It’s much simpler than Forever. Approximately 50 lines of CoffeeScript code.
It displays your apps output to STDOUT and also displays any of your apps
STDERR output in red.

Usage

Install it via npm:

npm install buzz


Then run:

buzz 240 your_cool_app param1 param2


The first parameter to buzz is the time in seconds that it’ll be killed and
restarted. So, `your_cool_app` would be killed and restarted after four minutes.

If you don’t want buzz to kill your app, but you want it to bring it back to
life if it dies, run:

buzz your_cool_app param1 param2


You can test buzz by running his the app `buzz_test`:

buzz_test


`buzz_test` runs the app `smarty_pants` that spews out random facts to you and
taunts you. Occasionally `smarty_pants` will commit suicide, but buzz will
bring him back to life.

`buzz_test` ends up actualy just running the following command:

buzz 10 smarty_pants 2000 0.15


Which will kill smarty pants every 10 seconds and bring him back to life. Also,
every two seconds, smarty pants will spit out a random fact. Approximately, every
13 seconds smarty pants will take his own life, but Buzz will bring him back.

Motivation

I have a command line app that is nasty to debug. It’s working fine for the first
five minutes or so. Thus, Buzz was born. Instead of fixing the bug, I wanted
to make this. =)

But really, it’s utility is that it’s a much simpler Forever.

The name comes from Buzz Lightyear in the movie Toy Story. His popular phrase was: To infinity and beyond!

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-JP Richardson

I provide a script to automate this process:

This script is deprecated now. Fortunately 10Gen (the company who makes MongoDB) provides an Apt repository. Do not use the current MongoDB version in the Ubuntu apt sources. It’s version 1.6.*

All you need to do:

vim /etc/apt/sources.list


Add the following line:
deb http://downloads-distro.mongodb.org/repo/ubuntu-upstart dist 10gen


apt-get update
apt-get install mongodb-10gen


By default MongoDB runs in trusted mode. This means that it’s listening on port 27017 for any connection. We want it to only listen on localhost.

Edit the file: /etc/mongodb.conf

Add the following lines:
bind_ip 127.0.0.1
noauth = true ##### YOU MUST add this line if you use bind_ip

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-JP

#!/bin/bash

for logfile in *.log
do

fn=${logfile%.*} #cut extension

echo making $fn.data...
egrep '\#\ collect|\:\=' $logfile > $fn.data 

done

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-JP

The lines in the log files look something like this:

####### collect $TIMESTAMP #########
*GARBAGE
*GARBAGE
*GARBAGE
$ID:=$DATASET
*GARBAGE


It’s been years since I’ve done anything more than a simple grep. I wasn’t even sure which grep I needed… egrep? fgrep? grep?

I can use this regex for the timestamp line:

\#\ collect

I can use this regex for the dataset line:

\:\=

But how can I put them together? It’s probably of no surpise that I can use the ‘|’ operator like so:

egrep '\#\ collect|\:\=' 2010-09-25.log

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That’s it! Follow me on Twitter @jprichardson and read my blog on entrepreneurship.

-JP

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-JP

This article will provide step by step instructions for preparing and then deploying a Rails application on Ubuntu 8.04 LTS that uses Microsoft SQL Server 2005.

Install Ruby
sudo apt-get install ruby-full build-essential

Install Apache 2
sudo apt-get install apache2 apache2-mpm-prefork apache2-prefork-dev

Install Ruby Gems
Do not install Ruby Gems from Apt.  This will screw up your Gems repository as Apt and Gems will both want to manage it.  Download the latest Gems package from http://rubyforge.org.  At the time of this writing the latest version is 1.3.  Version 1.3 is also the version that I used.
wget http://rubyforge.org/frs/download.php/43985/rubygems-1.3.0.tgz
tar xzvf rubygems-1.3.0.tgz
cd rubygems-1.3.0
sudo ruby setup.rb
sudo ln -s /usr/bin/gem1.8 /usr/bin/gem
sudo gem update --system

Install Rails
Make sure to install the proper version.  You may need to pass the “–version” flag.
sudo gem install rails

