Re: OT: Are things really this bad?

2002-10-12 Thread Dave Hodgkinson

Todd Finney [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes:

 I was looking at jobs.perl.org this afternoon, and there are a lot of
 things on there like this:

Over here, the barometer looks like:

http://www.jobstats.co.uk/

And those residual 4000 are agents trolling for leads from CVs.

-- 
Dave Hodgkinson, Wizard for Hire http://www.davehodgkinson.com
Editor-in-chief, The Highway Starhttp://www.thehighwaystar.com
   Interim Technical Director, Web Architecture Consultant for hire



Re: [OT] Better Linux server platform: Redhat or SuSe?

2002-07-04 Thread Dave Hodgkinson

Valerio_Valdez Paolini [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes:

 I never used RH RPMs for Apache and mod_perl, mostly because of DSO
 issues.

I'm running stock RH RPM apache/mod_perl on some fairly hairy sites
(hand-crafted mod_perl, slashcode etc.) with _no_ problems. And that
was through the current round of upgrades.

FWIW.

-- 
David Hodgkinson, Wizard for Hirehttp://www.davehodgkinson.com
Editor-in-chief, The Highway Star   http://www.deep-purple.com
All the Purple Family Tree news   http://www.slashrock.com
   Interim Technical Director, Web Architecture Consultant for hire



Re: [JOB] Crack OOP Perl whitebox tester wanted

2002-06-21 Thread Dave Hodgkinson

Phil Dobbin [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes:

 Sorry if I haven't kept up with this thread but, is this really the
 way the mod_perl list is going to go?

I hope so. All these job postings are making me feel warm and fuzzy
for the future.

-- 
Dave Hodgkinson, Wizard for Hire http://www.davehodgkinson.com
Editor-in-chief, The Highway Starhttp://www.thehighwaystar.com
   Interim Technical Director, Web Architecture Consultant for hire



Re: Problems installing on Solaris 8

2002-03-23 Thread Dave Hodgkinson

Ged Haywood [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes:

 Something very wrong there.  Do you have squeaky clean source trees?
 I'd be tempted to erase the lot and start again.  What's the compiler?
 Post your httpd.conf?  Have you built other (older) versions of Apache
 and mod_perl on the same OS?

httpd -l 

should verify what modules really are linked in.

-- 
Dave Hodgkinson, Wizard for Hire http://www.davehodgkinson.com
Editor-in-chief, The Highway Starhttp://www.thehighwaystar.com
   Interim Technical Director, Web Architecture Consultant for hire



Re: 0 being appended to non mod_perl scripts.

2002-03-22 Thread Dave Hodgkinson

Per Einar Ellefsen [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes:

 I suspect that you don't get the 0 from static files, or anything
 which sends a Content-Length header. Look more into the raw
 transmitted data, and you might find out something.

Might it be an HTTP/1.1 KeepAlive artefact?

-- 
David Hodgkinson, Wizard for Hirehttp://www.davehodgkinson.com
Editor-in-chief, The Highway Star   http://www.deep-purple.com
All the Purple Family Tree news   http://www.slashrock.com
   Interim Technical Director, Web Architecture Consultant for hire



Re: modperl and SQL db select

2002-03-21 Thread Dave Hodgkinson

darren chamberlain [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes:

 Quoting dreamwvr [EMAIL PROTECTED] [Mar 21, 2002 13:10]:
  Is there any issue with using modperl with postgres vs mysql
  for a database driven website? Don't want to bark up the wrong
  tree in a mod_perl project only to discover I picked the wrong
  .db :-/ 
 
 Take a look at URL:http://www.phpbuilder.com/columns/tim2705.php3,
 in which the author discusses why Sourceforge uses postgresql
 instead of MySQL.  It's a little dated (the postgres version is
 7.1, for example) but a fun read.

It's also been thoroughly rebutted ISTR :-)

-- 
David Hodgkinson, Wizard for Hirehttp://www.davehodgkinson.com
Editor-in-chief, The Highway Star   http://www.deep-purple.com
All the Purple Family Tree news   http://www.slashrock.com
   Interim Technical Director, Web Architecture Consultant for hire



Re: How to do connection pooling

2002-02-27 Thread Dave Hodgkinson

A.C.Sekhar [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes:

 Hi all,
 
 How can I maintain the connections in perl? For this I want to use connection
 pooling to contol the traffic of my site. How can I do this in perl? Can
 anybody help me in this regard? If possible please give the steps included in
 this.

Use a two-tier Apache and restrict MaxClients on the back-end.

-- 
Dave Hodgkinson, Wizard for Hire http://www.davehodgkinson.com
Editor-in-chief, The Highway Starhttp://www.thehighwaystar.com
   Interim Technical Director, Web Architecture Consultant for hire



Re: choice of mod_perl technology for news site

2002-02-07 Thread Dave Hodgkinson

Nate Campi [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes:

 Lets pretend I work for Wired News, and I really really hate Vignette's
 content management system. I mean *really* hate it. I'm the Ops guy
 supporting it and I have nightmares about the next unexplained CMS
 crash.
 
 Ok, we all know mod_perl is the right choice to replace their system,
 but what is the right way to go when you have a full news staff with
 many stories going out six days a week, and about a million hits a day?

My .02c:

1. Draw a REALLY sharp distinction between CMS and publishing the
pages.

2. Deliver the bulk of the content from a Template Toolkit,
include-driven system. 

3. Find a system that does what you need on the content management
end, what the pages out to files.

4. Do _not_ try to serve content from a database - keep it simple.

5. Many things you'd think about doing in mod_perl you can probably do
in mod_rewrite on the front-end Apache.

Um, that's all I can think of for now.




-- 
Dave Hodgkinson, Wizard for Hire http://www.davehodgkinson.com
Editor-in-chief, The Highway Star   http://www.deep-purple.com
   Interim Technical Director, Web Architecture Consultant for hire



Re: modperl growth

2002-02-05 Thread Dave Hodgkinson

Mark Maunder [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes:

 I was thinking that too, but then I remembered that if you're not from an IT
 background, you're probably not going to be able to write a line of mod_perl
 code anyhoo.

No, but you can pick up Mason, embperl, or Apache::Template (the TT
loaded into Apache).

