So, before I left, I noticed two things wrong with the server.
- Part of Mint wasn’t working right because I hadn’t configured curl support into php4
- CAPTCHAs weren’t working with Expression Engine because I’d left out gd
Unfortunately, I didn’t have enough time to fix these (I didn’t want to risk it, frankly), so I disabled CAPTCHAs on the blog and ignored the failing FreshView plugin.
It didn’t take long for the ‘bots to hit my comments section. Now, I hate CAPTCHAs, too, but I hate spending a significant part of my day deleting comment spam more. So, today, I fixed both problems.
Quite easy, actually. First, I tried to do it in one step:
sudo port install -v -c php4 +mysql5 +server +apache2 +imap +macosx +darwin_8 +gd +curl
But not so much. There was a differently configured php4 active—the one I’d previously built. Fortunately, easy to fix with a deactivate and then an install:
sudo port deactivate php4
sudo port install -v -c php4 +mysql5 +server +apache2 +imap +macosx +darwin_8 +gd +curl
And we’re done! After all the previous pain, positively easy.
