Featured articles

Returning to Rails in 2026: Building a modern application with the web framework that shook everything up in the early 2000s.

Haiku Package Management: A tour of the unique package management capabilities of the alternative Haiku Operating System

Amiga Systems Programming in 2023: A look at developing, packaging and distributing software for AmigaOS and derivatives

Recent Posts

Migrating from Apache to Lighttpd

In my role as a sysadmin, the bulk of the Unix systems I administer are web servers, running the now standard open-source stack of Apache, MySQL and PHP (note that whatever my personal misgivings may be about those elements, they are pretty much the standard now and what’s been mandated at work). If you’re using PHP on Unix, it’s pretty much taken for granted that you’ll be running it through Apache via mod_php. In fact, it almost goes without syaing that if you’re doing a...

PostgreSQL 8.1.4 out

PostgreSQL 8.1.4 has just been released, and Blastwave has updated packages as usual. This is a  major update security-wise; if you’re running a PostgreSQL server you really need to upgrade as soon as possible. The PostgreSQL site has a page detailing all you need to know about this particular problem, and how it may affect you. Packages will be making their way out to the mirrors shortly, and I’ll also be updating my PHP packages the moment the upstream source is released.

Whoah.

I found one of my favourites quotes from Carl Sagan again after loosing it a while back and felt compelled to post it here. It just blows me away each time, particularly when you put it in context with this picture, taken by Voyager 1 as it was 4 billion miles away from Earth and swung round for one last photo of "home".

Rude installers

Warning: Rant ahead.

PostgreSQL 8.1.3 out

Hot on the heels of the 8.1.2 package, 8.1.3 has been released. This fixes a serious security issue, and while it hasn’t yet made it into Blastwave’s “unstable” tree, you can grab it from our testing directory. Expect to see it available from our mirrors through pkg-get shortly.