to continue [Y/n]? y
Selecting previously deselected package m4.
(Reading database ... 127272 files and directories currently installed.)
Unpacking m4 (from .../archives/m4_1.4.13-2_i386.deb) ...
...

With these packages, you are ready to roll with PHP and PEAR in Ubuntu.

Problem with Ubuntu 9.10 Karmic Kaola

A great thing about PEAR is that you can quickly install packages with a simple command. For example, “sudo pear install PHP_Parser-0.2.1″ will install the PHP_Parser package. However, this doesn’t work properly in Ubuntu 9.10, Karmic Kaola.

Output of the standard PEAR install command can be seen below:

[chris@rommie ~]$ sudo pear install PHP_Parser-0.2.1
downloading PHP_Parser-0.2.1.tgz ...
Starting to download PHP_Parser-0.2.1.tgz (70,782 bytes)
.................done: 70,782 bytes

While this doesn’t look wrong, it has actually failed. Rather than installing the package, it has simply downloaded the archive, encountered an unchecked error, and crashed. A successful installation has a message saying that the installation is successful.

This problem can be easily fixed by giving the install command the “-Z” option. For example:

[chris@rommie ~]$ sudo pear install -Z PHP_Parser-0.2.1
downloading PHP_Parser-0.2.1.tar ...
Starting to download PHP_Parser-0.2.1.tar (Unknown size)
.............................................................................done: 533,504 bytes
install ok: channel://pear.php.net/PHP_Parser-0.2.1

Notice the “install ok: …” portion of the message. That’s what you should see at the end of a successful installation.

For more details on this bug, please check out Bug #451314 on the Ubuntu bug tracker.

I just encountered an odd issue with Ubuntu 9.10, Karmic Kaola. I had music playing in the background, I adjusted the volume, and I noticed that there wasn’t any change in the volume level. Even maxing out the volume and muting it had no effect.

After wondering if the problem was that I went insane, I looked in Sound Preferences (right-click the volume icon and select Sound Preferences) and found that “RV635 Audio device [Radeon HD 3600 Series] Digital Stereo (HDMI)” was selected under the device output. This means that Ubuntu was trying to send audio over my HDMI connection rather than through my headphone jacks.

This wasn’t a problem last night, so it might be due to the fact that my external monitor at the office runs over the HDMI connection, so it automatically switched to the HDMI audio output. In one way, this is nice, in another way, it will frustrate me to no end if it does this every time I’m at the office. If I’m right that it automatically switched upon detecting an active HDMI connection, then wouldn’t it be better to make it easier to provide a notification on where to switch the audio output rather than just switching it and causing confusion?

Switching the option to “Internal Audio Analog Stereo” instantly fixed the problem.

Oddly enough, when I manually selected the HDMI output again, it muted the analog output. So, it seems that it may not be a complete switchover or possibly just a bug. I’ll continue to see how the situation plays out and make a Ubuntu bug report if necessary.

Ubuntu 9.10, Karmic Kaola, launched earlier this week. One of the key new features in this release is Ubuntu One. Unfortunately, from what I’ve seen, this new feature/product launch has been anything but smooth.

Ubuntu One is one of the new ways that Canonical, the creators of Ubuntu, is trying to generate some revenue based on their distro. Ubuntu One is a hosted file storage solution that allows users to keep a folder and all of its content synced between multiple computers. All users get 2GB of storage for free with the option of increasing the store to 50GB for $10/month.

Since this new offering has many Ubuntu users very excited, I thought I’d give it a try as soon as I installed the new release. However, I was instantly met with a very big message telling me that something was wrong.

Launch Day: Problem 1

When I first started Ubuntu One, the following notification appeared:

Capabilities Mismatch
There was a capabilities mismatch while attempting to connect to the Ubuntu One server. You may have installed a newer version of the client, for which the server does not yet provide support. A new version of the server should be accessible soon. Please be patient while we update.

Ubuntu is supposed to be a Linux distro designed for the average computer user. Since this large message appears for a short period of time and it isn’t easily understood, I think that this message could very easily give users a very bad first experience. I believe it would be much more simple to simply say the following:

Server Connection Failed
Please ensure that you have installed all software updates and try again at a later time.

The reason why I believe the software update portion should be included is because the problem wasn’t the server, it was the client. This morning my system told me some updates were available, and a few of these updates got rid of the “Capabilities Mismatch” problem and allowed the software to connect properly.

The packages that fixed this are the following:

• python-ubuntuone-client
• ubuntuone-client
• ubuntuone-client-gnome

Each of these were updated to version 1.0.2-0ubuntu2. After the update, I closed the Ubuntu One software, restarted it, and the folder sync worked as expected. However, this is when another problem became clear.

Houston, We Have a Problem… Again

There are two parts to the Ubuntu One system. The first is the server/client connection that actively syncs the Ubuntu One folder between the computer and the Ubuntu One server. The second is an online system you can access through the browser. This online system allows you to manage folders and files from inside your browser.

When I first started to play with Ubuntu One, even though the folder sync didn’t function, the web access system did. Using this method allowed me to get a feel for what Canonical was aiming to offer its users. As soon as the server/client issue was fixed, I decided to play around with syncing files and then looking at them on the online system. This is when I found Ubuntu One’s second problem.

Disappointingly, as soon as Ubuntu One’s client started to work properly, their online system failed. So, is this out of the kettle and into the fire?

Again, this failed in a manner that is difficult to understand. You set up a Ubuntu One account by using a Launchpad account. I went to one.ubuntu.com, the Ubuntu One site, clicked “Sign In”, input my login details, and was redirected to the home page again with no feedback message. So, I clicked “Sign In” again, and I was once again redirected back to the homepage. Seems like some authentication issues were going on between the Ubuntu One and Launchpad systems.

As with the previous issue, my problem isn’t how the system failed — I’m a programmer, I know how things can go wrong — it’s with the fact that no feedback was given to the user. It simply didn’t work.

Conclusion

As I finish up this post, I see that Ubuntu One’s online system is functional again. However, as I’ve tested this throughout the day, it seems like it was down for at least a few hours. Overall, this is not a bad downtime, but it does tarnish the launch.

To be frank, I feel a bit bad being so harsh to software and services that I am getting access to for free; however, as per Canonical’s own press release, they are extremely-focused on the user experience. As a user, I have to say that my experience with the new Ubuntu One service was less than good.

I know that Mark Shuttleworth, founder of Canonical, believes that Ubuntu can take on Microsoft’s Windows head on. I also believe that Ubuntu has this potential; however, launch experiences like this aren’t going to win any new fans. One of the biggest disappointments that many people have with Microsoft is that many of their products, Windows included, feel like they were rushed out of development just to get a release.

Considering that Ubuntu One and Ubuntu are both Canonical creations, it looks really bad when Canonical can’t even get their own products to work together properly.