We Are Hiring: PHP Developers

Open Solutions is currently seeking full time PHP Developers to work on new projects and support existing ones. The roles are full time permanent and based in our Dublin 18 offices.  These positions are also available to be filled immediately.

Responsibilities

Responsibilities associated with this role include, but are not limited to the following:

  • Writing well structured, secure and scalable web applications;
  • Supporting existing web applications for our customers;
  • Problem resolution on the LAMP (Linux, Apache, MySQL, PHP) stack;
  • Project management and initiative to work productively without constant supervision;
  • Excellent testing and quality assurance abilities;
  • Superb customer service;
  • Assist in resolving issues out-of-hours through participation in an engineer on-call roster.

Skills / Knowledge

  • Exceptional knowledge of the PHP programming language (up to 5.3);
  • Deep understanding of OOP design;
  • Proven experience developing large web applications;
  • Good understanding of web application security.

In Open Solutions we typically develop applications using the following frameworks (of which experience with some or all is desirable but not necessary):

  • the Zend Application / Bootstrap / Controller;
  • the Doctrine ORM;
  • the Smarty templating engine;

We also use the following technologies and experience with these is also an advantage:

  • JavaScript / JQuery;
  • HTML / CSS (to an advanced level);
  • Linux as a development and production environment;
  • the MySQL database server;
  • the Apache web server;
  • Subversion / SVN and Git for SCM.

Personal Attributes:

  • Excellent communication skills;
  • Must be forward thinking and have good planning skills;
  • Excellent troubleshooting, judgment, and decision-making skills;
  • High level of self-motivation and proven ability for self-study and learning on the job (note that this is strongly emphasised!);
  • Flexible and dependable, on-call work and out of hours duties may be required from time to time;
  • Team player.

Salary

Negotiable, between €25,000 and €35,000 and depending on experience.

How to Apply

Please send a CV in an open document format (PDF, Open Office, HTML, RTF, etc) to jobs (at) opensolutions (dot) ie for the attention of Barry. Please ensure to include availability to start, any visa / legal requirements or limitations and a portfolio of past projects.

Unsolicited CVs, phone calls and / or emails from recruitment agencies are not welcome.

by barryo Posted on June 13, 2011
Posted in Jobs, PHP, PR | Comments Off

Data Centre Technical Services

We’ve added a new service to our website: Data Centre Services. In reality, this is a service we have been providing since our inception in 2007 and our employees have been doing for other companies long before that.

By data centre technical services we mean that Open Solutions provides a full data centre service portfolio including:

  • data centre selection, negotiation and management;
  • supply and installation of all necessary data centre equipment including racks, patch panels, cable guides, optical distribution frames, managed and unmanaged PDUs (power distribution units);
  • IP transit provider selection, negotiation, set-up and management;
  • installation of a resilient fault tolerant network edge (see case study);
  • installation of management and out of band access;
  • remote hands for installation and configuration of customer kit;
  • consultancy and advice;

And, of course, intelligent engineers with problem solving ability!

We’re very familiar with all the carrier neutral data centres around Dublin as well as most of the carrier owned data centres. We also have good relationships and contacts with data centres in Cork and Galway.

by barryo Posted on May 24, 2011
Posted in PR | Comments Off

ViMbAdmin – We Have a Logo!

As an example of open source in action, we had a note on our Google Code page for ViMbAdmin with a wanted section asking for a logo. Yesterday morning I received a mail from Robert Bell, self professed Head Nerd of Limeworks Australia offering some of his designers time to create one.

24 hours later, we proudly present the new face of ViMbAdmin:

ViMbAdmin Logo

With a cool new logo, we decided we needed to overhaul the login page. You can see the new face of ViMbAdmin at our updated live public demonstration page: http://www.opensolutions.ie/vimbadmin/. This has also been incorporated in a new release version, 0.2.4, which can be downloaded from here.

A sincere thanks to Robert Bell and his team Limeworks Australia for the logo.

 

by barryo Posted on April 7, 2011
Posted in Links, New Release, Open Source, PHP, ViMbAdmin | Tagged , , | 1 Comment

We’re IPv6 Ready! Are you?

IPv6 ReadyOpen Solutions has been certified by INEX to their Platinum standard. This means both our website and our DNS name servers are IPv6 enabled.

We should of course disclose that not only do we contract services to INEX, we also developed the website and web application that powers IPv6Ready.ie!

It is vital that content owners and businesses that generate even a small proportion of their revenue through an online presence become IPv6 Ready.

