Developed a control panel system to manage and automate various admin functions for radio stations. The panel is multi-site and multi-user capable and is currently used by Leeds Indie Radio and Radio MOJO in Liverpool.

The project was developed in OOP PHP 5 using the CodeIgniter framework. I also used jQuery and HTML5 for features such as the audio uploader. I also wrote functions to read and write ID3 tracks to the MP3s prior to them being uploaded to the radio playlist system (Centova Cast) via the API.

I plan to develop further tools for the panel in the future, such as an automated radio show producer.

$pcarr = explode(' ', $this->input->post('companyPostcode'));
$pc0 = $pcarr[0];
if(is_numeric(substr($pc0, 1,1))){
	$pca = substr($pc0, 0,1);
} else {
	$pca = substr($pc0, 0,2);
}
// $pca = city identifier
// $pc0 = full first segment
// $pc1 = street level segment

I hope this helps someone.

The reason for the error is because PHP cannot fine the function. The JSON functions are not built in to PHP (< 5.2) and is only available within the PECL libraries.  Ok, so that’s a whole lot of acronyms but it’s not nearly as scary as it sounds. Here’s some things to check:

• Is PECL installed? To test you need to connect to your server in a terminal via SSH and simply type pecl then hit enter. If you get a list of program options then you know it’s working. If you get a command not found error you need to first install the PEAR libraries via your distro’s package manager, i.e. yum install php-pear
• Once you know you have PECL and the PEAR libraries installed you need to check that the JSON extension is enabled. To do this first run ls /etc/php.d and see if there’s a file called json.ini. If there is then open it up and check that it says extension=json.so and that the line is not commented out (line should not start with a ; ).
• If the file does not exist then open up /etc/php.ini in a text editor (such as nano) and look for a line that says extension=json.so. If you see it there then  check that it isn’t commented out. If it isn’t in there, or as a separate file in /etc/php.d then add a line at the bottom of the /etc/php.ini file with extension=json.so then just save the file.
• To initiate the change you need to restart Apache. To do this you should be able to run something like service httpd restart.

Open up a prompt/SSH and login as root

Download the RPM release for your version of CentOS (i386/X86_64) using wget … The 64 bit version is http://packages.sw.be/rpmforge-release/rpmforge-release-0.5.2-2.el5.rf.x86_64.rpm

cd /tmp; wget http://packages.sw.be/rpmforge-release/rpmforge-release-0.5.2-2.el5.rf.x86_64.rpm

Install the associated GPG key

rpm --import http://apt.sw.be/RPM-GPG-KEY.dag.txt

Verify the RPM package you downloaded

rpm -K rpmforge-release-0.5.2-2.el5.rf.*.rpm

Install the RPM package

rpm -i rpmforge-release-0.5.2-2.el5.rf.*.rpm

Now the RPMForge repository is set up we should be able to install the packages required to mount NTFS…

yum install fuse fuse-ntfs-3g

You should then be able to mount the drive using something like

mount -t ntfs /dev/sdc1 /media/usb

Note: If you need to find the name of your drive use the fdisk -l command. Also if you wish to mount to say /media/usb you need to first create that empty directory using mkdir /media/usb

I hope this helps .

References:

• http://wiki.centos.org/AdditionalResources/Repositories/RPMForge#head-5aabf02717d5b6b12d47edbc5811404998926a1b
• http://wiki.centos.org/TipsAndTricks/NTFS

I don’t have a workaround for the netinstall as yet however you can get around it by downloading the full DVD version instead and mounting disk one as a virtual CD drive, followed by the second.

I hope this helps anyone who is getting frustrated trying to install CentOS as a VM!

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