About 30 minutes ago I moved the yum repository files from the "media" folder on this domain to a dedicated subdomain of http://yum.jasonlitka.com. This is simply a housekeeping measure. It's easier to keep track of those files when they're on a separate subdomain and it gives me the flexibility to easily spin them off to a separate server should the bandwidth requirements get out of control. On that, a big thank you to Linode (referral link) for recently increasing your bandwidth limits by 10x and to Cloudflare for absorbing close to 50% of my traffic for the grand total of $0.00/month.
This shouldn't have any impact on running servers using the repository since the old location has a 301 redirect to the new one. If you do hit a problem try a "yum clean all". If that doesn't work then let me know.
On a semi-related note, I migrated servers about a month back and apparently didn't configure outbound email... If you tried to use the contact form since the beginning of February then I didn't get your message. Sorry.
I've got two open positions in my department that are available to any qualified individuals within reasonable, daily driving distance of Malvern, PA (19355).
The first position is a C# Developer who will be part of a team whose primary, immediate focus will be to complete a rewrite of an existing Access/VBA application with C# Winforms (and possibly ASP.NET as a follow-up). This is a junior-to-mid position, so some experience is required, but you don't need to be an expert.
The second position is a Help Desk Specialist who will be the first point of contact for all internal user issues. Responsibilities will include interacting with users on a day-to-day basis through multiple communication methods, resolving their issues directly when possible, and escalating to a more senior team member when not. The expectation here is that the applicant will be have the knowledge to solve most user issues that don't relate to an in-house or 3rd party enterprise app on day one.
These are both permanent, on-site, full-time positions, so please don't apply if you're looking for a contract, a part-time job, an internship, a work co-op, or are looking to telecommute.
I've got a position for a SQL Server Report Developer/Analyst available for immediate, full-time hire, for any qualified individual within reasonable distance of Malvern, PA (19355).
This job reports to me and would be responsible for creating reports in SQL Server Reporting Services (including the T-SQL, Stored Procedures, etc. behind the reports), assisting users in developing their own queries/reports using the Microsoft Report Builder, and making minor changes to our Order Management application (MS Access & VBA w/ SQL Server for data).
Full data on the position, along with a form to apply, are at the link below. Individuals and recruiters are welcome (despite what the advert says) but please do not apply if you are looking for a contract job or if the bulk of your recent experience is NOT working with Microsoft SQL Server and building reports.
httpd 2.2.22 is now live in the public repos. I didn't get a lot of sleep last week due to a ShoreTel deployment so I decided not to push it live on Friday as originally planned.
httpd 2.2.22 will be posted to my testing repo early next week with a public push at the end of the week. I've gotten swamped with a ShoreTel deployment this week and while I've built the packages for httpd 2.2.22 I haven't actually spent any time testing them.
I've just made httpd 2.2.21 available in my repos. No other packages were updated or rebuilt so with any luck this will be a smooth upgrade for everyone.
For those that don't know, aside from a few bug fixes here and there, httpd 2.2.21 fixes another DoS bug (this time in mod_proxy_ajp) and re-fixes the DoS bug that was fixed in 2.2.20.
The Weed Dragon – I’ve got a flamethrower!
A Flamethrower is the best birthday present ever, thanks wife!
For those wondering, this is the Weed Dragon VT 2-23 SVC (full disclosure: Amazon Affiliate link). It's basically a flamethrower that you hook up to a standard propane tank. There is a cheaper model without the squeeze valve, that's the VT 2-23 C, though I'd highly recommend the SVC instead; this thing shoots a flame about 3" in diameter and 12" long out the end and it would be hard to move around without the ability to control that. All proceeds from the Amazon links will go towards either a hand dolly or a back pack to carry around my propane tank (temporarily swiped from my grill), I haven't decided which yet.
You can see in the bottom half of the photo where I've flamed all the moss and weeds in my pack patio and in the top half the area I haven't done yet. It's pretty effective and extremely satisfying.
Apache's httpd is now 2.2.20 to fix that bit of recent DoS nastyness, PHP is up to 5.2.17, MySQL up to 5.1.58, XCache has been updated to the 1.3.2 release, and a few included deps have been bumped as well.
One thing I've been considering lately is the upgrade to PHP 5.3. I was saying for a long time that I was not going to force people to upgrade because of the sheer volume of systems with outdated ioncube and zend loaders that would break (more zend than ioncube), but to be honest, you've all had a long time to remedy that issue, and with the EOL on PHP 5.2 (5.2.16 was supposed to be the last release, they made a 5.2.17 to cover an issue, who knows how many more times they'll do that), I think it's time to upgrade the repo.
I've personally been running PHP 5.3 on Amazon's EC2 for about 6 months now and have not had a single issue. I can't say none of you will, and you should probably all start reading the PHP 5.3 migration guide, particularly the sections on backwards incompatible changes, removed extensions, and deprecated functions, but I'll help where I can when the day comes to push out the version bump. That's not to say it will be tomorrow, for one, I'm leaving town tomorrow on business, and it won't be next week either, but at some point over the next month or two, I'll be pushing PHP 5.3 updates (with a warning on the site first, check back once in a while or subscribe to the RSS feed).
Oh, and as a reminder to all, updates are available early to those that use my "Testing" repos. These are packages I consider production-quality enough to try on my live systems and typically once a package is pushed to that point I don't rebuild again. I just wait a week and copy them to the GA repos.
httpd 2.2.17, mysql 5.1.52, php 5.2.16, XCache 1.3.1, and APC 3.1.6 (which is FINALLY marked as stable) updates are all published to the regular repo, "yum update" for everyone!
EDIT: Or not, I'm a man of few words.
If you haven't noticed yet, packages for MySQL 5.1 have been moved to the public repos. I whipped up updates for PHP 5.2.14 and httpd 2.2.16 as well. For those that have programs compiled against the mysql 5.0.x client libraries, a mysqlclient15 package has been added.
As I mentioned in an earlier post, there are some potential issues you might run into when upgrading from MySQL 4.1 or 5.0. It is absolutely critical that you run 'mysql_upgrade' after installing the update. Failure to do so will cause serious weirdness with your databases.
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