Category Archives: System admin

PHP: Curl being slow from php call on CentOS 5.4

I ran into an issue where curl request run within few ms from command line but same url fetch was taking over 10 secs. After doing some debugging and research it turned out that call to check (getaddr ipv6 was timing out. Obviously you can do multiple things to fix this (including enabling ipv6 support) but since I did not have a need for ipv6 (it is disabled in my network configuration), I decided to recompile curl and disable ipv6. Here is the command for recompiling curl and installing into /usr/local/curl directory with ipv6 disabled.

./configure –prefix=/usr/local/curl –disable-ipv6

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DISCLAIMER: Please be smart and use code found on internet carefully. Make backups often. And yeah.. last but not least.. I am not responsible for any damage caused by this posting. Use at your own risk.

SVN: How do you use svn command line on Windows with ssh tunneling?

If you ever used svn command line, you know it is not optimal to type in your password every time you do checkout, checkin, info, etc.  In linux world, it is very easy to setup keys to get around this.  Of course in the world of Windows it is not as easy.  Here are the steps you need to follow to get private/public keys working with your SVN under Windows using ssh tunneling.

Assumptions:  you will be connecting as user “root” to svn server located at “10.0.0.1”.  All your files will be saved at c:\ including your svn command line utility

First we will have to generate a key.  We can accomplish this by using a free utility called puttygen.  Run puttygen and click on “Generate” button.  You will have a key similar to below example:

Example of a key generated by puttygen

Example of a key generated by puttygen

Copy this, you will need it in few mins.  At this point, go ahead and create a private key by clicking on:  “Save private key”.  Save this as private.ppk on your C:\. 

Now let us log in to the svn server and add this public key to the authorized_keys2 (see setting up keys for step by step instructions).  I will assume you are using “root” as login.

vi /root/.ssh/authorized_keys2

Make sure when you paste, it is not broken into different lines.  All of the key should be one line.

Ok now back to your Windows machine.  Now we need to set up ssh tunnel to our server.  There are few ways of doing this but for our purpose, we will use another free program provided by the same developers as puttygen: download plink to C:\.  If you do not do this step, you will get following error:

svn: Can't create tunnel: The system cannot find the file specified.

Ok let us set the variables for svn.  Go to command prompt and type (you can also set this in your scripts and inside windows environment.  But since this post is to show you an example, we will just do this):

set SVN_SSH="/plink.exe" -i /private.ppk -l root

Now let’s run this one time manually to cache key:

/plink.exe -i /private.ppk -l root 10.0.0.1

Press “y” when it asks you to save.  Type exit and get back to your prompt.

Ok now we can test our svn utility.

/svn info svn+ssh://10.0.0.1/svn/testrepo/trunk/

This should display output similar to:

Path: trunk
URL: svn+ssh://10.0.0.1/svn/testrepo/trunk
Repository Root: svn+ssh://10.0.0.1/svn/testrepo
Repository UUID: b9143312-b1a1-11ba-a111-11cdcd1d2222
Revision: 10
Node Kind: directory
Last Changed Author: root
Last Changed Rev: 4
Last Changed Date: 2008-11-18 15:18:47 -0800 (Tue, 18 Nov 2008)

Now you are ready to script your checkouts, do checkin’s with out having to type in your password, etc.

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DISCLAIMER: Please be smart and use code found on internet carefully. Make backups often. And yeah.. last but not least.. I am not responsible for any damage caused by this posting. Use at your own risk.

sshfs: How do you install sshfs and fuse? [CentOS/Linux/Redhat]

One may wonder what is sshfs and why would you want it?  Well simply put, sshfs allows you to mount another server’s filesystem into a folder on your local system which in the background is doing ssh commands and transfers.  As a mounted folder, you are able to move about and copy files back and forth as everything was on local server.  As you can see this makes it very easy for you to work with files on multiple servers.

Note:  you only have to do the following installations on the server where you are doing the mounts on.

Let us download and install the filesystem framework which is a requirement for sshfs called fuse.

wget http://voxel.dl.sourceforge.net/sourceforge/fuse/fuse-2.7.4.tar.gz
tar zxpfv fuse-*.gz
cd fuse*
./configure

If you get the following error, you will either have to point to the location of the kernel source or install it if needed.

checking kernel source directory... Not found
configure: error:
*** Please specify the location of the kernel source with
*** the '--with-kernel=SRCDIR' option
configure: error: ./configure failed for kernel

In our case here, we will be installing the source using yum.

yum -y install kernel-devel

Once installed, you will have to find out the directory it is installed in

ls -l /usr/src/kernels/
total 4.0K
drwxr-xr-x 18 root root 4.0K Oct  7 14:50 2.6.18-92.1.13.el5-x86_64/

./configure --with-kernel=/usr/src/kernels/2.6.18-92.1.13.el5-x86_64
make && make install
cd ..

