35 Responses to “More Holiday Gifting – Software Upgrades”

1. Nigel Says:
   December 29th, 2006 at 5:07 pm

   Not that I use SVN on the Dreamhost Servers, thanks anyway, lots of people will appreciate it!

2. Oli Says:
   December 29th, 2006 at 6:05 pm

   Good to hear =)

3. Jeff C. Says:
   December 29th, 2006 at 6:07 pm

   > And before you give us grief that one of these upgrades is not
   > the version you wanted, take a moment to consider all the
   > people out there that don’t even have what you have and
   > appreciate what you do have.

   Yes – let’s remember that there are people who are forced to host their sites on Windows.

   Let us keep their plight in mind as we celebrate the holiday season.

   - Jeff @ DreamHost

4. Will Says:
   December 29th, 2006 at 6:08 pm

   [quote[You can’t say we never gave you anything now![/quote]

   I’m still waiting for my giant red furry tennis racket & that rather large check ;-)

5. Jeff C. Says:
   December 29th, 2006 at 6:36 pm

   Shhhh!

   - Jeff @ DreamHost

6. Anonymous Says:
   December 29th, 2006 at 7:09 pm

   my christmas cheer has just been extended another two weeks!

7. josh Says:
   December 30th, 2006 at 1:08 am

   Note that Ruby 1.8.5 breaks Binding.of_caller which in turn breaks the breakpoint feature in Rails. If you need to use breakpoints on 1.8.5, you can use the call_stack gem, but that will slow down your app a lot so you should only do that in development.

   Ruby 1.8.5-p12 is the latest stable version just released this week, and has the security fix for the CGI exploit (which doesn’t affect Rails on DreamHost since that uses FCGI).

8. Unofficial DreamHost Blog » Blog Archive » Ruby upgraded to 1.8.5 Says:
   December 30th, 2006 at 2:01 am

   [...] According to DreamHost Imagemagick is currently being upgraded to version 6.2.4 and Subversion is being upgraded to version 1.3.2. [...]

9. Timothy Says:
   December 30th, 2006 at 9:24 am

   With MySQL now becoming closed source, will DreamHost please offer POSTGRES.

   http://digg.com/linux_unix/MySQL_no_more_provides_binaries_to_the_users

   Pretty-pleaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaase.

   Tim

10. Albright Says:
    December 30th, 2006 at 2:00 pm

    PHP 5.2 would be nice. JSONny goodness.

    With regards to those wanting to dump MySQL… Good riddance, it was an entirely unspectacular database anyways. Consider SQLite instead; it’s awesome.

11. Matt Hite Says:
    December 30th, 2006 at 9:11 pm

    Nice, now how about upgrading SpamAssassin? Puuuuuuuhleeeeez?

    -M

12. Rebecca Says:
    December 31st, 2006 at 9:52 am

    My 2007 Wish List

    1. Python upgraded (current version is 2.5)
    2. PHP upgraded (current version is 5.2)
    3. Postgres (the BEST opensource database)
    4. Some type of modern webmail to replace squirrelmail
    5. Lighttpd (possibility the BEST web server)

13. Rebecca Says:
    December 31st, 2006 at 10:04 am

    I just noticed that Debian 4 will include:

    1. Python version 2.4 (no es current) :(
    2. PHP version 5.3 (very nice, i like)
    3. Postgres 7.5 (no es anywhere close to being current) :( :( :(
    4. n/a
    5. Lighttpd 1.4 (very nice, i like)

    Maybe when Debian 4 is released, DreamHost will upgrade and we will get Lighttpd as an option and upgraded packages.

    I would really looooooooooooooooove to have Postgres 8.2. DreamHost, I would do ANYTHING (IYKWIM) to have Postgres 8.2 available.

    Becca

14. Kevin Says:
    December 31st, 2006 at 1:59 pm

    I second an upgrade to SpamAssassin and and option of Lighttpd.

15. 337 Says:
    January 1st, 2007 at 4:05 am

    I think I’m in La uHve with Becca.

16. Sara Says:
    January 1st, 2007 at 4:08 am

    HAPPY NEW YEAR DREAMHOST!

17. 337 Says:
    January 1st, 2007 at 4:14 am

    DSpam and greylisting too, please.

    There is way too much spam.

18. Robert Bloom Says:
    January 1st, 2007 at 9:57 am

    My 2007 Wish List:

    1. Django web framework full supported with one-click install and modpython
    2. PostgreSQL
    3. A new web panel

    Happy New Year!!!!

19. Craig Says:
    January 1st, 2007 at 4:10 pm

    Thanks for the svn upgrade!

    I agree with ‘337′, add dspam and greylisting!

    Thanks,
    Craig

20. Andreas Says:
    January 2nd, 2007 at 3:23 am

    How about an upgrade to squirrelmail!

21. Henry Says:
    January 2nd, 2007 at 7:49 am

    My 2007 DreamHost Wish List:

    1. Web-mail upgraded to something more modern
    2. PHP upgraded
    3. PostgreSQL database

    And yes, I have voted on the panel.

22. Dallas Says:
    January 2nd, 2007 at 12:23 pm

    Squirrelmail was updated to the most recent version available last week or the week before. Is there something else I’m missing about that?

    The more ‘modern’ replacement most people mention is the roundcube.net one but it’s nowhere near stable and usable for us yet. It’s only 0.1 beta right now.

    To all the people asking for lighttpd: What functionality does it provide that you want to take advantage of?

    To the PHP people: Pretty much every PHP upgrade causes us a crazy amount of headaches due to its often poor backwards compatibility. You need to try harder to convince us than just asking! What does it provide that you absolutely need?

