Error message

On an Ubuntu box, I tried using the locate command to find information about a package and ran into the following error:

mlocate: can not stat () `/var/lib/mlocate/mlocate.db': No such file or directory

The locate program (should) routinely builds a database of files on the box and searches it when we call it. As the error message states, this database appears to be missing thereby leading to the error. Fixing it is as simple as calling:
updatedb

which should build the database.

Hope this helps!

If you find that you Drupal installation is WSOD-dead with the following error message:
Error: Class 'SelectQueryExtender' not found in includes/pager.inc

then this means that you've messed up the Drupal (7, at the time of writing) registry somehow. You might have done this during an import/export operation where you forgot to export the registry and registry_file tables, or as I did, you have foolishly just emptied them to clear up issues with a missing class file that Drupal fastidiously continues to track.

One of my laptops which is running on Kubuntu Lucid decided to stop connecting to my network today. I found that the KDE network-manager applet (or is it a plasmoid? :S) had decided to disable itself. Clicking it stated so with no option to re-enable it (nice UI, boys). Getting to the commandline and starting the network-manager service did not help. I also found that accessing the System settings networking configuration gave me corrupt XML file errors.

I ran into the following error when I added a new repository to my kubuntu box and ran apt-get update:
E: Dynamic MMap ran out of room. Please increase the size of APT::Cache-Limit. Current value: 123123. (man 5 apt.conf)

To fix this, navigate to /etc/apt/apt.conf.d and edit the file related to debconf which in my case was 70debconf. Add the following line to the bottom of this file and save it:
APT::Cache-Limit "200000000";

If you run into the following error message when attempting an iptables-restore < my.rules:
iptables-restore v1.4.8: no command specified
then the problem is that you have very likely just copied and pasted stuff into my.rules which has led to some dodgy line-breaks terminating blank lines in the file.

On a server I am working on right now, I installed a PHP application and attempted to run it. However, I ran into a "500 Internal Server Error". Upon further investigation by checking the logs, I found the following errors in the Apache error log:

SoftException in Application.cpp:357: UID of script "/home/foo/public_html/index.php" is smaller than min_uid
Premature end of script headers: index.php

On a new installation of GVim (in Windows 7), I ran into the following curious error whenever I tried to open a new document for editing:
Vim E303: Unable to open swap file for "[No Name]", recovery impossible

According to friendly chap on IRC, this is caused by a temporary directory bug and that it can be fixed by adding the following directive to the _vimrc file:
set directory=.,$TEMP

That's all it took to fix this issue for me - hope this helps!

Earlier today, I was banging my head against the wall trying to import some data in a CSV file into MySQL. While my imports have gone well thus far, this time around I was dealing with data involving lots of strange diacritics, runic squiggles and other manners of gibberish that make the world as fun as it can be. In other words, I was dealing with Unicode.

While trying to import a CSV file into MySQL today using the LOAD DATA INFILE command, I ran into the following situation:

mysql> LOAD DATA INFILE 'foo.csv' INTO TABLE bar FIELDS TERMINATED BY ',' ENCLOSED BY '#' LINES TERMINATED BY '\r' (a, b);
ERROR 29 (HY000): File 'foo.csv' not found (Errcode: 13)

The file exists fine and the permissions are also kosher. After much gnashing of teeth and perusing of documentation, I found out that local file sources require the LOCAL keyword:

If you've upgraded Drupal recently and noticed that the admin page is empty and returns a You do not have any administrative items error message, then this basically means that your menu table is a little wonky. Another tell-tale sign that you've got the same problem as I did is that the admin page will have the title, Administer rather than Administration. Fixing this is pretty straightforward, if a little painstaking. To do so, make sure that the Menu module is enabled and perform the following steps: