self.send(belongs_to :me) http://rushthinking.com Amr Numan Tamimi Sat, 28 May 2011 08:04:50 +0000 en hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.1.2 Using Monit to manage and monitor server’s processes and services on Ubuntu >= 10.04 http://rushthinking.com/using-monit/ http://rushthinking.com/using-monit/#comments Wed, 16 Feb 2011 10:36:53 +0000 Amr http://blog.rushthinking.com/?p=51

Monit is a free open source utility for managing and monitoring, processes, files, directories and filesystems on a UNIX system. Monit conducts automatic maintenance and repair and can execute meaningful causal actions in error situations.

Why Monit?

Monit is light weight application runs on UNIX systems. You can run it daemonized in the background to watch all the processes you specify in the Monit configuration file. Also, it has a good web Graphical User Interface, that let you watch the tasks you specify for Monit. you can start service(s), stop service(s), restart service(s) via the web interface.

What Monit can do?

Monit can start a process if it does not run, restart a process if it does not respond and stop a process if it uses too much resources. You can use Monit to monitor files, directories and filesystems for changes, such as timestamp changes, checksum changes or size changes. You can also monitor remote hosts; Monit can ping a remote host and can check TCP/IP port connections and server protocols. Monit is controlled via an easy to use control file based on a free-format, token-oriented syntax. Monit logs to syslog or to its own log file and notifies you about error conditions and recovery status via customizable alert.

Example problem

Let’s say you have Apache or Nginx web server that runs on your server. Suddenly, your website is down, because the used memory exceeded the limits, lets say that! The solution is to restart your web server. You have to login your server via ssh and restart the server! This would take time. So what about restarting it via a simple web page? What about make the server restart automatically when some conditions happen? Cool yeah?

Up and running in 15 minutes

Installing on Ubuntu

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sudo apt-get install monit

Configurations

Default configurations are located at /etc/monit/monitrc you can edit it. Or if you find that it includes some other files in the bottom of /etc/monit/monitrc it’s recommended to edit the included files!

In my case all lines of /etc/monit/monitrc are commented out, and in the bottom of the file there’s this snippet:

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###############################################################################
## Includes
###############################################################################
##
## It is possible to include additional configuration parts from other files or
## directories.
#
include /etc/monit.d/*
#
#

So, now we have to make edits in the folder of /etc/monit.d/. By default you’ll find localhost file in /etc/monit.d/ and that seems that this is the only file that be loaded for Monit. Note that maybe you have get sudo permission to edit this file.

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set daemon 20
set logfile syslog facility log_daemon

set mailserver smtp.gmail.com port 587 # if you want to use Gmail/Google app mail as a sender
        username "_EMAIL_" password "_PASSWORD_"
        using tlsv1
        with timeout 30 seconds

set alert MY_PERSONAL_EMAIL@domain.com # set this to recive alerts and notifications

set httpd port 2812 and # Monit will run on port 2812
    use address localhost
    allow localhost
    allow 192.168.0.0/255.255.255.0 #set your network ip range
    allow USERNAME:PASSWORD #set your username and password to loin to your Monit

Now run Monit with the new configs with sudo monit -d 60 -c /etc/monit/monitrc

Try to curl localhost:2812 by curl localhost:2812 and you’ll get this response, Unauthorized response as expected.

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<html>
  <head><title>401 Unauthorized</title></head>
  <body bgcolor=#FFFFFF>
    <h2>Unauthorized</h2>
    You are <b>not</b> authorized to access <i>monit</i>.
    Either you supplied the wrong credentials (e.g. bad password),
    or your browser doesn't understand how to supply the credentials required
    <p><hr><a href='http://mmonit.com/monit/'><font size=-1>monit 5.0.3</font></a>
  </body>
</html>

Congratulations! Your Monit is running well!

I wanna see what I’ve done!!

If you are running Nginx on your server, and you want to access Monit on some domain, you can get this behavior using a proxy pass.

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server {
  listen 80;
  server_name services.DOMAIN.com;
  location / {
    proxy_pass http://127.0.0.1:2812;
    proxy_set_header Host $host;
  }
}

Or on Apache

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<VirtualHost *:80>
    ServerName services.DOMAIN.com
    ProxyPass / http://127.0.0.1:2812
    ProxyPassReverse / http://127.0.0.1:2812
</VirtualHost>

Restart you Apache or Nginx server and go to services.DOMAIN.com. You’ll get a prompt to put your username and password. Enter what we already set in /etc/monit.d/localhost. And here we go!

Monit GUI

Adding services

You can add services to monitor as much as you want, just add some lines in the bottom of /etc/monit.d/localhost.