-- 
Dave Hodgkinson, Wizard for Hire http://www.davehodgkinson.com
Editor-in-chief, The Highway Star   http://www.deep-purple.com
   Interim Technical Director, Web Architecture Consultant for hire



Re: modperl growth

2002-02-04 Thread Dave Hodgkinson

Paul DuBois [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes:

 At 11:02 + 2/3/02, Dave Hodgkinson wrote:
 Paul DuBois [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes:
 
   Mac OS X includes Apache, and mod_perl works there, too.  That's
   another group of potential new mod_perl-ized servers.
 
 I think all the recent RedHats come with mod_perl as a DSO by default.
 
 I just looked on a RH 7.2 machine.  It has the AddModule line in the
 default httpd.conf, but no mod_perl.so in the modules directory.

OK try:

ps wwaux |  grep httpd

Does it have -DHAVE_PERL?


 

-- 
Dave Hodgkinson, Wizard for Hire http://www.davehodgkinson.com
Editor-in-chief, The Highway Star   http://www.deep-purple.com
   Interim Technical Director, Web Architecture Consultant for hire



Re: modperl growth

2002-02-04 Thread Dave Hodgkinson

___cliff rayman___ [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes:

 one more guess - in the group of guesses. ;-)
 
 perhaps redhat or another popular distro is
 configuring standard with mod_perl (i use
 redhat, but i always hand select my packages).
 if this is the case, then the banner will show mod_perl,
 even if the user has no idea what it is, and it
 is not in use.  the good news is, there is lots
 of mod_perl installed out there, so if more applications
 are created that use it, there is a bigger installed base
 capable of running them.

And if the Slashcode were as easy to install and customise as
phpnuke...

;-)

Hmmmactually, there's half a point buried in there.

-- 
Dave Hodgkinson, Wizard for Hire http://www.davehodgkinson.com
Editor-in-chief, The Highway Star   http://www.deep-purple.com
   Interim Technical Director, Web Architecture Consultant for hire



Re: modperl growth

2002-02-04 Thread Dave Hodgkinson

Dave Rolsky [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes:

 On 4 Feb 2002, Dave Hodgkinson wrote:
 
  And if the Slashcode were as easy to install and customise as
  phpnuke...
 
 For OSCON (and hopefully YAPC too), I've submitted a talk on using
 Module::Build (an ExtUtils::MakeMaker replacement) for modules and using
 it to build an application installer.

For slashcode, the HTML templating is a little hairy although
beutifully crafted and using Template Toolkit. It's just real hard to
find your way round the first time.

 I'm not sure how on-topic this is anymore, though I don't think creating a
 separate list would exactly help at this point.

I'm sure several mod_perl advocacy lists have spun out like a little
UFO in Conway's game of life and disappeared off the edge of the
screen already...


-- 
Dave Hodgkinson, Wizard for Hire http://www.davehodgkinson.com
Editor-in-chief, The Highway Star   http://www.deep-purple.com
   Interim Technical Director, Web Architecture Consultant for hire



Re: modperl growth

2002-02-03 Thread Dave Hodgkinson

Paul DuBois [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes:

 Mac OS X includes Apache, and mod_perl works there, too.  That's
 another group of potential new mod_perl-ized servers.

I think all the recent RedHats come with mod_perl as a DSO by default.
 

-- 
Dave Hodgkinson, Wizard for Hire http://www.davehodgkinson.com
Editor-in-chief, The Highway Star   http://www.deep-purple.com
   Interim Technical Director, Web Architecture Consultant for hire



Re: modperl growth

2002-02-02 Thread Dave Hodgkinson

Matt Sergeant [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes:

 However I'm always skeptical of such massive changes - perhaps more likely
 is a change in SecuritySpace's methodology?

Don't Netcraft keep numbers?

-- 
Dave Hodgkinson, Wizard for Hire http://www.davehodgkinson.com
Editor-in-chief, The Highway Star   http://www.deep-purple.com
   Interim Technical Director, Web Architecture Consultant for hire



Re: New mod_perl Logo

2002-01-30 Thread Dave Hodgkinson

Ged Haywood [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes:

 Hi there,
 
 On Tue, 29 Jan 2002, Chris Thompson wrote:
 
  mod_perl is a lousy name.
 [snip]
  mod_perl needs a name. Something marketable, something catchy.
 
 How about BigFoot?

Sasquatch.


-- 
Dave Hodgkinson, Wizard for Hire http://www.davehodgkinson.com
Editor-in-chief, The Highway Star   http://www.deep-purple.com
   Interim Technical Director, Web Architecture Consultant for hire



Re: Dynamically serving an .htaccess file with mod_perl

2002-01-29 Thread Dave Hodgkinson

[EMAIL PROTECTED] writes:

   Does anyone know of a way that I can server the contents of an
   .htaccess file dynamically? 
  Make the .htacess file in question a FIFO, with a script on the
  backend that Does The Right Thing.
 
 Whoops, you would loose big when two concurrent Apache processes
 attempt to access the .htaccess simultaneously... 

Not if the file is small enough...low level reads are granular up to,
I think 8k. Maybe.

-- 
Dave Hodgkinson, Wizard for Hire http://www.davehodgkinson.com
Editor-in-chief, The Highway Star   http://www.deep-purple.com
   Interim Technical Director, Web Architecture Consultant for hire



Re: Thumbnail generator

2002-01-21 Thread Dave Hodgkinson

Issac Goldstand [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes:

 Part of the idea here is to do everything on-the-fly so that changes
 on the filesystem (in terms of adding/removing pictures) will
 IMMEDIATELY take effect (including caching, etc) on the web interface.
 That means no thumbnails to start with.

Yeah, but cache early, cache often.

-- 
Dave Hodgkinson, Wizard for Hire http://www.davehodgkinson.com
Editor-in-chief, The Highway Star   http://www.deep-purple.com
   Interim Technical Director, Web Architecture Consultant for hire



Re: Fast template system

2001-12-30 Thread Dave Hodgkinson

Ryan Thompson [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes:

 Any thoughts?

You really have to ask?!!!

* _Dave thinks: Template Toolit.


