Information Technology

Today I finished migrating my server to a new system. The LAMP-site consisting of 3 domains, which also runs an MTA and mailing list software, has been moved from Debian ‘woody’ to Debian ‘testing’ (alias ‘etch’). Insiders know that this is quite a big jump, leaving out the ‘sarge’ release. The main reason for this move was dying hardware: I expect either the graphics board or the SCSI-controller to be the cause, as they both are from 1998. Once in a while some system processes ended up in a segmentation fault, so I looked for a new (used) PC, which should become the successor.

It was a good opportunity to clean up the system, as the old one had its roots in a time when I made my first steps with Debian and wanted to maintain everything using ./configure && make && make install. Now, I want to avoid this and use the original Debian packages, because these days some commonly used additions are now officially available. Also, with Debian ‘testing’, there won’t be so gigantic delays between new releases of packages.

The interesting increments in the version numbers are: MySQL 4.0.20→5.0.18, Postfix 1.1.11→2.2.9, Courier-IMAP 1.4.3→3.0.8, Apache 1.3.31→2.0.55 and PHP 4.3.8→5.1.2.

I don’t have an iPod. I don’t need one. If I had one, I wouldn’t know what to do with it, except selling it. I don’t listen to music regularly anymore, for me, that time has been more than 10 years ago. I used a simple Sony Walkman, and all CDs I bought got copied over to music cassettes.

And I really don’t understand what’s the hype with podcasting. While I still understand high interest in music, I can’t imagine replacing music by spoken text in everyday life. People in underground trains and streetcars surely give their brains a rest and let their thoughts flow while listening to their favorite music. But can they really relax while following a (maybe even scientific) “radio broadcast” consisting of spoken text? Or have I misunderstood what a podcast is?

But, I have a weblog. And I’m on Linux. I’m still cool.