breednet

By Kevin Howard

This blog post is a guest post by Kevin Howard from MRTGExamples.com. This site is a fantastic resource for all things related to implementing and getting the most out of MRTG. I have it listed in my links on the right side of my site under the Blogroll.

What I have realized that might be of interest to those who deploy or support web servers is that MRTG can be of great help to internet sites, specifically viewing machine level monitoring and historical data, without logging into the host.

A web page either served from the host or a separate monitoring server can report vital data from other machines to the monitoring staff. This may include a 24×7 Network Operations Center or other support staff that may not have shell access to the machine. As web sites grow larger and larger, simply logging into one or two of the machines and typing a command to get the current status would rely on your memory to recall the previous administrative check.

Of course, MRTG tracks data, by the day, week, month and year. Monitoring or system administrative staff can rely on MRTG monitoring vital services to reveal something “out of the ordinary”. Current data, past hours, days, or weeks could then be examined to reveal a problem, symptom or trend. Monitoring staff can then page or contact a technical engineer with some information as to what is going on with the web, application or database server.

Application level information can also be fed and monitored via MRTG such as general stats, threads, open files, disk space or any command you can run CLI, the numeric output can be used.

Other data can be gathered via script or command, that is interpreted by a simple perl script revealing a (1 or 0 for example) that a process is “ok” or “not ok”, that can be simply graphed as well. SNMP is a straight way of gathering counter information and graphing it as well, this is much more focused on a particular item, and needs interpretation done by the monitoring staff. Basic training on what is a HIGH number or LOW number, or what indicates trouble and what does not.

Examples of this and more are at: http://www.mrtgexamples.com

You can obtain MRTG here.

For my first in a series of random reviews, I have taken some time to conduct a mini, informal experiment on websites that promise free traffic generation. Many of these sites involve you actually “browsing” through their interface, and pausing for anywhere from 8 to 30 seconds before going to the next programmed site. The whole purpose behind this is to accumulate “credits” so you can then join the fun and get someone to see your site in their “browsing” session, and hopefully click on your site, find it remotely interesting, or whatever.

For each of the sites that required “browsing” to generate traffic, I “browsed” for approximately 100 pages, so I could get a feel for rewards, bonuses, experiences, etc.

The following are a list of sites that I reviewed, as well as my unbiased, non-paid opinion:

FreeViral – Ok, so I did a quick Google search and registered here. Stuck a banner and an annoying-as-hell pop-under page, as well as a text link in my blogroll. I get a few hundreds hits a day and 0 referrals in 48 hours. This site is beyond a waste of time, I dare anyone to prove otherwise.

RoyalSurf – I have to start off with a slam on this site – if you are looking for a site that is compliant in IE 3.0 on Windows 95B, you have come to the right place. Seriously, 1996 called and wants its crappy GIF files back. Anyway, the good thing about the browsing experience is new pages load faster (7-9 seconds) than any other site, which was good. When I looked at the Google Analytics results, I only had 4 hits from royalsurf.com referrals. Not impressed with the results. Moving on.

Traffic-Splash.com – Next up is traffic-splash, which made me immediately want to pack up the family truckster and head to a sunny beach in Florida. Too bad it is mid-November. Anyway, I found my second website that I am sure would be able to render just fine in my old Pentium 120 running Windows 95B and either IE 3 or Netscape Navigator 4. The time between pages was almost as good as Royalsurf, so that was impressive. I also got about 12 hits from traffic-splash, so it seemed to work. The GIF file cheesy graphics still make me want to cry, and I thought I heard a Jimmy Buffett song or 2 in a MIDI file in the background.

Trafficswarm – While using the previous two systems, I saw some pages for Trafficswarm, and was thinking “boy these guys must be good.” Well, mixed is more like it. I liked the text link layout of the “browsing” experience, but there is a 20 second wait between clicking links, which is good for allowing pages to load, etc. but bad for building credit. I received about 10 hits from trafficswarm when I let it cut loose on my target site, choosing 3 different URLs (home page and two different articles). Not terribly impressed, moving on still.

TS25.com – Traffic Syndicate 25, ok this looked good from the start. Dead simple registration, easy to naivgate site, very simple and clean layout (no late 90s GIF files, they actually use a random unique number match to move to the next page in the “browsing” session). When you build up credit you can have up to 3 simultaneous traffic campaigns. The hit ratio looked to be the highest from TS25, where I had 53 hits. Wow.

ilovehits.com – this site is stupid, stupid, stupid, and so are you if you waste your time here. Don’t.

startxchange.com – linked with and partners with ilovehits.com. Keep on walking.

Bottom line, all of these programs were pretty lame in my experience. For the time investment, I just did not see the payoff. I am sure there is a payoff if you set up a few accounts and wrote a click bot, but I am sure you would probably get shut down pretty quickly. The traffic generated well over 90% bounce rate across the board (and 100% on some networks), so it is mostly folks just clicking through your site, and certainly not clicking on articles, enjoying your content, clicking ads or buying anything. I really don’t feel like writing a click bot (or using one) for the limited payoff of marginal traffic with 90-100% bounce rate.