Now let us get sshfs source and install it.

wget http://voxel.dl.sourceforge.net/sourceforge/fuse/sshfs-fuse-2.1.tar.gz
tar zxpfv sshfs*
cd sshfs-fuse-*
./configure

If you get the following error:

checking for SSHFS... configure: error: The pkg-config script could not be found or is too old.  Make sure it
is in your PATH or set the PKG_CONFIG environment variable to the full
path to pkg-config.

OR

checking for SSHFS... configure: error: Package requirements (fuse >= 2.2 glib-2.0 gthread-2.0) were not met:

No package ‘glib-2.0’ found
No package ‘gthread-2.0’ found

You need to install glib2.  Do the following:

yum install glib2-devel

Once installation is done, continue with configure.

./configure
make && make install

After installation is done, we can move on with testing the installation:

cd /mnt
mkdir test
sshfs 10.0.0.2:/ test

If you get the following error,
sshfs: error while loading shared libraries: libfuse.so.2: cannot open shared object file: No such file or directory
execute this: NOTE: this is for x64 system. If you have 32 bit system, you have to symlink to /lib instead.
ln -s /usr/local/lib/libfuse.so.2 /lib64/
Let us try mounting again:
sshfs 10.0.0.2:/ test
At this point it would be like if you were making a ssh connection to 10.0.0.2 You will have to type in a password to get the mount to happen. You may get the following error: fuse: device not found, try 'modprobe fuse' first

If you do ‘modprobe fuse’, as they tell you to, and you get:
modprobe fuse
FATAL: Module fuse not found.

That means your running kernel is not the same version as the one you compiled with. You have two options here:
1) you can upgrade your kernel by typing: yum update kernel
2) find the source files for the kernel you have running and recompile fuse.

I went with option 1. Once you do the update, reboot and try doing modprobe fuse again.

At this point we can try doing the mount again.
cd /mnt
sshfs 10.0.0.2:/ test

If you do not get any errors, do df -h to see the mount:
...
sshfs#10.0.0.2:/ 1000G 0 1000G 0% /mnt/test
...

At this point you can browse 10.0.0.2 server filesystem as it was local on your server.

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DISCLAIMER: Please be smart and use code found on internet carefully. Make backups often. And yeah.. last but not least.. I am not responsible for any damage caused by this posting. Use at your own risk.

Linux: How do you find out what your server’s outgoing ip is?

There are many times when I needed to find out my outgoing (or external) IP for the servers which are behind load balancers or firewalls.  I used to just login to another external server from the server in question and find out by looking at “who” what my external ip is.  Even though it works and I am so used to it, today I decided to figure out a more graceful way of finding my outgoing ip.  As most of us already know, whatismyip.com is the quickest way to find out your outgoing ip from the browser.  So I decided to use the same way on the servers.  So I issued a wget:

wget http://www.whatismyip.org

Well that does the trick.  But being lazy as I am, I did not want to have to cat the output file to find out the ip (plus there is no point of creating extra files and doing extra work to remove them).  So if you are ssh’ed in, you can issue following command (I am sure there is another way of doing it, but this is the quickest way I could think of):

wget -q -O - http://www.whatismyip.org

-O tells wget to redirect output to the following file (- being the standard out ).  So it basically echo’s output to our console.

-q makes wget run in  quiet mode so you do not see all of the connection/download/etc output.

That is it!  I am curious to know what other ways people use to get the same information.  Please share your way if possible.

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DISCLAIMER: Please be smart and use code found on internet carefully. Make backups often. And yeah.. last but not least.. I am not responsible for any damage caused by this posting. Use at your own risk.

Apache/http monitoring: monitor http traffic in realtime using httptop

Server monitoring is a big part of running a solid web site.  As an admin, you must know what is going on your server.  One of the tools most Linux/Unix admins are used to is called “top”.  “top” by itself is a very powerful tool.  Here is a quick guide on how to read output from top:  introduction to load averages under top.  It just makes sense that somebody went and created httptop to monitor http traffic.

