User:Dd-b

Intro
I've been doing web pages since somewhere around 1994 (I can't trace the registrations of my first domains because they were before the big data glitch at Network Solutions where all the domain creation dates were lost). I worked for a web company from 1996 to 2000, and have done some freelance work since then, but I'm now back working in "ordinary" software engineering (for Sun Microsystems).

The web company I worked for, and their clients, mostly did self-hosting, and it turns out that Dreamhost is the first commercial hosting company I've worked with.

I'm something of a word and writing geek, so working on documentation here is something I can usefully do; though I tend to blow ideas up into projects too big to do and then drop them sometimes.

Current Projects
Mostly, these are things I'm having trouble with on a current page, and I need to figure out how they work. Once I've figured it out, seems only fair to perpetuate the information for future users!

If you happen on this, and happen to know something I need to learn about one of these, please leave me a note or send email or something!

Suexec
It's not working as currently documented here, and not working as Apache documents. In fact, in one area it's working exactly the way I patched suexec to work on my own server. I'm currently trying to figure out if this variant behavior is intentional at Dreamhost and hence likely to be stable, or if it's a glitch that will soon be fixed (and hence isn't worth documenting).

The exceptional case is that I seem to have seen cgi scripts run under suexec at Dreamhost (every CGI script at dreamhost runs under suexec) even though their protection allows group write, and even though they are in a directory allowing group write. I personally think this is highly desirable -- it lets the maintenance of a site be divided among people using different logins while still being able to access the same files (via group write).

My tests demonstrating the actual behavior are available here (directory protection) and here (file protection).

Options FollowSymlinks
This doesn't seem to be working as documented by Dreamhost or Apache. Again, I'm trying to figure out what's what, and document what people ought to know (not necessarily everything that's currently true).

My tests demonstrating the current behavior are pretty simple. What have I missed?

Directory and file symlinks are a very important tool for segmenting projects and sharing project tools. I really want them to be working.

Variables in SSI
The passing on of variables defined in an SSI page (.shtml page) to CGI scripts. It's not currently working the way it worked on my own server, despite both running Apache 2.0.54.

This may interact with SuExec.