-- 
David Hodgkinson, Wizard for Hirehttp://www.davehodgkinson.com
Editor-in-chief, The Highway Star   http://www.deep-purple.com
Deep Purple Family Tree news  http://www.slashrock.com
   Interim Technical Director, Web Architecture Consultant for hire



Re: irc

2001-12-22 Thread Dave Hodgkinson

Thomas Eibner [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes:

 On Sat, Dec 22, 2001 at 07:21:00AM -0800, brian moseley wrote:
  
  i can't believe i never thought to ask this in 4 years, but:
  do any of you hang out on irc anywhere in particular?
  shouldn't there be a #mod_perl somewhere, if there isn't
  already?
 
 We used to hang on #Take23 on Openprojects for a while, but it kinda
 died out..
 
 You have any suggestions?

#london.pm on irc.rhizomatic.net

Very warm and fuzzy.

-- 
David Hodgkinson, Wizard for Hirehttp://www.davehodgkinson.com
Editor-in-chief, The Highway Star   http://www.deep-purple.com
Deep Purple Family Tree news  http://www.slashrock.com
   Interim Technical Director, Web Architecture Consultant for hire



Re: load balancing on apache

2001-12-14 Thread Dave Hodgkinson

Hemant Singh [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes:

 Hi All
 
  
 
 I am planning to host an application and its size is going to be big one , so
 expect the concurrent number of connection s to be around 2200.To combat the
 same , want to perform load sharing on 3-4 servers.So the ide is to put one
 machine on external IP and this machine , after receiving the requests would
 forward them to any of the other three machines having the application
 deployed and running on the same environment.Pls suggest how can i achieve
 this on apache.

Depends how much session persistence you're keeping on the middle
tier. You can do things smarter than pure round robin with a few
mod_rewrite rules on the front. 

-- 
David Hodgkinson, Wizard for Hirehttp://www.davehodgkinson.com
Editor-in-chief, The Highway Star   http://www.deep-purple.com
Deep Purple Family Tree news  http://www.slashrock.com
   Interim Technical Director, Web Architecture Consultant for hire



Re: load balancing on apache

2001-12-14 Thread Dave Hodgkinson

Perrin Harkins [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes:

  I am planning to host an application and its size is going to be big one ,
  so expect the concurrent number of connection s to be around 2200.
  To combat the same , want to perform load sharing on 3-4 servers.
 
 If you really expect 2200 concurrent connections, you should buy dedicated
 load-balancing hardware like Big/IP or Cisco LocalDirector.

Aside from the fact I _really_ wouldn't expect that manny actual, live
TCP connections at one time...that many users, maybe...

I _really_ hate so-called dedicated boxes. They're closed, nasty,
inflexible and often don't work in _your_ situation. Doing smart
session-based redirection can be hard with these boxes.

-- 
David Hodgkinson, Wizard for Hirehttp://www.davehodgkinson.com
Editor-in-chief, The Highway Star   http://www.deep-purple.com
Deep Purple Family Tree news  http://www.slashrock.com
   Interim Technical Director, Web Architecture Consultant for hire



Re: mod_perl vs. C for high performance Apache modules

2001-12-14 Thread Dave Hodgkinson

Jeff Yoak [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes:

 Hi All,
 
  Recently I did a substantial project for a client in using
  mod_perl.  That client is happy with the work, but an
  investor with their company is very angry because of what a
  horrible choice mod_perl is for high-load web applications
  compared with Apache modules and even CGI programs, written
  in C.  If anyone on this list could forward any resources
  that do comparisons along these lines, or even analysis of
  mod_perl's handling of high-load web traffic, I would be very
  grateful.

Kill the investors. Really.

-- 
David Hodgkinson, Wizard for Hirehttp://www.davehodgkinson.com
Editor-in-chief, The Highway Star   http://www.deep-purple.com
Deep Purple Family Tree news  http://www.slashrock.com
   Interim Technical Director, Web Architecture Consultant for hire



Re: mod_perl vs. C for high performance Apache modules

2001-12-14 Thread Dave Hodgkinson

Perrin Harkins [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes:

  I spoke to the technical lead at Yahoo who said mod_perl will not scale as
  well as c++ when you get to their level of traffic, but for a large
  ecommerce site mod_perl is fine.
 
 According to something I once read by David Filo, Yahoo also had to tweak
 the FreeBSD code because they had trouble scaling *TCP/IP*!  I would say
 their experience is not typical.

Increasing the number of file handles, I'd wager. That was an issue on
2.x linux kernels too.

-- 
David Hodgkinson, Wizard for Hirehttp://www.davehodgkinson.com
Editor-in-chief, The Highway Star   http://www.deep-purple.com
Deep Purple Family Tree news  http://www.slashrock.com
   Interim Technical Director, Web Architecture Consultant for hire



Re: mod_perl vs. C for high performance Apache modules

2001-12-14 Thread Dave Hodgkinson

Toni Andjelkovic [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes:

  2.x linux kernels too.
 
 that was an issue with 2.0.x, since 2.2.x
 you can do it with

That was what I meant...decimal point in the wrong place... :-)

-- 
David Hodgkinson, Wizard for Hirehttp://www.davehodgkinson.com
Editor-in-chief, The Highway Star   http://www.deep-purple.com
Deep Purple Family Tree news  http://www.slashrock.com
   Interim Technical Director, Web Architecture Consultant for hire



Re: ASP.NET Linux equivalent?

2001-12-06 Thread Dave Hodgkinson

Medi Montaseri [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes:

 You can also use the tie() feature of Perl to abstract read/write to 
 database. In fact you can write a pretty flexible module to figure out
 many things, such as table name, col name, etc...

I'm a HUGE fan of Tie::DBI for dealing with little lookup
tables. Works especially well with GGI.pm's widgets for creating drop
downs and radio lists.

Whatever happened to the widget subproject that span out of the
modperl list a few months ago?

-- 
David Hodgkinson, Wizard for Hirehttp://www.davehodgkinson.com
Editor-in-chief, The Highway Star   http://www.deep-purple.com
Deep Purple Family Tree news  http://www.slashrock.com
   Interim Technical Director, Web Architecture Consultant for hire



Re: ASP.NET Linux equivalent?