Monit service

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check process monit
   with pidfile /var/run/monit.pid
   start program  "/etc/init.d/monit start"
   stop program  "/etc/init.d/monit stop"

Nginx service

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check process nginx
  with pidfile /opt/nginx/logs/nginx.pid #Pid file for nginx in my case it located in /opt/nginx/logs/
  start program = "/etc/init.d/nginx start"
  stop program = "/etc/init.d/nginx stop"
  if failed host IP_ADDRESS port 80 protocol HTTP then restart #set your server IP that runs nginx
  if 5 restarts with 5 cycles then timeout
  if cpu is greater than 30% for 2 cycles then alert
  if cpu is greater than 50% for 5 cycles then restart
  if totalmem is greater than 50.0 MB for 5 cycles then restart
  if children is greater than 10 then restart

I will update and add more services later.

Good cases to use Monit

  • - Monitoring Web Applications that run as deamons, like: thin, mongrel, passenger standalone, …
  • - Monitoring MongoDB database folder’s permissions.
  • - Monitoring Node.js applications.

Conclusion

Monit is a great tool to monitor your server. It has lots of feature that I didn’t mention in this blog post. You have to give a try. Also don’t forget to take a look at Monit Official Documentation and there’s a screencast by FOSSCasts.

]]> http://rushthinking.com/using-monit/feed/ 0 Real Web Based Console http://rushthinking.com/real-web-based-console/ http://rushthinking.com/real-web-based-console/#comments Sun, 13 Feb 2011 22:01:11 +0000 Amr http://blog.rushthinking.com/?p=32 Couple weeks ago I worked on making a web based shell.

Before, I started googling ”web based shell”, but couldn’t find what I was looking for. Later, I decided to start build my own with my own view.

I picked Sinatra Web Framework for its ease of use for building APIs. And here I will talk about the concept of building it.

First the tree of the application was like this:

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console
`|- app.rb
 |- config.ru
 |- public/
 |- views/
 |- web/
 `|- folder_1
  |- folder_2

Building the API

app.rb

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class Console &lt; Sinatra::Base
  require 'json'
  require 'yaml'

  BASE_PATH = File.expand_path(File.dirname(__FILE__) + "/web")
  # BASE_PATH is The folder the the console will only access
  # Also, enable Sinatra Cookies and Sessions

  get '/' do
    session[:current_path] = BASE_PATH
    haml :index
  end

  before do
    set_current_dir
    @p = env["rack.request.query_hash"] #accessing `q` and `XXX` like ?q=XXX
    # I dont know if theres another way
  end

  def set_current_dir #set @current for the current folder we are
    @current = session[:current_path]
  end  

  def f_level(path1_string, path2_string)
    # Check http://stackoverflow.com/questions/4353410/any-function-in-ruby-determine-the-difference-between-folders-level
    path1, path2 = [path1_string, path2_string].map { |s| s.split(File::SEPARATOR) }
    minsize = [path1, path2].map(&amp;:size).min
    path1.first(minsize) == path2.first(minsize) ? path1.size - path2.size : nil
  end

  get '/api/v0.1/:command' do
    content_type :json
    msg = {} # a hash for returning errors, messages etc.

    f = "#{@current}/#{@p['q']}"
    f = "#{@current}" if @p['q'].nil?

    unless File.exist?(f)
      msg['error'] = "No such file or directory - #{@p['q']} in ~/#{@current[@current.index('web'), @current.length]}"
      return msg.to_json
    end

    level = f_level(File.expand_path(f), BASE_PATH)

    if level.nil? || level &lt; 0 || level.nil? || @p['q'] &amp;&amp; @p['q'][0] == '/'
      # this prevents user to go up the folder `/web` Or that you specified in BASE_PATH
      msg['error'] = "Unauthorized to access #{@p['q']}"
      return msg.to_json
    end

    f = File.expand_path(f)

    case params[:command]
    when "pwd"
      ("/LOTS_OF_FOLDERS/#{@current[@current.index('web'), @current.length]}").to_json

    when "cd"
      if File.directory?(f)
        session[:current_path] = f
        session[:current_path] = BASE_PATH if @p['q'] == ""
        f = session[:current_path]
        f.to_json
      else
        msg['error'] = "cd: #{@p['q']}: Not a directory"
        msg.to_json
      end

    when "ls"
      if File.directory?(f)
        Dir.glob("#{f}/*").map{ |x| File.basename(x)}.to_json
      else
        msg['error'] = "ls: #{@p['q']}: Not a directory"
        msg.to_json
      end

    when "cat" #show file content
      if File.file?(f)
        file = File.open(f)
        result = ""
        result &lt;&lt; file.gets.strip while !file.eof?
        result.strip.to_json
      else
        msg['error'] = "cat: #{@p['q']}: Is a directory"
        msg.to_json
        # "cat: No such file or directory - #{@p['q']} in #{@current}".to_json
      end

    else
      "invalid all"
    end
  end
end

config.ru

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require 'rubygems'
require 'sinatra'
require 'haml'
require 'sass'
require './app'
run Console

