Last night and all of this morning I have been struggling with errors of the following type:

[Wed Sep 09 11:58:57 2009] [error] server reached MaxClients setting, consider raising the MaxClients setting

I have recently moved a client to a new Plesk server, and Apache would occasionally stop responding. Investigation showed that the MaxClients setting in Apache was being reached, due to a misconfiguration, and that httpd would just stop responding. Not a wonderful thing to have happen on a large site.

So, naturally, I checked out /etc/httpd/conf/httpd.conf, found the MaxClients setting, edited, saved, and restarted Apache. No dice.

Then I discover that any increase in MaxClients should ensure that ServerLimit – so I checked, restarted, no dice. Still.

As it turns out, a Plesk server overwrites a bunch of stuff that you set in /etc/httpd/conf/httpd.conf using a file located at /etc/httpd/conf.d/swtune.conf

This was the file that was setting my MaxClients to 10! Grr!

Edited the file, stopped and restarted Apache, so far, no more timeouts!

What’s new under the hood? Well, I subscribe to the mailing list, and as such see all the SVN commits, so I know there is quite a bit happening here. The new admin interface looks great. I no longer get a silly error in the footer of it, either.

This sexy new CMS version does not change the fact that my design is getting old, and isn’t achieving what I want it to. So, I’m putting together a sort of ‘roadmap’ for where I want to take my website. Maybe, just maybe, by speaking these words in public, I might be able to set aside some time to actually do it.

Cal’s Roadmap for oksushi.com

• Awesomer design, more in keeping with where my head is at
• Valid html
• Comments turned back on
• Better integration with the noise I generate on other channels (Twitter, IRC)
• Focus on my personal portfolio of work
• Focus on my css test cases
• More posts!

OK? Sound good?

Mix Together:

• 1 Cup Rolled Oats
• 1 Cup of plain flour
• 3/4 Cup of Sugar
• 1 Curp of Special K
• 1/2 Cups of Sultanas
• 1/2 teaspoon of grated nutmeg

Melt Together:

• 1 Tablespoon of Golden Syrup
• 4 Ozs Butter or Marg

Add:

• 1.5 Teaspoon soda bicarb and
• 2 tablespoons of boiling water

Add this to the melted mixture. Stir into dry ingredients. Mix well. PLace heaped teaspoon onto greased trays and flatten with a fork. Cook them until they are golden brown.

Doffy said on the recipe ‘I always used Special K instead of coconut (the boys didn’t like coconut – which is authentic for Anzacs!)

Main entry continued

This is a simple one, that takes only a few minutes to prepare, but tastes great.

Ingredients

• Big pot of thickened cream
• Half a dozen eggs
• Frozen puff pastry (you can make your own if you like, I’m lazy)
• One head of broccoli, cut into florets
• Some bacon rashers, diced
• One large shallot (or a couple of smaller ones), diced
• One tomato
• Cheese to taste
• Butter

Method

Put the broccoli in a steamer, and cook until it’s tender. The crunchiness is up to you.

In the frypan, gently melt the butter, then add the shallot. Cook until it starts to go transparent, then add the bacon, and cook for a while.

In a mixing bowl, crack the eggs and whisk gently. Once they start to combine, add some cream. You want the mixture to be as tough to mix as a light pancake batter. If it’s too tough, add a dollop of milk.

Add the shallot and bacon from the pan to the mixing bowl and mix gently.

Grease a quiche dish with butter, liberally. Cover the bottom and sides with the pastry.

Place the broccoli florets over the bottom of the pastry, then pour over the egg mixture.

Place slices of tomato over the top of the mixture, and then sprinkle with cheese if you like.

Bake at 180ºC for about 30 minutes. You want it to be wobbly, but not wet, when you remove it from the oven.

Enjoy!

I laughed at this – users with IE6 receive it at Momentile.com