I've got a buddy who is thinking about ordering a RAQ server. He is doing virtual hosting for a few smaller sites.

I'm helping him do the sysadmin on the server. I'm quite familar with sysadmin on a Lunix box and I've built Apache/PHP about a million times :D

My question is related to upgrading PHP on a RAQ. Everything I've see has a strong warning about putting any software on a RAQ that is not a .pkg. Is this just to prevent newbies from shooting themselves in the foot? I'm assuming that if I build PHP as a module (in a different directory than the original module) and them modify httpd.conf to point to the new directory I'd be perfectly safe? If something went wrong, I'd just put the old httpd.conf back and we'd be read to rock-n-roll?

TIA,

Frank

Since Cobalt's are basically modified versions of RedHat boxes, you can compile your own modules, programs, etc. For example, I compiled MySQL for my machine.

One note is that Cobalts occassionaly lack certain libraries that you may have to hunt down and install. Fortunately, most RedHat rpms work fine with the Raq, though there are exceptions. PERL is another beast on the Raq that lacks many of the modules that I use. So, long CPAN sessions are in order to bring your PERL libraries and modules up to date.

If you have the know how, the one-time compiliation to fully customize a program is worth the effort. MySQL can gain 5-15% speed boosts simply due to compiliation paramaters. Apache can also be tweaked during compiliation, but I don't have the guts to mess with Apache on our Raq, which is currently serving up sites.

Remember that linux (and unixes) give you enough rope to hang yourself.

What did you do to optimize MySQL? I think I need to optimize my installation but I didn't find many usefull things about optimizing the mysql installation yet.