Category: App

A quick and ditry alternative to Cacti

While I love the reports that Cacti produces, I really hate setting them up. And most of the time I just need something “quick and dirty” to get a better window into what’s going on with a small web/db server combo.

webminstats is a nice little plug-and-play Webmin module that does just that.

webminstats.png

It will automatically try to setup a dozen or so round robin scripts to collect data against a variety of common services (web server, database, memory, processes, etc.) It can take hours to get the same kind of reporting working in Cacti.

The output isn’t as “pretty” as that of Cacti’s.. but then again pretty doesn’t fix servers.

Posted on by nurikabe 0

Windows log file rotation

Yet another de facto Linux command that is oddly missing in Windows.

Some simple log files from a custom app were getting out of control. Google revealed that while basic rotation is possible for the standard Windows event logs, there’s no command in particular for log rotation, aside from some odd looking bat scripts that required typing output to temp directories and the like.

Tried rotatelogs.exe from the Windows distribution of Apache 2.2, but that didn’t seem to work at all.

Today, however, I stumbled across CHOMP. Works a peach, and surprisingly quick. Recommended.

(BTW, looks like the author has his own implementation of tail as well. Maybe this is the replacement for Cygwin tail that I was looking for last August..  Update:  It don’t work so well.)

Posted on by nurikabe 2

Mantis 1.1.0 Released

I’m a big fan of the Mantis Issue Tracker, an open source project in PHP.  Have been using for years. Version 1.1.0 was finally released this last week and includes some very nice usability improvements.

The new time tracking system, though simple, should actually be quite powerful. “Out of box” inclusion of MantisConnect will also be of interest to anyone wanting tighter integration with external applications or their favorite IDE.

Posted on by nurikabe 1

TOAD versus DBVisuzalizer

Earlier this year I began working with Microsoft SQL Server for the first time. Until now I’ve always been in open source databases, either MySQL or PostgreSQL.

At the time I looked around for a SQL Server-specific tool that simplified the process of sorting through table data (basic column sorting, filtering and the like), since SQL Server Studio seemed to focus primarily on managing query results. I tried a couple of tools like EMS’ SQL Manager, but nothing really stood out. Nothing worth paying for at least.

In the end I went back to my old standby, Minq’s DBVisualizer, which I’ve been using on-and-off since it was released back in ’99. It’s extremely convenient to have all one’s working databases, no matter the server, accessible from a single DBVis interface.

Recently, however, an Oracler tipped me off to Quest Software’s Tool for Application Developers (TOAD). Somehow all my googling last spring didn’t turn this up. Despite being a bit sluggish for a native Windows app, so far TOAD seems to be considerably more powerful the DBVis. I’m just scratching the surface, but TOAD’s inline editing of data is certainly more transparent, and includes nifty little touches like a popup calculator for numeric fields, date selectors, etc. The “group by column” feature is especially handy. Searchable built-in knowledgebase is a godsend for folks jumping back and forth between databases. The built-in session monitor is enlightening.

I’ll post more as I explore TOAD’s built in functionality, which seems to include a host of data differs, graph generation, and report designers.

I still wish I could view all my databases from a single dashboard — TOAD has different versions per database. But if you’re working in Windows, and spend a lot of time sifting through and managing data, then I have to say that TOAD has DBVisualizer beat hands down. Certainly worth the price of free.

Posted on by nurikabe 0

Remote Desktop over SSH

For a simple and free (and fairly standard!) way to secure your remote desktop sessions — and without having to figure out the crazy, proprietary Microsoft security stuff — take a look at copSSH. copSSH uses a streamlined Cygwin client to setup an SSH sever on your Windows box.

I’ve recently been using copSSH and PuTTY‘s Pageant authentication agent to tunnel RDP through PuTTY/copSSH SSH connections. Works like a charm.

One gotcha: copSSH doesn’t clean-up after itself well. Consider running taskkill from time-to-time.

C:\WINDOWS\Taskkill /F /IM bash.exe /T

Or if you prefer bashing:

$ kill -9 ps | grep ^I.*bash$ | cut -c2-9

Accrue more than 64 zombied PTYs and you’ll find yourself locked out of the server.

Posted on by nurikabe 1

Simple protection for Windows Media streams…

For whatever reason this was virtually impossible to find. Even the Great Google knew not.

Hoyasoft Screenshot

Hoyasoft’s Windows Media Server plugin, VideoGuard, enables a wide range of simple content protection mechanisms for video streams: From basic HTTP authentication to referer URL checking to MD5 ticket validation. VideoGuard’s snap-in admin interface is intuitive and makes setting up URL-level authorization and/or authentication strightforward.

Though the documentation could do with a serious overhaul, Hoyasoft’s email-based technical support is quite good. (Thanks Steve!)

And most importantly, VideoGaurd seems to be the only product on the market offering this kind of simple security functionality. (Which should probably have been built into Windows Media Server in the first place…)

Posted on by nurikabe 0

Advanced Outlook Repair Crash

Well, for whatever reason AOR crashed when I tried to run the licensed version. Fortunately the kind souls at DataNumen let me upload my archive to their FTP server and did the repair for me.

When I asked why AOR wasn’t working here, I got the standard “must be your machine” answer:

Sorry but we don’t know the reason, as we cannot repeat the problem on our computers at all. We have used Advanced Outlook Repair to repair your file without any problems!

I guess the problem may be caused by incompabilities, but our computer installed with Vista and 2007 can also run correctly. So the problem may be related to other software or system confirgurations.

So with some good support here the results are what I was after.. though buyer beware.

Posted on by nurikabe 0

Screen Rulers

For one reason or another I’m always measuring images and other screen real estate in web pages or elsewhere. This recently got a lot easier when I discovered the MeasureIt add-on for Firefox. (Which fits snugly next to ColorZilla, the equally useful in-browser color picker.)

The “elsewhere” part has remained difficult until recently when I stumbled across the Wonderweb Screen Ruler. I find that I will leave it open and on top of the screen for easier use when working with graphics in web apps.

Truly a ruler of rulers.

Posted on by nurikabe 0

Testing Regular Expressions with Expresso

This cool little tool from Ultrapico saved me a ton of time while attempting to whack together a fairly complex regex today. Though it can be a bit clunky at times, in general Expresso is extremely useful for visualizing how your regular expressions are stepping through test data. The layout is simple and intuitive. And best of all, it’s free.

Expresso

Also played around with Jan Goyvaerts’ RegexBuddy, which is definitely the more slick of the two (real-time search while typing) and highly recommended by flagrant regex badass at large Steve Levithan. Nevertheless I found it easier to see what was going on in Expresso and, as I may have mentioned above… free.

Posted on by nurikabe 0