2001-12-05 Thread Dave Hodgkinson

Kee Hinckley [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes:

 At 6:55 PM -0500 12/3/01, Vsevolod Ilyushchenko wrote:
 Hi,
 
 Is anyone aware of a Linux product equivalent to ASP.NET from MS? Its most
 attractive feature is the GUI construction of Web forms and the automatic
 connection of their fields to a database. Since I am getting sick and tired
 of writing over and over the code to process user input and store it in the
 database, a similar product would be a huge help. (PHPLens does something
 
 The combo of Embperl and DBIx::Recordset will come pretty close to 
 automating the fetch and store of database records into a form 
 (perhaps four or five lines of embedded Perl for each).  Designing 
 the form is not there though.

I did an auto-form generator-from-schema thing once.

Too many exceptions and meta-data involved to actually make it really
worthwhile.



-- 
David Hodgkinson, Wizard for Hirehttp://www.davehodgkinson.com
Editor-in-chief, The Highway Star   http://www.deep-purple.com
Deep Purple Family Tree news  http://www.slashrock.com
   Interim Technical Director, Web Architecture Consultant for hire



Re: [modperl site design challenge] please vote

2001-12-04 Thread Dave Hodgkinson

Stas Bekman [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes:

 Thanks to Eric Cholet for providing this voting script and hosting it.

HTTP/1.1 200 OK Date: Tue, 04 Dec 2001 09:39:28 GMT Server: Apache/1.3.23-dev (Unix) 
PHP/4.0.6 mod_perl/1.26_01-dev Connection: close Content-Type:
text/html; charset=iso-8859-1 Expires: Tue, 04 Dec 2001 09:39:28 GMT 


Double header issue?


-- 
David Hodgkinson, Wizard for Hirehttp://www.davehodgkinson.com
Editor-in-chief, The Highway Star   http://www.deep-purple.com
Deep Purple Family Tree news  http://www.slashrock.com
   Interim Technical Director, Web Architecture Consultant for hire



Re: [OT] log analyzing programs

2001-12-02 Thread Dave Hodgkinson

Bill Moseley [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes:

 Any suggestions for favorite ones?  wusage seems to require a lot of
 resources -- maybe that's not unusual?  It runs once a week.  Here's a
 about six days worth of requests.  Doesn't see like that many.

analog - but _do_ read the words that go with it, know what you're
analysing. i have a stats redux note on my site too.

-- 
David Hodgkinson, Wizard for Hirehttp://www.davehodgkinson.com
Editor-in-chief, The Highway Star   http://www.deep-purple.com
Deep Purple Family Tree news  http://www.slashrock.com
   Interim Technical Director, Web Architecture Consultant for hire



Re: [OT] A couple of dubious network problems...

2001-11-28 Thread Dave Hodgkinson

Mark Maunder [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes:

 Dave Hodgkinson wrote:
 
  1. On a RH6.0 (yes, ick) box without persistent DBI connections, the
  server side of the DBD::mysql connection was successfully closed
  (netstat shows nothing), but the client side shows a TIME_WAIT state,
  which hangs around for 30 seconds or so before
  disappearing. Obviously, using Apache::DBI makes this go away, but
  it's disturbing nonetheless. Does this ring any bells?
 
 Dunno about number 2, but 1 is perfectly normal. TIME_WAIT is a condition
 the OS puts a closed socket into to prevent another app from using the
 socket, just in case the peer host has any more packets to send to that
 port. The host that closes the socket will put the old socket into
 TIME_WAIT. BSD IP stack implementations keep sockets in time_wait for
 about 30 seconds, others go up to 2 minutes. The duration is called 2MSL
 (2 * max_segment_lifetime). Don't worry about it and dont mess with it
 (unless you're consuming 64000+ sockets per 30 seconds, in which case you
 have other problems to deal with ;-)

Does SO_REUSEADDR make this go away?

-- 
David Hodgkinson, Wizard for Hirehttp://www.davehodgkinson.com
Editor-in-chief, The Highway Star   http://www.deep-purple.com
Deep Purple Family Tree news  http://www.slashrock.com
   Interim Technical Director, Web Architecture Consultant for hire



[OT] A couple of dubious network problems...

2001-11-27 Thread Dave Hodgkinson


Chaps,

Can I pick the wisdom of the hive here please? I witnessed a couple of
mod_perl related network problems yesterday which are kind of mod_perl
related:

1. On a RH6.0 (yes, ick) box without persistent DBI connections, the
server side of the DBD::mysql connection was successfully closed
(netstat shows nothing), but the client side shows a TIME_WAIT state,
which hangs around for 30 seconds or so before
disappearing. Obviously, using Apache::DBI makes this go away, but
it's disturbing nonetheless. Does this ring any bells?

2. On both RH6 (in the office) and Solaris (at the co-lo) with a
middling-recent Apache and mod_perl, some pages were getting truncated
when sent to the browser. This happens on a variety of browsers and a
variety of pages. Once it happens on a particular combination of page
and browser it's reproducible. Now, the page is definitely being
completely sent to $r-print(), but it's not making it to the browser
(or at least that's what tcpdump shows). Again, any bells ringing?

Thanks,

Dave






Re: [DBI] DBI-install_driver fails

2001-11-18 Thread Dave Hodgkinson

Ged Haywood [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes:

 Hi there,
 
 On Sat, 17 Nov 2001, Dau Hee wrote:
 
 [snip,snip]
  I also use up2date to upgraded my glibc to 2.2.4 from 2.2.2.
 
 Why?  If it ain't broke, don't mend it.

Because RedHat will have fixed stuff. For some values of fixed.

I normally roll my own mod_perl Apaches, but I recently put RH7.1 on
my desktop and so far, the out-of-the box install and complete up2date
has been sweet.

My recommendation to our friend would be to make sure ALL the RPMs are
up to date - perl included. It might be a large update, but at least
everything will be in step.

When are we going for that beer, Ged? ;-)

-- 
David Hodgkinson, Wizard for Hirehttp://www.davehodgkinson.com
Editor-in-chief, The Highway Star   http://www.deep-purple.com
Deep Purple Family Tree news  http://www.slashrock.com
   Interim Technical Director, Web Architecture Consultant for hire



Re: Doing Authorization using mod_perl from a programmers perspective

2001-11-14 Thread Dave Hodgkinson

Jonathan E. Paton [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes:

 Please don't flame me, I'll go away... honest :P

I wonder if you're trying to do too much too soon?

