Tag Archives: Apache

Welcome to the new server

By Dougal | Published: December 4, 2009

After much flailing about and gnashing of teeth, you should now be seeing this site served up by my new webhost. My original plan to use FastCGI + PHP CGI didn’t pan out (for some reason). But with other improvements to my configuration, I think that the new setup should work pretty well.

After it’s had some time to burn in, and I have the chance to twiddle some more knobs, I’ll try to post a few tidbits of what we changed. [...]

Posted in Announcements | Also tagged configuration, fastcgi, Performance, Servers | Leave a comment

Server Reconfig Redux

By Dougal | Published: December 4, 2009

After a couple of failed attempts at switching to the new server setup, it seems I’m going to have to fall back and punt (at least on a portion of it). With the help of Frederick Townes, I have what should be a really screaming-fast web server setup. But for some reason, it seems that the Apache Worker MPM + FastCGI (mod_fcgid) + PHP CGI combination is not stable. At least, it’s not for me. [...]

Posted in Announcements | Also tagged fastcgi, mod_fcgid, mod_php, Performance, PHP, Servers | Leave a comment

New Server

By Dougal | Published: November 18, 2009

I’ve completed my migration to the new server, as mentioned in my previous post. I’m going to give it a little time for any problems to shake out before I do any heavy testing, but please let me know if you notice anything that doesn’t work correctly.

Update, Dec 2: I’m trying again, after some server configuration help from Frederick Townes (W3 Total Cache author). So far, testing with ApacheBench has looked good.

Posted in Announcements | Also tagged configuration, Hardware, hosting, Servers | 2 Comments

Server Reconfig

By Dougal | Published: November 13, 2009

This blog will be moving to a new server very soon. If all goes well, you shouldn’t notice a thing. But just in case, I figured I’d give a warning, so that if you try to visit and you get an error, or the site won’t come up, you’ll know to just come back again later instead of thinking that my site was an early victim of the 2012 apocalypse or something.

I’m doing more than just moving onto a new server though. [...]

Posted in WordPress | Also tagged fastcgi, hosting, mod_expires, mod_fcgid, mod_php, Performance, PHP, prgmr, slicehost, tuning, virtual private server, vps, WordPress, xen | 19 Comments

Creating a secure WordPress install

By Dougal | Published: October 30, 2007

Over on BlogSecurity, there’s a whitepaper on How to create a secure WordPress install. It covers several areas, including MySQL setup, WordPress user configuration, Apache protection of directories, and some useful plugins. I’ve glanced over it, and I have mixed feelings. Here’s a quick list of notes, off the top of my head:

Pros:

There is detailed information about granting the minimum privileges necessary for the MySQL login. This is a good idea that many people probably don’t think about.
Creating a less privileged WordPress account for posting, separate from your blog admin login, is also a good suggestion.
The notes on password enumeration are important. [...]

Posted in Security, WordPress | Also tagged access, hacking, hardening, ids, MySQL, plugin, Plugins, Security, WordPress | 29 Comments

glTail: Realtime Logfile Visualization

By Dougal | Published: October 11, 2007

This screenshot shows how glTail visualizes a comment spam attack in my configuration.

A few days ago, in my usual daily link browsing, I ran across a link to something called “glTail“, which was described as “realtime logfile visualization”. I’m often keeping an eye on my server logs to catch unusual activity, so I thought I’d give it it a look. [...]

Posted in Applications, Open Source, Ruby, Servers, WordPress | Also tagged Graphics, logs, monitoring, Ruby, Servers, Spam, sysadmin, tools, visualization, WordPress | 4 Comments

Downtime

By Dougal | Published: February 7, 2006

Some of you might have noticed that my site had some downtime over the weekend, and into Monday night. I had upgraded MySQL from version 3.23.x to version 5.0 last week. Everything seemed fine at the time, but when the server ran some maintenance tasks on Saturday night, it turned up some mismatched library versions between PHP and MySQL. And of course, I didn’t know about it until Monday, because an emergency came up that took me out of town all day on Sunday.

So, I finally found time on Monday evening to try to resolve a cascading chain of library dependencies, recompiling just about everything on the server that is related to Apache, PHP, and MySQL. [...]

Posted in MySQL, Servers | Also tagged PHP, this-site | 7 Comments

Zend Core for IBM

By Dougal | Published: June 8, 2005

Cool, IBM and Zend have announced Zend Core for IBM. Basically, it’s an officially supported version of PHP with tight integration into IBM’s DB2 and Cloudscape database servers, and some web services stuff. This is probably going to grab some new eyeballs for PHP from some IBM-based businesses who have probably never heard of it before.

If I was still working at my previous employer back in Alabama, I would be all over this. [...]

Posted in Linux, News, Software, Tech | Also tagged IBM, Microsoft, Perl, PHP, Programming, Ruby, Web, WebSphere, Zend | 3 Comments

Server update

By Dougal | Published: February 1, 2005

Earlier today, I upgraded the webserver on this box to the latest versions of Apache, PHP, mod_ssl, and a few other things. I still need to go back and do some tweaking, since the a lot of configuration file paths were different from my previous compiles. Currently, I’ve got a hodgepodge of symbolic links and config file hacks acting as a bandaid. If you notice anything misbehaving, please let me know.