Remote debugging with Xdebug: roadmap needed!

[jhsachs]

I'm debugging my PHP projects with XDebug and NetBeans 7.0.1, on my development system (Windows 7) with a local server, then uploading them to a remote (Linux) server.

I also want to be able to use NetBeans, still running on my development system, to debug projects with XDebug on the remote server.

I'm having some difficulty figuring out how to approach this. The documentation I've found seems to describe the details (e.g., how to set up an alternate run configuration) without explaining the concepts (whether setting up an alternate run configuration will get me where I want to go).

Right now I'm puzzling over a tutorial titled "Deploying a PHP Application on a Remote Web Server Using the NetBeans IDE" (http://netbeans.org/kb/docs/php/remote-hosting-and-ftp-account.html). I think this describes the steps I need to perform, but it's going to require a substantial amount of work -- starting with a NetBeans upgrade -- and I want to confirm that I'm on the right path before I pursue it.

This tutorial describes how to set up an additional run configuration that will run a project remotely when the project is already set up to run locally. That's exactly what I want to do.

But the tutorial is silent about whether it's possible to debug the project while it is running remotely. All it says about debugging is that "you can create and debug your PHP project locally and then deploy it on the remote server"... a tantalizing but essentially meaningless statement, since I can do that now without any of the stuff that the tutorial explains!

Is this the right technique for me? If not, where should I look?

[Ramratan Gupta]

Hi,
You can login via remote like vnc teamviewer and configure netbean on linux server, I think you can debug there localy via remote login.
Sincerely,
Ramratan Gupta
http://in.linkedin.com/in/ramratangupta


Sent from my Samsung Mobile On 31 Jul 2012 19:32, "jhsachs" <address-removed ([email]address-removed[/email])> wrote:

[jhsachs]

Ramratan: I appreciate your suggestion, but running NetBeans on the remote server would be a very poor second choice. It would have numerous disadvantages... the most serious being that keeping the two codebases in synch would be very awkward. I would much prefer to find out how to do what I originally proposed.

[paolosca]

Hi,

I think there is no problem using xdebug from a remote server but your
workstation will need to be accessible from the internet since xdebug
will have to connect back to you on port 9000.

This means you will either need to have a public IP number or to setup
port forwarding in your router or firewall to make your workstation
accessible from the internet.

Be aware that it's probably not very secure to setup xdebug on a
production server and it will make your server slower so I suggest you
disable xdebug whenever you don't need to debug your code.


Regards,


Paolo.

[jhsachs]

OK... as another thread I've started will show, I've begun setting this up. It's taking a while because I'm doing it in spare moments, but I don't foresee any technical problems so far.

I do have a practical problem, though. I've found that NetBeans views the remote site as a "mirror" of a local directory. Consequently there must be a fully populated local directory, which serves no purpose except to comply with NetBeans' remote project design.

My problem is that a complete set of project files occupies close to 500 MB of disk space. Even on a modern hard disk, that's significant chunk. Furthermore, most of the files are images and PDFs, which have nothing to do with the problem I'm debugging, and never change. From my perspective they're just duplicate files filling up my disk. And there's a real possibility that I'll have to debug several versions of the site concurrently, which will mean several 500 MB chunks out of my development system's hard disk.

Is there any way to avoid this "mirror of a local directory" design, and the need to keep a local copy of the whole site?

[paolosca]

Hi,

By design you need to have a copy to work on, this can even be one on
the server if you map it as a local directory (in this case you will
work on it directly) but it's an extremely slow setup even on a local
network.

This is up to you of course but in the case of a production server you
will need to be extremely careful because if you break something the
system will stop working. It's always better to test the project locally
or on a test server and upload it when you are sure everything is working.


For debugging you don't need a mirror of the whole project but only the
php scripts, I suggest you to setup your local project excluding
directories containing images and pdf files.

Also, you can exclude whole directories from your project in
File->Project properties->Ignored folders, this will prevent netbeans
from scanning those folders and from uploading them to the remote server.

I also work on very large projects and I have the following setup:

1. If on the server there are directories with files uploaded by the
user, I will have the same directories on the local copy without the
user files (mostly empty);

2. If the project contains directories with collections of files for
users to download (as pdf documents, zip files, etc) and are
particularly large I will set them as ignored as ignored and remove them
from the ignored folders list only if I need to upload them;

3. If on the local copy there are directories containing files not
needed to run the project as original high resolution images, DB dumps,
backups of old programs, documentation, etc I set them as ignored so
they are not scanned and are excluded from uploads;


Have a nice day,


Paolo


you can exclude whole directories

On 08/05/2012 03:23 AM, jhsachs wrote:

[jhsachs]

[paolosca]

Hi,

On 08/07/2012 01:16 AM, jhsachs wrote:

[nissan]

[jhsachs]

I didn't have a chance to work on this for a while. I have now, and I've made progress, but I haven't quite reached the finish line.