If you're concerned about hosting then *gulp* PHP might server you
better.  I rent a dedicated server because I want absolute control and
the ability to run my own handler.

-- 
David Hodgkinson, Wizard for Hirehttp://www.davehodgkinson.com
Editor-in-chief, The Highway Star   http://www.deep-purple.com
Deep Purple Family Tree news  http://www.slashrock.com
   Interim Technical Director, Web Architecture Consultant for hire



Re: Excellent article on Apache/mod_perl at eToys

2001-10-23 Thread Dave Hodgkinson

Nathan Torkington [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes:

 Leon Brocard writes:
   Perhaps a port of JMS is in order.
  
  Interestingly, I've been thinking along the same lines. Spread
  (http://www.spread.org/) can be used for the publish/subscribe
  messaging domain but queueing seems to be important too. Straying a
  bit offtopic perhaps, but I wonder what would be involved...
 
 I like the idea of P2EE.  If the goal is to provide the same features
 as Java, why not just implement the Java messaging, transactions,
 etc. APIs in Perl?  That is, endeavour to have the same classes and
 methods as Java, to the greatest extent possible.  That'll also make
 it possible for Java programmers to become Perl programmers, bwahaha.

That's P5EE

Is there a nice graphicy map of what actually constitutes J2EE onto
which we can overlay the relevant perl bitz?



-- 
David Hodgkinson, Wizard for Hirehttp://www.davehodgkinson.com
Editor-in-chief, The Highway Star   http://www.deep-purple.com
All the Purple Family Tree news   http://www.slashrock.com
   Interim Technical Director, Web Architecture Consultant for hire



Re: Mod_perl component based architecture

2001-10-16 Thread Dave Hodgkinson

Gargi Bodke [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes:

 hi
   i have been asked to suggest an architecture to seperate the business
 logic from the html.
 how is this done in modperl? i guess by using functions for the business
 logic.
 is there any other way?

By using one of the many available templaters, my preference being the
Template Toolkit. you can fake up a pretty decent
Model-View-Controller patterm from that.


 
 also does modperl support object oriented programming?

As much as perl does.

-- 
David Hodgkinson, Wizard for Hirehttp://www.davehodgkinson.com
Editor-in-chief, The Highway Star   http://www.deep-purple.com
All the Purple Family Tree news   http://www.slashrock.com
   Interim Technical Director, Web Architecture Consultant for hire



Re: Programmer Wanted

2001-10-12 Thread Dave Hodgkinson

BuildReferrals.com [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes:

Hello,

You need a decent client side programmer too...all the stupid popups,
scripting and crap killed my netscape.

-- 
David Hodgkinson, Wizard for Hirehttp://www.davehodgkinson.com
Editor-in-chief, The Highway Star   http://www.deep-purple.com
All the Purple Family Tree news   http://www.slashrock.com
   Interim Technical Director, Web Architecture Consultant for hire



Re: [VERY OT] What hourly rate to charge for programming?

2001-10-11 Thread Dave Hodgkinson

Gunther Birznieks [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes:

 America is richer than Australia.

Yeah, but the food's better in Oz.

Still, the beer sucks in both ;-)


-- 
David Hodgkinson, Wizard for Hirehttp://www.davehodgkinson.com
Editor-in-chief, The Highway Star   http://www.deep-purple.com
All the Purple Family Tree news   http://www.slashrock.com
   Interim Technical Director, Web Architecture Consultant for hire



Re: [VERY OT] What hourly rate to charge for programming?

2001-10-11 Thread Dave Hodgkinson

Chris Devers [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes:

 Ahh, you have Budweiser in Australia too, then? ;) 

Worse: Fosters.

-- 
David Hodgkinson, Wizard for Hirehttp://www.davehodgkinson.com
Editor-in-chief, The Highway Star   http://www.deep-purple.com
All the Purple Family Tree news   http://www.slashrock.com
   Interim Technical Director, Web Architecture Consultant for hire



Re: Off-topic - Apache Config - Load crises

2001-10-11 Thread Dave Hodgkinson

Rafiq Ismail [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes:

iv) Something else?

Two tier Apache.
Increase shareability.
Read the guide.

-- 
David Hodgkinson, Wizard for Hirehttp://www.davehodgkinson.com
Editor-in-chief, The Highway Star   http://www.deep-purple.com
All the Purple Family Tree news   http://www.slashrock.com
   Interim Technical Director, Web Architecture Consultant for hire



For hire...

2001-10-01 Thread Dave Hodgkinson


I've got some availability at the moment so if anyone needs anything
from a couple of hours sorting out performance issues (and therefore
avoiding that costly upgrade!) up to planning and implementing major
rearchitectures, let me know. Check my site for recent projects,
references supplied from ecstatic clients on request.

Thanks,

Dave

-- 
David Hodgkinson, Wizard for Hirehttp://www.davehodgkinson.com
Editor-in-chief, The Highway Star   http://www.deep-purple.com
   Interim Technical Director, Web Architecture Consultant for hire
  -- chmod a+x /bin/laden --



Re: keeping client images private

2001-09-12 Thread Dave Hodgkinson

will trillich [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes:

 i'm sure there's more than one way to do this -- and before i
 take the likely-to-be-most-circuituitous route, i thought i'd
 cull advice from the clever minds on this list...

Take a look at the mod_rewrite cookbook...there's some neat stuff in
there.

-- 
David Hodgkinson, Wizard for Hirehttp://www.hodgkinson.org
Editor-in-chief, The Highway Star   http://www.deep-purple.com
   Interim Technical Director, Web Architecture Consultant for hire
   



Re: FW: AuthCookie Woes!

2001-09-04 Thread Dave Hodgkinson

Chris Lavin [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes:

 I have used a sniffer and no cookie is being sent! Man this is frustrating!

Are you positive the cookie domain is being set properly?

-- 
Dave Hodgkinson, http://www.hodgkinson.org
Editor-in-chief, The Highway Star   http://www.deep-purple.com
  Interim CTO, web server farms, technical strategy
   



Re: OT: Re: ApacheCon Dublin Cancelled?

2001-07-16 Thread Dave Hodgkinson

Nathan Torkington [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes:

 Are there any requests other than price for next year? 

