NYCPHP Meetup

[Gary Mort]

On Sun, Jan 31, 2010 at 2:17 PM, Leam Hall <leam at reuel.net> wrote:

>
> I will recommend Red Hat/CentOS for package management and general ease of
> finding server assistance. However, if you're familiar with another distro,
> use that. Ease of use is the name of that game.
>
>
I avoid centos like the plague.  CentOS uses PHP5.1 as their v5 package,
which has just enough bugs and oddities in it as to be not worth using.
 There are a couple other oddities with CentOS and it's default repositories
that I have run into that I just avoid it entirely.  While I can[and often
do] compile PHP 5.2 and the latest MySQL on CentOS by hand[after having
taken on a project, and been told the server was all configured and then
discovered their using CentOS and did not realize that when I asked for
PHP5.2, I /meant/ 5.2 and not 5.1] I don't recommend it.

My own unix distro recommendations are as follows:
Debian for servers if you are familiar enough with server management to
figure things out
Ubuntu for servers if you expect to need some help from time to time and
want to be able to use a GUI on the server[I find Ubuntu to be an easier GUI
to learn, and you can setup VNC to remotely invoke and run the GUI so you
can manage things from a "desktop"]

It is also slightly easier and cheaper to find people willing to do
consulting admin for Ubuntu than Debian.

Fedora is you are a windows shop, are setting up a server you will have
physical access to, and want an interface that is easiest to learn going
from windows to Linux.

CentOS if you want a more secure linux setup, as the reason they are
versions behind in most of their packages is they only place trusted,
reviewed, and approved packages in their repositories.  CentOS is great for
the corporate environment willing to pay to have an outside consultant come
in and troubleshoot/tweak as needed[just get someone reputable who isn't
going to just add some untrusted repository to the list of repositories,
thus blowing away one of the reasons for using it in the first place!]




> To answer the "second virtual" question, you don't. You run a second Apache
> instance on the machine and redirect to a different port or IP. Generally
> the latter. The issue is that one Apache instance runs as the same user and
> has write rights to both directories. So unless you can use authentication
> to limit what the web pages serve and thus what they can edit, the Apache
> process can do either.
>
>
Both suPHP and suExec are solutions to this problem.  They do, however, also
introduce additional oddities and such based on their configuration.

For example, suPHP in some configurations will refuse, entirely, to serve
any file that is world writable or world readable or a directory that is
such.  Wheras many extensions have instructions to make the directory that
uploaded images will be stored in permission 777 which stops working.

Suexec has added issues with making sure that the "jail" includes access to
the PHP libraries..and if you plan on installing additional PEAR libraries
that area as well.

In addition, both of the solutions "recipes" generally include the idea that
you will have 1 user per virtual host.  So while the web server and the
primary user can then both read/write files in the virtual host, if you add
additional ftp users for a virtual host I am fuzzy on how to make it so that
a group of users can all edit files for the same virtual host[another
frequent issue I run into is when someone creates an additional FTP account
for me on their virtual host.... I can add files to the server, but then if
any of them need to also be edited by the server...for example configuration
files... there is a problem.]


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