I was able to create a remote project without difficulty. I anticipated problems finding the location of the certificate for SFTP, but NetBeans apparently lifted it from Filezilla and set everything up correctly. The "New Project" wizard downloaded the appropriate files from the server to the local project directory.

When I tried to start the project in the debugger, though, NetBeans was unable to connect to the debugger. When I killed the debug run I got a familiar error dialog which listed the relevant pip.ini settings and suggested that the debugger might not be installed.

I've checked out every possibility as far as I can, but haven't found the problem. I'm seeking suggestions.

Here's what I've checked:

From the error dialog:

xdebug.remote_enable=on
xdebug.remote_handler=dbgp
xdebug.remote_host= the IP address of my development system, i.e. of NetBeans' debug client
xdebug.remote_port=9000

As far as I can tell, these settings are correct and sufficient.

The error dialog doesn't say so, but php.ini also contains

zend_extension=/usr/local/lib/php/extensions/no-debug-non-zts-20090626/xdebug.so

I have looked at this directory and confirmed that it exists, and xdebug.so is in it. This xdebug.so is actually a link to

/usr/lib/php/extensions/no-debug-non-zts-20090626/xdebug.so

which also exists, and has a length of 743245 bytes.

I don't know whether this is the right xdebug.so, and I'm not sure how to find out. I don't have the root permissions that I need to write to these directories, so the hosting service's tech support people installed the file (and did any other necessary magic) at my request. I have no reason to assume they did it wrong, but I can't verify that they did it right.

It occurred to me that the connection might be blocked by the firewall (in my case, Windows Firewall in Windows 7 Professional). I added inbound and outbound port rules allowing connections on port 9000, but that didn't help. I haven't used this firewall before, though, so I have to allow for the possibility that I made a mistake.

[paolosca]

On 08/27/2012 10:47 AM, jhsachs wrote:

[jhsachs]

Paolosca, thank you for your effort to help. I need to explain a little more about what's happening.

First, the server is run by a hosting company. They're very helpful, but there are certain things that they simply can't do. I suspect that reconfiguring a router will fall in that category, if the router in question is even under their control. That probably knocks out your suggestions 1 and 2.

Suggestion 4 is definitely inapplicable. I've got a local server already, and the debugger works fine with it, but the problem I need to debug does not present there.

That leaves your suggestion 3, a VPN. I don't know what's involved in setting one up, but from my past experiences with support people who had to set them up for me, I gather that part of it is rocket science and part is voodoo! So it's a possibility, but not an appealing one.

What I'm really hoping for is tools or tricks that will help me determine what is wrong, so that I can fix the problem rather than evade it. Even knowing for certain that the problem is on the server side or the client side would be a big help.

[paolosca]

On 08/29/2012 02:52 AM, jhsachs wrote:

[jhsachs]

I read up on port forwarding, and I think I have a pretty good understanding of the problem now.

The router is a black box provided by the cable company, and I'll need to ask them to set up the port forwarding (or tell me how to do it). I'm not looking forward to that. All of the black humor about cable company service is true!

A few observations and questions:

My router's internet address is fixed; at least it hasn't changed over the past six weeks. I don't know about the internal IP address; I don't have any old records of it.

Do the internal and external address both need to be fixed? Or does the router know which computer is mine, even if its internal address changes?

phpinfo says that xdebug is loaded, with a version number of 2.2.1 and an IDE key of "no value." I assume that means it's functional... correct?

Later: I realized that I could test the port 9000 connection with Telnet. I tried that, and found that I can't connect to the host on that port.

This is the type of thing I meant when I appealed for tricks or tools that would help me figure out what is wrong.

I think port 9000 is cleared through my workstation's firewall and the host's firewall. That leaves the local router. I'm going to try to configure port forwarding there, but I can do so and the debugger still doesn't work, what then?

It would make my life ever so much easier if I could confirm that traffic can or can't pass through port 9000 at each point! Until I can do that, I can't isolate the problem; I can think I know where the problem is, but I can't be sure.

[paolosca]

Hi,

On 08/30/2012 05:30 AM, jhsachs wrote: