random memes }

Slightly broken weblog ... and inspiration

Oh boy. The WordPress 2.0.5 update came out, and my hosting provider (DreamHost) offered an auto-update from the then installed 2.0.4 version. The prior updates were only slightly bumpy, but this time Something Broke.

Was the fault in WordPress, DreamHost, or mine? Cannot muster any enthusiasm for debugging someone else's server-side PHP code (yuck). Since programming is my day job, this is not my idea of "fun".

Ever had one of those times when a number of incomplete slightly-related notions seem to come together? Maybe it was an after-effect of the cheap Halloween candy I consumed after the trick-or-treaters stopped. In any case, found I could not sleep and a common thread seemed to emerge from a cloud of somewhat-related questions and notions.

Update: Found the problem. Running PHP via FastCGI and stock WordPress yields the following errors in the Apache error.log:

FastCGI: comm with server "/home/dreadedhill/bannister.us/php5-wrapper.fcgi" aborted: error parsing headers: duplicate header 'Status'

Right ... I'd found this when turning on FastCGI with an earlier version of WordPress. Found an article in the DreamHost Wiki with the fix.