By default CentOS 5 comes with PHP version 5.1. This is an ancient version of PHP and incompatible with modern Content Management Systems (CMS). This point is driven home with the recent release of WordPress 3.2 that requires a minimum of PHP 5.2.4. Because WordPress is such a popular CMS and CentOS such a popular web server operating system it seems like a good time to write about updating PHP to version 5.3.3 on CentOS 5.
CentOS Linux: Secure password-less SSH access
Secure Shell or SSH is used to access a remote Linux based Virtual Private Server (VPS) or dedicated server. Using SSH you can log into the remote server’s command line interface to carry out server administration tasks. SSH connections are encrypted so its safer than using alternate methods like telnet. But because SSH is so widely used it is often the target of malicious individuals looking to compromise your server. So it’s important to secure SSH access to your server.
Automating incremental backups with Rsnapshot
Previously I wrote about using rsync to efficiently backup your server. Automating rsync backups is easier when you use a collection of perl scripts called rsnapshot. Rsnapshot is designed to maintain backups taken at different times. These backups are called snapshots and, apart from the very first one, they all tend to be incremental in nature taking up very little disk space and bandwidth.
BlackLens serendipity template
It has been a long time since I created a template for serendipity (s9y). BlackLens is an original two column template with a horizontal top navigation bar, customizable footer and a fancy header.
Using rsync to efficiently backup files
Rsync is a Linux command line program for synchronizing directories and files on different computers. Rsync will maintain an exact copy of the remote directory on your local computer. It does this by downloading all the files once and then only downloading the files that have changed the next time you run it. This way your bandwidth usage is minimized and the time taken to make backups is also reduced.