I do not know how many people require PHP4 on Fedora Core 5. However since I find that I use it, I am providing PHP4 binary RPMs. Since I made the files available I did receive some complaints. Primarily a compile failure on x86_64 architecture and a compile failure on PPC architecture. I have no means to test PPC, however I have tested with x86_64 and had success. For x86_64 architecture, I have tested the src.

SpamAssassin is a free tool for mailservers to identify SPAM. It has a several parameters it checks (forged headers, HTML only content, blacklisted hosts, improper mail relays, etc) and assigns a score for every parameter. If the total score is greater than the threshold, it is marked as spam and either tagged, moved to a separate mailbox or deleted. I started using SpamAssassin in April of 2005 and it has caught thousands of messages.

Apparently some developers still require PHP4 on their web servers. The previous method for doing so on Fedora Core 4 (FC4) was to use the FC3 RPM’s. (A formal procedure was provided by the guide: PHP4 on FC4.) Since the release of FC5, the dependancies and outdated linking from the FC3 RPM packages may be difficult to resolve. It is recommended to recompile the PHP4 SRC.RPM and link it to the running software provided in FC5.

After using shared hosting services on Linux servers for the past few years, I was thinking about experimenting with a VPS (virtual private servers). Currently shared hosting services are highly competitive. If you shop around you can find great deals to host a simple website most with a comprehensive feature set. However these are all very limited. My basis for a VPS was to acquire a server that had room to grow but yet more manageable and more affordable than a dedicated server.

Since Redhat stopped supporting their commercially available Linux distribution, they moved to an Enterprise Linux Server (RHEL) and left everyone else to use a community effort (Fedora Core). Considering the cost of RHEL, the source packages were recompiled and redistributed. The resulting CentOS is a free binary compatible distribution of RHEL without the proprietary Redhat only software. I have seen some virtual private servers using CentOS for the virtualized operating system.