Current stable platform for mod_perl application ?
I have a opportunity to upgrade and standardize a couple of mod_perl enabled servers to the most stable configuration as of now. Apache 1.3 and mod_perl was easy to choose since it is a production environment. What I am very much confused is to what should I chose for the distribution. For various reasons it is certainly going to be RedHat but I have a choice between the very well tested 7.3 but highly likely to become unsupported by RedHat soon. Or I could go for RedHat 9.0 and rollback perl to 5.6.1 - I dont like the idea of running a production server on a maintenance snapshots of perl especially a .0 release. If anyone has recently had the opportunity to make simillar decisions do share what made him/her decide on whatever platform was chosen. Also does the Native Posix Thread Library support in RedHat 9.0 have any added benifit for mod_perl/my applications ? Mithun __ Do you Yahoo!? SBC Yahoo! DSL - Now only $29.95 per month! http://sbc.yahoo.com
Re: Current stable platform for mod_perl application ?
Hi there, On Mon, 16 Jun 2003, Mithun Bhattacharya wrote: I have a choice between the very well tested 7.3 but highly likely to become unsupported by RedHat soon. Or I could go for RedHat 9.0 A distribution is just a package of stuff that you could put together yourself if you had the time and energy. Generally it includes an enormous mountain of stuff you neither need nor want, but it has to have frills, bells and whistles to compete. For a mod_perl server all you need is a decent kernel, networking support, a shell and tools to build the server(s) e.g. an editor, a C compiler suite and Perl. You can add all kinds of goodies like mail, ftp and name servers but that isn't what we're talking about here. The less you have in there, the less there is to go wrong and the fewer holes there are in it. Even having a C compiler on the machine is an added security risk. Do you actually need or use RH support? I'm not saying that there's anything wrong with it, but by the time you've a few years of Linux experience under your belt it's unlikely you'll need much more than the odd security patch - and you'll be able to deal with that sort of thing easily, even if it means installing a new kernel. I'd say stick with what you know. I tried RH9.0 on internal servers: I found so many things broke it was hardly worth the effort, except for the machine on our receptionist's desk which needs a nice GUI for her word processing stuff (even if it's less reliable than I'd like). Having said that, I had as much trouble with the latest Slackware distro. Things have changed a lot in a couple of years, so I think you either need to keep regularly up to date or else only do it when it's forced on you. I belong to the inertial navigation group. Must be my age. Also does the Native Posix Thread Library support in RedHat 9.0 have any added benifit for mod_perl/my applications ? I've no idea, but that's all a bit new and exciting for me anyway... :) 73, Ged.
Re: Current stable platform for mod_perl application ?
--- Ged Haywood [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Hi there, On Mon, 16 Jun 2003, Mithun Bhattacharya wrote: I have a choice between the very well tested 7.3 but highly likely to become unsupported by RedHat soon. Or I could go for RedHat 9.0 Ohh no no one is using RedHat support it is just the fact that most of the administrators are used to RedHat and I am not going to be maintaining the servers in the long run therefore I wanted them to have something they know their way around. I want something which they can manage on their own, they can upgrade without breaking everything down - and ending up ruining my happiness :). I do a minimal install for the servers anyway other than kernel and perl they wont have much else to worry about. Ofcoure RedHat 7.3 has the notorious gcc 2.96 - no body has been able to figure out whether it is actually broken or not I guess :). Do you actually need or use RH support? I'm not saying that there's anything wrong with it, but by the time you've a few years of Linux experience under your belt it's unlikely you'll need much more than the odd security patch - and you'll be able to deal with that sort of thing easily, even if it means installing a new kernel. The problem with ease of maintenance is that I need to give something which will have patches coming out for it for atleast a year - with the way new versions are poping up with all the distros I guess it is a dream for the time being. Mithun __ Do you Yahoo!? SBC Yahoo! DSL - Now only $29.95 per month! http://sbc.yahoo.com
Re: Current stable platform for mod_perl application ?
