芳草苑

Day: February 18, 2009

  • Release on demand: new idea for courier service

    On some ocassion, we need some kind service of “release on demand”. Courier service provider should think of offering it as a value added service.

    The scenario is – We have some customers are desparate for some products, but they can not pay the money up front. It is understandable. There may be a problem with their card issuer at the time they place an order. If customer need the products the next day, we must dispatch one day earlier before they can sort out the payment problem. Most customers have good history – if they say they will pay, they will pay. We do not want to lose those customers. The best solution would be we dispatch the order once we receive the order, then the order is with the courier, and the courier must hold the order for us until we advise them to release the order. That saves time on route.

    Will any courier be thinking of launching this new service?

  • So many bugs in ispconfig

    ispconfig 可以做 hosting account management，但给我的感觉是打磨得不够精致。如果把它应用到生产环境，如果不怕客户抱怨，如果喜欢捉虫游戏，那倒可以用 ispconfig，毕竟免费的嘛，我看功能跟 isp 自己开发的 control panel 差不多（如 godaddy 的 turbo panel）。我感觉 ispconfig 还无法跟 cPanel, plesk 相抗衡，用在开发环境还凑合。

    凭我的肉眼，我就发现了以下几个说大不大，说小不小的毛病。

    按 ispconfig installation on Fedora documentation 一步步安装完毕以后，其实并没有安装 mod_fastcgi 或 mod_fcgid （暂且算是 documentation 失误吧），但控制面板里已经可以选择 php 模式为 fastcgi。我只好自己摸索着装 mod_fcgid。

    但未装 mod_fcgid 倒没有问题，装好 mod_fcgid 重启 apache 反而会出错。因为 ispconfig.conf 里预设的 <IfModule mod_fcgid.c> 生效了，而里面一条 FCGIWrapper /var/www/php-fcgi-scripts/ispconfig/.php-fcgi-starter .php 会出错。原因是 /var/www/php-fcgi-scripts/ispconfig/.php-fcgi-starter 不存在，又得自己动手制作一个。

    另外一个问题是，新建第二个站点时，ispconfig 不会自动添加 namevirtualhost directive，导致 apache 启动时会有一个 warn message，但不致命。

    综 上，ispconfig 对 conf 文件生成和管理得不是很好，而 ispconfig 本身也是基于 apache 的 conf 来配置的，所以 ispconfig 一不小心就搞砸了，连 apache 都启动不起来，连更正的机会都没有了。用着 ispconfig，还得时刻准备着 ssh 手动去更正搞砸了的 conf 文件。