Lubos's Weblog Lubos Kosco's Weblog

For those of you, who don't know logwatch, it's a perl script, which prepares log reports from your system and sends them to you.
On Linux (read: Debian ) systems this small tool is enabled by default & I enjoy it, because it can help monitor your machines and give you an overview what's going on there.

Sooo the other day I was thinking about putting up logwatch for tomcat on one of our Sparc boxes with Solaris 9 (yeah, I know, S10 rulez, but we need S9 for legacy stuff).
But since I am not only a man of thinking, I went & downloaded logwatch source, put it on my box, installed and was wondering if logwatch supports tomcat out of box ... bummer! It's not!

Hmm ... now I was thinking ... tomcat logs which I wanted to be analyzed are not the usual catalina.out, but I turned on access logging, which formats out strings very similar to apache(http).
So why not go & use logwatchs "http" service ???

YEAH, small change to <logwatch_basedir>/default.conf/logfiles/http.conf to add:
LogFile = localhost_access_log*
LogFile = logs/localhost_access_log*
and it all worked like charm

But since I needed one more feature - counting of unique IPs which accessed my server, I had to develop it and that's how MY tomcat service saw the light of world ... it supports apache log files as well, so to avoid double reports when installing this service, use service="-http" .

Now I am a happy user of weekly report from my tomcat logwatch service (download in Resources section, NO Support)

Remeber:
logwatch --help is your friend
--logdir is a good parameter as well

Resources(download):
tomcat_logwatch.tgz
(you will probably need to unpack it to /usr/share/logwatch/ )

Phew ... my second blog in one day

Well ... finally some info and news about N1, which after some struggles and internal reorgs comes out with a new general name - System Management software (not official yet, no hate/black mails pls ).

Albeit it's not opendatacenter.org you can still get some info and publish/submit your knowledge, tips and tricks on BigAdmin Information hub http://www.sun.com/bigadmin/hubs/sysmgmt/


That page contains already lots of know-how and plenty of links to discover. So to learn new ways of automating your common administration tasks, spend some time checking those pages out.

N1SM can help out with OS install automation, patch distribution, firmware upgrades and monitoring.

N1SPS can wrap up your service provisioning processes, giving you easy control on what goes where, how it will be set up and easy manage. I saw actually an implementation of N1SPS for easy to use and manage deployment of web application, which saved that customer lots of troubles and money doing it the old way. Hmm, not mentioning that you can see the whole history of actions in N1SPS, so it's very easy to audit.

Slowly but surely projects with code are being unveiled. Let's see if repositories will be filled and people start to submit / check out the code. First swallows(as planned) are SPS plugins on http://n1-sps-plugins.sunsource.net/ . What might follow is the core of N1SPS and then maybe N1SM and SunMC.

Well, can't wait to see people hacking plugins into SPS .

Soo

in the first week of October I had the honor to attend CEC 2006 conference as one of the GENO (Global Engineering Organization) guys. Hmm, Dan Berg has mentioned GENO in his blog as well, and he has there a "backdoor" picture with me & ferrari laptop on my lap sitting just in front of big Greg P .

Anyways, there have been a lot of musings and news about CEC, especially from our hosts Jim Baty, Hal Stern and Dan Berg, so I am not going to duplicate them.

Overall one could have seen a lot of great technology and innovation we are making here at Sun, but since I am a N1(Systems management) guy, I've mostly had a look on those pressos & demos.

However I really enjoyed one session - Bryan Cantrills presso on new network provider in dtrace, be sure to check it out here.

All in all San Francisco was very nice & it was my first time to Pacific coast so I had those "big eyes". Driving around the coast and through SF was a nice experience as well, hehe, I got pretty addicted to "cruise mode" in those US cars ... wondering if I will remember how to drive with manual transmision . During the weekend I drove with my coleague Milos to Santa Cruz, Monterey, saw San Francisco Red Bull fly day and visited Muir Woods.

And yes, I had no flowers in my hair (next time, I'll wear them ) ...

Some time ago, I was in need of this functionality.
This little silly script, however very uneffective will check which apps listents on the given port number.
Maybe I should think about writing something more effective ... or just file a Request For Enhancement against netstat on Solaris?

Script get_port_pid.sh:

#!/bin/bash

for i in `ls /proc`
do
pfiles $i | grep AF_INET | grep $1
if [ $? -eq 0 ]
then
echo Is owned by pid $i
fi
done


Prepared for a long time the openn1.org (or www.opendatacenter.org) will be public in close time span.

What's this (N1) all about?

N1SM - System Manager - provision OS(RH,Solaris,Windows), patches, firmware, monitor server HW, provision N1 Grid Engine, diskless stations

N1SPS - Service Provisioning System - provision services (like Weblogic, Websphere, Oracle, ...) and ev. OS, Zones, ... write your own plugin for what you need

N1GE - Grid Engine - job distribution(dispatching) and management software across grids (of different kinds)

So to be able to manage your datacenter better, easier and save $$$, these tidbits of software are ready to serve.

Be sure to check the site out then, at least for the fancy flash videos and demos.

Edited 6.5.2005 - Sorry for a false alarm folks, the site still needs some more ice cream and fudge to suit your taste
But hey, stay tuned!

