Migrating to 2.0, part two

I got done migrating to Apache 2.0 on Eris. I’m actually still running two daemons. I’m running Dav in its own process, on an alternate port. I built a very stripped-down Apache, taking out all the modules that I did not think I would need. I’ll bet I could make it even more stripped down, but it seems to be pretty good. I’m running it with Worker, and just a few threads.

The other process is bigger – ie more modules – and running SSL as well. I’m running worker on that also, and it really seems to be running faster. I suppose I could be imagining this, but it feels snappier. This could also be because I’m running mod_deflate. I was using mod_gzip before, but this cause some problems, as mentioned in an earlier note.

My other main server is still running 1.3, because I feel better with 1.3 and mod_perl. Hopefully, I can move that to 2.0 real soon now also.

Migrating to Apache 2.0

Now that I have given a “Migrating to Apache 2.0” talk a few times, I
thought it might be a good time to try it myself. Actually, my last PHP
web site went away, and I’m not using mod_perl on the server in
question, so it seemed like a reasonable thing to try. Also, after my
latest frustrations with mod_gzip, a move to mod_deflate seemed like a
good idea as well.

So, I’m moving one of my two main servers to Apache 2.0.

The hardest part of the entire process really seems to be the swap
itself, because there are so many hard-coded path-names laying around
pointing to /usr/local/apache. So I’m building Apache2 in
/usr/local/apache2, I’ll do some symlinking for a bit while I rebuild it
in /usr/local/apache, and then … well, it should just work. I think.

Linux World Expo, summary

LinuxWorld 2003

I just wanted to write a few last thoughts on my experience at Linux World, lest I leave the wrong impression – or no impression at all, which is more likely to be the case – about the conference.

I arrived Monday evening, and left Tuesday almost immediately after giving my presentation. This was not condusive to actually experiencing anything of the conference, which did not start for real until Wednesday. I tried to get out onto the show floor, so that I could at least talk to a few of the companies there, even though they were not really set up for business yet. However, the various people in charge of such things did not feel very cooperative in that regard, so I did not even get to do that.

The nice things that did happen was that I was able to talk with some folks that I only see about 2 or 3 times a year, at most. In particular, I talked with Adam Turoff about the copyright/patent stuff surrounding Calendrical Calculations. I don’t know if I’ve mentioned that here before, but I expect it will come up again.

And, as I was submitting an article to slashdot about the 2.0.44 release, Chris DiBono conducted a mini-interview so that he could write a few additional words about the topic for the article.

In all, I came away from the conference with just a few observations.

First, New York City is an awful place, and one would have to be a lunatic to live there voluntarily. It is cold, crowded, noisy, smelly, and everybody seems to be in an absolute panic of hurry. These people need to calm down, get their priorities in order, and move somewhere where people aren’t quite so reticent to look one another in the eye.

Second, I’m unclear how any conference even remotely connected to technology can not have network in the session rooms. Perhaps I’m spoiled, but I’m really coming to expect wireless networking, or, at the very least, wired networking, at conferences. IRC is an integral part of conference-going. And, no, I’m not being facetious.

Third, I know that conference budgets are really tight lately, but if I may make a comment/suggestion. The speakers are an integral part of what makes the conference happen. It is a Good Thing to encourage them (ie, pay) to stay for the whole conference, mingle with the attendees, conduct late-night BOFs, have informal “guru is in” sessions, and so on. In addition to the fact that I *hate* rushing around, it is annoying to fly in, speak, and fly out, being unable to participate in the conference, have people be able to ask follow-up questions after ruminating on the talks, or just being able to feel like more than a hired hand. I suppose I’m whining, but I tend to feel that I’m wasting my time doing these kind of gigs, where it ends up costing me a few hundred dollars in expenses, and I don’t really get anything out of it for my troubles.

mod_gzip

It appears that mod_gzip keeps work files FOREVER. Don’t say that you want to keep work files, because it will. I appear to have GIGABYTES of mod_gzip work files. And I’ve been backing them up. For months. This is an enormous pain.

You bet your life

When I am in big cities like this, I am struck more than ever by how much we rely on the good will of strangers. In fact, as is observed by Rush in their song of the same name, “you bet your life.” I got in a van with 9 strangers, and wandered around a strange (*very* strange) city for almost an hour, just hoping that I would end up somewhere pleasant. And, eventually, I did. This is a very nice hotel room. Not quite as nice as the room at ApacheCon, but still very nice. And a lot cheaper.

They did not have any note that my room cost would be covered. And Kevin Lenzo, who was standing next to me at the check-in counter, also did not have such a note on his reservation record. I don’t think Kevin knew who I was, which makes perfect sense considering I met him once, more than 1.5 yrs ago. Kevin has done some very cool stuff, including the original YAPC, and heading up YAS.

While we’re quoting Rush …

In the canyons of the city, you can hear the buildings cry.

