Gallery 3, Windows 2008 R2, and IIS 7

EDIT: Gallery’s maintainers decline to fully support Gallery 3 on IIS. See http://gallery.menalto.com/node/90281 for more info.

Yes, you can run Gallery 3 on Windows 2008 and IIS 7. Here’s how I did it:

  1. Clean install of Windows 2008 R2 x64. NOTE: These days, 32 bit is pretty ridiculous. The instructions below are only guaranteed to work on x64.
  2. Install the Web Server (IIS) role. I think this will also force a portion of the Application Server role to be installed, too.
  3. Install PHP 5.3. Just go through the default installation steps. I used the latest VC9 x86 Non Thread Safe version from the Windows binary download page.
  4. Install MySql Community Edition for Windows x64. I used default options through the process.
  5. Download phpMyAdmin. Unzip and copy files to C:\inetpub\wwwroot\phpmyadmin.
  6. Visit http://localhost/phpmyadmin, sign in using your MySql’s root account, and create a new database for Gallery 3.
  7. Download Gallery 3. As of this writing, the latest version is beta 2.
  8. Extract files and place in C:\inetpub\wwwroot\gallery3.
  9. If you run Gallery right now, it will squawk about missing some PHP settings that are in its .htaccess file. That file is not read by IIS, so you must implement differently:
    1. Create C:\inetpub\wwwroot\gallery3\.user.ini (more info on .user.ini) and open with a text editor. (Might need to use Notepad launched as administrator because of the protection Windows gives to files in C:\inetpub\.) Yes, you do need the period before user in the filename.
    2. Add these lines:
      short_open_tag    =    1
      magic_quotes_gpc   =   0
      magic_quotes_sybase =  0
      magic_quotes_runtime = 0
      register_globals  =    0
      session.auto_start =   0
      upload_max_filesize =  20M
      post_max_size =      100M
      date.timezone = "America/Chicago"
      Note that the date.timezone is because of an additional problem with Gallery 3’s underlying Kohana framework and PHP 5.3 (link).
  10. Create a new directory at C:\inetpub\wwwroot\gallery3\var. Edit its permissions and give the Users and IIS_IUSRS groups Modify permissions. NOTE WELL: Generally, you should use the principle of least privilege and only give enhanced privileges to the smallest number of users possible, which means not the Users group. I’ll revise in the future if I confirm that only IIS_IUSRS–or even a specific account–is all you need.
  11. Set up mod_rewrite:
    1. Download and install the URL Rewrite Module x64.
    2. In Server Manager, click on Server Manager > Roles > Web Server (IIS) > Internet Information Services (IIS) Manager. To the right, find your gallery3’s directory under your web server under Sites. Click on that directory.
    3. Click URL Rewrite then Import Rules…
    4. Copy the mod_rewrite rules, including the IfModule directives, from the end of Gallery3’s .htaccess file and paste into the Rewrite rules field of the Import mod_rewrite rules screen. Remove the # characters at the beginning of each line; otherwise, they are just code comments.
    5. Delete the line containing RewriteBase. It is not supported, and the rules will not import until that is fixed.
    6. Click Apply on the right hand side.
  12. Now run Gallery 3 setup at http://localhost/gallery3.

Viola, you have Gallery 3 on IIS.

This may seem like a lot of steps, but it’s actually not much different than a setup on Ubuntu. It’s easier than how it used to be with IIS 6 or PHP 5.2. Kudos to Microsoft and The PHP Group for a dramatically easier setup process.

Democrats are lying about the public option

healthcare

Mark my words: a public option health care plan will someday be the only plan.

Don’t put any faith in today’s democrat promises. With a few votes and a sympathetic president, future liberals can (and will) alter public option’s scope. With impunity. That is government’s track record:

  • Social Security expands: At inception, a 1% tax on the first $3,000 of income funded the system. By 1940, it paid $35 million of benefits. Now it’s a 6.2% tax on the first $102,000 of income and pays $650 billion of benefits. (source)
  • Income tax expands: In 1913, when the Sixteenth Amendment was ratified, the income tax was 1% of all earnings over $3,000. Now it is between 10% and 35%, depending on your bracket. (source)
  • Even the Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation expands: “When the PBGC was created in 1974, Democrats running Congress assured everyone there was no taxpayer risk because the agency would be funded by fees from pension plans, as well as by the assets of plans the company takes over.” “Now the PBGC has a $33.5 billion deficit,” and this is before it is about to take on much of Delphi’s pension, a politically-motivated, union face-saving “second biggest pension bailout in PBGC history.” (source)
  • How about those automaker loans? What started in 2008 as large loans is now a giant taxpayer giveaway that just won’t end.

I could fill a whole blog post with expansionism.

Even with current democrat promises, public option probably starts out with a massive tax subsidy and forced lower payments than what private insurers can negotiate (a la Medicare). It will creep like St. Augustine grass and gradually smother all other options. Future expansionists will just seal this fate.

Don’t get me wrong: the current system is flawed. And Obama is right about a lot of its flaws. But as an expansionist liberal, anything he prescribes is quackery.