Hi there, On Mon, 16 Jun 2003, Mithun Bhattacharya wrote: [snip] RedHat 7.3 has the notorious gcc 2.96 - no body has been able to figure out whether it is actually broken or not I guess :). [snip] Whether it's broken or not it was never released, it escaped. :) The developers called it a development release, not to be used in production: http://gcc.gnu.org/gcc-2.96.html Until recently I used gcc 2.95 and I had next to no trouble with it, compiling certainly many hundreds (perhaps thousands, didn't count) of all kinds of packages, including almost all versions of Apache, Perl and mod_perl since mid-1999 i.e. (if memory serves) Apache 1.2.19, mod_perl 1.19 and Perl 5.005_03. To my mind there are more programmers in this world than there should be who don't mind warnings in compiler output, but if you have a fussy compiler you'll expect to see the odd warning amongst the slew of messages you get when you build something. Apache, Perl and mod_perl are better than many in this respect. Recently I started to use gcc 3.2 although I never used it to compile mod_perl. I had a few problems with gcc 3.2 - I was mostly compiling kernels and kernel modules - so I upgraded to 3.2.3 which has given me very good service so far. Slower than 2.95 :( but just as fussy. :) It's a real slog to buid the compiler and support stuff on an old system, if you're thinking of doing it I'd advise getting a recent distribution which has at least gcc version 3.0 already in there. Changing libraries can be just as traumatic as changing compilers. I'm using glibc 2.3.1 at present. I've used gcc 3.2.3 to compile Apache 1.3.23 and the latest mod_perl versions (1.27 and the candidate for 1.28), with no problems at all. Using 3.2.3 as yet I've only built Apache with statically linked modules, and that's unlikely to change unless someone offers money. Since the last guy who did that never paid, it would probably need to be cash in advance. (You know who you are... :) 73, Ged.
Re: Current stable platform for mod_perl application ?
-BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE- Hash: SHA1 On Monday 16 June 2003 05:02, Mithun Bhattacharya wrote: I have a opportunity to upgrade and standardize a couple of mod_perl enabled servers to the most stable configuration as of now. Apache 1.3 and mod_perl was easy to choose since it is a production environment. What I am very much confused is to what should I chose for the distribution. For various reasons it is certainly going to be RedHat but I have a choice between the very well tested 7.3 but highly likely to become unsupported by RedHat soon. Or I could go for RedHat 9.0 and rollback perl to 5.6.1 - I dont like the idea of running a production server on a maintenance snapshots of perl especially a .0 release. If anyone has recently had the opportunity to make simillar decisions do share what made him/her decide on whatever platform was chosen. Go ahead and install RedHat 9. Sure, they use Apache 2.0, but you can do the barebones install and build everything you need from there. I've not had any problems building Apache 1.3 and mod_perl at all. I dunno, if you are really paranoid, just spend a couple of days and get LFS working! ;-) I don't know what the other guy is talking about when he says a whole bunch of stuff is broken. I guess if you don't upgrade to the latest versions of the packages you can't expect a whole lot. But who runs an unpatched system anyways? And as far as the .0 scare, consider RedHat 9 like RedHat 8.1, or even RedHat 7.5. There isn't going to be a RedHat 9.1, or any .0 or .1 from here on out. Things are just developing too fast. I use Redhat 9 because it's just easier to manage, and it has a lot of things I like (Apache 2.0 w/ mod_perl and mod_python). I think when you start managing more and more machines (I've 3 at home!) that it's easier just to keep them all bleeding edge and updated. I don't even build my own software outside of a few RPMs I maintain anymore as it was just too much work. - -- Jonathan Gardner [EMAIL PROTECTED] (was [EMAIL PROTECTED]) Live Free, Use Linux! -BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE- Version: GnuPG v1.2.1 (GNU/Linux) iD8DBQE+7fwSWgwF3QvpWNwRAiuhAKDEDqx31+8Jz0VMrGdRSYwEGwIpDACfSekv D6P6I/XPzXV4DHb9i2Ujj2k= =75sb -END PGP SIGNATURE-
Re: Current stable platform for mod_perl application ?
Mithun Bhattacharya wrote: I have a opportunity to upgrade and standardize a couple of mod_perl enabled servers to the most stable configuration as of now. Apache 1.3 and mod_perl was easy to choose since it is a production environment. What I am very much confused is to what should I chose for the distribution. For various reasons it is certainly going to be RedHat but I have a choice between the very well tested 7.3 but highly likely to become unsupported by RedHat soon. Or I could go for RedHat 9.0 and rollback perl to 5.6.1 - I dont like the idea of running a production server on a maintenance snapshots of perl especially a .0 release. If anyone has recently had the opportunity to make simillar decisions do share what made him/her decide on whatever platform was chosen. As Jonathan Gardner suggested go with the latest version. You have a better kernel, better glibc and many more better things. You can always downgrade parts that you don't find good. Also does the Native Posix Thread Library support in RedHat 9.0 have any added benifit for mod_perl/my applications ? Not if you don't use threads. perl 5.8.1 is about to be released and after doing some testing I'd suggest to go with it. It has a pretty good ithreads support when you need it. However don't build this feature in, unless you really need it, since ithreads support slows perl down. Of course when you use ithreads you get the speedups/benefits on other fronts, so the lost is compensated. Having perl 5.8.0/1 gives you a chance to try your applications on threaded mpms of Apache2/mod_perl 2.0 and they may scale much better. __ Stas BekmanJAm_pH -- Just Another mod_perl Hacker http://stason.org/ mod_perl Guide --- http://perl.apache.org mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] http://use.perl.org http://apacheweek.com http://modperlbook.org http://apache.org http://ticketmaster.com