Install perl modules:

install Term::ReadKey
install File::Tail
install Time::HiRes

Now copy paste the script below and save it in a location and set +x attribute on it so you can execute it.  On my setup, I have the script under /usr/bin/httptop:

#!/usr/bin/perl -w
use Time::HiRes qw( time );
use File::Tail (  );
use Term::ReadKey;
use Getopt::Std;
use strict;
### Defaults you might be interested in adjusting.
my $Update = 2; # update every n secs
my $Backtrack = 250; # backtrack n lines on startup
my @Paths = qw(
%
/title/%/logs/access_log
/var/log/httpd/%/access_log
/usr/local/apache/logs/%/access_log
);
my $Log_Format = "combined";
my %Log_Fields = (
combined => [qw/ Host x x Time URI Response x Referer Client /],
vhost => [qw/ VHost Host x x Time URI Response x Referer Client /]
);
### Constants & other thingies. Nothing to see here. Move along.
my $Version = "0.4.1";
sub by_hits_per (  ) { $b->{Rate} <=> $a->{Rate} }
sub by_total (  ) { $b->{Total} <=> $a->{Total} }
sub by_age (  ) { $a->{Last} <=> $b->{Last} }
my $last_field = "Client";
my $index = "Host";
my $show_help = 0;
my $order = \&by_hits_per;
my $Help = "htlwufd?q";
my %Keys = (
h => [ "Order by hits/second" => sub { $order = \&by_hits_per } ],
t => [ "Order by total recorded hits" => sub { $order = \&by_total } ],
l => [ "Order by most recent hits" => sub { $order = \&by_age } ],
w => [ "Show remote host" => sub { $index = "Host" } ],
u => [ "Show requested URI" => sub { $index = "URI" } ],
f => [ "Show referring URL" => sub { $index = "Referer" } ],
d => [ "Show referring domain" => sub { $index = "Domain" } ],
'?' => [ "Help (this thing here)" => sub { $show_help++ } ],
q => [ "Quit" => sub { exit } ]
);
my @Display_Fields = qw/ Host Date URI Response Client Referer Domain /;
my @Record_Fields = qw/ Host URI Referer Domain /;
my $Max_Index_Width = 50;
my $Initial_TTL = 50;
my @Months = qw/ Jan Feb Mar Apr May Jun Jul Aug Sep Nov Dec /;
my %Term = (
HOME => "\033[H",
CLS => "\033[2J",
START_TITLE => "\033]0;", # for xterms etc.
END_TITLE => "\007",
START_RV => "\033[7m",
END_RV => "\033[m"
);
my ( %hist, %opt, $spec );
$SIG{INT} = sub { exit };
END { ReadMode 0 };
### Subs.
sub refresh_output
{
my ( $cols, $rows ) = GetTerminalSize;
my $show = $rows - 3;
my $count = $show;
my $now = (shift || time);
for my $type ( values %hist ) {
for my $peer ( values %$type ) {
# if ( --$peer->{_Ttl} > 0 ) {
my $delta = $now - $peer->{Start};
if ( $delta >= 1 ) {
$peer->{ Rate } = $peer->{ Total } / $delta;
} else {
$peer->{ Rate } = 0
}
$peer->{ Last } = int( $now - $peer->{ Date } );
# } else {
# delete $type->{$peer}
# }
}
}
$count = scalar( values %{$hist{$index}} ) - 1 if $show >= scalar values %{$hist{$index}};
my @list = ( sort $order values %{$hist{$index}} )[ 0 .. $count ];
my $first = 0;
$first = ( $first <= $_ ? $_ + 1 : $first ) for map { $_ ? length($_->{$index}) : 0 } @list;
$first = $Max_Index_Width if $Max_Index_Width < $first;
print $Term{START_TITLE}, "Monitoring $spec at: ", scalar localtime, $Term{END_TITLE} if $ENV{TERM} eq "xterm"; # UGLY!!!
my $help = "Help/?";
my $head = sprintf( "%-${first}s %6s %4s %4s %s (%d total)",
$index, qw{ Hits/s Tot Last }, $last_field,
scalar keys %{$hist{$index}}
);
#
# Truncate status line if need be
#
$head = substr($head, 0, ($cols - length($help)));
print @Term{"HOME", "START_RV"}, $head, " " x ($cols - length($head) - length($help)), $help, $Term{END_RV}, "\n";
for ( @list ) {
# $_->{_Ttl}++;
my $line = sprintf( "%-${first}s %6.3f %4d %3d %s",
substr( $_->{$index}, 0, $Max_Index_Width ), @$_{(qw{ Rate Total Last }, $last_field)} );
if ( length($line) > $cols ) {