To this end, IPv6 Ready is an initiative by INEX to promote the uptake of IPv6 in the Internet and broader business communities. While IPv6 has been available and in active use for over 10 years, its take up has been stunted by the continued, but increasingly limited, availability of IPv4 address space. INEX, with the IPv6 Ready initiative is encouraging businesses to delay no longer and invest in IPv6 to ensure the future of their Internet related activity.

Even if you’re not IPv6 Ready just yet, you can still make your users and customers aware that you realise the importance of this by displaying the IPv6 Pending badge which you receive by signing up at IPv6Ready.ie.

Test your site now: www.ipv6ready.ie.

–

Open Solutions has been a part of INEX’s operations team since April 2008, working with the expanding number of INEX Members and ensuring the smooth running of the exchange. We assist with the administration of the switching frabic, provide member support, and develop INEX’s provisioning and management systems.

IPv6 Ready is a PHP application using our standard application framework of Zend, Doctrine ORM and Smarty running on a FAMP stack.

by barryo Posted on March 29, 2011
Posted in Customer News, IP Networking, IPv6, Open Source, PHP, PR | Comments Off

ViMbAdmin :: New Release 0.2.2

We’ve had a busy few weeks updating ViMbAdmin, the virtual mailbox administration web based application we announced earlier this month. Version 0.2.2 reflects a number of bug fixes and new features including:

  • you can now conveniently add a new email alias in the “Aliases of [emailaddress]” popup window;
  • when adding a new mailbox or alias, the domain is pre-selected when available;
  • you can now set the number of rows to display in the configuration file;
  • we’ve added a link to the login page to the mailbox password change page;
  • you can now conveniently add domains to admins through the Administrators -> Domains screen;
  • the system will now check and alert super admins if a new version is available as well as display the version in the footer;
  • many bug fixes.

A full list of changes can be found in the change log and updating instructions can be found here.

by barryo Posted on March 29, 2011
Posted in New Release, Open Source, PHP, PR, ViMbAdmin | Tagged , , | Comments Off

Using Doctrine ORM with Zend Application

In this first of a serious of articles where we delve into some of the hidden treasures in our ViMbAdmin application, we look at how to integrate Doctrine ORM with Zend – and specifically Zend_Application and Zend_Controller.

The first assumption (and requirement) we are going to make is that you are using Zend_Application. If you want to see a working application set up and configured for this, please checkout or browse our ViMbAdmin source code – which we’ll reference throughout this document.

Zend Application has a resource framework which allows us to bootstrap various resources on demand. We have created a Doctrine resource for this very purpose which you can download from here (and you may need to edit the class name and change the plugin path in the config code below to match your setup). Our implementation does many things:

  • instantiates the Doctrine object;
  • sets up an autoloader for Doctrine models;
  • instantiates the Doctrine manager;
  • opens the connection to the database;
  • sets all collations and character sets to UTF8 (this is hard coded but can easily be changed);
  • sets various hard coded Doctrine attributes which can also be changed.

We the add various configuration parameters to the application.ini file:

pluginPaths.ViMbAdmin_Resource = APPLICATION_PATH "/../library/ViMbAdmin/Resource"

resources.doctrine.connection_string = "phptype://username:password@host/database"
resources.doctrine.data_fixtures_path = APPLICATION_PATH "/../doctrine/data/fixtures"
resources.doctrine.models_path = APPLICATION_PATH "/models"
resources.doctrine.migrations_path = APPLICATION_PATH "/../doctrine/migrations"
resources.doctrine.sql_path = APPLICATION_PATH "/../doctrine/data/sql"
resources.doctrine.yaml_schema_path = APPLICATION_PATH "/../doctrine/schema"
resources.doctrine.generate_models_options.generateTableClasses = true
resources.doctrine.extensions_path = APPLICATION_PATH "/../library/DoctrineExtensions"

Or the following where $application is the instance of Zend_Application:

$application->getBootstrap()->bootstrap( 'doctrine' );

From that, you can use Doctrine to your hearts content!

We also have a Doctrine CLI script which works from the same resource. See:

http://code.google.com/p/vimbadmin/source/browse/trunk/bin/doctrine-cli.php

 

by barryo Posted on March 11, 2011
Posted in Hidden Treasures, How-tos, MySQL, Open Source, PHP, ViMbAdmin | Tagged , , , , | 1 Comment

Introducing ViMbAdmin – Virtual Mailbox Administration

Open Solutions are pleased to announce the immediate availability of our latest free and open source web application, ViMbAdmin (vim-be-admin). ViMbAdmin is a web based interface which will allow you to manage mailboxes, virtual domains and aliases.

ViMbAdmin is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the terms of the GNU General Public License version 3, or (at your option) any later version.

ViMbAdmin was entirely funded by Open Solutions and developed by our staff. If you find this application of value, please consider making a donation to our chosen charity.