23. LaSombra Says:
    January 2nd, 2007 at 3:48 pm

    Yay! No more hacking ViewVC!!!
    Thank you so much!!!

24. gog Says:
    January 3rd, 2007 at 4:37 am

    I need at least PHP 5.1.4, Zend Framewrok requires it… :(

25. Frank Says:
    January 3rd, 2007 at 6:38 am

    @Dallas

    PHP 5.2 – provides well over 200 bug fixes that many of us experienced prior to this release.

    Lighttpd – it’s super crazy fast compared to Apache. Which is great when on a shared environment.

    Postgres – well, it’s completely free unlike MySQL (if someone uses InnoDB in a commercial setting they have to pay money). Also, Postrgres is arguably faster and fully ACID compliant unlike MySQL. Being ACID compliant is a big deal and most people don’t consider anything a “database” unless it’s fully ACID compliant.

    Modern web-mail – very true what you say that RoundCube is not in stable form. And I completely agree that something not marked stable should be used. Though, for what it’s worth – 0.1 is meant to be the first stable release and they are currently on beta2 of the first release. So sometime soon (maybe by summer) RoundCube will be available.

26. Jun-Dai Says:
    January 4th, 2007 at 1:27 am

    My 2007 wish list:

    1. A viable rails mongrel option.
    2. A datacenter in Japan (let me know if you want any help with that).
    . . .

    I guess that’s it, at least for now as far as major concerns are concerned.

27. Dodig Says:
    January 4th, 2007 at 7:18 am

    @Dallas:

    Here is the short summary of improvements and fixes in PHP5.2:
    http://www.php.net/releases/5_2_0.php
    and this is the complete changelog:
    http://www.php.net/ChangeLog-5.php#5.2.0

    Few things that are great about 5.2:
    - new memory manager (aka faster servers)
    - added data stream support (finally developers are able to give some feedback to the user on uploads in form of a progress bar)
    - ability to use Zend Framework (now we must compile our own php for this)

    I really recommend reading this for more on why PHP5.2 is so important: http://ilia.ws/files/phpworks_php52.pdf

28. Dodig Says:
    January 4th, 2007 at 7:23 am

    O, and I forgot about new filter extension that is enabling developers to build much more secure sites + noticeably faster performance due to improved include_once() and require_once() functions, etc. etc.

    :)

29. Dallas Says:
    January 4th, 2007 at 12:50 pm

    So, what’s the other side of the PHP story? What does PHP 5.2 break? I read through the pdf presentation but I’m not a PHP developer so I don’t know how commonly the changes might come up in day to day usage.

    For every person who wants us to upgrade, there’s probably another 10 who would be mad if we upgrade and break their website. We’re always in the middle getting blamed from both sides!

    @ postgresql people: We’ve put a considerable amount of work into our existing MySQL system. We’ve learned a lot of lessons the hard way and we’re still learning new things all the time. It’s not a small task to support a large-scale installation of a database server. We are always interested in investing time and energy into supporting the technology that will help you run your websites and we will continue to adopt new technologies as it makes sense. I can tell you that Postgres support has definitely come up in discussion more than once and it’s not totally out of the question for some point in the future (probably not near).

30. David Ramalho Says:
    January 5th, 2007 at 4:29 pm

    php 5.2 breaks people using DateTime classes (yes, I once had one of those, but not anymore) , on the other hand, PHP 5.2 brings us DateTime :D and that’s a GoodThing ™ , and so’s the rest of PHP 5.2, so, Whip It Out Already (WIOA[tm]) :D :D :D .. please

31. mek Says:
    January 6th, 2007 at 1:11 am

    Great! :)

    I hope we will soon have the upgrade for RMagick too! :)

32. John Says:
    January 6th, 2007 at 7:04 am

    Hey, you should really upgrade immediately Wordpress! 2.0.6. was released and there is (among numerous security fixes)

    [drumroll]

    * Compatibility with PHP/FastCGI setups.

    Please, upgrade our one-clicks, happy office :)

33. Dodig Says:
    January 8th, 2007 at 5:46 am

    @Dallas:

    My thoughts on 5.2 breaking things:
    Every new version of every programming language breaks something for someone. But admin (in this case Dreamhost) is not to be blamed for it. It’s developers responsibility to stay on top of the things and fix his apllications to work with the latest version of chosen language.
    We have this policy where I work and it works flawlessly. Before upgrading we put out a notice that system will be updated so developers are alert and ready to fix any errors that might pop up.
    Of course it is completely different for mission critical applications, but those are on seperate servers.
    I know your customers are not all developers and many of them just use one-click installs so you are naturally “afraid” of their reaction if some of those break.
    I guess the right way to do it would be to test all your one-click installs on php 5.2 and if needed upgrade them and only then go on with upgrading to php 5.2.
    Idealy you need not worry for any other applications/websites as those that are installed by users should be updated and supported by them (us). Your only responsibility in that regard as a web host is to take care that every programming language is patched and up to date.

    I know, we are living in a real world with so many other factors interfering and not in an ideal world but just to share my thoughts…

    Best regards,

    Dodig

34. 1inuxoid Says:
    January 9th, 2007 at 2:10 am

    I agree with majority that there’s a little neat feature that Dreamhost is still missing – a great DBMS PostgreSQL
    I would be really the happiest user if it would be available here!
    Pleeese, Guys, make us happy! :)

35. Matt Says:
    January 15th, 2007 at 12:33 pm

    Dspam, dspam, dspam! :/

    The spam situation hurts baddddddlllllllly.