Upgrading to MySQL 5.0.54 on RHEL and CentOS
December 27, 2007 by Jason · 24 Comments
It's been a while (3 months) since I've posted a MySQL update. The Enterprise release of 5.0.50, the Community release of 5.0.51, and the Enterprise release of 5.0.52 all refused to pass the testing at the end of the build process. Thankfully though, they got that worked out (MySQL bug 33050), so I'm now making binaries for MySQL 5.0.54 available in my repo.
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MySQL, ModSecurity updated
December 18, 2007 by Jason · 2 Comments
I forgot to mention, but I updated a couple packages the end of last week. ModSecurity (mod_security) was updated to 2.1.4 and MySQL 5.0.48 (still haven't gotten 5.0.50 or 5.0.51 to pass testing) was rebuilt to add the cluster components ('mysql-cluster').
Upgrading to PHP 5.2.5 on RHEL and CentOS
November 16, 2007 by Jason · 141 Comments
After a little more than 2 months of waiting since the last release, PHP has been updated once again, this time to 5.2.5. The 5.2.5 release brings several security enhancements, more than 60 bug fixes, and improved performance for those of you that like arrays (and really, who doesn't?).
PHP 5.2.5 also updated the bundled version of PCRE to 7.3, although if you're a user of my repository you've been using that version for quite some time now, and the timezone database to 2007.9.
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XCache Plugin for WordPress
November 7, 2007 by Jason · 26 Comments
I was sitting here the other day saying to myself, you know, wouldn't it be nice if I could use the Var cache in XCache to eliminate some of the (far too numerous) queries used by WordPress? Well, I set myself on building a plugin to do just that, but it turns out that someone else actually already did it!
Now, before I go any further I should mention that this isn't actually a plugin, it's more of an extension of existing functionality. It doesn't go in your 'wp-content/plugins' folder (that was the first mistake I made, I never read the directions), it doesn't show up in your plugins list (making you check manually for updates, even under WordPress 2.3), and it doesn't have a pretty GUI in 'wp-admin'.
What it does do is eliminate a number of common queries that get run over and over for every single page view. On this site it eliminated a total of 8 queries per page load. While that only dropped the page generation time by about 0.1 seconds, every little bit counts.
Still alive, just busy…
October 24, 2007 by Jason · 3 Comments
For anyone wondering, yes, I'm still here. I'm in the final stretch of finishing up my Master's Degree and between that and work (big things going on there as well) I just haven't had much time to post anything. Stay tuned though, I'm bound to find something interesting to say, and time to say it, soon. 🙂
WordPress Plugin: “Disable wptexturize”
September 25, 2007 by Jason · 51 Comments
"Disable wptexturize" is the second plugin I've created for WordPress. To be honest, as far as plugins go, they don't get much simpler than this one. Aside from the header info, it consists of a grand total of three lines of code. Those three lines, though, make a world of difference to someone trying to run a site where formatting is important.
The purpose of this plugin is to stop the wptexturize filter from running on your content, the excerpt for your content (if you use it), and the comments left by your visitors. The texturizer mangles your code by converting what you actually type to what it thinks you mean. For example, the difference between "--" and "–" or straight quotes (what normal people use) and smart quotes (what Microsoft Word uses) is night and day when you're trying to run a command on a *nix system or compile a bit of code.
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mod_security, mod_perl, mod_python, php-pear, mysql updated
September 21, 2007 by Jason · 16 Comments
Earlier today I rolled out a bunch of updates to the packages in the repo. If you use any of these you'll need to run a "yum update" to pull them in. Complete details on the updates are at the bottom of this post.
The only update I would consider "critical" is MySQL. Bug #31001 was found after the release of the sources and is probably a deal-breaker for anyone using InnoDB tables as "ORDER BY DESC" no longer works. This respin includes a patch to fix that glitch.
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Upgrading to MySQL 5.0.48 on RHEL and CentOS
September 19, 2007 by Jason · 42 Comments
Yeah, I know last month I said that I probably wouldn't be doing any more releases of MySQL from the Enterprise-only sources but I guess I lied. As soon as I saw that 5.0.48 was out I checked it out from BitKeeper and started working to turn that into a package that I could use to build my RPMs. Not wanting to unleash an untested copy of MySQL on the masses, and not knowing how my readers would react to my releasing packages made from an unofficial source tarball, I decided to keep that one private for a while and test it on my own systems.
Well, just about when it got to the point when I was going to release it to the wild, some kind soul went and released the official tarball for 5.0.48 Enterprise. The 5.0.48 binaries currently in my repo are made from the official sources, not my original BitKeeper sources. That said, given how well they worked out for me I am still not opposed to, in the future, releasing Enterprise versions of MySQL that are made from the BitKeeper sources and then later doing a respin if the official source tarball leaks out. If you have a concern about that, let me know.
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Upgrading to httpd 2.2.6 on RHEL and CentOS
September 12, 2007 by Jason · 71 Comments
Whew! Given that it's been 8 months since the release of Apache's httpd 2.2.4 I was starting to wonder whether or not the httpd developers were on an extended vacation. That said, they've just released version 2.2.6 of their wonderful web server. That vacation theory must have been wrong, given that they skipped version 2.2.5 (something that is rarely done) and went straight to 2.2.6. This release is a big one, fixing five potential security issues and numerous bugs to provide a more stable platform.
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Upgrading to PHP 5.2.4 on RHEL and CentOS
September 5, 2007 by Jason · 70 Comments
Well, it's been 3 months since the last release of PHP 5.2 but 5.2.4 is finally here. Unlike the earlier releases of PHP 5.2 which have included both performance/memory optimizations as well as fixes for critical bugs (security issues and otherwise), this release is aimed at improving the overall stability of the 5.2 release chain (no doubt aiming to improve the image of PHP 5.2 with 4.4 being discontinued at the end of the year) by fixing more than 120 small bugs, as well as taking the opportunity to fix a few low-level security holes.
The PHP development team didn't slap a "0mg!!! j00 m|_|$7 |_|pd473 j00r php 0r 3l$3 j00 \/\/1ll b3 h4ck3d!!!" tag on this one but stability is always a good thing so I would recommend that all of my readers upgrade when they get a chance. Really though, since I do all the work, do you really have an excuse NOT to update?
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