What an amazing place – I seriously have to try and find some time to write about it soon.
I want to go back…NOW!
Archive | 2012
How To Install The Latest APC 3.1.9 On Ubuntu 10.04 LTS & W3 Total Cache Optimization
Yah another geeky post – woohoo! Anyway, when you are running high traffic WordPress sites – it’s very common to use W3 Total Cache (known as w3tc usually).
And with this you need some kind of in memory cache to store objects/db queries etc – the choice for a single server setup is generally APC as it’s part of the PHP core now (used to be eAccelerator/Xcache were contenders too).
Anyway never use APC for page caching – use disk enhanced and make sure your rewrites are working properly – your site will fly. For Object Cache and Database Cache – you should use APC (if you have a multi-machine cluster then use memcached).
The problem you might face (especially on Ubuntu 10.04) is that it uses a fairly old version of PHP and thus APC (3.1.3). I was facing horrible fragmentation with this setup and it will effect server performance over time. I could see from my monitoring that it was reaching over 20% fragmentation, this is not super bad – but over 10% is enough to worry for me as I’m a performance freak.
I tried various different tweaks (ttl 0, ttl 7200, ttl 3200) but it wouldn’t go down. I eventually figured out I might try updating apc, rather than sticking with the one installed using: aptitude install php-apc.
Assuming you already have php-apc installed and configured, this single command will remove it, and install the latest version of APC.
sudo aptitude remove php-apc; sudo aptitude install php-pear libpcre3 libpcre3-dev; sudo pecl install apc
Then all you need to do is:
sudo /etc/init.d/apache2 restart
Or for nginx/php-fpm (my preference now):
sudo /etc/init.d/nginx stop; sudo /etc/init.d/php5-fpm stop; sudo /etc/init.d/nginx start; sudo /etc/init.d/php5-fpm start
And that’s it, now you’ll have the latest version of APC running and you should see a LOT less fragmentation (mine is hovering about 4% now instead of 20%).
I’ll keep an eye on it, perhaps change the apc.ini settings a little more (usually found in /etc/php5/conf.d/apc.ini) – for reference if you want those, here they are 🙂
extension=apc.so
apc.enabled = 1
apc.shm_segments = 1
apc.shm_size = 128M
apc.optimization = 0
apc.num_files_hint = 2048
apc.user_entries_hint = 2048
apc.ttl = 7200
apc.user_ttl = 3600
apc.gc_ttl = 600
apc.cache_by_default = 1
apc.filters = "-/home/username/domains/yoursite.com/public_html/apc.php$"
apc.mmap_file_mask = "/tmp/apc.XXXXXX"
apc.slam_defense = 0
apc.file_update_protection = 2
apc.user_request_time = 1
apc.enable_cli = 0
apc.max_file_size = 2M
apc.stat = 1
apc.write_lock = 1
apc.report_autofilter = 0
apc.include_once_override = 0
apc.rfc1867 = 0
apc.rfc1867_prefix = "upload_"
apc.rfc1867_name = "APC_UPLOAD_PROGRESS"
apc.rfc1867_freq = 0
apc.localcache = 1
apc.localcache.size = 1024
apc.coredump_unmap = 0
apc.stat_ctime = 0
Enjoy!
Happy 34th Birthday To Me!
Yah it’s my birthday again – wooohoo!
This is actually a scheduled post, because right now I’m somewhere in the World – and it’s a surprise (this was written March 18th and I have no idea where I’m going).
I guess you’ll most likely see where I’m headed on Twitter, so follow me there – @ShaolinTiger
Here’s a picture of me enjoying a beer on the beach in Koh Lipe last November.
So yah, happy birthday to me and thanks to my awesome wife Kimberly for taking me away on a surprise birthday holiday!
Future Music Festival Asia (FMFA) 2012 – With Chase & Status And Pendulum
You should know by now, I’m a MASSIVE electronic music fan – especially Drum and Bass.
