Testing Frontier Server Software

Saturday, October 3, 1998

New Software

Not two days after I get my website up and running, and I'm already playing with new server software. I guess once you know something works, it's already time to move onto something else.

As you might guess from the page footer, I'm using Frontier to serve this website, and the fine folks at Userland have allowed me to get some burn-in time on my system for some new server software they are developing. It's fun to be part of a group like this, and even though I understand that I'm probably not the one who's going to be making any earth-shattering discoveries or find that subtle bug that has the potential of bringing down Western civilization, this process still gives me a chance to really dig into this stuff and learn how it all works. Of course, I guess I could have done that anytime, but now I have a solid reason, and sometimes that's just what it takes for me.

So here's what I've found so far…

It Works!

Installation went well, no problems there. And after poking around in some of the tables, I figured out what I needed to change in order for the new mainResponder to see my website on disk. I don't keep my websites in the default location, but I just changed user.mainResponder.domains.default to point to my website folder, and everything was working again.

After installing the new mainResponder, I tested it locally, and the pages came up fine. And then my good friend, who goes by the rather obscure handle n117client236.hawaii.rr.com came to visit, and my console window started to scroll. Thanks!

A few questions that I had about how the new software worked were cleared up after a bit of digging. I'm still curious about learning more about how the logging bits work, but that just gives me something to do tonight.

The most difficult part of the whole process was telling my mom how to get to the page so she could help me test it, and that's probably not something Userland can help me with.