We’ve got 64-bit binaries!
March 17, 2007 by Jason · 7 Comments
Well, I've finally gotten VMWare working again. Now that I've got a suitable 64-bit development environment running, I'm finally able to compile both 32-bit and 64-bit binaries for httpd, PHP, MySQL, etc.
If you run a 64-bit system and you haven't already taken a look, now might be a good time to check out my yum repository.
Announcing the Utter Ramblings EL4 repository
March 14, 2007 by Jason · 33 Comments
If you're a regular reader of the site, you may have noticed the "Yum Repository" link at the top of the page. If so, congratulations, you're one of the first to try out a new service I'm offering on this site.
As it appears, most of the posts on this blog thus far have been how-to's on updating your RHEL & CentOS servers to use the newest versions of httpd, PHP, and MySQL. I'm still planning on creating those articles as needed, but only the source packages will be linked to the page. Binary releases for i386 (x86-64 coming soon) will now be available for easy updating through my brand new yum repository (and yes, before you ask, 'up2date' can read a yum repo).
I'm hoping that this will cut down on not only the effort required to update your systems, but also on the possible glitches that can come from updating a complex set of packages like PHP (where, with prior provided methods, you'd need to type out all of the file names that you wanted to install all at once, otherwise you'd have dependency issues with upgrading from an earlier release).
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Upgrading to MySQL 5.0.37 on RHEL and CentOS
March 9, 2007 by Jason · 11 Comments
Well, I'm back again with yet another release of MySQL. Coming only a few short days after the Enterprise release of 5.0.36 under the Monthly Rapid Update program, MySQL has decided to release 5.0.37 as a community edition.
As with my last release, this one is based on the latest Fedora src.rpm from the development tree and has been modified to use the newest source package, package new files that didn't exist before, remove patches that have been integrated into the main code-base, and, as a first for me, to add a patch to reverse part of a recent commit that breaks regression testing.
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Update to “Upgrading to MySQL 5.0.36 on RHEL and CentOS”
March 8, 2007 by Jason · 7 Comments
If you followed my earlier guide on Upgrading to MySQL 5.0.36 on RHEL & CentOS 4, you don't really need to read this. If you haven't, you may want to read the other for reference, but I would strongly recommend that you follow this guide instead.
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Upgrading to MySQL 5.0.36 on RHEL and CentOS
March 6, 2007 by Jason · 9 Comments
Let me start by saying, "yes, I know that MySQL 5.0.36 isn't on the download page yet". That's because this is an enterprise-only release under the Monthly Rapid Update program. That said, there is absolutely nothing preventing the build of this version as a community release.
As with my prior release of MySQL 5.0.33 for RHEL & CentOS 4, the i386 binary packages and the src.rpm are packaged in the "Red Hat"-style that is used for the RHEL-, CentOS-, and Fedora-distributed packages. That means that the client & shared libraries are packaged as "mysql", that the "mysqld" daemon is packaged as "mysql-server", etc.
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XCache 1.2.0 src.rpm Updated
February 23, 2007 by Jason · Leave a Comment
For those of you using it, the src.rpm for XCache 1.2.0 in my PHP Caching and Acceleration with XCache tutorial has been updated to fix a bug that might occur on some servers (see this ticket for more information).
Online Capacity Expansion (Gone South) with Openfiler and a 3Ware RAID card
February 20, 2007 by Jason · 5 Comments
If you've been reading my blog then you'd know that I use OpenFiler for my home storage needs. When I originally provisioned the system it was with a pretty beefy box. One thing I went short on though was storage. I purchased a high-end RAID card (3Ware 9590SE-16ML) but then proceeded to only install 3 drives (Western Digital RE2 500 GB). I did this for a bunch of reasons, but the most important are that, 1. hard drives cost money and they wern't currently needed, 2. hard drive prices go down, and 3. the raid controller I purchased supports Online Capacity Expansion (OCE).
A few days ago I noticed that my storage array was about 80% full. As such, I decided to order another 500GB RE2 (for $40 less than the original three, proving point #2) and test out 3Ware's OCE.
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Upgrading to PHP 5.2.1 on RHEL and CentOS
February 10, 2007 by Jason · 36 Comments
Well, PHP 5.2.1 was released on Thursday so here we go again. PHP 5.2.1 contains more than 180 bug fixes, as well as some performance improvements (official release statement). For those of you that like to stay on the bleeding edge, here's my how-to on upgrading to PHP 5.2.1 for RHEL & CentOS 4.
As I have done with the last few upgrade tutorials, I'm including the modified src.rpm at the bottom of this post. Compiled RPM packages are NOT going to be included as PHP RPMs are dependent on the version of httpd that you're running. If you didn't follow my Upgrading to httpd 2.2.4 how-to, my compiled binaries won't do you a bit of good. In any case, if you've followed any of my other tutorials, you're probably pretty familiar with the process. If not, read my how-to's on Upgrading to PHP 5.1.6 & Upgrading to PHP 5.2.0 BEFORE proceeding as they both contain helpful information about the process.
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How-To: Compiling XCache from Source
January 30, 2007 by Jason · 27 Comments
For those of you that are not running RPM-based distros, you're probably feeling a bit left out. Up until now, all of my tutorials have dealt with upgrading RPM-based distros. Well, that ends here. I'm going to walk through the fairly simple process of compiling and installing XCache for httpd from the original source.
The current stable release of XCache is 1.0.3. The "Unstable" release, made for PHP 5.1 & 5.2, is 1.2.0. Despite the label, I have not found anything "unstable" about the 1.2.0 version. That said, there have been a few issues reported on the vBulletin forums for users of PHP 4. If you are running PHP 4, I'd recommend that you use 1.0.3, just to be safe. Now, down to the work.
Upgrading to PHP 4.4.4 on RHEL & CentOS
January 25, 2007 by Jason · 2 Comments
Yeah, I know, some of you don't like PHP 5. Some don't like it because it breaks some of their (poorly written) software. Some don't like it because there aren't any RH-approved packages for upgrading. Some don't like it for good reason because PHP 4 is actually faster at many tasks when compared to PHP 5.0.x or 5.1.x (I'm stopping there, 5.2.0 is wicked fast for me). For those people, I'm going to toss this out quickly so that you have an easier time moving to the newest version of PHP 4 without compiling from source.
If anyone reading this uses the Plesk Management Panel then you're probably familiar with AtomicRocketTurtle. "Back in the day" Scott used to provide RPMs for PHP 4.4.4 on RHEL/CentOS 3 & 4. He has since dropped support for that version (unless you're one of this paying customers) but he's still got the src.rpm available for anyone. That src.rpm makes it very easy to upgrade your system to PHP 4.4.4.
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