One of my favourite acts is Chase & Status, a pair of fairly nerdy looking white dudes from London – followed by Camo & Crooked and then probably Pendulum. You can imagine my surprise (and pure delight) when I saw the lineup for Future Music Festival Asia 2012 (hereon known as FMFA) included both Chase & Status and Pendulum!
Imagine my dismay later..when they scheduled them both on at the same time…WTF? Seriously – there’s 2 DnB acts on in the WHOLE festival and 5 different stages – and they put them both on AT THE SAME FUCKING TIME. Pendulum was on for 2 hours (8.30pm-10.30pm), but was only a DJ set and Chase & Status was LIVE (8.30pm-9.30pm)! So yah!
We headed there around 7pm just as the sun was going down, I got my best junglist massive outfit on – ready to rinse out.
Yah my cap should have been Burberry, but I don’t have one – so neh. We chilled for a while first whilst the sun went down, grabbed a couple of beers and kicked back on the grass.
We were waiting quite a while, as the schedule seem to have gotten knocked back quite a while.
The first act we caught was the rather late starting Sneaky Sound System, they were really really good live – the singer was incredible (both her vocals and her stage presence). Her name is Connie Mitchell and man can she move.
We were a fair way back at that point and it was a nice warm up to the festival, but really I was waiting for 8.30pm for Chase & Status to come on..they were delayed though and only started after 9 I think. I was happy to see the DJ decks rolled off and a full drum kit exposed with guitars and all sorts coming out – this meant 1 thing..
Chase & Status were going to be playing their music live! We headed right down into the chaos at the front, right next to the fence.
Yah drum and bass played live on a drumkit – you can’t beat that shit seriously. They started out banging straight away with insane Dubstep and Drum n Bass tracks assaulting us non-stop. This is how sweaty you look after dancing and jumping to awesome dnb for half an hour or so.
Then a female vocalist came out to perform Heartbeat and Time, I didn’t really catch her name – I think it was Holly something. Time was mind-blowing live.
Here’s a short clip of it, apologies for the sound quality but the camera was clearly overwhelmed by the epic basslines. Listen to the original here.
The moshpit in front was getting pretty mad too, I wanted to join in…but I was scared I’d crush them all. This was during Fool Yourself – listen to the original here.
I didn’t take all that many pics or videos because I was busy mashing it up, junglist stylee. Their set finished at 10:08pm – it was legendary.
After that we headed down to the other stage to catch the end of Pendulum, it was a DJ set though so it’s not the same – but Pendulum does have some mad tunes (like Watercolour). I would have liked to get down the front and mash it up for an hour – but due the timing – it wasn’t happening.
Just hung out at the back and caught the last 2-3 tracks he dropped.
It was ok, wondered around for a while – went to see Tinie Tempah – thought he was shite and left – headed back down to wait for Chemical Brothers to start..
There was a whole lot of confusion down there, no lights, no spotlight on the stage, no intro, no wording on the backdrop, no emcee – no one actually had any idea if Chemical Brothers had started playing or not.
And honestly whoever was playing was pretty shit, the music was meh. We hung around for half an hour or so, then headed off home. I heard Cosmic Gate and Wombats were good – but I wasn’t going to wait around through all that monotony till 2-3am to catch them both.
Got back in time for some awesome frog porridge in SS2 then off home to bed.
Honestly I would have driven all the way there, paid and gone home happily after an hour just to see Chase & Status live – it was that good. I hope I see them again…soon!
Running Unattended/Automatic Security Updates on Ubuntu 10.04 LTS Lucid
I thought I may as well share/dump some of the tech stuff I learn on here because a) A lot of the stuff I find on Google is complete crap and b) If I forget how to do it I can just search my own blog (w00t) c) It might be useful to someone else.
Anyway, the objective of this exercise is to install security updates on Ubuntu automatically – commonly known as unattended updates (without any operator intervention). It’s not considered safe to install ALL updates unattended – just in case something goes wrong, but for security updates it’s important to install them ASAP.
And it saves you logging in to however many servers you manage (100+ for me currently) and running sudo aptitude update; sudo aptitude safe-upgrade; on all of them.