Install Phusion Passenger
This allows us to deploy Rails application with as much simplicity as it takes to deploy a PHP application.  This we can avoid using Mongrel/Proxy Balancing/(Apache|Lighttpd|Nginx).
sudo gem install passenger
sudo passenger-install-apache2-module

Next add the following to your /etc/apache2/apache2.conf file:
LoadModule passenger_module /usr/lib/ruby/gems/1.8/gems/passenger-2.0.3/ext/apache2/mod_passenger.so
PassengerRoot /usr/lib/ruby/gems/1.8/gems/passenger-2.0.3
PassengerRuby /usr/bin/ruby1.8

Install Ruby/ODBC/SQLServer2005 Compatibility
In /etc/profile add the following:
export ODBCINI=/etc/odbc.ini
export ODBCSYSINI=/etc
export FREETDSCONF=/etc/freetds/freetds.conf

Make sure you restart your shell after this!

Now install UnixODBC:
sudo apt-get install unixodbc
sudo apt-get install unixodbc-dev
sudo apt-get install tdsodbc


Now install FreeTDS (stable) from source. The FreeTDS in the Apt repository is version 0.63 and will not work with SQL Server 2005. At the time of this writing, the current stable version is 0.82.
wget ftp://ftp.ibiblio.org/pub/Linux/ALPHA/freetds/stable/freetds-stable.tgz
cd freetds-stable
./configure
make
sudo make install

Edit /etc/freetds/freetds.conf and add the following:
[YOUR_DB_DEFINITION_NAME]
host = 172.24.40.100
port = 1433
tds version = 8.0


Test it with the following:
sqsh -S YOUR_DB_DEFINITION_NAME -U USERNAME -P PASSWORD


Once actually logged in, you can run some SQL and verify the results. Make sure to type “go” after each command and also make sure to “use” the right database.

Now edit /etc/odbc.ini and add the following:
[YOUR_DB_DEFINITION_NAME]
Driver = FreeTDS
Description = ODBC connection via FreeTDS
Trace = No
Servername = YOUR_DB_DEFINITION_NAME
Database = YOUR_ACTUAL_DB_NAME


Edit /etc/odbcinst.ini and add the following:
[FreeTDS]
Description = TDS driver (Sybase/Microsoft SQL)
Driver = /usr/lib/odbc/libtdsodbc.so
Setup = /usr/lib/odbc/libtdsS.so
CPTimeout =
CPReuse =
FileUsage = 1


Now test it….
isql YOUR_DB_DEFINITION_NAME USERNAME PASSWORD


Install Ruby ODBC:
wget http://www.ch-werner.de/rubyodbc/ruby-odbc-0.9995.tar.gz
tar zvxf ruby-odbc-0.9995.tar.gz
cd ruby-odbc-0.9995/
ruby extconf.rb
make
sudo make install


Install ActiveRecord ODBC Adapter
sudo gem install activerecord-odbc-adapter


Edit your database.yml in your application and configure it like…
development:
adapter: odbc
dsn: YOUR_DB_DEFINITION_NAME
username: USERNAME
password: PASSWORD


Now dump your Rails app in /var/www/yourrailsapp and add a new Apache Virtual Host as seen in the previous post. Configure the virtual host DocumentRoot to point to the public directory in Apache2.  Do not forget to change ownership of your rails app to www-data. (chown -R www-data:www-data yourrailsapp) That’s all there is too it! Now you can deploy a number of Rails apps in Apache with little trouble!

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This is extremely easy to do.  This was done on Ubuntu 8.04.  Replace “SERVER_IP” with the IP address of your  server.

Edit /etc/apache2/apache2.conf and add the following:

NameVirtualHost SERVER_IP:80

Create a new file “subdomain” in /etc/apache2/sites-available with the content:

<VirtualHost SERVER_IP:80> *

ServerName subdomain.yourdomain.com
DocumentRoot /var/www/subdomain

<Directory “/var/www/subdomain”> **
Order allow,deny
Allow from all
</Directory>

</VirtualHost>

Then run:
a2ensite subdomain
/etc/init.d/apache2 restart

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