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Apache extreme memory usage

by on Sep.13, 2014, under Linux, Personal

My Apache webserver suddenly started to use an insane amount of RAM, freezing the whole box.. There are a couple of things you can tune in order to avoid this from happening.  Obviously, one or more scripts are causing this issue.  You could either go search for them by running the next commands :

ps -eo pmem,pcpu,pid,user,rss,vsize,args | { head -1 ; sort -k 1 -r -n ; } | head -10

This will sort the top 10 processes which eat away all the RAM.  Run the following command to free up memory while you’re troubleshooting :

echo 3 > /proc/sys/vm/drop_caches

Change the next settings in your httpd.conf (typically found in /etc/httpd/conf/) :

<IfModule prefork.c>
StartServers 2
MinSpareServers 2
MaxSpareServers 5
MaxClients 150
MaxRequestsPerChild 500
</IfModule>

LoadModule deflate_module modules/mod_deflate.so
<Location />
AddOutputFilterByType DEFLATE text/html text/plain text/css text/xml application/x-javascript
</Location>

KeepAlive On
KeepAliveTimeout 2
MaxKeepAliveRequests 80

<Directory />
Options FollowSymLinks
</Directory>

<Directory />
AllowOverride None
</Directory>

ExtendedStatus Off

Timeout 45

Also, it might be worth having a look at Easyapache and add mpm-prefork, or else Nginx or Litehttpd..

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Sports vs Nerds

by on Jun.12, 2014, under Personal

Michael Jordan having “retired,” with $40 million in endorsements, makes $178,100 a day, working or not.
If he sleeps 7 hours a night, he makes $52,000 every night while visions of sugarplums dance in his head.
If he goes to see a movie, it’ll cost him $7.00, but he’ll make $18,550 while he’s there.
If he decides to have a 5-minute egg, he’ll make $618 while boiling it.
He makes $7,415/hr more than minimum wage.
He’ll make $3,710 while watching each episode of Friends.
If he wanted to save up for a new Acura NSX ($90,000) it would take him a whole 12 hours.
If someone were to hand him his salary and endorsement money, they would have to do it at the rate of $2.00 every second.
He’ll probably pay around $200 for a nice round of golf, but will be reimbursed $33,390 for that round.
Assuming he puts the federal maximum of 15% of his income into a tax deferred account (401k), his contributions will hit the federal cap of $9500 at 8:30 a.m. on January 1st.
If you were given a penny for every 10 dollars he made, you’d be living comfortably at $65,000 a year.
He’ll make about $19.60 while watching the 100 meter dash in the Olympics, and about $15,600 during the Boston Marathon.
While the common person is spending about $20 for a meal in his trendy Chicago restaurant, he’ll pull in about $5600.
This year, he’ll make more than twice as much as all U.S. past presidents for all of their terms combined. Amazing isn’t it?

However…
If Jordan saves 100% of his income for the next 450 years, he’ll still have less than Bill Gates has today.

$$$ Game over. Nerd wins.

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IPv6 connectivity !

by on Dec.26, 2013, under Personal

Since a couple of days, I arranged for IPv6 connectivity for my blog – www.geert.cc – so I’m ready for the future 😉

As some amongst you probably know, we ran out of IPv4 IP addresses a while ago, and internet providers, ISP’s and other network service companies are struggling to divide them for their customers.  So they came up with the next generation of IP addressing, which allows a HUGE increase of available addresses.  “Problem” is, that at this point not many people know how to handle IPv6, or they simply didn’t bother yet.

So I decided to have a look at it myself, and I got this certification on Hurricane Electric’s website. I’m now officially an IPv6 Guru (he he he!).  And more importantly, my site is now also running on IPv6, and it has the address 2001:0470:006D:035F::4.  “Is that really necessary..?” – well, yes.  If you intend to run your own service or host your own webserver/mail/DNS/…. then I suggest you have a look at it.  Otherwise you’ll be forced to do that soon anyway  😎

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Holidays !

by on Dec.19, 2013, under Personal

Finally holidays.. tomorrow still a half day of home office and then 2 weeks off 😛

No idea yet what I’m going to do, but it won’t be much !  I still have some music projects to finalize, and a trip to plan.. but that’s it.  Hope you all have a great end of the year !

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Why we Shoot Deer in the Wild

by on Mar.22, 2013, under Personal

I had this idea that I could rope a deer, put it in a stall, feed it up on corn for a couple of weeks, then kill it and eat it. The first step in this adventure was getting a deer. I figured that, since they congregate at my cattle feeder and do not seem to have much fear of me when we are there (a bold one will sometimes come right up and sniff at the bags of feed while I am in the back of the truck not 4 feet away), it should not be difficult to rope one, get up to it and toss a bag over its head (to calm it down) then hog tie it and transport it home.

I filled the cattle feeder then hid down at the end with my rope. The cattle, having seen the roping thing before, stayed well back. They were not having any of it. After about 20 minutes, my deer showed up– 3 of them. I picked out a likely looking one, stepped out from the end of the feeder, and threw my rope. The deer just stood there and stared at me. I wrapped the rope around my waist and twisted the end so I would have a good hold..

The deer still just stood and stared at me, but you could tell it was mildly concerned about the whole rope situation. I took a step towards it, it took a step away. I put a little tension on the rope .., and then received an education.. The first thing that I learned is that, while a deer may just stand there looking at you funny while you rope it, they are spurred to action when you start pulling on that rope.

