https://www.davehall.com.au/tags/sysadmin/Recent content in Sysadmin on Dave Hall ConsultingHugoen-auFri, 16 Oct 2020 00:00:00 +0000https://www.davehall.com.au/blog/2010/03/16/making-it-easier-spawn-php-cgi-debian-and-ubuntu/Tue, 16 Mar 2010 00:00:00 +0000https://www.davehall.com.au/blog/2010/03/16/making-it-easier-spawn-php-cgi-debian-and-ubuntu/Apache is a great web server, but sometimes I need something a bit more lightweight. I already have a bunch of sites using lighttpd, but I’m planning on switching them to nginx. Both nginx and lighttpd use FastCGI for running PHP. Getting FastCGI up and running on Ubuntu (or Debian) involves a bit of manual work which can slow down deployment. The normal process to get nginx and php-cgi up and running is to install the spawn-fcgi package, create a shell script such as /usr/local/bin/php-fastcgi to launch it, then a custom init script, after making both of these executable you need to run update-rc.https://www.davehall.com.au/blog/2010/03/13/solr-replication-load-balancing-haproxy-and-drupal/Sat, 13 Mar 2010 00:00:00 +0000https://www.davehall.com.au/blog/2010/03/13/solr-replication-load-balancing-haproxy-and-drupal/I use Apache Solr for search on several projects, including a few with Drupal. Solr has built in support for replication and load balancing, unfortunately the load balancing is done on the client side and works best when using a persistent connection, which doesn’t make a lot of sense for PHP based webapps. In the case of Drupal, there has been a long discussion on a patch in the issue queue to enable Solr’s native load balancing, but things seem to have stalled.https://www.davehall.com.au/blog/2010/02/22/check-drupal-module-status-using-bash/Mon, 22 Feb 2010 00:00:00 +0000https://www.davehall.com.au/blog/2010/02/22/check-drupal-module-status-using-bash/When you run a lot of Drupal sites it can be annoying to keep track of all of the modules contained in a platform and ensure all of them are up to date. One option is to setup a dummy site setup with all the modules installed and email notifications enabled, this is OK, but then you need to make sure you enable the additional modules every time you add something to your platform.https://www.davehall.com.au/blog/2010/02/06/howto-setup-private-package-repository-reprepro-nginx/Sat, 06 Feb 2010 00:00:00 +0000https://www.davehall.com.au/blog/2010/02/06/howto-setup-private-package-repository-reprepro-nginx/As the number of servers I am responsible for grows, I have been trying to eliminate all non packaged software in production. Although ubuntu and Debian have massive software repositories, there are some things which just aren’t available yet or are internal meta packages. Once the packages are built they need to be deployed to servers. The simplest way to do this is to run a private apt repository. There are a few options for building an apt repository, but the most popular and simplest seems to be reprepro.https://www.davehall.com.au/blog/2010/02/04/packaging-drush-and-dependencies-debian/Thu, 04 Feb 2010 00:00:00 +0000https://www.davehall.com.au/blog/2010/02/04/packaging-drush-and-dependencies-debian/Lately I have been trying to avoid non packaged software being installed on production servers. The main reason for this is to make it easier to apply updates. It also makes it easier to deploy new servers with meta packages when everything is pre packaged. One tool which I am using a lot on production servers is Drupal’s command line tool - drush. Drush is awesome it makes managing Drupal sites so much easier, especially when it comes to applying updates.