Do you want to see it in action? We have a live demo which you can access here. You can also browse screenshots by clicking the image on this page.

ViMbAdmin was written in PHP using our own web application framework which includes the Zend Framework, the Doctrine ORM and the Smarty templating system with JQuery on the frontend.

ViMbAdmin is hosted on its own Google Code project page where you can find documentation, browse the source code and access our Subversion repository. We have set up a Google Groups discussion group and you can read our ViMbAdmin blog posts.

ViMbAdmin can work as a slot in replacement for Postfix Admin with a few MySQL ALTER statements.

Features

  • Super admin(s) user level with full access;
  • Admin(s) user level with access only to assigned domains and their mailboxes and aliases;
  • Super admins can create and modify super admins and admins;
  • JQuery Datatable throughout for quick in browser searching and pagination;
  • Create, modify and purge domains including limited the number of mailboxes and aliases a non-super admin can create per-domain;
  • Activate / deactivate admins, domains, mailboxes and aliases at the click of a button;
  • Full logging;
  • Facility for users (mailbox owners) to change their password;
  • Forgotten Password / Password Reset function for admins;
  • Very configurable including:
    • set default values for quotas, number of mailboxes and aliases for domain creation;
    • templated welcome and settings email for users;
    • either plain or MD5 mailbox password support;

 

by barryo Posted on March 5, 2011
Posted in MySQL, Open Source, PHP, PR, ViMbAdmin | Tagged , , , , , , , , | 1 Comment

All Hands on Deck for WINI at the Mobile World Congress

Last month, we posted an item about our customer WINI Technologies being invited to the prestigious annual Mobile World Congress (MWC) in Barcelona.

Since then, they entered and won a Developer Challenge by Aepona and as a result were invited to also exhibit at Aepona’s stand.  This competition was co-hosted by Neustar and, yes, WINI Technologies have also been invited to their stand! So it’s a busy schedule and all hands on deck for the team.

We just saw and are very impressed by the very impressive demonstration kit they put together which you can see below:

You can follow their progress with some more behind the scenes photos on WINI’s Twitter account at @WINICabs.

Open Solutions have provided all technical support to WINI Technologies since their foundation. This includes the development of the telephony and software platform which is to be demonstrated the the conference. We wish the WINI team all the best at the show.

by barryo Posted on February 14, 2011
Posted in Customer News, Links, PR | Tagged , | Comments Off

Useful RANCID Debugging Tips

I always find it difficult to find a good reference for RANCID debugging strategies and, after spending the afternoon on doing same on one installation, put together my own list.

Note that in the following, I use clogin and rancid which assumes a Cisco device. Change to the appropriate variations if you’re not trying to work with a Cisco.

  1. Test logging into a device: 
    > clogin rtr1.example.com
  2. Test logging into a device and a single command: 
    > clogin -t 90 -c"show version" rtr1.example.com
  3. Test logging into a device and run a sequence of commands: 
    > clogin -t 90 -c"show version;show calendar" rtr1.example.com
  4. Show what RANCID does with debugging output: 
    > rancid -d rtr1.example.com

    If the above throws some errors (especially a list of missed commands, and if you’re using TACACS, ensure you have authorisation to run all the commands RANCID tries but logging into the router as the RANCID user and executing them one at a time.

  5. Same as (4) but record all router / switch output for analysis: 
    > setenv NOPIPE YES
> rancid -d rtr1.example.com

    and then complete output can be found in the file: rtr1.example.com.raw (in this example).

  6. Run RANCID on a single switch / router tree rather than all: 
    > /usr/local/bin/rancid-run [tree]
  7. Run RANCID normally:
    8. > /usr/local/bin/rancid-run
  8. Don’t forget that logs are available in RANCID’s logs/ directory.
by barryo Posted on February 5, 2011
Posted in How-tos | Tagged , , | 1 Comment

IANA IPv4 Free Pool Exhausted

The RIPE NCC updated yesterday that the IANA IPv4 free pool has been exhausted:

The IANA IPv4 free pool was exhausted today, 3 February 2011. Each of the Regional Internet Registries (RIRs) has now received one of the final five /8s. The RIPE NCC has been allocated 185/8.

The RIPE NCC is holding reserves totaling approximately four /8s (around 75 million individual IPv4 addresses), not including 185/8.

RIPE will most likely exhaust their reserves sometime in 2011:

As we unable to anticipate consumption rates, we cannot fully predict how long our reserves will last. However, we would like to reassure you that our supplies will not be exhausted within the coming months.

by barryo Posted on February 4, 2011
Posted in IP Networking, IPv6, Links | Tagged , , , | Comments Off