In an unexpected move, the software for this blog got an update! A security fix and some things that were lingering in its between releases repository state. This meant I had to rebuild the blog software, which led to some different observations.

I've made a small Docker build for making this blog run in a container. I even shared it on GitHub at https://github.com/jekewa/b2evolution for anyone to use. This was necessary because the software on which it depends are not the currently available versions. This happens when software starts to fade away.

I thought the Docker build was a clever way to blend that old with the new. Yes, arguably the container has some potential exposures to things not being updated, which could lead to some security bits here and there. Generally, though, no one can reach the containers on my own system (except me), and the traffic and attempts I get on my systems tend to be stopped at the layers of firewalls and obscurity through the CDN that I use.

Still, when I was trying to get this latest build to run, it didn't behave as the out-of-box did previously. It seems that something happened in the Apache IfDefine directive that checks to see if an alias was defined before trying to use it in the site configuration files. I brute forced it in this deployment, because I know that value is defined (as I use /blogs/ as the root for my blog, although the software allows using the real / root as the root). Doing so got me past the hiccup.

While discovering this, though, I found that I couldn't add software from the Ubuntu repository in the container. In a very not-immutable-container way, I tried to add vim so I could edit the file directly, but was rebuffed as the version of Ubuntu and its repositories aren't in the Ubuntu world on which it was built. I'm sure somewhere out there someone is still hosting a Hirsute Hippo repository, but the normal Ubuntu mirrors are not.

As long as my Docker build continues to iterate on its old, and I don't change any of the Ubuntu software in the deployment, I should be good to carry on. Should I move away from this, or try to add a package, however, all bets are off. I still think it's pretty neat and a little clever how that all works, and am glad that I did start it before those things got too old.

The next step would be to step into the blog software itself, either changing to a different platform (and figuring out how to move the content forward), or monkeying with this software to help bring it to the modern choices. Neither strikes me as a quick afternoon of effort, which is about all I get to do in some of these hobby things.

Nonetheless, the update did work on this copy. I'm going to work to get that GitHub version to work, and get a newer image out in the world for anyone else in the same boat.