I wanted to achieve this without installing any additional software – so it can run on a bare-bones install (I’m a server minimalist).
In this case it’s for Ubuntu 10.04 LTS (we only use LTS versions of Ubuntu for production) but it should work on any Debian based variant. Ok first up:
sudo nano /etc/cron.weekly/apt-security-updates
When you have that non-existent file open, paste this inside:
echo "******START********" >> /var/log/apt-security-updates
date >> /var/log/apt-security-updates
aptitude update >> /var/log/apt-security-updates
aptitude safe-upgrade -o Aptitude::Delete-Unused=false --assume-yes --target-release lsb_release -cs-security >> /var/log/apt-security-updates
echo "Security updates (if any) installed at:" >> /var/log/apt-security-updates
date >> /var/log/apt-security-updates
echo "******END********" >> /var/log/apt-security-updates
Then make that file executable with the following command:
sudo chmod +x /etc/cron.weekly/apt-security-updates
What that file basically does is runs aptitude update and aptitude safe-upgrade and logs it all to a file – /var/log/apt-security-updates – so just in case if something goes wrong – you know which packages to look at.
Because it’s logging to a file, just one last precaution – so you don’t run out of disk space – is to add it to logrotate.
So what we do is create the following file:
sudo nano /etc/logrotate.d/apt-security-updates
Then paste this in:
/var/log/apt-security-updates {
rotate 2
weekly
size 250k
compress
notifempty
}
And that’s it, your machine will get updated with the latest security updates once a week and your HDD won’t explode because of huge log files.
KONY 2012 – Make a Difference
First and foremost – this is incredible film making.
KONY 2012 from INVISIBLE CHILDREN on Vimeo.
Secondly, it’s an amazing cause – and yes we can all make a difference.
You can join Invisible Children on Facebook here:
https://www.facebook.com/invisiblechildren
Join the cause here:
And donate here:
Homeland – Intensely Gripping Television!
Now it’s been a fair while since I wrote about what TV Series I’ve been watching, and well I still think Breaking Bad – The New BEST TV Series EVAR!! – is still the best, even more so after the latest season!
Of course Entourage has ended after 8 seasons (us fans are looking forwards to the film of course) – and there are various other shows I’ve tried out, many of which were recommended in the comments here and here.Intensley
A couple of years back there was a show that caught my interest, it was kinda quirky and pretty entertaining, it was called Life and starred Damian Lewis – an extremely striking red head chap.
Honestly, it was a good show – but by no means great. Rather directionless, gripping at times, funny at times – but in the end..a little too gimmicky. Anyway, no surprise it got cancelled in the second season. It was too weird the the US audience and had no great draw to get the ratings.
It was sad though as I thought Damian Lewis was REALLY good and I wanted to see where he was going to take the character of Charlie Crews. I also enjoyed it greatly because Christina Hendricks was in it…but that is besides the point!
You might remember him as Maj. Richard D. Winters from Band of Brothers – but that’s probably about it. Yah he obviously suits the police/military kind of role very well.
Anyway notice the plot summary from Life:
A former police officer returns to the force after having been wrongly imprisoned for years.
Now replace police officer with US marine, the force with his life and wrongly imprison with held captive and what do you get:
A former US Marine returns to his life after having been held captive for years.
Yah, you get the storyline for Homeland – pretty similar eh? The main difference being, Homeland is spectacular television with a truly gripping plot arc.
Centers on Marine Sergeant Nicholas Brody, who returns home eight years after going missing in Iraq, and Carrie Mathison, a driven (and possibly unstable) CIA officer who suspects he might be plotting an attack on America.
It’s really intense TV, really really intense. The lead roles played by Damian Lewis and Claire Danes are both extreme characters and the way the plot intertwines is just masterful.
Plus for once, all the supporting characters are really strong in their own rights (Saul, the wife, the sister, the kids, Mike, David etc).
Claire Danes though blows it out of the water, she’s spectacular – truly.
