31-Dec-2008

PHP issues
I found that the new PHP engine seems to be somewhat case sensitive….
When trying to add new content to the tracks blog, I entered the location as “Tracks” and that failed – causes the location not found. But stating “tracks” – all lowercase – works. At least, at that time it meant a difference. Once things have been accessed, case doen’t seem to matter anymore: I cannot reproduce it at will now.
The same problems happened with this blog. Once in a while, nothing seems wrong and all works fine, at other times I get “stack overflow” at some places, and MySQL may (!) fail accessing RSS data; This is found in the webserver log:
WordPress database error MySQL server has gone away for query UPDATE sm_options SET option_value = 'O:9:\"MagpieRSS\":19:{s:6:\"parser\";i:0;s:12:\"current_item\";a:0:{}s:5:\"items\
It happens on any of the admin screens, I guess this is a MySQL problem…
The same may happen using SET in stead of UPDATE in the SQL statement. It causes errors on accessing the server, but refresh could well return the page.

So it’s not as stable I would expect. Big problem: Re-starting the older version failes with ACCVIO, no matter what I try….But normal use seems to work pretty well – and fast, once the environment has been setup – so I keep it this way – for now (there is no real alternative 🙁

Others are testing as well, it has been found that UTF-8 is now built-in in the PCRE module. That’s true, since at times I do not get this error in the sysblog admin pages. But other required modules are not included, and these could cause the problems I found including media.

Some digging to do, still, before sending a report to HP.

26-Dec-2008

Windows woes
No answer on the Outlook problems….
I got extra memory and an extra disk for Aphrodite, to be able to install VMWare ESXi. The new disk was prepared to hold this software, and it took some while that I found out I had to use Demeter – the laptop – to access the machine, but what was worse, I couldn’t use the drives on Aphrodite: I could install the system software (Windows XP and Ubuntu Desktop) only using Demeter’s DVD drive. And it took far too long, so finally I gave up, and re-initiated the drive to hold both data partitions I had set up before; the two on the primary disk now became free to do a ree-install of Windows XP and do a Ubuntu intstall. Both succeeded, and have been updated to latest standards. I didn’t install Office – yet. I think I’ll move to Linux for most of the normal office job and keep the Windows installation for whwn I really need it. Or run it in emulation on Linux 😉
Anyway, the alternative installation of Windows now contains all latest free MS stuff: IE8 (beta 2), Silverlight, Live mail and messenger, and of course, McAfee virus protection and firewall. More to come there, since the normal installation has more weird and unexpected issues every time: lost USB devices, problems in connection to other Diana; hangs of Word and Excel. But none of the scanning software: Ad-Aware, Spybot S&D nor Windows Defender find somnething that shouldn’t be there…