Linux: February 2008 Archives
I knew that upgrading Ubuntu had been far too easy.
There had to be a "gotcha" and of course there was.
EVMS (Enterprise Volume Management System) is no longer supported as part of the core Ubuntu distribution, but as a couple of my servers were running very old versions of Ubuntu apt did its job all too well and upgraded it for me.
End result - Siracusa, where several of my busier sites live, was very very unhappy and fell over a couple of times. Niall had a look at it for me and thought it was a hardware related issue, which was understandable. Udevd was eating CPU and the load post-reboot was over 10, which, for a relatively quiet machine, is a littled nuts!
A bit of searching this morning led to this post, where someone else had had a similar issue with a laptop. That led me to this page on the Ubuntu wiki. The package has been removed and that page outlines in detail the kind of issues that the software causes. And it fits more or less exactly with the errors in siracusa's logs!
Running a simple:
apt-get remove evms
seems to have resolved the issue - I hope!
I also cleaned up the configurations following Niall's tip:
dpkg --purge `dpkg --get-selections | grep deinstall | cut -f1`
There had to be a "gotcha" and of course there was.
EVMS (Enterprise Volume Management System) is no longer supported as part of the core Ubuntu distribution, but as a couple of my servers were running very old versions of Ubuntu apt did its job all too well and upgraded it for me.
End result - Siracusa, where several of my busier sites live, was very very unhappy and fell over a couple of times. Niall had a look at it for me and thought it was a hardware related issue, which was understandable. Udevd was eating CPU and the load post-reboot was over 10, which, for a relatively quiet machine, is a littled nuts!
A bit of searching this morning led to this post, where someone else had had a similar issue with a laptop. That led me to this page on the Ubuntu wiki. The package has been removed and that page outlines in detail the kind of issues that the software causes. And it fits more or less exactly with the errors in siracusa's logs!
Running a simple:
apt-get remove evms
seems to have resolved the issue - I hope!
I also cleaned up the configurations following Niall's tip:
dpkg --purge `dpkg --get-selections | grep deinstall | cut -f1`
Today was upgrade Ubuntu day!
For some inane reason I hadn't kept ANY of my Ubuntu servers up to date in terms of releases (they were up to date in terms of security patches).
Part of the reason why I hadn't upgraded was laziness - they were all working properly, so I didn't see any reason to fix something that wasn't broken...
Of course that meant that when I finally decided to upgrade the first server (this one) I faced an interesting dilemma.
Ubuntu has an upgrade path, however it is not direct.
If you are running Dapper and want to upgrade to Gutsy you are going to spend quite a bit of time looking at an ssh session!
The upgrade path is:
Dapper Drake > Edgy Eft > Feisty Fawn > Gutsy Gibbon
And you have to do it in that order. There doesn't seem to be anyway around that...
I'm not a *nix developer, so I can't comment on the logic, but it would be nice if someone were to come up with a method of making the upgrades from $oldish version to most recent a little bit easier and less time-consuming.
On the plus side the upgrades seem to have worked without causing any major headaches. I may regret saying that!
The first step is to verify exactly which version of Ubuntu you are currently running.
You could check your sources.list (/etc/apt/sources.list), but the "sane" way to check is by running the following command as root:
lsb_release -a
Running the upgrade itself involved simply changing the version referenced in sources.list each time and running
apt-get update;apt-get dist-upgrade
And then following any on screen instructions regarding changes to configurations etc.,
This server and its "relatives" are now all up to date with the latest version of Ubuntu and all the other software that goes with that
Now back to playing Travian ....
For some inane reason I hadn't kept ANY of my Ubuntu servers up to date in terms of releases (they were up to date in terms of security patches).
Part of the reason why I hadn't upgraded was laziness - they were all working properly, so I didn't see any reason to fix something that wasn't broken...
Of course that meant that when I finally decided to upgrade the first server (this one) I faced an interesting dilemma.
Ubuntu has an upgrade path, however it is not direct.
If you are running Dapper and want to upgrade to Gutsy you are going to spend quite a bit of time looking at an ssh session!
The upgrade path is:
Dapper Drake > Edgy Eft > Feisty Fawn > Gutsy Gibbon
And you have to do it in that order. There doesn't seem to be anyway around that...
I'm not a *nix developer, so I can't comment on the logic, but it would be nice if someone were to come up with a method of making the upgrades from $oldish version to most recent a little bit easier and less time-consuming.
On the plus side the upgrades seem to have worked without causing any major headaches. I may regret saying that!
The first step is to verify exactly which version of Ubuntu you are currently running.
You could check your sources.list (/etc/apt/sources.list), but the "sane" way to check is by running the following command as root:
lsb_release -a
Running the upgrade itself involved simply changing the version referenced in sources.list each time and running
apt-get update;apt-get dist-upgrade
And then following any on screen instructions regarding changes to configurations etc.,
This server and its "relatives" are now all up to date with the latest version of Ubuntu and all the other software that goes with that
Now back to playing Travian ....
I finally got round to installing Urchin 6 (beta) this evening.
As my personal servers are running Ubuntu I opted for the source install, however for some reason Urchin sees it as Fedora? It works, but it's a very odd thing to report...
As the software is commercial you have to get a license. Fortunately once it's installed you can simply follow the wizard to get your license key and have the data passed back to your server.
You can then go about setting up "profiles". If you're familiar with Google Analytics then most of the jargon is almost identical.
The key difference is that Urchin can parse physical log files both local and remote ie. on the same server or anywhere else (as long as they can be accessed via FTP, HTTP or HTTPS). Unfortunately it doesn't seem to offer support for SCP or Rsync, which would be very handy.
In my case I'm primarily interested in processing raw logs and don't want to go messing about with Javascript tags (which are an option).
