Faster page loads by combining/compressing Javascript & CSS
May 29, 2007 by Jason · 3 Comments
I just saw an interesting article and had to test it out on a new site I'm developing (sorry no link to that). The article "Make your pages load faster by combining and compressing javascript and css files" includes a PHP script and directions for easily and automatically combining and compressing your Javascript & CSS pages.
Now, I know what you're thinking... If you've got 4 JS files for a total of 50KB then combined they're still going to take 50KB. Yeah, that's 100% true. You're probably also thinking, "why should I compress my pages when httpd can do that on the fly?" Well, yeah, that's also true.
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Setting up an RPM build environment
May 21, 2007 by Jason · 10 Comments
Back when I started this site I was recommending that users go through the process of chown-ing chmod-ing the /usr/src/redhat folder so that it was writable by a normal user account as opposed to only root. A few weeks back a user brought up the question of why I was doing this. Well, the answer is "it's just the way I've always done things"...
When I started using Linux a decade or so ago I was taught that this was where you built rpms. Later, when told that I shouldn't be compiling as root, I simply created a new user, changed the permissions on that folder tree, and went about my business. The truth is, there's absolutely nothing wrong with this process if you're the only user of the system. However, you can run into real permission problems and conflicts if there are multiple users on the box and more than one want to build an RPM...
Upgrading to MySQL 5.0.41 on RHEL and CentOS
May 11, 2007 by Jason · 14 Comments
As happened with 5.0.36 and 5.0.37, it looks like the MySQL 5.0.40 Enterprise-only release has been followed almost immediately by a community version of 5.0.41. As the purpose of my Yum repository is to keep your LAMP stack on the bleeding-edge, I bring you RHEL/CentOS RPMs for "MySQL 5.0.41"!
I don't have an actual changelog for 5.0.40 to 5.0.41 because the only changelogs that are published are for 5.0.36 -> 5.0.38 -> 5.0.40 and 5.0.37 -> 5.0.41 for Enterprise and Community releases respectively. That said, if anyone would like to go through the changelogs for 5.0.38, 5.0.40 and 5.0.41 and find a list of differences, I'd be happy to post up the details with proper credit given.
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Upgrading to PHP 5.2.2 on RHEL and CentOS
May 5, 2007 by Jason · 33 Comments
It's been quite a while since the last release of PHP 5.2. The article I posted on upgrading to PHP 5.2.1 was published back on 2/10/2007, just short of 3 months ago. That all said, PHP 5.2.2 has finally been released and it includes many of the patches that were submitted under the recent "Month of PHP Bugs" (formerly known as "March").
The spec file goes largely unchanged from my release of 5.2.1, although the source has been updated to 5.2.2 and one RH-supplied patch (#50) has been updated to reflect some of the code changes in this newest release.
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Upgrading to MySQL 5.0.40 on RHEL and CentOS
May 5, 2007 by Jason · 2 Comments
Another month brings another Enterprise-only release of the MySQL database server under the "Monthly Rapid Update" program. As with the last few Enterprise releases, I've built RHEL-style 32- & 64-bit binary packages for all of the community users out there so that they can keep their systems up-to-date.
The spec file is unmodified from my release of 5.0.38 but the source has been updated to 5.0.40. If you would like to download the src.rpm to compile yourself or simply to look and see what I've done, feel free to use the link at the bottom of this post.
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Subversion packages in repo upgraded to 1.4.3
April 23, 2007 by Jason · 10 Comments
After taking a long weekend to enjoy my new FIOS TV service (by the way, if you haven't seen FIOS TV then you haven't actually watched TV, this is crystal clear), I decided to build Subversion 1.4.3 packages for my repo. These, as with the last batch, are based on DAG's spec file but have been compiled against newer versions of apr & httpd.
Questions and comments, leave them below. Otherwise, enjoy.
WordPress Plugin: “Block Countries”
April 16, 2007 by Jason · 66 Comments
As was mentioned in my "To the jerk stealing my content" rant, I've recently developed a WordPress plugin that can be used to block certain countries from accessing a blog. After a few days of tweaking, I believe that it's finally ready for a public release. I give you... "Block Countries"!
I'm actually surprised at how quickly this plugin was completed. I started with ZERO idea as to how to build a plugin for WordPress but within a couple hours I had a bare-bones plugin that accomplished what I needed it to do. Of course, it then took most of the weekend to clean it up to the point where I would feel comfortable telling someone, "Why don't you try this out on your blog?".
New PHP packages available by popular request
April 2, 2007 by Jason · 6 Comments
Since there have been a few requests for some of the less-common PHP modules (and because these modules are available in the 'centosplus' repo) I decided to build them and have them added to my repositories. The 32- & 64-bit repos now have packages for php-dbase, php-mcrypt, php-mhash, and php-tidy. A few dependencies for those packages popped up (such as libmcrypt, tidy, and mhash) so those have been included as well.
I've also received quite a few requests for a subversion binary package that will work with the newer version of httpd. I'm a bit busy right now, but I'd expect that I'll be able to get to those requests within the next few days.
Upgrading to MySQL 5.0.38 on RHEL and CentOS
March 26, 2007 by Jason · 14 Comments
Well, MySQL has released another Enterprise-only version. Not only are there no binary packages for the community, but they haven't even bothered to post a link to the source on the download page. Why they do this, I don't know, because it would really only take another 15 seconds to update the link to the source package on the community release page. As it stands, in order for someone to find out about this release they'd either have to be crawling the MySQL FTP site or watching the Enterprise edition release logs.
In any case, not to be left behind just because I "can't afford"/"refuse to pay" $600 (minimum) per server, I have once again built packages to provide a community release of the newest stable version of MySQL.
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apr, apr-util, & pcre Updated
March 20, 2007 by Jason · 6 Comments
The files in my yum repository (32- and 64-bit) have been updated to the newest available versions of 'apr' (1.2.8), 'apr-util' (1.2.8), and 'pcre' (7.0). 'httpd' has also been rebuilt to take advantage of the newer versions. I would suggest that all users apply these updates.