Mantis Email Sending Problem

If when using the Mantis (bug tracking system), you get a message like:
"SYSTEM WARNING: fsockopen() [function.fsockopen]: unable to connect to smtpserver:25 (Permission denied)"
you may take a look at the Mantis forums.
If the answers given there did not solve your problem, then the information below may help you:

(I assume that you are using Linux :) )
In your terminal window, type
tail -f /var/log/messages
and press ENTER.
You may see something like:
"SELinux is preventing the httpd daemon from connecting to network port 25"

If this is the case, then, you may prevent the SELinux from running :) [But if your server is open to internet, stopping SELinux may not be a wonderful idea, I am NOT a SELinux expert]

To disable the SELinux, type
vi /etc/selinux/config
and press ENTER.
In vi editor (i hope you know how to use vi, you may use nano or other editor as well), change the
SELINUX=enforcing
line as
SELINUX=disabled

Save and exit the config file.
Reboot your server.
You probably will not get smtp error from your Mantis.
:)

An easy but primitive web site load test

If you have a Linux OS and want to make a (primitive) load test to a page on your web server, here is a quick solution. In your terminal window, type and ENTER:
ab -n 1000 -c 5 http://YourWebSite/page.html

5 is the number of the concurrent requests and 1000 is the number of the total requests.

IBM vs I18N

There is one thing common in the IBM products: they don't like any regional settings other than US :S
For instance, you are trying to record a Web application with IBM Rational Functional Tester. During the recording, you press the Pause or Stop button and get the warning that "... the record activity can not be started / stopped ...".
Change the regional settings to US (and language to English) and try again.

[ I wasted a whole work-day just because of this easy(!) configuration problem ! ]

Installing SOAPpy on Python on Windows

Download the latest official release from http://pywebsvcs.sourceforge.net
(Alternatively, https://pypi.python.org/pypi/SOAPpy )
Extract it.
In the command prompt navigate to the folder that you extracted the SOAPpy.
Type
python setup.py install
press ENTER.

If you get an "SyntaxError: from __future__ imports must occur at the beginning of the file" error, then find the Client.py, Server.py and Types.py files.
Locate the given lines in all 3 py files:

ident = '$Id: Server.py,v 1.21 2005/02/15 16:32:22 warnes Exp $'
from version import __version__
from __future__ import nested_scopes

and cut the "from __future__ import nested_scopes" lines and paste it above of the "ident =" line, as below.

from __future__ import nested_scopes
ident = '$Id: Server.py,v 1.21 2005/02/15 16:32:22 warnes Exp $'
from version import __version__

Save the files and re-execute the
python setup.py install
command. It should work.

PS: Blogger Wes said...
In 0.11.6 I had to update GSIServer.py, as well.

Installing PyXML on Python on Windows

You download the latest PyXML distribution for your Python from http://pyxml.sourceforge.net.
But it said that it could not find the correct Python version?

Simply open the downloaded PyXML exe file with Notepad++, search for the Python version string which the PyXML wants (e.g., 2.4). Edit the 2.4 with your Python version (e.g., 2.5). Save the file.
And execute the exe file.
It should install the PyXML.