Using MySQL query logs to debug authentication issues
I recently installed LogAnalyzer, and after the install completed I noticed that nothing was being displayed in the web interface. I figured I fat fingered something, but needed a way to verify this. Luckily for me I was using MySQL, so I enabled MySQL query logging and low and behold I proved my hypothesis: To fix this I logged into the database and changed the password for the rsyslog user: Everything began working once the application could authenticate, and I was able to start playing around with LogAnalyzer. Noting this here in case I fat finger another password in the future…
$ read more →An interesting way of looking at file system versioning (ZFS feature flags)
I got a chance to catch up with a bunch of stuff in my "need to read" / "need to watch" folder this past weekend. One of the videos I watched talked about ZFS feature flags, and how they will be used by the Illumos community to add new features to ZFS. ZFS feature flags make a lot of sense, and will definitely be invaluable once ZFS is extended by more than one organization. Cool video, and well worth the ten minutes it takes to watch it.
$ read more →How I saved $80 a month on my cable and Internet bill
I was reviewing my cable bill last month and was floored that I was spending $120 a month for a DVR, cable and Internet access. This blew my mind, and I set out on a quest to lower my bill without losing access to quality content (I like to watch educational shows and documentaries). I had a couple of requirements prior to heading down this road: I needed to be able to view shows on the major TV networks. Internet bandwidth needed to be sufficient to stream movies from Hulu, Netflix or Apple…
$ read more →How to get around the PHP strftime() It is not safe to rely on the system's timezone settings warning
When I was playing around with the LogAnalyzer Statistics page I received the following error in each of the display boxes: In the error message it provides two solutions to address this issue: Use the date.timezone php.ini entry. Call date_default_timezone_set() to set the timezone. I went with #1 and set date.timezone to the following: I restarted Apache and everything is now working. I like easy fixes…
$ read more →Enabling MySQL query logging
I recently installed the LogAnalyzer graphical syslog analysis tool. After the install completed I went to the "Show Events" page and noticed that no data was being displayed. I wanted to see which queries were being sent by LogAnalyzer to my MySQL database instance, so I enabled query logging by adding the following two statements to the [mysqld] block in the /etc/my.cnf configuration file: The first line enables logging, and the second line tells MySQL were to write the logs. Once enabled you can see the queries executed against your server by paging out the contents of /var/log/query.log…
$ read more →