Plesk for Windows does NOT auto update, the feature is entierly not implemented.
What you do it Download plesk for Windows from the Parallels website, and run the installer, I upgraded today from 9.0.1 to 9.2.1
Sounds like it went smoothly (Did not check yet), but the update from 8.6 to 9.0.1 went smooth that is for sure
As for this update, the setup file (About 600MB) can be extracted if you open it with 7ZIP
Setting up MySQL to connect to from PLESK for example is very simple
apt-get install mysql-server
Then, you will need to allow mysql to listen to the outside world
Edit /etc/mysql/my.cnf
and comment out the line
bind-address = 127.0.0.1
then, you will need to allow the root user to connect from outside the server
On the command prompt
mysql -uroot –password=”aPassWord”
use mysql;
select host, user from user;
Now look for the root user with the hostname of the machine, assuming it came out as thishost
update user set host=’%’ where user=’root’ and host=’thishost’;
flush privileges;
quit
And you should be all set
If you don’t perform the above operations, PLESK will complain when you add the server to the list of database servers, You will probably see an error like
Error: Test connection to the database server has failed because of network problems:
Failed to connect to database: Can’t connect to MySQL server on ‘host.domain.com’ (10061)
The three options for this on a PLESK server running plesk 9.01 and IIS6 is as follows
We will choseto always have everyone in the shared application pool, CPU limit will come after some investigation
So, I setup Windows in a VM with that old version of windows i had on the shelf for some time. (Thanks XEN HVM), Installed .NET 3.5 SP1 and the KB959209 , Setup MSSQL Express 2008
Things that got setup
SQL SERVER REPLICATION
FULL TEXT SEARCH
REPORTING SERVICES
BUSINESS INTELLIGENCE DEV STUDIO
Management Tools
SQL Client Connectivity
ms sync framework
From the SQL SERVER CONFIGURATION MANAGER, i enabled TCP/IP from protocols for SQL express
Opened a hole in the firewall for both MSSQLBinnsqlservr.exe and 90Sharedsqlbrowser.exe
and then from within Plesk i added the server
Server Host: mywin.server.com.MSSQLExpress
Admin User: sa
Admin Pass: Same pass i entered in Mixed authentication for the sa user !
Done, Plesk thinks this is a great thing i have done and accepts the thing instantly
MS advises that i read Understanding Surface Area – In setup help Minimize SQL Server 2008 surface Area
So, My PLESK 9.0.1 comes with .NET 2.0 Version 2.0.50727.0 is what PLESK reports, Installing .NET 3.5 SP1 and the KB959209 did not bump that from within PLESK.
So maybe with IIS i can assign 3.5 ?
Well, i am just setting up this server so i don’t know how plesk works in this regard yet, But i sure will very very soon.
As you may well know 3.5 is an upgrade to 2.0, it is not really different at the core, it is just a larger 2.0
I will let you know as soon as i do about how this thing works, for now i have to go finish setting up this thing to use MS SQL Express edition 2008.
According to PLESK, the point of the Mail message submission feature is to “protect your server against unauthorized mail relaying or injection of unsolicited bulk mail.”, So in other words, They mean security through obscurity, or in other words, if the hacker does not know that the port is 587 rather than 25 then they will not be able to relay mail right ?
security through obscurity is in a few words “A system relying on security through obscurity may have theoretical or actual security vulnerabilities, but its owners or designers believe that the flaws are not known, and that attackers are unlikely to find them.”
Well, i don’t think so, surely not when PLESK hard codes a port !
You see, Mail span software evolves daily, and when you popularise a port, it is probably on the checklist of spammer software.
So how do you stop the spam ? I personally implement a system to limit the amount of email a Domain name can send and requier authentication to send mail.
So, not to go off topic, the Mail Message submission feature does have a use to me, Even though it is not rocket science to open extra ports for mail, This feature is rather useful for users who have there port 25 blocked for example.
In Jordan, Most ISPs block port 25 to reduce spam, as an expert i have no clue how they intend to stop spam by blocking port 25, They can’t be serious, Spammers are power users and they know how to overcome the Port 25 issue, and there are not many servers on the internet that are open relays are there ?
Anyway, i am not here to critisize them either, the point is, You can always open alternative ports for your users (Any port you wish) and instruct them to use it, and plesk makes it easier with a single click.
