The Scientific Linux 6 shell server, “scientific“, currently does not have a functional desktop installed.  This is because software sub-systems from two different sources created conflicts that made updates uninstallable.

     To resolve this it was necessary to uninstall a great number of software packages, perform the upgrades, then re-install.  This is still in progress.

     I made a change to the web server today that causes PHP sessions to be stored in a tempfs file system in memory.  This should speed up applications that use sessions like WordPress and PHPBB and owncloud.