Examples that return JSON object

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/api/v0.1/pwd
/api/v0.1/cd[?q=SOME_FOLDER]
/api/v0.1/ls[?q=SOME_FOLDER]
/api/v0.1/cat?q=SOME_FILE

Finally

You have to run the Sinatra app. I will release its full source on Github soon. For the Graphical user interface I used a custom modified version of JQuery Console 1.0 and some Javascript here and there! You can check a working example here http://lab.rushthinking.com.

Update

This post is about how building an API in general, I used Ruby File API, and the only methods I worked on iscd, pwd, ls, cat. Though nano, su, sudo and others will not work! Thanks Jamal Shaheen.

]]> http://rushthinking.com/real-web-based-console/feed/ 0 Yalla ’3 Demo.ps http://rushthinking.com/yalla-3-demo-ps/ http://rushthinking.com/yalla-3-demo-ps/#comments Fri, 26 Feb 2010 10:30:42 +0000 Amr http://rushthinking.com/?p=79 The title means “Let’s go to Demo.ps”

After the second meeting of Demo.ps, I understand now! There are alot of entrepreneurs.

Demo.ps: Palestinian Entrepreneurship Forum for Startups and Technology
Or in Arabic: تجمع المبادرين و الرياديين الفلسطينيين “.

It’s the first gesture of its kind in Palestine, to talk about innovations and startups in general, e-marketing and solutions, technology and much more.

Day after a day, people wants to know more about Demo.ps, the people behind it and the idea itself. In my previous post “what’s demo.ps”, I wrote it in rush, and nothing -almost- was clear. Well, some more information.

The Team

The Idea

From the beginning, the idea came and buzzed while a meeting of the three Guys of the team: Amr, Ayman and Omar. First we thought of a video community for technologist in Nablus. Later, we decide to make it such an event from time to time.

In The Action

We’ve done the first session and the introduction session was in my dad office, with the help of Mohammed Salameh, and attending of 20 invited people including Dr. Baker Abdulhaq. The attendees were encouraging of the idea, they liked it and wanted to know more.

We begun our activity through a facebook page for Demo.ps. We collected more than 100 of fans in couple of days. We made a twitter channel (@demo_ps) also! We’ve gone social! The Demo.ps website is currently in the beta stage, check it out!

For preparing the second meeting, we’ve got help from Dr. Baker Abdulhaq. And it was done on Saturday, Feb, 20 in a computer lab in the university. Yes, it was amazing. We faced the rapid reaction of the attendees that we didn’t expect! Many people would like to talk.

Shots… Say Cheese!

Challenges

In the second meeting, some people bet on us, that the attendees won’t break the 10 people! Well, the attendees were 10 multiply 8. Yes almost 80 people were attended this meeting, and many others said sorry that they couldn’t attend. So, see you next meeting.

Next time, we expect more people, so more space is needed!

Special Thanks

  • - Dr. Baker Abdulhaq
  • - Inst. Mohammed Salameh
  • - Dr. Maher Arafat
  • - All attendees of the previous sessions so far.
]]> http://rushthinking.com/yalla-3-demo-ps/feed/ 0 What is Demo.ps? http://rushthinking.com/what-is-demo-ps/ http://rushthinking.com/what-is-demo-ps/#comments Sun, 07 Feb 2010 10:22:51 +0000 Amr http://rushthinking.com/?p=72 In Palestine, the core of the information technology growth is the youth. And the Technical openness which happened in previous years is the gate for the perfect progress in the natural life, especially in the technological development.

Recently, an union of information technology has been established in Nablus. A good move. But what then? It must be effective for tech activities etc..

Ummm, okay, Demo.ps has a solution.

The Name

Demo is the shortcut of demonstration word. .PS is the Palestinian domain. And because we/you want to show and talk it’s Demo.ps

So what?

Demo.ps came to hold the initiative minds of youth, developing their technical knowledge, to make them motivated to discover more.

Demo.ps is your stage to talk, share and exchange ideas/information in technology domain.