Some thoughts and unanswered questions about pluggable(modular) architecture of todays software.

Ah, nice to be blogging again :]

Today however, I got a complain reason ... plugins or modules (how do U like to call 'em?) ...

Been updating Firefox lately and naturally to get it to the Opera like level I had to update dozen of plugins. One of them broke my browser in that kinda way, that the session manager plugin works odd now and I keep getting a stupid preferences alert window whenever I open a new firefox window (not tab).

Yeah, I am an engineer, so I am going to find what the prob is and fix it, but it's just a waste of my(our) time caused by lack of testing before release.

Why do I even care to write about it? Because living on the edge just brings such stuff, but still I think, most of the probs could be omited.
A similar thing happened to me with our Netbeans, when I installed a bunch of plugins(modules) and one of them broke my Tools/Options dialogue (it crashed down).

I mean, it's really nice to be able to put your own functionality to the product, but couldn't be the integration improved a little bit?

If I should compare Opera against Firefox or JBuilder against Netbeans(Eclipse) I'd say, that thing is the only difference(functionality is almost the same, user experience lacks the integration feeling). One can say it's the same reg. Windows and Solaris (Linux).
Hmm, maybe the "distros" idea isn't that bad. I really like NB5.5 enterprise preview or other our product built upon Netbeans. But than again it's a problem with confusion - all the names for the same thing ... hmm, guess that's the tax for high expectations from things (yeah, converging to a very political topic).

Wondering what can be done. Better testing before including to a public download/update site? Hire some integration and testing teams? Or just leave it on people - enthusiasts who create their own "distros" (leave the community to solve it)?

I'll definitely update this article after the talk with Roumen on this reg. to Netbeans

Till then just have a good one ...

Update:

Well, living on the edge ... test by yourself, or just wait and get a stable software ... sigh

Btw. I had to reinstall Firefox and redownload all modules, before that I cleared all registers and leftovers. Sometimes to start over from scratch just clears the way for better things

Today I have one from those yet another bookmark'o'article & I would like to ask you all for a favour.

First I thought ... Code reviews? ... isn't this just another bugger and slowdown process?
But ... honestly, it's not. I even like it. Looks like the most of the people don't
But trust me, it's really usefull & maybe it could teach you something new. At least you get in touch with other developers .

There's one article I read recently:
http://www.developer.com/java/other/article.php/3579756

I haven't read anything about Code Inspections, but in general they seem to me more like a teaching process, but hey! Two times do the measurement & then cut

Finally, I am happy, that there are people researching different ways of how to make code development a better and more superior process.

& before I press "Post to weblog" ... I would like to ask you all to put a comment with a link to a good web page or give a good advice (you use, or have experienced) about Code reviews or Code Inspections (so we can all get a better approach to them )

Thanks!

Some people drink, the other take drugs, some just do sports, then there are people who pray or worship (whatever they care about) ... everyone just does something that helps him to relax (yes, whatever you call it )

My stuff is definitely music.

Not that I like only one kind of music ... I can listen almost to everything.
But some genres just make me feel good.

I have a very fine collection of classical music. The most inspiring is Beethoven, there's no dispute about it
I could name a few others that I like, e.g. Debussy and his Claire de lune, Gorecki and wonderful Symphony No 3, Saite Gymnopedie, Massenet Meditation, and you probably know Offenbach and his Barcarolle (at least from this: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0118799/).
The funny thing is, that I like to play it too, but not often I have so much time to learn the whole piece, so you might see me play at least part of the score (if it wasn't replaced in the mean time by some bug fixing ideas)

Another stuff is good chillout. If you want make a good gift, give me chillout (music)
My favourite ones are from CDM (www.cafedelmarmusic.com , gosh they rebuilt the site, those backgrounds are awesome!) and I will visit Ibiza and this club for sure (visit CDM, see the sunset and then I can die ),
but lately I started to enjoy somehow asian influenced Budha Bar.

Ha ... I also have an album, which is very unknown to me(but is a pleasure to hear). It was a gift from my sis, unfortunately only in form of digital music without any info
So ... if anyone knows something about "chill out - schhh" album, let me know!

And naturally combination of those two is an overkill So maybe next I'll write something about my chillout classic albums collection

From time to time I read the articles at http://techrepublic.com
I found one really interesting, because it made me smile and think about all the code I have seen. It really reminds me, why do I always think twice and then try to write something. But ... I don't always suceed.

I mean, I can fully understand, why we write such code even though we try to get better.
Umh, before I forget ... the link is: http://techrepublic.com.com/5254-6257-0.html?forumID=99&threadID=173898&messageID=1915531&id=3923716

Happy findings and better(more elegant?) code to the world

(why do I use blog for bookmarks? I dunno )

Hello folks
it's nice to be a part of Sun under the Sun

I am a sustaining eng. for N1 products (mainly N1SM and N1SPS) in Prague, Czech Republic and my blogs will be about Java, N1, Solaris and programming.
I might throw in all other stuff I do and like, but you'll see.

You can get more info about myself on the net (hmm, everything is on the web ), if you don't like to search a good starting point is:
http://www.talk.to/tarzan