The SquizLog

May I suggest http://wordpress.org I haven't had any of these kidn of problems since I switched to it. Although I'm still trying to get the URL re-writing correct before swapping halfcooked.com/mt over

Andy: Yes, I've been tempted to switch to WordPress but haven't taken the plunge yet (probably because I expect it would take more time and effort than I can afford at the moment). I'll be interested to hear about your experiences when you swap your blog over.

There is no patch from MT, but really, I hope people will realize that this is not MT's problem, but one from the latest DBD::Mysql library in Perl. The author of that library is aware of it. MT is aware of it. And if you paid attention, there *is* a temporary solution to it, this guy documents it:

http://sniptools.com/vault/tipstricks/mt-cpanel-issue-dbd-downgrade.htm

Oh and btw, the architecture of wordpress has a long way to go before it will match MT or pmachine's sophistication. I was impressed with what I read, but I came to know its limitations when I really got into converting my advanced MT templates. For one thing, I like the idea of generating static templates in MT, which can be PHP but require no significant DB access while viewing EVERY page.

Just to be clear, the problem was not with Movable Type, but instead a combination of a bug in the DBD::MySQL driver (developed by Patrick Galbraith, an employee of MySQL) and auto-update by CPanel (or CPanel clones) by individual users' web hosts.

To say that MT was the cause is as accurate as as saying that Matt[1] or any other Wordpress[2] developer was responsible for the recent security flaw[3] in the PHPXMLRPC or Pear XMLRPC libraries.

Luckily, as the update says, the developer has posted a fix which should be pulled by CPanel within the next 24 hours.

Oh, regarding switching, you might also want to see this[5].

[1]: http://www.photomatt.org
[2]: http://photomatt.net/2005/07/05/xml-rpc-vulnerability/
[3]: http://news.netcraft.com/archives/2005/07/04/php_blogging_apps_vulnerable_to_xmlrpc_exploits.html
[4]: http://www.sixapart.com/movabletype/news/2005/07/intermittent_500_server_.html
[5]: http://www.sixapart.com/movabletype/news/2005/06/movable_type_32_is_comin.html

Jay: Thanks for the clarification. Actually, I've experienced intermittent 500 server errors since upgrading to 3.1x and it would appear that they may be unrelated to the DBD::mySQL and CPanel problem to which you refer. I guess I jumped to the wrong conclusion.

Keith, if you have a paid license, make sure that you file a help ticket about those (unrelated) 500 errors. Our support staff is awesome and there's no reason you should be getting those at all. What's more the fix is almost always something simple.