As i write, A PLESK 8.6 Windows machine displays the message next to Switch on message submission, i will let you know about this feature in Plesk 9 and if it is available and what workarounds exist for this as soon as i get PLESK 9
UPDATE: Now plesk allows you to disable the horde side menu ads from within the CP, more details here
When on Plesk, Horde becomes PSA-HORDE that has one real major difference that the original HORDE does not, it has advertising to it’s left
If there is one thing that differentiates Paid mail hosting from Free hosting (Since google allows you to host your mail domain), it is the No-Advertising feature, and plesk took that away.
Anyway, i am not taking any of this advertising thing, i know horde and i know they can not possibly hide it from me, After all the PHP code of horde is there.
The file that needs edeting is
/usr/share/psa-horde/templates/portal/sidebar.inc
Find the line that reads
if (window.NewsFeeds) {
and make it
if (false) {
Even when you do this, when Plesk updates Horde again, it will probably overwrite this, But modifeying this at every update is the easiest sollution i can think of besides dissabeling Plesk updates (Which is very dangerous)
Tis page is veing updated at APC Debian
Once you activate APC from PHP.INI, you should probably use some directives to make this magical invention work.
For example, APC and smarty templates don’t go together bery well, SMARTY caches it’s results into PHP files rather than reparsing them, if APC is set not to check for changes in files, it will simply not load the new SMARTY template untill the APC cached version is gone.
But APC is such a beuty, and it translates to lower load on your server.
First, you should understand that on a big PHP server, many changes need to be done.
First, APC data lives in shared memory, By default on a linux system this is usually 33 Megabytes, not enough for one big PHP program, you need to increase it
1- How much shared memory is there now
cat /proc/sys/kernel/shmmax
2- Change that to something suitable
vi /etc/sysctl.conf (Reboot don’t you think )
remember, Don’t go too high, if your system gets low on memory and starts swapping, you are out of luck
3- Make sure you know what the settings here do… what you can change for directories and what you can’t etc..
| Directive | Description | Use | Warnings | More Notes |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| apc.cache_by_default | ||||
| apc.coredump_unmap | ||||
| apc.enable_cli | ||||
| apc.enabled | ||||
| apc.file_update_protection | ||||
| apc.filters | ||||
| apc.gc_ttl | ||||
| apc.include_once_override | ||||
| apc.max_file_size | ||||
| apc.mmap_file_mask | ||||
| apc.num_files_hint | ||||
| apc.report_autofilter | ||||
| apc.rfc1867 | ||||
| apc.rfc1867_freq | ||||
| apc.rfc1867_name | ||||
| apc.rfc1867_prefix | ||||
| apc.shm_segments | ||||
| apc.shm_size | ||||
| apc.slam_defense | ||||
| apc.stat | ||||
| apc.stat_ctime | ||||
| apc.ttl | ||||
| apc.user_entries_hint | ||||
| apc.user_ttl | ||||
| apc.write_lock |
So, i got some magazines from ZINIO, and boy is that annoying, I still don’t get what they are trying to do and what for
You want people Not to circulate it, Will that really work ?
If you can print, you can print to PDF right, that makes it circulate, if you can print you can also print to JPG which is even easier to circulate !
Want to protect the text from making it to the blogs ? You can’t
Here is a very quick way that i can convert ZINIO files to PDF, MS Word, or whatever other format in a few minutes
NOTE: I tested this and i know it works, i was investigating the efficiency of the ZINIO approach
Except for the printing, 2 and 3 and 4 can be done in a batch
1- Print to JPG’s
2- Import the JPG’s into OMNIPAGE
3- Convert to text and images with OMNIPAGE
4- Save all in whatever format you please, including text PDF, MS Word, Text files, whatever you want and OMNIPAGE permits
So, the moral is, if someone wants to take your magazine to the web, they can, they can actually do it with the paper edition and a scanner
Sollution:
Accept the fact that it is impossible to fully protect, Use secured adobe PDF, Adobe protection is a fair medium between usability and protection
Now, Hope that no one takes it to the web
I hope adobe will make a website like ZINIO and offer there ser vices to publishers, The zino reader is hell
I blurred the image on this so that they don’t come after me for copyright or something, but look at the reader
ZINIO reader user interface
Searching is very slow, Page flipping is very slow on my Quad Core, printing is either no printing or 2 page printing at a time, it is real hell
Even worse, You zoom in, then the hand tool will also function to zoom out, so you need to pay close attention in order to read a simple Home Improvement magazine, They just can’t be serious
I like the idea of this new thing, Why detect the radar, why not memorise it’s location
Update this thing’s database, and it will use GPS to tell you when you are going for a camera
escort radar passport 9500IX