I use Microsoft Windows 7 RC on my main desktop computer since June 2009. Since there was no Windows ports of my favorite editors in Linux (gedit on Fedora/CentOS), I decided to use Notepad++, an open-source source code editor and Notepad replacement, which is released as free-software. Soon I realized that this application was too far from being robust as I experienced random freezes quite often. I continued to use the application hoping that any issues would be resolved in the near future.
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You might wonder why installing a web application takes me so long… The only answer I can give to this question is that it takes just about the necessary time that is required to deploy and support a modern web application like Redmine on an old-fashioned, but secure and predictable, operating system like Enterprise Linux (the CentOS rebuild in this case). It’s not only the part of the installation that has to do with the fastcgi process management by the web server as I wrote the other day, but it also includes all the aspects of installing and maintaining the application itself and all the backend software that it needs in order to run.

This needs some more clarification, but I will just save some time now.

Since there is no website at the moment on CodeTRAX.org, i decided to put some social media to good use, so you can monitor the progress of the Redmine deployment at the following places:

• CodeTRAX on Twitter
• CodeTRAX on Identi.ca
• CodeTRAX on FriendFeed

You may choose whichever you like. Moreover, the status updates are available as an RSS/Atom feed. I am sure you will spot the relevant links on those pages.

I use the services above mainly for fun, but also as a general log of my actions. I have developed a small (but expandable) utility that I use to post my status updates there. So, if you happen to ask a question or make a remark directly through the above services and I do not reply soon enough, it should be safe to assume that I have not seen your comment, because I use my command-line utility to post rather than visiting the services’ web pages.

See you there!

There are times that I strongly believe that the developers of software that aims to be included in a Linux distribution and also the packagers of that software should make sure that a command-line only application does not require the presence of a graphical application in order to run. By not doing so they cause some serious trouble to those who wish to maintain a minimal installation of the operating system. Although the examples are many, here is the relevant part of the output of the command: yum install ImageMagick
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I’ve been using Thawte’s free personal email digital certificates for some years now. Unfortunately, Thawte discontinues the Personal E-mail Certificate and Web of Trust services. All issued certificates will be revoked on November 16th 2009 and the particular services will no longer be available after that date.
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I am afraid the deployment of Redmine on CodeTRAX.org will be delayed some more. This is because I am skeptical about using mod_fcgid to run two different kinds of web applications on the same web server. This software is pretty much incomplete when it comes to defining classes of applications and setting limits, like the maximum number of fastcgi processes and the spawning rate of new processes, for each application class. What’s a process manager if you can’t define classes of processes? I also now realize the lack of a standalone, feature-rich and well-documented fastcgi process manager.

I use mod_fcgid to run PHP in fastcgi mode, but I cannot let it run the same amount of Redmine instances as it will bring the server to its knees. Redmine is not a blog. It’s a whole project hosting platform. Each instance will require about 45MB of RAM. I have already experimented with another Apache module that can manage Rails applications, but this will require some extra testing and this is exactly what I am going to do in the following days.

The most unfortunate thing is that I have removed the old platform and, for a couple of weeks now, CodeTRAX serves a 503 Service Unavailable error document, which I consider bad for the website. I hope I find the time to fix this soon.

Having hosted my web sites on DSL or ISDN/PSTN lines for the past 7-8 years, I finally decided to move them to a server on a faster and more reliable network. Having the servers at home was fun. Having total control is fun. I liked it a lot, but the quality of the network was the determinant factor for moving them to a hosting company. Linode was the first I signed up with about 2 weeks ago and, so far, I am satisfied. At home I had as many system resources as required, but now things are different. I am gradually moving services there, while monitoring the VPS using collectd and my home-built graphing solution and do any upgrades to the VPS plan as necessary. The operating system I chose was CentOS (that’s no surprise) doing a root LVM setup. That means that I did not use the provided distribution image, but did the installation myself. I will describe how I did this in a guide, as soon as I find the necessary free time to write it.

So, since I am configuring and fine-tuning the system, access to G-Loaded might occasionally not be possible until things are set up as I need them to be.

During the last six months, I found myself using 4 different operating systems on the computers I use for my everyday tasks. This is the first time that something like this happens. In the past, I had mainly used Microsoft Windows (before 2005) and Fedora (from 2005 until April 2009). During the last six months, apart from Fedora, I’ve used OpenSolaris, CentOS and the beta and RC releases of Windows 7. Trying to find a good reason why this has happened, I always come to the same conclusion: I have started seeing computers, and thus their operating systems and other software, differently than before. I have stopped being a fan. I now care about using computers to get the job done with the minimum cost. After all, that’s why those machines have been invented.

Speaking about costs, I’d like to be more specific. Cost is not just about money. Cost can also be measured in terms of “time” and in terms of “effort“. Nothing is by default cheap or expensive. It depends on the task too. For example, suppose you have put all your old computer magazines in a cheap trash bag expecting it to hold long enough until you reach the trash bin across the street. The cheap bag will not hold the weight of all those magazines and you will most probably find yourself picking them up from the street like an idiot. Well, in this case, that cheap bag turned out to be very expensive in terms of time and effort. On the contrary, using expensive trash bags for lightweight garbage is idiotic too, as you spend your money on trash bags instead of buying yourself those extra megabytes of RAM your VPS requires. The same applies to computers and software. You have to use the right tool for a specific job to be cost-effective. There is no operating system that is good for everything.

I care about using cost-effective ways to do things. I didn’t used to, but I do care now. I am totally against saving, regardless of it being money, time or effort. I am in for spending, but spend wisely. Regarding computers, I have decided to use any operating system, office suite, development environment, programming language, multimedia software, server software to accomplish my tasks. Sometimes paying some money can save a lot of time and effort. Other times, investing some time and effort can save a lot of money. That’s how things work.

This post is not supposed to be lengthy and I will keep it that way. All the above, of course, do not change my views about open source, open standards and open access to information. I just wanted to say that I leave the operating system wars to you. I am out.

Usually, the only time I make a change to the timezone setting of the operating system is during the installation time. But it may happen that a change to that setting is necessary. There are several ways to do this, but, as usual, there is only one Right Way™ to set the timezone info in your Linux distribution. I investigated it for a while and I think I have figured out how to do it right using command-line utilities on Fedora and all RHEL rebuilds (CentOS, Scientific Linux, etc). I am quite certain that many people miss this piece of information, so I describe it in detail right below.
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It’s been a long time since the last time I had done any cleaning in the G-Loaded Forums. I use the forums for further discussion about the published content, since the comments are disabled after a period of time. During the last months the place had been left at the hands of bots. But this is no more. Below you will find information about all the actions I took in order to cleanup the user accounts created by bots and prevent further automatic user registrations.
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mod_dav_svn lets you serve subversion repositories through the Apache HTTP Server. mod_dav.so is a requirement for mod_dav_svn.so. If while setting up mod_dav_svn you see the error “undefined symbol: dav_register_provider“, make sure you check the order that the aforementioned modules are loaded. mod_dav must precede mod_dav_svn:

LoadModule dav_module modules/mod_dav.so
LoadModule dav_svn_module modules/mod_dav_svn.so

This will resolve the issue.