Have it in London.

-- 
Dave Hodgkinson, http://www.hodgkinson.org
Editor-in-chief, The Highway Star   http://www.deep-purple.com
  Interim CTO, web server farms, technical strategy
   



Re: CGI module or Apache

2001-07-09 Thread Dave Hodgkinson

Paul [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes:

 Just use it in your handlers normally. It'll only be included once per
 process, . . . right?

Put it in startup.pl and it'll get mostly shared too!

-- 
Dave Hodgkinson, http://www.hodgkinson.org
Editor-in-chief, The Highway Star   http://www.deep-purple.com
  Interim CTO, web server farms, technical strategy
   



Job: Chief Wizard for Hire

2001-05-29 Thread Dave Hodgkinson


All the current projects are done and dusted and the T-shirts are at
the printers (really!). I'm looking for the next round of excellent
clients to work with.

Take a look at my site at http://www.hodgkinson.org/ to see what I'm
up to.

Thanks,

Dave

-- 
Dave Hodgkinson, http://www.hodgkinson.org
Editor-in-chief, The Highway Star   http://www.deep-purple.com
  Interim CTO, web server farms, technical strategy
   



Re: mod_perl and 700k files...

2001-05-10 Thread Dave Hodgkinson

Morbus Iff [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes:

 Well, it's a big deal if you've no in with the place you're webhosting
 with, sure... No one wants to be told that some lowly customer wants to
 restart the server that's running 200 other vhosts...
 
 Granted, I work at the damn webhost, but it's gotten to the point where all
 the gizmo's and crap I've added have slowly been dipping the stop touching
 the server, you feature freak - I'd rather not stress the relationship.

Sounds like you need to start running multiple Apaches. Get to know
the architecture sections of the guide, get familiar with mod_rewrite
and start dividing up your servers.


-- 
Dave Hodgkinson, http://www.hodgkinson.org
Editor-in-chief, The Highway Star   http://www.deep-purple.com
  Interim CTO, web server farms, technical strategy
   



Re: Is this startup.pl ok?

2001-04-26 Thread Dave Hodgkinson

Philip Mak [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes:

 My Apache with modperl is acting weird with respect to memory usage.
 
 When it first starts up, each process uses 10 MB of memory.
 
 As time goes on, these processes' memory usage grows and grows. Right now
 they're 20 MB (uptime 2 days). When I rebooted the machine two days ago,
 they were using 80 MB each (shared memory, though). MaxRequestsPerChild is
 set to 200.

What operating system?

I'd be inclined to stuff a lot more of the generic modules you use
(CGI, Template Toolkit, URI, Date modules) into startup.pl. The more
the merrier.

If a process starts at 10M and grows to 80M that's 70M per process,
_unshared_ for sure. Not good. 

-- 
Dave Hodgkinson, http://www.hodgkinson.org
Editor-in-chief, The Highway Star   http://www.deep-purple.com
  Interim CTO, web server farms, technical strategy
   



Re: Is this startup.pl ok?

2001-04-26 Thread Dave Hodgkinson

Philip Mak [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes:

 I thought it was shared, because under top, SHARE was almost as big as
 RSS.

Before Stas starts laying into me for misleading inaccuracy, take a
look at the guide: http://perl.apache.org/guide/

There's LOTS of good stuff in there on shareabiliy. 

If your processes start at 10M, then grow to 80M, that memory is
probably _not_ shared. Unless you're mapping in some shared memory or
something.

-- 
Dave Hodgkinson, http://www.hodgkinson.org
Editor-in-chief, The Highway Star   http://www.deep-purple.com
  Interim CTO, web server farms, technical strategy
   



Re: Loading Index.pl as the Root File

2001-04-24 Thread Dave Hodgkinson

Jeffrey W. Baker [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes:

 On Mon, 23 Apr 2001, Al Morgan wrote:
 
  I've been studying Slash to better understand mod_perl.  I think I
  understand everything that happens in the config file, except for this:
 
 That is probably the single worst way to learn about mod_perl.  Slash is
 the only program that makes me physically ill.  It is the single worst
 piece of programming ever released upon the world.

No, that would be Matt's Script Archive.

Have you seen Slash 2.0? Even uses the Template Toolkit.


-- 
Dave Hodgkinson, http://www.hodgkinson.org
Editor-in-chief, The Highway Star   http://www.deep-purple.com
  Interim CTO, web server farms, technical strategy
   



Re: Web forum engine

2001-04-21 Thread Dave Hodgkinson

"Per Einar" [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes:

 Hi,
 
 I am looking around for a web forum engine like
 wwwthreads(URL:http://www.wwwthreads.com/) which is GPL'ed(or atleast Open
 Source) and runs under mod_perl. I know wwwthreads was GPL before, and I
 think there have been someone who has taken up the project under a different
 name, if anyone knows about this, please tell me.

mwforum, and a Template Toolkit version may well be in the pipeline.


-- 
Dave Hodgkinson, http://www.hodgkinson.org
Editor-in-chief, The Highway Star   http://www.deep-purple.com
  Interim CTO, web server farms, technical strategy
   



Re: Fast DB access

2001-04-18 Thread Dave Hodgkinson

clayton cottingham [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes:

 Matthew Kennedy wrote:
  
  On 17 Apr 2001 18:24:43 -0700, clayton wrote:
  
   i wanted a good benchmark for postgres and mysql
   {i hope to transpose the sql properly!}
  
  
  This is a good comparison of MySQL and PostgreSQL 7.0:
  
  "Open Source Databases: As The Tables Turn" --
  http://www.phpbuilder.com/columns/tim20001112.php3
 
 
 very nice not all the info i was looking for but some solid answers

Do go through all the answers since there were some extreme flaws in
the tests (as always!) and there were issues in MySQL that were fixed.
I don't know if the tests were eventually run against MySQL 3.23.


-- 
Dave Hodgkinson, http://www.hodgkinson.org
Editor-in-chief, The Highway Star   http://www.deep-purple.com
  Interim CTO, web server farms, technical strategy
   



Re: Apache growing.

