Flashes of Panic

As I watch yet another PHP upgrade scrolling by on the background terminal window, I realize that the real reason I’m documenting a lot of this stuff is not because I’m concerned that my replacements won’t know how to do things like upgrade PHP. Well, maybe they won’t, but that’s not the real issue.

The real issue is that I’m concerned my own software installations are such godawful kludges that someone will need a manual to figure out the twisted hacks required to make everything run.

Take PHP, for instance. Upgrading the main server is easy enough, but for convoluted reasons, Apache 2.0 is listening on port 80 (most of our sites), but Apache 1.3 is in charge of port 443 (https, the secure server.) So I need to install PHP twice, in order to have the current version running on both servers, and who knows what symlinks and path redirections exist to make sure they’re all using the right configuration files in the right places.

I suppose it’s a good thing that as I closely observe the installation process, the better to write up all the steps, the process goes more smoothly.

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