Chris Meller

I was stuck re-compiling Apache today to enable support for mod_proxy so I could pass requests through our existing webserver seamlessly to our new PHP5-sporting webserver. Of course I decided to make some other “optimizations” along the way with our Apache configuration, so I ended up breaking everything.

Recompiling Apache threaded of course required that I recompile PHP so it had thread support, and recompiling PHP meant I had to re-tackle the problem of Oracle support in PHP which has always been quite shady anyway.

To make a long story short, one of the things I needed to know was which parameters to pass into each ./configure command. PHP’s handy-dandy phpinfo(); page shows you the configure command used, but I didn’t know off hand how to find out which parameters Apache had been built with.

After poking around in the Apache root directory, I found my answer. Apparently the Apache configure command saves a pretty format of itself every time it’s compiled. On our box at work, I found it in <server_root>/build/config.nice - I presume it’s in a similar location for everyone.

For anyone wondering, yes, I did get mod_proxy up and running, and everything works like a charm. I’ll probably toss together another quick entry tomorrow about our specific use case, since I had to piece together all the information I found from dozens of different sites, none of which seemed to have the whole picture.

In the mean time, happy compiling!

Vista SP1 was RTM earlier this month, and they announced a laid-back release schedule.

Their plans for slowly rolling it out to end users sound great, but I have to wonder why Microsoft doesn’t plan on releasing SP1 to IT Pros through TechNet until it’s publicly available for users to download.

This seems like negating the entire point of the TechNet community if you ask me. It’s there so its members can get their hands on essentially all of Microsoft’s software for testing and pre-deploy purposes. Several Windows 2008 Server builds have been on TechNet, and it was available for full download the day it went RTM. Why, then, is Vista’s service pack different?

Update: Per the rumors, the release schedule for SP1 has indeed been changed, so that technical users get updates sooner than expected.

• Beta testers got it Friday (RC2 was identical code, so they actually already had it), because that makes so much sense.
• Volume License customers will get it the end of this week.
• MSDN and TechNet users won’t get it until later this month.

I still don’t understand why we’re waiting for TechNet. If nothing else, those users should get it at the same time VL customers do - they’re likely one and the same people.

I was waiting to rebuild my Vista box at home¹ until SP1 was available, but it looks like that’s still going to take too long. Maybe I’ll move ahead with my plan to make that box a Windows 2008 Server and using my Ubuntu laptop as my primary machine…

1. Which I’ve pretty thoroughly trashed. ↩

I’m at a bit of a loss as to what title I should have put on my business cards at work (yes, at the job I want to leave). It seems that no matter what title I come up with, I feel I’m selling myself short in some area or another.

You guys have a vague idea some of the things I do at work… If not, check my about page for a huge list of crap. Any suggestions?

I upgraded Zend Core for Oracle on our soon-to-be production webserver at work tonight so it was running the latest build of PHP 5.2, and while I was at it I decided to make sure all its other packages were current.

It was quite sad, but the kernel was over a year out of date, so I had to kill our glorious 385 day uptime to restart the machine. While I was checking the latest version installed, I found this:

[root@web ~]# rpm -qa | grep kernel-
kernel-2.6.9-42.0.8.EL
kernel-smp-2.6.9-55.0.9.EL
kernel-smp-2.6.9-42.0.3.EL
kernel-devel-2.6.9-42.0.3.EL
kernel-smp-2.6.9-67.0.1.EL
kernel-2.6.9-42.EL
kernel-smp-2.6.9-42.0.8.EL
kernel-smp-2.6.9-55.0.2.EL
kernel-devel-2.6.9-55.0.2.EL
kernel-2.6.9-55.0.6.EL
kernel-utils-2.4-13.1.105
kernel-smp-2.6.9-55.EL
kernel-devel-2.6.9-67.0.1.EL
kernel-2.6.9-55.EL
kernel-smp-2.6.9-67.EL
kernel-2.6.9-67.EL
kernel-2.6.9-67.0.1.EL
kernel-smp-2.6.9-42.EL
kernel-devel-2.6.9-42.0.8.EL
kernel-2.6.9-55.0.2.EL
kernel-devel-2.6.9-55.0.6.EL
kernel-devel-2.6.9-55.0.9.EL
kernel-hugemem-devel-2.6.9-67.0.1.EL
kernel-devel-2.6.9-55.EL
kernel-smp-2.6.9-55.0.6.EL
kernel-2.6.9-55.0.9.EL
kernel-doc-2.6.9-67.0.1.EL
kernel-2.6.9-42.0.3.EL
kernel-smp-devel-2.6.9-67.0.1.EL
kernel-devel-2.6.9-67.EL
kernel-devel-2.6.9-42.EL
[root@web ~]#

I could be wrong, but I think that may be a bit excessive… By my count, that’s 9 individual kernel versions, each with their respective dependent packages. Wow…

How To Win Friends and Make Developers Happy

If you’re managing developers (dare I say IT personnel in general), and you’re doing any of these wrong, it’s time for a serious change.

Now, how do I subtly hint to my boss that he’s doing most of these wrong? Oh yeah… quit.

(via Dzone here)