Installing Aegir and problem solving

I'd heard of The Aegir hosting system back in March when I went to Drupalcon DC. I didn't attend any of the workshops for it, but when I ran across a mention of its merits recently after installing Drush on a Linode VPS I thought installing it would be a good opportunity to improve my server setup/admin skills and ease the management of all of the Drupal sites I maintain.

I began by following the directions on the Aegir install page, and was rolling along nicely until I got caught up in the Apache configuration settings. Apache can be a bit of a beast until you get to the point where you understand it. I Googled my problem, I was getting a syntax error and this error, "ServerAlias only used in VirtualHost" when attempting to restart the server. I tried several configurations, and even after allowing for the new subdomain to propagate, I still had no luck.

As a last resort I went into the #aegir room on IRC and talked about the problem. It was a 4 line conversation, one where I asked about more documentation, one where someone in the room asked what the problem was, and two where I explained it in some detail. Talking gave me the insight to realize that I needed to edit the aegir apache config file to include and its matching tags. On many occasions I've run across a problem that was difficult to solve, from SharePoint workflow issues to jQuery selectors and simply the act of talking about it out loud helped solve the problem.

The moral of the story: If you have coworkers, even if they are non-technical, don't be afraid to use them as a springboard for your ideas and as a tool to help solve problems. If you don't have coworkers, chat is a great resource especially when you've tried your best to understand the problem thoroughly first. It's easy to get caught up in your own thoughts and miss an obvious solution that your brain is overlooking.