Apache Maintenance Basics Page 5

Other Systems and Extensions

It’s unlikely Apache is your entire Web serving platform — there are probably additional modules, languages, scripting environments, and other components to maintain and keep up to date (e.g., the latest versions of Perl, Perl modules, PHP, and MySQL). Keeping these up to date is not entirely a full-time job, but they should be checked every one to three
months to see what needs updating.

Some of this can be quite easy. For example, if you are using the CPAN module within Perl, you can update all of the installed modules on your system using the command:

/usr/local/bin/perl -MCPAN -e 'CPAN::Shell->install(CPAN::Shell->r)'

This forces CPAN to produce a list of all of the outdated modules and install them. Other systems must then be handled manually.

Scheduling Maintenance

Some items in this article should be checked weekly, some monthly, and some annually. Each enterprise must determine which schedule is right for each item based on the environment, how busy the server is, and how well-used the system is. Most likely, the treatment that sites and virtual hosts receive will vary.

Just don’t ignore maintenance in the hopes that it will go away — it wont. But a
few simple steps could save you hours, and even days, in the long run.