BenV's notes

One of my older (stable, works like a train) database servers still on Slackware 11 — well, heavily modified Slackware 11 😉 — is running MariaDB 5.1.something. Because I was tinkering with mysql settings I decided ‘hej, let’s see if upgrading to the latest version is a fun project!’.
Well, it sure is 😉

First of all, the newer MySQL and therefore also MariaDB versions have dumped a perfectly fine autoconf system for Cancer Make aka CMake. Well, that’s just great. There’s no cmake in Slackware 11, so I figured to grab the latest slackware cmake sources and build it myself. No big deal, except in order to use the latest slackware sources you’ll need tar with xz support. Well, while we’re at it anyway might as well build them. So I headed over to the nearest slackware repository and built myself a new xz, tar, findutils and pkgtools using the slackware 14 build scripts (slightly helped/modified to handle the absense of xz in my old system). There, now back to cmake. (continue reading…)

If Opera continues living the way it does right now it’ll die within a few years. At least, that’s what I expect. Every new release there are more and more little nuisances. New features? Yeah, they have plenty of new garbage slowing the browser down.
Soon they’ll dump their rendering engine for Webkit. Who knows, it might even improve the browser, but then again… soon I might jump to Chrome or another piece of garbage.
I wonder why browser vendors have determined they all have to inject cancer into them. Must be contageous or something.

Anyhow, my Opera issue for today: Webfonts.
Ever seen a page rendered like this?

Opera with weird webfont

Those of you running Slackware 14 or current probably have noticed the move to the Apache httpd v2.4 already.
On my webservers I haven’t yet dared to upgrade from the stable 2.2 version, but I figured it might be a good time to test out an upgrade procedure.

Notable problems / changes

This new version of the Apache httpd brings a few things that you should really pay attention to before attempting to upgrade. Well, you could ignore it, but it would surprise me if you wouldn’t end up with a broken webserver 😉
So you might want to look into these things:

1. Configuration syntax changes
2. Handling the Pleuris-Hoeren-Paaltjes aka PHP disaster
3. Switching to the MPM-event module

Of course you’ve already done your homework and read upgrading to 2.4 from 2.2, right? 😉 (continue reading…)