substr( $line, $cols - 1 ) = "";
} else {
$line .= " " x ($cols - length($line));
}
print $line, "\n";
}
print " " x $cols, "\n" while $count++ < $show;
}
sub process_line
{
my $line = shift;
my $now = ( shift || time );
my %hit;
chomp $line;
@hit{@{$Log_Fields{$Log_Format}}} = grep( $_, split( /"([^"]+)"|\[([^]]+)\]|\s/o, $line ) );
$hit{ URI } =~ s/HTTP\/1\S+//gos;
$hit{ Referer } = "<unknown>" if not $hit{Referer} or $hit{Referer} eq "-";
( $hit{Domain} = $hit{Referer} ) =~ s#^\w+://([^/]+).*$#$1#os;
$hit{ Client } ||= "<none>";
$hit{ Client } =~ s/Mozilla\/[\w.]+ \(compatible; /(/gos;
$hit{ Client } =~ s/[^\x20-\x7f]//gos;
# if $now is negative, try to guess how old the hit is based on the time stamp.
if ( $now < 0 ) {
my @hit_t = ( split( m![:/\s]!o, $hit{ Time } ))[ 0 .. 5 ];
my @now_t = ( localtime )[ 3, 4, 5, 2, 1, 0 ];
my @mag = ( 3600, 60, 1 );
# If the hit didn't parse right, or didn't happen today, the hell with it.
return unless $hit_t[2] == ( $now_t[2] + 1900 )
and $hit_t[1] eq $Months[ $now_t[1] ]
and $hit_t[0] == $now_t[0];
splice( @hit_t, 0, 3 );
splice( @now_t, 0, 3 );
# Work backward to the UNIX time of the hit.
$now = time;
$now -= (shift( @now_t ) - shift( @hit_t )) * $_ for ( 3600, 60, 1 );
}
$hit{ Date } = $now;
for my $field ( @Record_Fields ) {
my $peer = ( $hist{$field}{$hit{$field}} ||= { Start => $now, _Ttl => $Initial_TTL } );
@$peer{ @Display_Fields } = @hit{ @Display_Fields };
$peer->{ Total }++;
}
}
sub display_help {
my $msg = "httptop v.$Version";
print @Term{qw/ HOME CLS START_RV /}, $msg, $Term{END_RV}, "\n\n";
print " " x 4, $_, " " x 8, $Keys{$_}[0], "\n" for ( split "", $Help );
print "\nPress any key to continue.\n";
}
### Init.
getopt( 'frb' => \%opt );
$Backtrack = $opt{b} if $opt{b};
$Update = $opt{r} if $opt{r};
$Log_Format = $opt{f} if $opt{f};
$spec = $ARGV[0];
die <<End unless $spec and $Log_Fields{$Log_Format};
Usage: $0 [-f <format>] [-r <refresh_secs>] [-b <backtrack_lines>] <logdir | path_to_log>
Valid formats are: @{[ join ", ", keys %Log_Fields ]}.
End
for ( @Paths ) {
last if -r $spec;
( $spec = $_ ) =~ s/%/$ARGV[0]/gos;
}
die "No access_log $ARGV[0] found.\n" unless -r $spec;
my $file = File::Tail->new(
name => $spec,
interval => $Update / 2,
maxinterval => $Update,
tail => $Backtrack,
nowait => 1
) or die "$spec: $!";
my $last_update = time;
my ( $line, $now );
# Backtracking.
while ( $Backtrack-- > 0 ) {
last unless $line = $file->read;
process_line( $line, -1 );
}
$file->nowait( 0 );
ReadMode 4; # Echo off.
print @Term{"HOME", "CLS"}; # Home & clear.
refresh_output;
### Main loop.
while (defined( $line = $file->read )) {
$now = time;
process_line( $line, $now );
while ( $line = lc ReadKey(-1) ) {
$show_help = 0 if $show_help;
$Keys{$line}[1]->(  ) if $Keys{$line};
}
if ( $show_help == 1 ) {
display_help;
$show_help++; # Don't display help again.
} elsif ( $now - $last_update > $Update and not $show_help ) {
$last_update = $now;
refresh_output( $now );
}
}

Save/exit and make sure you make it executable by setting it to +x (chmod +x httptop)

Now you can run httptop by typing:  httptop -f combined -r 1 /usr/local/apache2/logs/access_log

NOTE:  Your access_log file might be in different location.  Point to the right location.  This sets the refresh rate to 1 sec (-r 1).  Now you can run httptop any time you want to checkout how your http traffic is doing.  Remember to press “?” to get help once you are in.

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DISCLAIMER: As always, if you find any inaccurate information, please comment and let me know. When you do comment, make sure you give me some references to confirm.