Configuring vsftp on Ubuntu Server 10.04 LTS

So my move from shared hosting to virtual private server (VPS) was going well so far – I’d moved this blog across and wired up Exim4 to handling all my emailing needs. Then yesterday I saw an interesting article on Lifehacker about the MobilePress plugin for WordPress which rendered the blog in a format more suitable for mobile devices. Excellent, I thought – I’ll have that! That’s when I found out that the blog itself was not as ready as I thought it was – the fact was I could not install any plugins due to the lack of an FTP server on my VPS – so my next job was to resolve that!

Migrating Blog to Virtual Private Server with Exim4 email support

In my previous post I explained that I was migrating this blog from a shared server provided by 5quidhosting onto a virtual private server (VPS) provided by BHost. In theory this should have been quite straightforward but in practice, and bearing in mind I’m a developer and not an infrastructure boffin, there was a lot more to is that just moving zip files around and running a few commands.

Moving from Shared Hosting to a Virtual Private Server

Until recently I have been hosting this blog, and a few other sites and proof of concepts, using a reseller account provided by 5quidhosting costing, well £5. Now before I continue I should say that I have been very happy with the service they have provided me over the past two years or so and have no hesitation in recommending them for standard hosting services. The server performance was good and on the few times I needed to contact support their response was prompt and efficient. So, why have I moved this blog? Well, it’s all about access, or more accurately the lack of it.

I am of course talking about SSH access which was not provided on the 5quidhosting servers due to previous hack attempts. This is fair enough, most users will have no need for this level of access – indeed neither did I for two years.

When is a backup not a backup ….. ?

The answer is of course, when you can’t restore from it. This is the situation I found myself in last weekend after receiving an email from a friend saying that he tried to post a comment but only received a blank page for his efforts. Sure enough, when I tried I got the same result. Logging into the WordPress admin panel I was greeted with a message saying that the Akismet anti-spam plugin had not been loaded due to an error. Sounds like the most likely suspect, so what do I need to do about it? Well there was not an update available so it can’t be that. However, I had recently upgraded to WordPress 3.1 so maybe that’s the culprit. So clicking on the Reinstall button might sort me out right …. that’s where the problems really started.

Android: Not Free as in Speech, but does it really matter?

So I was at work the other day and a tweet grabbed my attention. It said “Steve Jobs vindicated: Google Android is not Open” and linked to an article on The Register. After reading through the article I was reminded of my childhood when kids would say things like “yeah, well you eat snails!“. Steve Jobs vindicated!! Well I bet he’ll sleep better for all of that!

It’s not that I am an Apple basher, I have an iPod Nano after all, but how can a company with no Open Source culture to speak of start pointing the finger at another? It’s like being back in the playground!