How to find out what program is hogging a listening port

Ever tried to run a server and find it won't start because some other program is already using the same port number to listen on?

In my case, I was installing a new package onto a Debian machine. For some reason, the new service didn't seem to be working. Checking the log of the newly installed server revealed a clue:

Cannot create listening socket on port 32101 - socket address already in use

Hmmm. To track down the problem, we need to find out what process is already listening on port 32101.

Save Milton Country Park

The country park in Milton (the village where we live) is in danger of closing due to lack of funding. I'm a bit late at getting around to this, so if you're local you've probably heard about it already. But, if for some reason you've haven't heard or have been too busy, please help to save Milton Country Park by signing the petition at SaveMiltonCountryPark.com.

Lots of people have things to say about why the park should be saved. For me personally, I can add the reason that it's also the only place in the UK that I've ever seen a wild snake. Although I don't have a photo of the snake, I do have a few photos we took in the park in July 2005. Including one of a rabbit.

RabbitMilton Country ParkMilton Country ParkMilton Country ParkMilton Country Park

See all these photos at my Milton Country Park album.

New website

I've just finished overhauling the website so I now use Drupal to manage the content. Previously I had been using WordPress to manage my blog, and my own PHP template system to manage the staticpages. Now all of this is done by my Drupal installation. It took a while to migrate everything across, and to make the old URLs work with the new system, but its working well enough now. I'll get to see how it holds up over the coming weeks, but so far I'm very impressed with Drupal. Well done folks.