2001-04-16 Thread Dave Hodgkinson

Michael Bacarella [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes:

 (I'm not sure this is even a code problem. Maybe perl is just bad at keeping
 a single consistent working set and the copy-on write from the parent Apache
 kicks in and keeps increasing unique per process memory consumption).

There's lots of good stuff in the mod_perl guide on tracking down
leaks. Both perl and mod_perl have both been extensively tested .

It's worthwhile to have done this at least once so you know how to do
it when you really need to do it. In addition, profiling your code is
a Good Thing to do :-)


-- 
Dave Hodgkinson, http://www.hodgkinson.org
Editor-in-chief, The Highway Star   http://www.deep-purple.com
  Interim CTO, web server farms, technical strategy
   



Build problems on Mandrake

2001-04-05 Thread Dave Hodgkinson


I'm trying to build mod_perl on my Mandrake 7.2 laptop, apache 1.3.19,
mod_perl 1.25 and perl 5.6.0 and I'm getting:

cc  -DLINUX=22 -DMOD_PERL -DUSE_PERL_SSI -fno-strict-aliasing -D_LARGEFILE_SOURCE 
-D_FILE_OFFSET_BITS=64 -DUSE_HSREGEX -DNO_DL_NEEDED -fno-strict-aliasing 
-D_LARGEFILE_SOURCE -D_FILE_OFFSET_BITS=64 `./apaci`\
  -o httpd buildmark.o modules.o modules/standard/libstandard.a 
modules/perl/libperl.a main/libmain.a ./os/unix/libos.a ap/libap.a regex/libregex.a   
-lm -lcrypt -rdynamic -Wl,-rpath,/usr/lib/perl5/5.6.0/i386-linux/CORE  
-L/usr/local/lib  -L/usr/lib/perl5/5.6.0/i386-linux/CORE -lperl -lnsl -ldl -lm -lc 
-lposix -lcrypt 
modules/perl/libperl.a(perlxsi.o): In function `xs_init':
perlxsi.o(.text+0xdb): undefined reference to `boot_DynaLoader'
collect2: ld returned 1 exit status
make[3]: *** [target_static] Error 1


Am I missing something? Is it a perl issue?

TIA,

Dave

-- 
Dave Hodgkinson, http://www.hodgkinson.org
Editor-in-chief, The Highway Star   http://www.deep-purple.com
  Interim CTO, web server farms, technical strategy
   



Re: Renegotiate Language

2001-03-21 Thread Dave Hodgkinson

Joachim Zobel [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes:

 Hi.
 
 I want to use content negotiation to choose a starting language and return 
 appropriate content. I know how to do that with mod_negotiate. What I would 
 like to add is the possibility for the user to add a language. Therefore I 
 want the server to renegotiate the language with different preferences. How 
 can I do this.

Look at the HTTP_ACCEPT_LANGUAGE environment variable?

I've done this and actually got resistance from Brazilians who
preferred the Engligh content. You might be better off with a user
preference.


-- 
Dave Hodgkinson, http://www.hodgkinson.org
Editor-in-chief, The Highway Star   http://www.deep-purple.com
  Interim CTO, web server farms, technical strategy
   



Re: book recommendations?

2001-03-20 Thread Dave Hodgkinson

Paul Evad [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes:

 I know a lot of the good O'Rielly books are showing some age (1999 
 publishing date). Anyone out there have a copy of "Writing Apache 
 Modules with Perl and C", is it still relevant enough with the 
 current apache mod_perl distro's to be worthwhile getting?

Absolutely.

 
 Suggestions on  good reference books to get? (I have most of the Perl 
 library already).

Effective Perl
Damian Conway's Object Oriented Perl
Data Munging in Perl

-- 
Dave Hodgkinson, http://www.hodgkinson.org
Editor-in-chief, The Highway Star   http://www.deep-purple.com
  Interim CTO, web server farms, technical strategy
   



Re: Apache thrashing my swap...

2001-02-28 Thread Dave Hodgkinson

"Jason Terry" [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes:

 I know this isn't really a mod_perl problem... but I also know that this list is 
probably the most likely to have other people who
 have exactly this issue on their machines

I wonder if putting a thin apache on the front of a very limited fat
apache would at least get you somewhere near where you want to be. If
someone hits stop before something gets passed to the fat apache, will
it get tossed completely?

Having a maxclients limit on the fat apache will keep memory and CPU
usage sane.

-- 
Dave Hodgkinson, http://www.hodgkinson.org
Editor-in-chief, The Highway Star   http://www.deep-purple.com
  Apache, mod_perl, MySQL, Sybase hired gun for, well, hire
  -



Re: Process Running Even after timeout

2001-02-22 Thread Dave Hodgkinson

"Kiran Kumar.M" [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes:

   I have a program that fetches data from mysql database,since the =
 database is huge the user gets a time-out(this has been taken care now =
 :-)) , but when i see the process list the mysqld process for that =
 request is still running , Dosent apache close the database connection =
 after it sends a timeout ???

Yes, but mysql is busy doing your query.


-- 
Dave Hodgkinson, http://www.hodgkinson.org
Editor-in-chief, The Highway Star   http://www.deep-purple.com
  Apache, mod_perl, MySQL, Sybase hired gun for, well, hire
  -



Re: newbie mess

2001-02-19 Thread Dave Hodgkinson

matt [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes:

 but that is half-ass. from what i read i have to compile suexec
 appropiately. but i am not sure about that either.

man suexec:

/usr/man/man8/suexec.8
/usr/local/src/apache_perl/apache_1.3.14/src/support/suexec.8

Read the INSTALL options for what to do on build...

Cheers,

Dave

-- 
Dave Hodgkinson, http://www.hodgkinson.org
Editor-in-chief, The Highway Star   http://www.deep-purple.com
  Apache, mod_perl, MySQL, Sybase hired gun for, well, hire
  -



Re: [JOB] another bloke for hire...

2001-01-22 Thread Dave Hodgkinson


I'm looking at justifying a trip to Japan in late March. If there's
anyone who needs some Apache architecture, Apache::Registry-ification
of existing CGI code or in depth MySQL tuning work, please mail me.

Thanks,

Dave

-- 
Dave Hodgkinson, http://www.hodgkinson.org
Editor-in-chief, The Highway Star   http://www.deep-purple.com
  Apache, mod_perl, MySQL, Sybase hired gun for, well, hire
  -



Re: [RFC] modproxy:modperl ratios...

