Adventures in Web Serving

Igor Popik has written a spiffy output filter for Web Server 6.1 (and it should work with WS7.0 too) that strips unprinted white space from HTML. Nifty idea. Write HTML that is easy to read, deploy it, and let the filter remove all those wasted formatting bytes prior to passing the data off for compression and transmission. Neat!

I have just sat through a presentation where the phrase "paradigm shift" was used three times in twenty minutes. Gah.

The hotel I'm in right now has just returned this error to me:

I intend to start using this text in as many descriptions of things as I can.

Sun Java System Web Server 7 Technology Preview 2 has been released. Lots of bug fixes, particularly in the Administration interface. The Pattern Matching feature is now documented as well.

Update to the latest release and send us your feedback at webserver@sun.com or on the Web Server forum.

In my original PHP article I documented making PHP v4.x work with Web Server. This blog entry provides information about PHP 5.x, and Web Server 7.x as well.[Read More]

Just a quick note that I stumbled across another article with information about running PHP with our Sun Java System Web Server (née Sun ONE Web Server; iPlanet Web Server; Netscape Enterprise Server). Could offer some more information to the curious administrator:

PHPBuilder.net

I've had many hard drives fail over the last twenty years. Who hasn't? Bearings go bad, heads crash, controllers go bad, etc. But I've never actually had one go *POOF* with a puff of smoke.

Well not until last week anyway.

I find it strangely funny that this is a Quantum drive. The model? "Fireball." Hi-larious.

This just makes me smile. Anything to put into a red triangle I guess.

I'm surprised they didn't throw in a "Contains beverages! THEY'RE WET!"

Early experiments with Pattern Matching in Sun java System Web Server 7.0.[Read More]

Several years ago a photograph that I took was used in a documentary. Being conscientious folk they placed in their credits links back to my web site. Unfortunately they didn't have me proof the link before they pressed a couple thousand DVDs, and the URL was wrong.

What to do?

Just create some simple "virtual server" redirects and hang them off my default Virtual Server.[Read More]

This is kinda cool. The PHP article I wrote about writing (How meta is that?) has been featured on www.sun.com. Nifty!

An untidy errors log makes me grumpy. An errors log filled with thousands of 404s from robots trying to find common CGIs (or other apps) that they can hijack really annoys me. So similar to how I block requests for direct-linked images, I also simply abort requests that hit common Bad URIs.

Fintan has a spiffy blog describing how the guys in the performance team go about automating the installation of Web Server 7.[Read More]

A few years ago I noticed that I was spending a huge amount of bandwidth on particular images in my URI space. Some investigation through the Referer fields showed me that the images were being embedded on a popular sports forum, and every time a thread was displayed my server server had to spend energy and bandwidth providing the images. Naturally this really annoyed me.