Switching…

It’s been a month since the last update and there where some rumours about the update running around on the internet. The actual update is finally here and it solves a lot of issues people might have with their mac and even fixes some security issues.

Check out all the improvements that where made in the knowledge base article. The update also includes some security issues on which you can read in this article.

I’ve updated both my mini’s without a problem. The mail and web server weren’t affected by the update and are still running as strong as ever. The only problem is that the up-time of my server isn’t going to be more than a few months with all these updates

I’ve been tinkering for quite some time now but I think I’ve got the problem solved with the issues that I blogged about earlier because MySQL didn’t provide shared libraries with their binary installation.

The solution is to compile your own shared libraries and remove the ones that come with the binary distribution. It took so long to solve this issue because I had to compile and test all the components that we use for our setup. One time PHP worked but Courier-Auth didn’t and when I got Courier-Auth to compile, PHP got problems again and the same happened with Postfix. But now I’ve had all programs that need the MySQL libraries like PHP, Courier-Auth and Postfix to compile and run without a hitch.

I will provide instructions on how to compile these and how to install the new shared libraries. I’m also thinking of providing you with the finished product, the compiled shared libraries as a downloadable file which you only need to unpack and copy to get everything running, because compiling MySQL is something that will take a while on a G4 Mac mini.

I still need to test this on the Intel platform, I have access to someone else’s Mac mini which I can use but it will take some time and I need to write it all down in a nice and easy to read manner for you to use. So give me some time to finish this and I’ll update the documentation as soon as possible. Keep watching this space…

Please note that I hope this solution will be a workaround for the time being. Maybe you can help to push MySQL to provide shared libraries in the binary install package by adding your voice to the bug report in at the MySQL site. Add your voice by commenting.

Well, it is all taking more time than anticipated, although we are on the verge of a breakthrough in getting the lost MySQL shared libraries issue solved.

In the mean time I’ve finished installing and creating a consistent look and feel for a phpBB based forum. You can use it or just look at it on http://forum.richard5.net. I hope you find it useful, specially as with the baby coming I will have less time to answer all your questions. This way we can all pitch in…

As I said earlier, I hope to solve the issue with MySQL this week, it has taken me a lot more time than anticipated. I had planned to have the V2 installation and configuration ready last month. The plan was to have a first release of a decent spam-filter configuration ready by now. But don’t despair, it is still coming, just a bit later than planned. Sorry.

Just found out through my trusted RSS reader, which is subscribed to the Hawk Wings blog amongst others, that there is a new email client on the horizon.

It’s called Kiwi and it’s going to be a full blown IMAP mail client from the ground up and not as an afterthought for most mail clients that started life as a POP3 mail client. There is nothing to download yet but the outlook is promising. The lead developer looks like he knows what he is talking about if you read of his latest blog entry on the IMAP protocol. I hope it’ll work well with the Courier IMAP server I use in my setup. I’m guessing we’ll have to wait and see when the first public beta arrives. I know I’m going to give it a try…

A short personal note, the baby stuff is taking more time than anticipated in me preparing for it’s arrival. I thought that I would have less time when it had arrived but it is already happening. Please note that I’m still working on the installation procedures for the v2 version but the MySQL issues as discussed earlier are taking a lot of time to solve as the static/shared libraries are used by all the programs involved.

As an avid user of WordPress I just found out (because I spend some days not being behind a computer) that WordPress has had an update a couple of days ago. The major drive for me to upgrade it that there was a security issue with the administration tool. Besides that there are some small performance enhancements as well. Read all about it in the announcement at the WordPress site. I’ve just updated my instalment and may I suggest you do it as well as quickly as possible.

I received an email yesterday on the MySQL announce list which told me about a new update on MySQL. This time the release was to solve a security hole that recently was discovered. It seems it was possible to inject SQL statements that you didn’t want to happen.

      Security fix: An SQL-injection security hole has been found in
      multibyte encoding processing. The bug was in the server,
      incorrectly parsing the string escaped with mysql_real_escape().

      This vulnerability was discovered and reported by Josh Berkus
      and Tom Lane as part of the inter-project security collaboration
      of the OSDB consortium.

You can read more about the issue in the release statement.

Unfortunately our issue for Mac OS X users hasn’t been solved yet. We still don’t get shared binaries in this release. I’m working on a solution with Jeff Stubbs to provide the shared libraries. We really need those shared libraries to be able to compile your own postfix server with support for MySQL and SSL/TLS. This currently isn’t possible because MySQL provides us with static libraries which have been compiled with SSL support as well, as told before. So during the linking phase you end up with multiple definitions of symbols which don’t help. We are nearing a good solution so keep watching this space for more info.

Maybe you can help to push MySQL to provide shared libraries in the binary install package by adding your voice to the bug report in at the MySQL site. Add your voice by commenting. This is as far as I know the best way to let them know we think this is an important feature.