Tag: php

Apologies to all my loyal blog members, and thank you for your patience over the last few weeks…

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Those of you who have tried to access my blog site during May and June experienced a very slow response, or, occasionally, no response at all, throughout the day. I have been investigating potential solutions, including using FPM (FastCGI Process Manager) to speed up the PHP programs. I was close to implementing this solution, but had actually made no changes, when the response times suddenly improved dramatically earlier this week. The performance improvements have been very welcome, but I have no explanation for them yet.

I do still intend to implement FPM, but there is less urgency now.

So, while the blog site is user-friendly again, don’t miss out on the pre-publication discounts on the new Altair SLC ebooks at The Book Table. More details can be found at Download pre-publication copies of my new books at discounted prices.

PS. You may have read that Altair SLC has been rebranded by Siemens as Rapidminer SLC, but this name has yet to appear in the software itself or its documentation, so the book titles will remain the same for now!

Apologies for the 9 hour server outage today, but I now know more about Apache and PHP!

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Apologies for the 9 hour server outage on my SAS-related blog site today, but I now know more about the relationships between Apache and PHP:

  1. The server’s Ubuntu operating system was upgraded from 16.04 to 18.04 on 18Aug2019.
  2. The Apache WordPress server was unaffected, but my Apache cloud server refused to start due to a PHP incompatibility.
  3. The cloud server software was then upgraded to use PHP7.2 instead of PHP7.0, but the server still refused to start.
  4. More PHP7.2 modules were downloaded and installed.
  5. The PHP configuration in the Apache cloud server was changed from PHP7.0 to PHP7.2, and it now started.
  6. At some point in the updates the listening ports on the Apache WordPress server were also updated, so, when it was automatically restarted at midnight, it immediately failed due to duplicate ports.
  7. Finally, this morning, I corrected the listening ports on the Apache WordPress server, which is how I’ve been able to write this blog post.

Thank you for your patience!

Scheduled blog server maintenance in the evening of 17Jul2018 (UK time)

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My blog server runs WordPress software, which I can update hourly while the server is running, if necessary. However, the underlying Apache, PHP and MySQL software requires server downtime to update, so I have scheduled their updating to take place in the evening (UK time) of Tuesday 17 July 2018. I am hoping it will only take 1-2 hours to complete, but, having never done this big an update before, I can’t be more precise.