FreeBSD Server Administration

Upgrade to PHP 5 and MySQL 5

Sat, 08 Mar 2008 13:53:10 +0100

There is really no any reason to continue using PHP 4 and MySQL 4 except being lazy. The upgrade was quite smooth and took about 1.5 hours including compiling time. Upgrade MySQL 4.0.27 to MySQL 5.0.51a This guide explained it...

Happy Chinese New Year

Wed, 06 Feb 2008 07:32:24 +0100

Today is the Chinese New Year's Eve, welcome to the Year of Rat! I wish everyone a happy and fruitful new year!...

Confusing Server Debug in Eclipse

Tue, 05 Feb 2008 13:25:47 +0100

The server debug (Debug as PHP web page) in Eclipse is quite confusing. For example: - It always opens the browser despite the setting 'Open in Browser' is unchecked. - The Apache error often pops up without a clue. It...

Eclipse

Mon, 04 Feb 2008 17:23:04 +0100

PDT User Guide in the help manual is very helpful, I followed its 'Basic Tutorials' smoothly until I tried the debug part. The server debug configuration is confusing to me. After lots of attempts, I finally got Eclipse working with...

My PHP Journey

Mon, 04 Feb 2008 07:31:38 +0100

As a long time C++ and Java developer, I have managed to modify/debug some PHP scripts with the help of PHP manual, but never spent time learning it. I don't dare to start a PHP project without systematic learning. The...

Portsnap

Thu, 20 Apr 2006 16:03:39 +0100

Portsnap is another tool for updating Ports tree, compared to CVSup, it's more secure, faster and easier to use. You should give it a shot, especially when you build a new server. Update ports tree # portsnap fetch update For...

Install a Proxy Server - Privoxy

Thu, 09 Mar 2006 15:48:11 +0100

Occasionally, some websites are unreachable due to weird network problems. Setting up a proxy server on our own server would be a very convenient solution, it's also safer than using a proxy which we know nothing about. I tried Privoxy....

Hard Disk Problem

Thu, 16 Feb 2006 22:45:16 +0100

In the last two months, my server got the following errors occasionally (very infrequent): > ad0: FAILURE - READ_DMA status=51 error=40 LBA=154033791 > ad0: FAILURE - READ_DMA status=51 error=40 LBA=154033791 > ad0: FAILURE - READ_DMA status=51 error=40 LBA=154033791 > ad0:...

Add GD Support for PHP

Wed, 15 Feb 2006 22:53:36 +0100

To enable image (JPEG/PNG) manipulation for PHP, install gd extension from ports: # cd /usr/ports/graphics/php4-gd # make install clean # apachectl graceful If a PHP script needs gd module but can't find it, it will display the following error: Fatal...

MySQL Start Script

Wed, 15 Feb 2006 18:33:04 +0100

I installed mysql-server-4.0.21 when I got the server more than one year ago. Although MySQL 4.0 (4.0.26 as for now) only released small patches thereafter, the start script for FreeBSD has made significant changes: 1. Must enable MySQL in /etc/rc.conf....

PHP Upgrade

Wed, 15 Feb 2006 01:21:03 +0100

Upgrading PHP may affect installed PHP modules. For example, a PHP script reported the following error after I upgraded PHP: PHP Warning: Unknown(): Unable to load dynamic library '/usr/local/lib/php/20020429/xml.so' - Shared object "libexpat.so.5" not found, required by "xml.so" in Unknown...

Mambo Revisited

Wed, 15 Feb 2006 01:00:36 +0100

I tried Mambo a while ago and it's always causing a fatal error "httpd exited on signal 11". Finally I took the time to upgrade all vulnerable packages reported by portaudit and gave Mambo another try, the latest version 4.5.3...

Update AwStats with Cron Job

Fri, 10 Feb 2006 01:05:58 +0100

In the next few days, I will try to automate the server maintenance as much as possible - ideally, I don't have to logon the server for months if I don't want to. Summer is coming :-). I know little...

301 Redirect

Thu, 19 Jan 2006 00:45:13 +0100

Just want to post a follow-up to my previous post. After I updated the domain configurations, all my sites have been re-indexed by Google. I strongly suggest you configure your domains this way....

Apache and Google

Fri, 13 Jan 2006 17:36:41 +0100

This post is more about Google, but I think it's very important and I should mention it. Let me use this blog as an example to explain the problem. This blog can be accessed by typing freebsdblog.org or www.freebsdblog.org in...