BitBucket, Apache2, SSL/TLS, Dovecot, Sendmail, Postfix, Roundcube, Win8, Metro

Post date: Oct 9, 2011 2:26:01 PM

I managed to do a few things during this week.

  • BitBucket is very nice. Now they're offering unlimited private repositories. That's exactly what I was looking for earlier.
  • Configured my Apache2 web server bit further. Checked all parameters and set optimal values modules configured:
      • Expires
        • 1 day expire time for static pages&iamges to fully utilize browser caching and improve performance.
      • SSL SSLv3/TLSv1
        • Officially signed cert, securing private communications.
      • Etag
        • When objects expire in browser cache, Etag is used to check if object has changed and needs to be downloaded. Improved performance and lower bandwidth consumption.
      • Gzip - Compression
        • Improved performance & lower bandwidth consumption with objects that can be compressed. Images and compressed filetypes aren't recompressed.
      • KeepAlive Sessions
        • No TCP/SS re-negotiation after every object retrieved from server. Radical performance improvement.
      • MPM Worker instead of MPM Prefork
        • Use a few processes running multiple threads, instead of one process / connection being accepted. This configuration is being used mostly to save memory in limited virtual server environment.
  • I know I should use uWSGI/WSGI instead of CGI. I'll configure it when I get the right mood.
  • I also configured separate test server with Dovecot, Sendmail, Postfix and Roundcube. Everything seems to be working as expected. But I did setup without going through all configuration parameters, so installation isn't safe enough to be really used yet. When I know everything is working, I'll install this set to my own test server. Naturally IMAPS, SMTPS are being used. Unfortunately it's not possible to use SMTPS only, because there are lots of servers out there which doesn't support encryption.
  • Read detailed articles about LRU,ARC,CAR cache algorithms and Bitcoin white paper.
  • Checked out Windows 8 preview. I don't like Metro at all. It's even uglier than Unity with Ubuntu.