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Alessandro Pisa

Mar 13, 2012

Fix funkload report generation problems by upgrading gnuplot

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If your funkload tests are succesful, but you get the error "Report generation failed for ..." check your gnuplot version. Older versions are in conflict with our benchmarking tool. This is my way to fix the problem

After running funkload tests [1] on CentOS 5.7 I ran into a problem: I was not able to generate the reports.

Digging into the funkload internals, I realized that the problem was related to a syntax error raised by gnuplot, that was silently swallowed by the report generator command.

The funkload generated plot commands were in conflict with the gnuplot version installed by default on the system (4.0 patchlevel 0, a very old one!).

On my shiny kubuntu I had no problems with gnuplot version 4.4.4, so I solved this problem by adding an updated gnuplot version to my buildout.

Here is how I made it work:

[buildout]
extends = base.cfg
parts+= 
    gnuplot
   
[gnuplot]
recipe = zc.recipe.cmmi
url = http://sourceforge.net/projects/gnuplot/files/gnuplot/4.4.4/gnuplot-4.4.4.tar.gz/download 
configure-options =
    --bindir=${buildout:directory}/bin

 

For this trick to work properly, the bin directory inside the buildout folder should be in your PATH environment variable. If you are using virtualenv properly, you will probably stumble upon this.

[1] Version 1.11.0, the one that, to my knowledge, works best with collective.recipe.funkload as of version 0.3.1

Dec 06, 2011

SSH tips and tricks: how to save time configuring properly SSH

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This blog post is about ssh client configuration. Configuring ssh is a really good practice both for saving time and keeping organized your connections data. Even though the blogosphere is full of posts like this, I think it is worth repeating because the practice of keeping an up to date ssh configuration is not so diffused.

In my daily activity I find myself connecting to a lot of servers and it is hard to remember for each of them the correct hostname or IP and the related credentials.

To speed up my work I try to keep has much as possible updated my .ssh/config file.

Let's say, for example that one of our clients, let's say ACME :), gives us access to a fictitious server with the IP address 999.999.999.999. 

They give us the access that server with the username bugs and ssh is listen to port 2222.

As soon as I am authorized to connect to a new server I insert a new section to the file like this:

# The new acme server
Host acme
HostName 999.999.999.999
Port 2222
User bugs

 This way instead of typing:

ssh -p2222 bugs@999.999.999.999

I can just type:

ssh acme

with the same effects.

The benefits of that go beyond the use of ssh, because the same configuration file has effect on other ssh related programs like scp, rsync and sshfs.

In addition .ssh/config is parsed by bash completion scripts so I can save further keystrokes (holy laziness)!

This is good, more than for today, for tomorrow because time passes and I can forget the username, the server IP or the port, but I would hardly forget I worked for ACME and to get those info quickly reading .ssh/config is enough.

Of course I can add many hosts sections to the .ssh/config like I am showing in this example:

## List of ACME servers ##
# The staging server
Host acme-staging
HostName staging.example.com
User bugs
# The production server
Host acme-production
HostName production.example.com
User bunny

## Another customer ##
Host demo
HostName 10.0.1.100
User donald

# I can also setup a tunnel to a port
Host demo-debug
HostName 10.0.1.100
User root
LocalForward 8080 localhost:8080

As you can see each section starts with the Host declaration and the settings are effective only for that specific Host.

In the last example we make a tunnel forwarding the 8080 port to localhost, useful in case the server firewall filters direct connections from outside.

With this configuration the command:

ssh demo-debug

is equivalent to:

ssh root@10.0.1.100 -L 8080:localhost:8080

 

Further readings

Beyond the nice manual page about ssh configuration:

man ssh_config

you could find very useful those links to

A note to KDE users

I found out that also sftp and fish KIO slaves are aware of ssh configuration, with the difference that fish overrides the User directive, i.e., using the example before, to connect to the acme server as bugs I have to point dolphin to either fish://bugs@acme or to sftp://acme

.

 

Aug 13, 2010

Where is my manage portlets link?

Filed Under:

Check that your content implements plone.portlets.interfaces.ILocalPortletAssignable

It is the second time in a couple of days that I am asked why in some pages there is no link to the @@manage-portlets view. In both cases the archetypes missing the link (and the view) where inheriting from a very basic object.

After a small research I found that this view is registered for the interface plone.portlets.interfaces.ILocalPortletAssignable.

Making the object interface inherit from this interface solved the problem.

Jun 24, 2010

rt.vuvuzela?!

Filed Under:

Creato durante l'agonia di Italia - Slovacchia

rt.vuvuzela e' su pypi

Per vedere ciò di cui rt.vuvuzela è capace aggiungetela agli come al solito alla sezione [instance] del vostro buildout (eggs e zcml).

Una volta rilanciato il buildout la vista vuvuzela sarà a vostra disposizione.

Ecco uno screenshot della vista:

rt.vuvuzela at work

Per accedere al player aggiungete "vuvuzela" all'url, ad esempio:
http://nohost.com/vuvuzela
http://nohost.com/mycontent/vuvuzela

Un logo per rt.vuvuzela???

rt.vuvuzela logo

rt.vuvuzela is out!

Filed Under:

Developed while watching Italy on tv. Suffering...

rt.vuvuzela is available from pypi

As usual add rt.vuvuzela to eggs and zcml into the [instance] section of your buildout.

Then you can just go to your site and you will have a nice vuvuzela view displaying a player stealed borrowed from wikipedia. Here you can see a snapshot of the view:

rt.vuvuzela at work

To see it live just append "vuvuzela" to your browser url, e.g.:

http://nohost.com/vuvuzela
http://nohost.com/mycontent/vuvuzela


rt.vuvuzela logo???

rt.vuvuzela logo