She’s been pretty quiet since Stardust, with her married guy scandals and all that – but she came back in Homeland and kicked some serious arse.
I seriously can’t wait for the second season to air! I HIGHLY recommend you watch it if you haven’t yet.
Skrillex – Scary Monsters And Nice Sprites (Live Cover by Pinn Panelle)
I guess you probably already know I’m a fan of Dubstep, but really this blew me away man seriously, this is so awesome – it’s actually beyond words..
If you’re not familiar with the original, check it out here:
It sounds kinda harsh and rough after hearing the smooth Pinn Panelle cover.
Getting A Thorough Health Check With BP Healthcare Head2Toe In Malaysia
Well I’m not getting any younger, and I’ve been meaning to have annual health checks – or at least blood tests. I’ve been very bad, the last real health test I had was in 2004 for the company insurance, I haven’t had any health screening since then.
I finally got my arse off the couch and got around to getting myself and Kim a proper, comprehensive, top to bottom health test. I had a look around and the test that attracted me was the BP Healthcare Head2Toe Health Screening as it really seems to cover everything that concerned me and even some things I didn’t know were available (DEXA bone density scanning and Ultrasound for example).
I’ll say up front, this kind of testing is not cheap – they are using state of the art equipment though and they cover everything you can think of. It’ll set you back well over RM1000 per person, if you’re looking for something cheaper though I believe they have basic blood screening on so on starting from RM100+ and they have comprehensive allergy tests too.
All you have to do to prepare is don’t eat anything 8 hours before the test – so basically schedule your appointment in the morning and don’t eat anything when you get up, also don’t drink anything but water and you’ll be fine.
We chose to do the tests at their HQ in Glenmarie, there’s ample parking and it’s an easy to spot building.
I was actually surprised how pleasantly modern it was inside, it was also shiny and clean – a big difference from previous experiences I’ve had with health screenings.
The whole process started off with us getting registered and then taking some basic measurements like resting blood pressure, height, weight and so on.
The final part of the registration was the worst part, getting a big needle stuck in your arm to take your blood. It doesn’t hurt too bad, but still..
After that, you need to go pee in a cup and leave it in the bathroom to be collected – then the real tests begin. The order differs depending on which equipment is available and they have a ticketing system with something to guide you through.
There’s stuff like the DEXA scan for bone density – I have super awesome bone density, which is nice to know 🙂
Then the chest x-ray which is fairly standard in most medical exams – the advantage nowadays is instead of hulking round the huge exposure everything is digitized and given to you on a DVD!
The ultrasound procedure is an interesting one, you have to make sure your bladder is full to do a good bladder health ultrasound. For the guys, be prepared – you’re gonna have that ice cold gel on your nutsack..so yah.
There were various other tests too like the Spirometry test measuring lung function, heart health where you do a stress test and a treadmill ECG (the treadmill speeds up and increases the incline incrementally) – it got me sweating that’s for sure.
They also have an Audiology Test is a hearing test to gauge hearing loss, which is very common but often undiagnosed leading to depression or frustration due to poor communication abilities at work and with loved ones. This test is available at BP Diagnostic Centers.
And it ends with a medical consultation to explain your results and let you know if there’s anything you should keep an eye on.
The doctor will explain all the results, let you know any areas you need to be aware of and any changes you need to make in your lifestyle or medicine you might need to take.
Health-wise I’m fairly ok, I just need to make some lifestyle changes as I have above average cholesterol and a slightly fatty liver. I need to drink less (boohoo) and exercise more, it’s as I expected pretty much (hence me wanting to go on a diet etc).
One interesting thing I did learn from the lab work on my blood is that my Hepatitis vaccine has expired and I need to get a booster jab.
You can find out more about the Comprehensive Health Screening vs Head2Toe Health Screening here:
https://www.bphealthcare.com/BPDC/DCseries.asp
The BP Pharmacy is also having some promotions at the moment (for the BP Glucometer, BP Glucometer STrips, BP Blood Pressure Meter and BP 30th Anniversary Promo), you can find out more here:
