Open Source and the Easter Egg

My latest task was to be an easy one -- building the Apache - PHP stack for Windows 2003. "Easy," you think. "People are doing this thousands or hundreds of times a day." Very wrong, and yes I did know better.

The error I faced was this one:

• Cannot load [path]php4apache2.dll into server. The specified file cannot be found.

Search on this error message and you'll see hundreds of instances dating back to 2004.

For the solution I attribute this Devside.net careful posting and bailout.

For a more animated expression of dismay, keep an eye out for the launch of errorprocessing.com. In the meantime, allow me to observe that in the relatively controlled environment of a Windows server, configuration management for the LAMP stack should be the responsibility of the folks at php.net. The information given there provides a hint, but not the solution.

And then there are dozens of misdirected suggestions, such as removing quotes around the pathname . . . This is not about assembling working components into working order. It's an Easter egg hunt, and one no self-respecting child would tolerate.