I think for my blog and the few hundred hits (less than 1000/day on average) that it gets daily, I am going to stick to working on good content and social networking and social bookmarking through Digg (where I get ~25% of my referral traffic anyway), StumbleUpon and Delicious. I am also going to dramatically change my ads around and probably reduce my ad presence, and make it way more targeted.

Hope you found this helpful.

Ok, if you use WordPress (I use it on several sites), you probably logged into the admin interface and saw the top banner saying “WordPress 2.8.6 is available! Please update now.”

For most of us in the IT space (and especially in the security space), upgrades for security issues are normally no-brainers. However, this is a key example that you need to understand the security risks and/or exploitable vulnerabilities and counter-balance that with you ability to upgrade.

Just becuase WordPress releases a “Security update” does not mean you should just mindlessly update your site. Like any IT security issue, read and understadn the issues before you make a determination.

In the case of the two security issues in the WordPress 2.8.6 release, here’s the layman’s terms:

Issue #1 – XSS (Cross-site Scripting) exploit/vuln/software bug in Press This that only manifests through untrusted author accounts. If you have a blog where you trust your authors, and their login credentials are not compromised, move on.

Issue #2 – Issue with naming file uploads on Apache web server. If you are not using Apache (i.e. IIS, etc.) you don’t care. If you are not allowed to upload files to any directory on your web server you don’t care.

So in other words, I will probably update my sites in due time, but since WordPress has released at least 4 updated versions in the last 30 days and I am not affected by the 2.8.6 issues, I can do this without a great sense of urgency.

VMware has announced that VMware Fusion 3, the next major release of its virtualization solution for running Windows, Linux, and other operating systems on Intel-powered Macs, will ship on October 27. The new version ($80, with an upgrade available for $40) promises more than 50 new features, including changes designed to make it run well in Snow Leopard. The virtualization engine in Fusion 3 is completely 64-bit native, and will run in 64-bit mode under both Leopard and Snow Leopard for users of 64-bit-CPU-equipped Macs.

Fusion 3 also offers greatly improved graphics support, including support for OpenGL 2.1 and DirectX 9.0c Shader Model 3. For the first time in Fusion, users will be able to use the “Aero” visual effects in both Windows 7 and Windows Vista.

Users of physical Windows machines looking to move to Fusion 3 on the Mac will find the task has been greatly simplified. A small program on the physical PC is first run, which generates a four-digit code. Users then move to the Mac and run the migration assistant, which will ask for the four-digit code. After providing the code, the Mac will find the physical Windows PC, and set up an identical virtual machine—all without any user intervention.

Fusion Unity mode—whereby the Windows desktop is hidden and Windows applications and windows appear alongside those of OS X—has also been improved over its predecessor. Users will be able to switch between windows of a Windows application using Command-`, as they can in OS X. Windows application icons in the Dock will show a list of open windows when clicked, just like OS X applications in the Dock. You can even use Dock Exposé in Snow Leopard to show just the windows associated with a particular Windows application. Finally, a new Fusion menu bar icon provides access to the items in the Start Menu and on the Task Bar, along with some other often-used tasks.

VMware has worked toward improved performance throughout the application, reducing memory usage where possible and adding small refinements. Dragging windows in Unity mode will be notably faster than before, and CPU usage is lower than it was previously. Users will be able to copy and paste not just text but graphics as well between Windows and OS X. Fusion 3 will support multiple cores in virtual machines, as opposed to the multiple CPUs supported in Fusion 2. Virtual machines will also launch more quickly than they did in Fusion 2.

On the front end, the new virtual machine library overview window loads faster, and shows real time views of your virtual machines—even if its windows are hidden or it’s running in Unity mode. A new simplified interface makes it easier for users to create new virtual machines and handle other routine tasks. Finally, application updates are built right into the program, so users won’t need to visit the web site to download updates.

For those who need technical support, Fusion 3 will offer 18 months of free e-mail tech support (up from 30 days for the current product), as well as the option of $29 per incident phone support—a service option that wasn’t available at all with Fusion 2.

Users can pre-order the full $80 version of VMware Fusion 3 from VMware’s site, the Apple Online Store, and Amazon.com starting Tuesday. Upgrades from prior versions will be available for $40 on October 27 at vmware.com, as well as at all authorized resellers.

Source – Macworld.com

I have VMs of just about every version of Windows, and also have a VM running DOS 6.22 and Windows for Workgroups 3.11, with the TCP/IP-32 driver. Tony’s VMware site is a great link for all the drivers you will need to get WFW 3.11 running under VMware, including sound, video, and even a link to old 16-bit Netscape browsers. Enjoy.