Linux System Admins Blog

Absolute Path Error:
cvs [checkout aborted]: absolute pathnames invalid for server (specified `/path/drupalsite/')

Ok, I got the error above when I performed Drupal CVS update on our Debian server (newly installed CVS 1.12.13). The same command works on other server with older CVS installation. The issue is the reference to local cvs directory where I used absolute path (-d /path/drupalsite/), which is a bug (security hole on client side) – it was fixed on newer CVS version to use relative path.

Drupal Checkout Command:
cvs -z6 -d:pserver:anonymous:anonymous@cvs.drupal.org:/cvs/drupal co -r DRUPAL-6-15 -d /path/drupalsite/ drupal

Use of Relative Path (sample)
cd /path
cvs -z6 -d:pserver:anonymous:anonymous@cvs.drupal.org:/cvs/drupal co -r DRUPAL-6-15 -d drupalsite drupal

Last December I gave a talk at the Chicago Drupal Meet Up on increasing your Drupal site’s performance.  I thought I would share the slides from that presentation with everyone – so here it is.  I tried to cover a fairly wide array of topics at a high level.  We started with page load performance definition, identifying the differences between the high availability and scalability concepts and then we jumped into page load performance.  The talk was very drupal specific in terms of load page improvement recommendations, and we covered a few MySQL drupal performance tweaks, some apache modules and tools, such as YSLOW, Google page speed and JMeter.

Google will start pushing for a faster web next year, and there have been several rumors in the SEO and marketing world that google will add page speed to its SEO rankings algorithm.  Yesterday they have announced that  Google will offer a free DNS service.

First off, this is great.  It should improve the speed of looking up the DNS info of many sites, and if the service takes off, it should take the load off your NS.

The focus on speed if very clear, the Google public DNS server lists this first as one of the advantages.  It also points to the speed problems caused by DNS latency.

Google Public DNS IP addresses

The Google Public DNS IP addresses are as follows:

• 8.8.8.8
• 8.8.4.4

My small collection of my favorite 404 and error messages on the web, from mostly big sites.  Some are humorous, some are quirky, and I think they are all great.  No one is perfect.

Enjoy.

Top web site error pages – my favorites.

1) barrackobama.com – simple, to the point, diffusing.

Obama.org site not availalble 404

2) Plaxo.com – (oops! There seems to be a problem.  I’ll tell you what… let us fix it and this can be our little secret.)  humorous

3) crowdspring.com – (our servers are currently fighting among themselves and we’re putting them into a timeout.) – if you have kids you will appreciate this.

crowdspring.error error

4) youtube.com – (“The functionality is not available… Be cool – we’ll be back 100% in a bit.”) – I like the slang

be cool - you tube 404 image

5) Witter error – before the whale

twitter error, before the whale

6) Google apps error – not funny, not cool… common google, you can be fun too!

google error

7) suumbleupon.com error – (“we’ll be right back, in the mean time why dont you go outside and play for a while”) – LOVE this one

Facebook error – not funny at all, especially since it happens a lot

9) the now famous twitter whale – simply brilliant

twitter whale

10) technorati.com error (“Doh! The Technorati Monster escaped again.”) – good one

techocrati 404

With the release of Apache 2.2.12, we can now configure multiple SSL sites in one IP address. It is available of you have Server Name Indication (SNI) extension for OpenSSL. Visit TechRepublic’s post on “Configure Apache to support multiple SSL sites on a single IP address” for details and vhost sample configuration. And for complete reference please refer to this page “SSL with Virtual Hosts Using SNI” and Apache mod_ssl documentation.

We’ll try this on our server and hopefully offer this to our shared hosting clients who wants SSL but not interested in paying extra for a dedicated ip address.

Adding additional block devices to XEN guests is accomplished using xm block-attach command. In this example I am exporting an external USB hard drive that was recognized as /dev/sda1 by the hosts kernel. Important thing to keep in mind is that you must use xvdX as the guest block device name.
xm block-attach 6 phy:/dev/sda1 /dev/xvda1 w

This command will export /dev/sda1 on host machine to guest domain 6 as /dev/xvda1 with write permissions.

Fedora release 12 became available to the public November 17, 2009. New features are plentiful and many are centred around KVM virtualization.

If you are like me and still running Fedora 10 or 11 and do not wish to wait till a yum based update is pushed out you can kick off your adventure into Fedora 12 land manually. Set aside at least an hour of time where you will not be able to use the PC while the update is taking place. First thing is to review Preupgrade Wiki Page, once you feel confident that your system is ready (enough space in /boot, created backups of your data) issue (as root):
yum update && yum install preupgrade
Followed by:
preupgrade-cli "Fedora 12 (Constantine)"
After a lengthy download, reboot and update process you should be looking at Fedora 12 login prompt.

If you used ext3 filesystem in your Fedora 10/11 system you can also migrate to ext4 filesystem by following the Fedora ext4 Wiki guide.

Today the EU createded a serious road block on the road to the merger of Sun Microsystems and Oracle.  Here is the timeline of events up to now.

European antitrust authorities formally objected to Oracle Corp.’s proposed purchase of Sun Microsystems Inc., complicating a $7.4 billion deal that U.S. officials had already blessed.

The companies said Monday that the European Commission, the European Union’s executive arm, issued a statement of objections regarding the deal, which they said focuses on whether Oracle’s takeover of Sun’s MySQL database software would reduce competition in the database market.

Here is a quick recap of MySQL history, and how it got where it is today:

• MySQL is born in 1994.
• MySQL becomes the most used and popular database used by websites.
• Sun Microsystems buys MySQL for 1.0 Billion Dollars.
• Sun hemerages money, Oracle steps in to buy Sun/MySQL.

sun mysql logo

So where does this leave MySQL and hundreds of sites that depend on it?  Sun has predominantly been a hardware company.  Oracle recently introduced its software running on Sun hardware (You may have seen the ads comparing Oracle Running on Sun being x number of faster than same software running on IBM hardware).  Oracle maintains that MySQL will continue to stand alone as a open-source product.  However that may just be the problem that the EU has with it, saying that because it will be owned by Oracle, which already has a powerful commercial product, the merger will prevent MySQL from becoming another powerful database commercial competitor.  So, what do you think?  Will MySQL wilt in the shadow of the mighty Oracle?

This week we have Terminator – a split window terminal emulator. This tool is very helpful if you use terminal windows to connect to several servers at the same time. Usually, we have multiple separate windows or the tabs, but on this one you can have split windows or grid. Below are the features and those in bold are the features i really like.

Features:
* Arrange terminals in a grid
* Tabs
* Drag and drop re-ordering of terminals
* Lots of keyboard shortcuts
* Config file to override gnome-terminal settings
* Simultaneous typing to arbitrary groups of terminals
[Read more →]

I installed Ubuntu 9.10 (Karmic Koala) to my new laptop (HP EliteBook 6930p), and first on my to-do list is to set the root password so I can do additional package installations and configurations. But this time, after I unlocked and set password for my root account, i still can’t login (via terminal) as root. I even tried to set password three times just to make sure i typed it correctly. As usual, if something is not working out of the box the next thing to do is to search for ‘known issues’ for laptop brand/model. Then I found similar report on Ubuntu Forums from they gave a link to “Policy on log-in-as-root tutorials” with explanation on Ubuntu’s RootSudo policy. I did get a chance to look further on this as to which version it was implemented.

So if you really need to login as root you can either use the “sudo -i” to simulate the root login (this will ask for your password and log you in as root), or enable the root account “sudo passwd root” (this will ask for your password and will prompt you to enter new root password).