In other way

Demo.ps is a series of sessions that talk about many topics, such as:

  • - Startups and innovations
  • - Web applications, and development
  • - E-marketing and solutions for making business
  • - Mobile development
  • - New Technologies
  • - Programming Language
  • - And more other…

Get connected

Currently, Demo.ps Website is in development stage. Visit it bookmark it and come back again

Also, Demo.ps has social channels on Facebook and Twitter. To stay updated, become a fan on Facebook: here. And follow Demo.ps on Twitter: here. Or subscribe to this blog: here

Sponsors

Now, Demo.ps is leaded by Highruns, Inc.

If you want to support Demo.ps, contact info[at]demo.ps

Conclusion

Demo.ps is a unique-type of sessions/events in Palestine. Now, It covers Nablus area, and soon will cover All the Westbank.

You have to come!

]]> http://rushthinking.com/what-is-demo-ps/feed/ 0 Thinking Global! http://rushthinking.com/thinking-global/ http://rushthinking.com/thinking-global/#comments Fri, 05 Feb 2010 10:47:09 +0000 Amr http://rushthinking.com/?p=88 In this article I will talk about the thinking global role in making web innovations and startups in Palestine.

Young People

Well, six years ago, Facebook published as a social web site for Harvard students. The Creator of Facebook, Mark Zucherburg, was only 20 years old. Years later he made Facebook a world wide social community with millions of users. Nowadays, Mark is rated as the richest guy in the world. Yes, all because Facebook.

mark

Status

Let’s back to Palestine, Palestine is witnessing the rapidly rise in the field of technology. All noticed the changes in the daily lives of citizens, we all use iPhones to explore the Internet on the roads, yes, also we have 3G technology. And no books any more, Amazon Kindle is available for using, and everybody use it. The Internet connection available in 50Mb/s lately. Yes Yes Yes it all Lies.

Honestly, Palestine got the worst. No 3G technology. The Internet Connection is available only up to 2Mb/s –and everybody has limited quota for his monthly download. This is only about how people connect the WWW. And that is a tip of the iceberg.

Don’t wonder, begin with yourself.

Could we find a guy like Mark in this land. Maybe. Why maybe? say “Yes”, say I know somebody, say: “Me”. If your answer is “No”, then ask again Why no? say “Yes”, say I know somebody, say: “Me”.

YES WE CAN

Martin Luther King had a dream and Obama said Yes We Can, and we all saw how the black people of the US switched from being slaves to be presidents and billionaires.

yes we can

The Problem

It’s itself complicated. Specialists needed to list the problem(s) in the points.

The Solution

The solution in my opinion, is to think global -see the needs of the world, not even the area you live in, apply it, share it and I promise you’ll success.

Thinking locally destroys me. Give me an exact number of people who will use your own social community. Nobody will leave Facebook or Twitter to interacts with such social network that its visitor won’t hit 1000 people.

Let’s take Peeks as an example, Peeks means Palestinian Geeks. Well its great idea, but not great as it applied now. Peeks uses NING as a ready to use social network -not so nerdy. Okay, first time I saw this “geeks” website, I got exited, I signed up, and played around, but naaahhh, I have months with no one login record, why? Ask Peeks Owners.

Another funny example is the Open Advertisements Websites. Let’s count how many website specialized with such things.

So do you think people like things like that, they get enough of one at least, so don’t think of a new website with same idea.

More to talk about…

Conclusion

Think Global, not local. Pick a talent team. Have no limits. Go over sky.

]]> http://rushthinking.com/thinking-global/feed/ 0 Hello world! My world http://rushthinking.com/hello-world-my-world/ http://rushthinking.com/hello-world-my-world/#comments Wed, 03 Feb 2010 23:17:13 +0000 Amr http://blog.rushthinking.com/?p=1 Well, this is my first article in this blog.

I wrote lots in my previous blog, and I used Mephisto. Now since my blog is out of date and really out of date, I decided to start a new blog, elegant, clean and in a geeky style!

Since I’m a Rubyist, I chose a blog engine written in Ruby and one make me feel like real hacker, and here’s My Blog running on the top of Jekyll. I’m running it on WordPress. “Time is Gold”

I always try to keep blogging, but unfortunately I’m lazy in writing -even in my Arabic language, And as I am saying programmers don't write else code.

This blog is my lab, test stage and knowledge “exchange and share” place.

My World

I’m a freelance web developer, working with Ruby Language and its frameworks and Gems. I started learning Ruby with learning Ruby on Rails in the middle of 2007, at that time I was almost busy so I went back to PHP. I learnt CakePHP, and 2 weeks later I returned to Rails, I read 3 of its books, I was in love with that charming language.

This Blog

In this blog I’ll write about programming in general, Ruby, technology, tips and tricks, some tutorial series, events around me, ah and my life status.

Let’s Go!

And here we go!!

 

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