Digitalquill

I recently ran an apt-get update on my Debian Etch server as I wanted to install pSpell for php. I found that the apt repros were out of date. After and Internet search I found that they have been archived. This is worrying that the OS that I am running is now seemingly obsolete but this is a worry for another day.

I changed my repros in /etc/apt/sources.list to:

deb http://archive.debian.org/debian etch main contrib non-free
deb http://archive.debian.org/debian-volatile etch/volatile main contrib non-free
deb http://archive.debian.org/debian-security etch/updates main contrib non-free

and then ran an apt-get update again, this updated the repros, before I installed pspell i decided to run an apt-get update to ensure that everything else was up-to-date. It upgraded some minor stuff, but it did upgrade both Amavis-new and MySQL server.

Amavis-new was no problem other than having to manually restart SpamAssasin and ClamAV, however, the upgrade to MySQL changed the my.cnf (/etc/mysql/my.cnf) config file for mysql and seemingly turned on binary logging.

I was happy that the upgrade had gone ok and proceeded to install pSpell and work on the project I was working on when the server became sluggish and unresponsive.

After looking I found that the server was out of space, after and investigation I found that the /var/logs/mysql/ folder was huge with many log files of 100mb and over.

After looking at the my.cnf file I found that the binary logging lines were uncommented:

# WARNING: Using expire_logs_days without bin_log crashes the server! See README.Debian!
expire_logs_days       = 10
max_binlog_size         = 100M
binlog_do_db           = include_database_name
binlog_ignore_db       = include_database_name

So I commended out those lines and restarted mysql and after deleting 64Gb of Log files (created in a 2 hour period!) the server was back.

I will in future pay more attention to these upgrades. I have said this before but this is the very place that opensource software falls down. As a web host who runs several servers with many websites on each all earning money, I can not afford to have those servers go down.

If one can not rely on those updates to leave a perfectly working well configured server still working after the update one has to consider if this is the best OS to be using to host sites of any importance what  so ever.

When the open source community comes to the realization that the software that they create is relied upon by real people making real money and running real projects and it is not just some form of geeks project to see if we can make it work, and it pays more attention to its user base and ensuring continuity of the software then I am sure that open source of all forms will dominate the market, until such time one has to consider what is best for your business.

Having just posted a good write-up of Virtualbox I am having a strange problem with my Ubuntu Desktop. I decided to update it all, so ran the ‘apt-get update’ which was fine, but when I ran an ‘apt-get upgrade’ it decided it needed to download 150mb or updates. This was expected so I allowed to to go and get them, which was when the problems started.

The whole PC ground to a halt, task manager showed Virtualbox was using 100% of the CPU constantly.

I managed to get back onto the Virtualbox and cancel the upgrade which then released the CPU. However after repeating the upgrade the same thing happened.

Doing the same on the Virtual Debian works fine…

Very strange… Anyone else had any similar problems?