It is darned cold out there, and the wind is just killer. But on some streets, you feel like you’re in a canyon, and the wind whips through it like it is possessed, and flings trash at cars almost belligerently.

On another, completely unrelated note, it appears that Apache::Perldoc does not work under Perl 5.8. I have not yet figured out why this is the case, but it appears that pod2html itself has changed syntax somewhere in that timeframe, and so when Apache::Perldoc calls pod2html, the arguments are geborken.

Flying to New York

The flight out of Lexington was delayed, and my time in Cincinatti, already painfully tight, was reduced to about 3 minutes. I arrived at the gate after they had already closed the door, but as the plane door was still open, they let me on.

And so I’m on my way to JFK, using my wonderful new ElectroVaya 16-hour laptop battery. I’m really happy with it. Although it was very expensive, it’s cheaper than 3 laptop batteries, which is about how long it lasts. Except for my laptop batteries, which seem to last about 10 minutes on a good day. When I’m using 802.11, it seems to last about 6 hours. When I’m not, I seem to be getting about 10 hours out of it. So it’s not *really* 16, although I suppose if I did console only, no sound, no network, I could probably get that much out of it.

In other news, the Magical Vhosts thingy that I posted a few weeks ago only works for one vhost. So it’s not much good. The fix is pretty simple. Instead of:

$VirtualHost{‘*’} = { … etc

I have

push @{$VirtualHost{‘*’}}, { … etc

This should have been obvious to start with, but, alas, I did not actually test it. Well, I tested it with one vhost, but not with more than one. And having it work for one vhost is not terribly useful.

Hopefully, the guy on IRC who was frantically trying to get this working will still be online this evening, or tomorrow morning, or some time, so that he does not get fired for not getting this working. I had to get on the plane, and so did not have a chance to tell him my solution, which I really just arrived at just now, at 5000 feet or so.

Linux World Expo

Heading out to Linux World Expo this afternoon. In New York City. In the dead of winter. Ick. Anyways, hopefully it won’t be too terrible, and there will be a few training leads that come out of it. (Shameless self-promotion!)

My goal for this trip is to get my GPG key signed by John “Mad dog” Hall.

Oh, yeah, and to get my presentation written before it is time to give it. 😉

Mongols?

Seems Saddam is calling us the new Mongols. (NOTE: If you saw this earlier, the link was completely wrong. This should be better now.)

Now, personally, I find this a bit comical, since the Mongols left Iraq a smoking pile of rubble, so this seems like a bit of a bad omen.

But, on a more serious note, there’s the matter of the Mongol Horde itself. I mean, how many times in history does one get the opportunity to participate in a mongol horde? Not many, my friends. Go enlist now, while there is still time.

And, more importantly, there are the yaks.

Here, for your reading pleasure, a slightly sanitized IRC transcript:

BOB: so, that means we like large women, long hair and ride yaks

BOB: See the World! Ride Yaks! Scare the pants off of Women! Meet Genghis in Person!

BOB: Yak Riding. Do they do that in the first week or did they tack that on to the end of boot camp?

Bacchus: I wanna yak!

BOB: now where would you keep him? he would produce quite a quantity of fertilizer.

HARRY: in the yak pens out back. Doesnt everyone have one of those? or am I just Spesial

Bacchus: In the spare bathroom

CHARLIE: (large women)++

There you have it, folks. Proving, yet again, that IRC is the source of all wisdom.

Those holding a ticket with the letter K

I went to Joseph Beth this evening, knowing that if I stayed home, I would be distracted by IRC and get nothing written. As it turned out, Robert Jordan was there, signing his new book. And so were all the Robert Jordan fans in the state of Kentucky. Every one of them. And they were all waiting for him to sign their copy. Every 10 minutes or so, the Uber-Loud announcer would announce the next letter in the alphabet, and there would be a mad rush of frenzied fans around the store trying to get in line. Meanwhile, the rest of the fans, realizing that they would be waiting until sunrise to get their book signed, moped dejectedly around, pretending to be interested in the latest edition of Car and Driver, or The Complete Morons Guide to Navel-Lint Farming. It was almost as distracting as IRC. But not quite. So I stayed until I had written at least one chapter, and then came home. At least, I think I finished a chapter. I’m not actually sure, since the chapter was not outlined, and I was sort of winging it.

The light remains the same

Today could have been a lot worse, I suppose.

On the way to work, the light at Reynolds and Clays Mill stayed red
through 4 cycles, while traffic in all other lanes got green. I finally
just went through on red when there was a break in traffic, as I had no
desire to be there all day. And while this was a pretty poor omen for
the day as well, the rest of the day turned out pretty good. I did an
install at a customer site, so got to spend some time in the car
listening to Umberto Eco. And the install went well, which is always
good. So, for the most part, I seem to have escaped from the terrible
karma of yesterday.

The Margin Is Too Narrow