You can easily setup a new site profile by following the online wizard and choose multiple log sources.
The reporting interface is very similar to the old Analytics one pre-upgrade. You can choose from 3 different views, depending on which type of report you want to see.
Nothing too exciting there.
Where it gets interesting is in the speed of the interface. As it's running on one of my machines on our network I don't have to contend with the rest of the internet, so it's way faster.
The simpler UI renders different views a lot faster as well.
As it's working on local log files (my config choice) it can also give me bandwidth usage which is kind of useful. (I didn't realise GoogleBot had used nearly 7 Gigs so far this month on one site!)
The other really cool thing is the update frequency.
One of the major downsides of Analytics, especially since it went "free" is that the data is nowhere near "real time".
With Urchin you can get updates as often as you want.
If you're a stats junky you could choose to have it update every hour if you want. Plus you can choose which minute of the hour (handy if you have multiple profiles on the one machine and don't want CPU meltdown!)
I'll try and setup a few more profiles, schedule updates etc., and see how it handles things.
So far I like it, though some of the interface options are a bit counter-intuitive. Fortunately the contextual help / documentation is pretty clear, so I haven't run into any "show stoppers" just yet!
As my personal servers are running Ubuntu I opted for the source install, however for some reason Urchin sees it as Fedora? It works, but it's a very odd thing to report...
As the software is commercial you have to get a license. Fortunately once it's installed you can simply follow the wizard to get your license key and have the data passed back to your server.
You can then go about setting up "profiles". If you're familiar with Google Analytics then most of the jargon is almost identical.
The key difference is that Urchin can parse physical log files both local and remote ie. on the same server or anywhere else (as long as they can be accessed via FTP, HTTP or HTTPS). Unfortunately it doesn't seem to offer support for SCP or Rsync, which would be very handy.
In my case I'm primarily interested in processing raw logs and don't want to go messing about with Javascript tags (which are an option).
You can easily setup a new site profile by following the online wizard and choose multiple log sources.
The reporting interface is very similar to the old Analytics one pre-upgrade. You can choose from 3 different views, depending on which type of report you want to see.
Nothing too exciting there.
Where it gets interesting is in the speed of the interface. As it's running on one of my machines on our network I don't have to contend with the rest of the internet, so it's way faster.
The simpler UI renders different views a lot faster as well.
As it's working on local log files (my config choice) it can also give me bandwidth usage which is kind of useful. (I didn't realise GoogleBot had used nearly 7 Gigs so far this month on one site!)
The other really cool thing is the update frequency.
One of the major downsides of Analytics, especially since it went "free" is that the data is nowhere near "real time".
With Urchin you can get updates as often as you want.
If you're a stats junky you could choose to have it update every hour if you want. Plus you can choose which minute of the hour (handy if you have multiple profiles on the one machine and don't want CPU meltdown!)
I'll try and setup a few more profiles, schedule updates etc., and see how it handles things.
So far I like it, though some of the interface options are a bit counter-intuitive. Fortunately the contextual help / documentation is pretty clear, so I haven't run into any "show stoppers" just yet!
Urchin announced its acquisition by Google approximately 3 years ago.
I'd been in talks with Urchin prior to the acquisition and had installed a trial version of the software.
The main difference between the Urchin software and the SAAS was that one is installed on your server and reads your logs (a bit like Awstats) while the other uses a bit of Javascript in your pages to track results.
Urchin 6 was "coming soon" back in 2005, but the Google acquisition buried it.
Now, almost three years later, it looks like Google has finally decided to brush off the cobwebs and relaunch the software with a 3 month beta.
They've made available an installable version for Linux, Free BSD and Windows (not Vista - but that's not a server OS, so you wouldn't expect them to).
With a price tag of US$2995 (which will probably be a LOT higher in the EU!) it will be interesting how people react to this "new" venture from Google.
At least they won't be selling it directly, but will instead be relying on a network of partners.
I'm currently downloading the Linux version to see if much has changed in the last 3 years and will hopefully be able to report on my progress (or lack thereof) in the coming days.
It might be a little too late, as products like Sawmill, which offer similar functionality, cost a fraction of the price and can be bought directly from the developers. They also have a better track record of customer support than Google.
In any case an alternative to Google Analytics, be that Sawmill or the "new" Urchin should be welcomed by those who are concerned by Google's "big brother" position. Being able to keep details of traffic private wouldn't be such a bad thing!
I'd been in talks with Urchin prior to the acquisition and had installed a trial version of the software.
The main difference between the Urchin software and the SAAS was that one is installed on your server and reads your logs (a bit like Awstats) while the other uses a bit of Javascript in your pages to track results.
Urchin 6 was "coming soon" back in 2005, but the Google acquisition buried it.
Now, almost three years later, it looks like Google has finally decided to brush off the cobwebs and relaunch the software with a 3 month beta.
They've made available an installable version for Linux, Free BSD and Windows (not Vista - but that's not a server OS, so you wouldn't expect them to).
With a price tag of US$2995 (which will probably be a LOT higher in the EU!) it will be interesting how people react to this "new" venture from Google.
At least they won't be selling it directly, but will instead be relying on a network of partners.
I'm currently downloading the Linux version to see if much has changed in the last 3 years and will hopefully be able to report on my progress (or lack thereof) in the coming days.
It might be a little too late, as products like Sawmill, which offer similar functionality, cost a fraction of the price and can be bought directly from the developers. They also have a better track record of customer support than Google.
In any case an alternative to Google Analytics, be that Sawmill or the "new" Urchin should be welcomed by those who are concerned by Google's "big brother" position. Being able to keep details of traffic private wouldn't be such a bad thing!
