Subscribe to RSSLocation aware Bind
Devco.net has an article describing how to patch Bind to send client requests to the closest server based on location. You can also download RPMs to install a patched version of bind for CentOS 4.
Linux ethernet bonding
Devco.net has an article that describes bonding multiple ethernet interfaces using Linux.
Green Web Hosts
Thankfully, there are quite a few web hosting companies that use renewable energy sources to power their data centers or offset their energy usage by investing in renewable sources of energy. These companies are helping to “green the web” by offering sustainable hosting solutions. Here are just a few companies that I found:
Searching for a new hosting provider - Part 2
Several months ago I reported the results of four hosting providers I was researching. The report was written after using each host for approximately a month. This review can be seen here. In the review all four hosts were found to be acceptable and would meet most users needs. However I narrowed the finalists down to two hosts.
Greylisting to prevent Spam
Greylisting is a method of blocking significant amounts of spam at the mailserver level. It blocks spam based on the behavior of the sending server, rather than the content of the messages.
What happens is that each time a given mailbox receives an email from an unknown contact (ip), that mail is rejected with a “try again later” message. This, in the short run, means that all mail gets delayed at least until the sender tries again - but this is where spam loses out! Most spam is not sent out using RFC compliant MTAs; the spamming software will not try again later. This process is transparent to the user sending and receiving the message.
This is a very lightweight process. Especially compared to other common spam prevention techniques which read the content of the message or check blacklists. The only disadvantage is this technique will delay email being delivered from unknown contacts.
Most implementations of greylisting only delay a message for a few minutes. They also keep a database with previous email so this delay is only seen the first time a message is received.
In my experience greylisting prevented almost all spam from being delivered to my mailbox.
A list of software that can be used to implement greylisting can be found at:
greylisting.org
Zimbra Backend Review
There have been several reviews of the Zimbra Collaboration Suite. However the focus most of these reviews has been on the browser-based Ajax interface. I agree the Zimbra has one of the best, if not the best, browser-based email client. However what makes Zimbra such a great solution is the product as a whole. The focus in this review is the server side of Zimbra.
Compiling PHP on a 64 bit system
When compiling PHP on a 64 bit system don’t forget to add “–with-libdir=/lib64″ to the configure statement. A typical configure statement would be:
./configure –with-apxs2=/usr/local/apache2/bin/apxs –with-mysql –with-libdir=/lib64
If you forget ./configure will fail in the mysql section with the error:
configure: error: Cannot find libmysqlclient under /usr.
Note that the MySQL client library is not bundled anymore!
Planet Argon Review
A few months ago I opened an account with shared account with Planet Argon. They offer shared hosting and typo blog hosting. Their typo hosting starts at $3.00 per month and shared hosting at $11.25 per month. There is no setup fee but they require signing up for either six months or annually.
Searching for a new hosting provider
I’m in the process of searching for a new web hosting provider.