Just a quick note, I did a respin of MySQL 5.0.54 with a patch for bug #33814. This wasn't really necessary since my binaries use OpenSSL rather than yaSSL (and the vulnerability is with the bundled yaSSL) but I know that quite a few people download my source RPMs and rebuild them, so I updated it just in case.
Since the source package used is still 5.0.54 and I am manually patching during the build process I have kept the version number at "5.0.54" and just incremented the release to "jason.2". Rest assured though, it is equivalent to 5.0.54a.
Continue Reading 'MySQL 5.0.54 respin (to 5.0.54a)' »
Yeah, I know, I've been a bit lax in posting over the past week. I tried to keep up with answering questions and comments but it was a low priority...
In any case, last Saturday I proposed to Dot, my girlfriend of 7 years, and she said yes! No plans for a wedding date or honeymoon destination as of yet, although since both of us want a small wedding (neither of us know/like many people) we're pretty set on deciding on a honeymoon destination first and then planning the wedding around the best time of the year for that location.
I've been a bit lax over the past week or so, but there's been a few packages I've updated since the last post. On January 8th I updated XCache to 1.2.2. On January 15th I updated mod_security to eliminate that config bug that affected some 32-bit users. Finally, yesterday, January 22nd, I updated Apache's httpd to 2.2.8.
On that last one, there were two versions of httpd posted yesterday: "jason.2" and "jason.3". If you've got "jason.2" then I'd suggest you run another "yum update" as I decided to make a last minute change to stomp out a possible initscript issue that may have affected some users. If you get a couple warning messages during the upgrade you can ignore them; they aren't important and they won't come back once you are on "jason.3".
Continue Reading 'Recent repo updates: ModSecurity, XCache, httpd' »
It's been a while (3 months) since I've posted a MySQL update. The Enterprise release of 5.0.50, the Community release of 5.0.51, and the Enterprise release of 5.0.52 all refused to pass the testing at the end of the build process. Thankfully though, they got that worked out (MySQL bug 33050), so I'm now making binaries for MySQL 5.0.54 available in my repo.
Continue Reading 'Upgrading to MySQL 5.0.54 on RHEL and CentOS' »
I forgot to mention, but I updated a couple packages the end of last week. ModSecurity (mod_security) was updated to 2.1.4 and MySQL 5.0.48 (still haven't gotten 5.0.50 or 5.0.51 to pass testing) was rebuilt to add the cluster components ('mysql-cluster').
After a little more than 2 months of waiting since the last release, PHP has been updated once again, this time to 5.2.5. The 5.2.5 release brings several security enhancements, more than 60 bug fixes, and improved performance for those of you that like arrays (and really, who doesn't?).
PHP 5.2.5 also updated the bundled version of PCRE to 7.3, although if you're a user of my repository you've been using that version for quite some time now, and the timezone database to 2007.9.
Continue Reading 'Upgrading to PHP 5.2.5 on RHEL and CentOS' »
I was sitting here the other day saying to myself, you know, wouldn't it be nice if I could use the Var cache in XCache to eliminate some of the (far too numerous) queries used by Wordpress? Well, I set myself on building a plugin to do just that, but it turns out that someone else actually already did it!
Now, before I go any further I should mention that this isn't actually a plugin, it's more of an extension of existing functionality. It doesn't go in your 'wp-content/plugins' folder (that was the first mistake I made, I never read the directions), it doesn't show up in your plugins list (making you check manually for updates, even under WordPress 2.3), and it doesn't have a pretty GUI in 'wp-admin'.
What it does do is eliminate a number of common queries that get run over and over for every single page view. On this site it eliminated a total of 8 queries per page load. While that only dropped the page generation time by about 0.1 seconds, every little bit counts.
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For anyone wondering, yes, I'm still here. I'm in the final stretch of finishing up my Master's Degree and between that and work (big things going on there as well) I just haven't had much time to post anything. Stay tuned though, I'm bound to find something interesting to say, and time to say it, soon. 
"Disable wptexturize" is the second plugin I've created for WordPress. To be honest, as far as plugins go, they don't get much simpler than this one. Aside from the header info, it consists of a grand total of three lines of code. Those three lines, though, make a world of difference to someone trying to run a site where formatting is important.
The purpose of this plugin is to stop the wptexturize filter from running on your content, the excerpt for your content (if you use it), and the comments left by your visitors. The texturizer mangles your code by converting what you actually type to what it thinks you mean. For example, the difference between "--" and "–" or straight quotes (what normal people use) and smart quotes (what Microsoft Word uses) is night and day when you're trying to run a command on a *nix system or compile a bit of code.
Continue Reading 'WordPress Plugin: “Disable wptexturize”' »
Earlier today I rolled out a bunch of updates to the packages in the repo. If you use any of these you'll need to run a "yum update" to pull them in. Complete details on the updates are at the bottom of this post.
The only update I would consider "critical" is MySQL. Bug #31001 was found after the release of the sources and is probably a deal-breaker for anyone using InnoDB tables as "ORDER BY DESC" no longer works. This respin includes a patch to fix that glitch.
Continue Reading 'mod_security, mod_perl, mod_python, php-pear, mysql updated' »