2000-05-03 Thread Dave Hodgkinson

Vivek Khera wrote:
 
  "DH" == Dave Hodgkinson [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes:
 
 DH I'm currently arguing about this very thing with my BOFH - I think we
 DH should have, effectively, an SSI apache and a mod_perl apache, he's
 
 I tend to call mod_perl scripts from my SSI's, so it makes sense for
 me to keep them on the same server.

Sounds like a plan.

Did we ever resolve the buffering question on squid? How much can
squid suck from a fat apache thread before it fills its buffer?


-- 
Editor, "The Highway Star"   http://www.deep-purple.com
Dave endorses Yanagisawa saxes, Apache, Perl, Linux, MySQL, emacs, gnus



Re: [RFC] modproxy:modperl ratios...

2000-04-28 Thread Dave Hodgkinson

Vivek Khera wrote:
 
  "MS" == Matt Sergeant [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes:
 
  doing - and the TCP listen queue will hold a few more
  connections if you are slightly short of backends.
 
 MS Is there any benefit of mod_proxy over a real proxy front end like "Oops"?
 
 Not being familiar with "Oops", I can say that I use mod_proxy as the
 front end so that I can do virtual hosting.  Doing this with Squid is
 not so straight-forward (meaning it requires me to spend lots of time
 learning something else to maintain.)

We use squid as the front end proxy for about 180 domains and it works
well. It catches about 50 "stupid redirect" domains, ones that bounce
to a subdirectory of a larger site. We reckon at least 50% of all 
traffic is cached, which is to be expected as our sites are heavily
SSI driven and therefore regular html just doesn't cache and nor
should it.

Squid's OK and a lot better than it used to be. If we were running on
less hardware (currently 3 tier: proxy, 2xmod_perl servers, database),
then I'd think hard about using a single, modular apache build
and two instances of apache. 

I'm currently arguing about this very thing with my BOFH - I think we
should have, effectively, an SSI apache and a mod_perl apache, he's
going with the KISS principle. Since at the moment we're by no means
constrained by "concurrent" users eating connections to fat servers
and you can always turn off keepalive on apache, I'm leaning towards
KISS too.

-- 
David Hodgkinson, Technical Director, Sift PLChttp://www.sift.co.uk
Editor, "The Highway Star"   http://www.deep-purple.com
Dave endorses Yanagisawa saxes, Apache, Perl, Linux, MySQL, emacs, gnus



Re: Proxy front end behind 64k

2000-04-28 Thread Dave Hodgkinson

Matt Sergeant wrote:
 
 I'm behind a 64k leased line here (net access is *extremely* expensive
 here in the UK) and I was thinking, a proxy front end is probably really
 not necessary for me. Worst case scenario: I get 8 clients connecting to
 my at about 1KB/s - my pipe is maxed out anyway, so pushing them
 onto a proxy is just making more work! Just a thought for anyone
 thinking about a proxy front end - evaluate your pipe too.
 

I couldn't get your CV:

Not Found

The requested URL /cgi-bin/xmerge.pl was not found on this server.

Additionally, a 404 Not Found error was encountered while trying to use
an ErrorDocument to handle the request. 


Cheers!

Dave

-- 
David Hodgkinson, Technical Director, Sift PLChttp://www.sift.co.uk
Editor, "The Highway Star"   http://www.deep-purple.com
Dave endorses Yanagisawa saxes, Apache, Perl, Linux, MySQL, emacs, gnus



Re: authentication via login form

1999-10-11 Thread Dave Hodgkinson


"Jamie O'Shaughnessy" [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes:

 
 On 11 Oct 99 15:05:23 +0100, you wrote:
 
 I was actually looking at a PerlTransHandler that I'd drop into
 my site-wide files that would do something like the following:
 
  my $uri = $r-uri;
  if ($uri =~ s#/@@(\d+)@@/#/#) {
$session = $1;
$r-uri($uri);
$r-header(Session = $session);
  }
 
 This way, a session ID could be generated of the form
 
  /some/path/@@123456@@/foo/bar.html
 
 
 But isn't the problem then that if the user cuts  pastes the URL for
 someone else to use (e.g. mails it to someone), they're also then passing
 on their authentication? 
 
 Doesn't this also mean you can only have links from sessioned pages -
 non-sessioned pages or sessioned pages - sessioned pages and not
 non-sessioned pages - sessioned pages. I'd classify a non-sessioned page
 as a static HTML page.
 
 Have I missed something here?

Perhaps an MD2 or MD5 hash that has an IP and the username or some
other bumf as semi-authentication might do the trick?

We've done something similar for embedding URLs into newsletter type
emails so when people click through they come to something
personalised for them. 

Still, that's only for us pushing to them, anything involving money
requires a full session login on the secure server.


-- 
David Hodgkinson, Technical Director, Sift PLChttp://www.sift.co.uk
Editor, "The Highway Star"   http://www.deep-purple.com
Dave endorses Yanagisawa saxes, Apache, Perl, Linux, MySQL, emacs, gnus



Re: authentication via login form

1999-10-11 Thread Dave Hodgkinson


Michael Peppler [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes:

 Don't use the IP address. Some proxy systems have a non-static IP
 address for requests coming from the same physical client (some of
 AOLs proxies work that way, if I remember correctly...)

"...or something..." ;-)

-- 
David Hodgkinson, Technical Director, Sift PLChttp://www.sift.co.uk
Editor, "The Highway Star"   http://www.deep-purple.com
Dave endorses Yanagisawa saxes, Apache, Perl, Linux, MySQL, emacs, gnus



Re: Server Stats

1999-10-07 Thread Dave Hodgkinson


Matt Sergeant [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes:

 Sadly Phillip Greenspun, while a great writer, isn't that fabulous
 technically (although he's on the right track by not recommending NT). See
 how he also recommends HP-UX as the fastest and most stable Unix around.

Yeah, but have you seen the kit they gave him! 

-- 
David Hodgkinson, Technical Director, Sift PLChttp://www.sift.co.uk
Editor, "The Highway Star"   http://www.deep-purple.com
Dave endorses Yanagisawa saxes, Apache, Perl, Linux, MySQL, emacs, gnus