That deer exploded. The second thing I learned is that pound for pound, a deer is a lot stronger than a cow or a colt. A cow or a colt in that weight range I could fight down with a rope and with some dignity. A deer– no Chance. That thing ran and bucked and twisted and pulled. There was no controlling it and certainly no getting close to it. As it jerked me off my feet and started dragging me across the ground, it occurred to me that having a deer on a rope was not nearly as good an idea as I had originally imagined.. The only upside is that they do not have as much stamina as many other animals.

A brief 10 minutes later, it was tired and not nearly as quick to jerk me off my feet and drag me when I managed to get up. It took me a few minutes to realize this, since I was mostly blinded by the blood flowing out of the big gash in my head. At that point, I had lost my taste for corn-fed venison. I just wanted to get that devil creature off the end of that rope.

I figured if I just let it go with the rope hanging around its neck, it would likely die slow and painfully somewhere. At the time, there was no love at all between me and that deer. At that moment, I hated the thing, and I would venture a guess that the feeling was mutual. Despite the gash in my head and the several large knots where I had cleverly arrested the deer’s momentum by bracing my head against various large rocks as it dragged me across the ground, I could still think clearly enough to recognize that there was a small chance that I shared some tiny amount of responsibility for the situation we were in. I didn’t want the deer to have to suffer a slow death, so I managed to get it lined back up in between my truck and the feeder – a little trap I had set before hand…kind of like a squeeze chute. I got it to back in there and I started moving up so I could get my rope back.

Did you know that deer bite?

They do! I never in a million years would have thought that a deer would bite somebody, so I was very surprised when ….. I reached up there to grab that rope and the deer grabbed hold of my wrist. Now, when a deer bites you, it is not like being bit by a horse where they just bite you and slide off to then let go. A deer bites you and shakes its head–almost like a pit bull. They bite HARD and it hurts.

The proper thing to do when a deer bites you is probably to freeze and draw back slowly. I tried screaming and shaking instead. My method was ineffective.

It seems like the deer was biting and shaking for several minutes, but it was likely only several seconds. I, being smarter than a deer (though you may be questioning that claim by now), tricked it. While I kept it busy tearing the tendons out of my right arm, I reached up with my left hand and pulled that rope loose.

That was when I got my final lesson in deer behavior for the day.

Deer will strike at you with their front feet. They rear right up on their back feet and strike right about head and shoulder level, and their hooves are surprisingly sharp… I learned a long time ago that, when an animal -like a horse –strikes at you with their hooves and you can’t get away easily, the best thing to do is try to make a loud noise and make an aggressive move towards the animal. This will usually cause them to back down a bit so you can escape.

This was not a horse. This was a deer, so obviously, such trickery would not work. In the course of a millisecond, I devised a different strategy. I screamed like a woman and tried to turn and run. The reason I had always been told NOT to try to turn and run from a horse that paws at you is that there is a good chance that it will hit you in the back of the head. Deer may not be so different from horses after all, besides being twice as strong and 3 times as evil, because the second I turned to run, it hit me right in the back of the head and knocked me down.

Now, when a deer paws at you and knocks you down, it does not immediately leave. I suspect it does not recognize that the danger has passed.. What they do instead is paw your back and jump up and down on you while you are laying there crying like a little girl and covering your head.

I finally managed to crawl under the truck and the deer went away. So now I know why when people go deer hunting they bring a rifle with a scope……to sort of even the odds!!

All these events are true… An Educated Farmer

”Life’s tough, pilgrim, and it’s even tougher if you’re stupid.”– John Wayne

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FluidFS

by on Mar.19, 2013, under Personal

This week I’m in the Amsterdam office, messing around with FluidFS, FS type of appliances, NAS appliances etc etc :]

They’re not too bad, at a first glance – yesterday I got killed by a slideshow that had no end so I hope today will be slightly more practical.  The labs should have been set up, so I’m looking forward to those.

In the meanwhile, trying to enjoy the stay here … Amsterdam doesn’t really do it for me, so I’m sort of confined to watching movies, spend time in the bar with Mr Duvel, munching tapas and perhaps watch football on the giant screen they got installed in the bar downstairs 🙂

Other than that .. Happy to drive back on Friday 😛

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Miami Vice etc…

by on Mar.09, 2013, under Personal

I recently started watching Miami Vice again (no, not the movie, but the series from the 80’s) – and I came to realize that I LOVE those 80’s and 90’s TV series 🙂

Miami Vice is just one example.. There are plenty of others; some more famous than others. Like for instance Married With Children, Allo Allo, The A-Team, MacGuyver, Knight Rider, Magnum PI, Friends, Happy Days, ALF, Battlestar Galactica, V, etc etc …

For some strange reason I still find them a lot more appealing than the full-of-FX, modern type of series. With one exception maybe… I love The Walking Dead 😀
Can’t wait for the 3rd season to finally become available on Blu-Ray !

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Notorious Lunch

by on Mar.08, 2013, under Personal

Whenever I go for lunch with Mr. Verwulgen, it’s definitely #likeaboss

Like any self-respecting bon-vivant, we don’t like to rush having lunch. “Powerlunches” are for gaylords. We go for the full package 🙂

Venue of today was Testa Rossi, in Machelen… Highly recommended ! :mrgreen:

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Mecano – Spanish band

by on Mar.08, 2013, under Personal

A year and a half ago, I started following Spanish evening classes, and ever since, I take every chance I get to learn new words, expressions, etc etc.. Learning Spanish of course means learning how to write it, read it AND it involves developing listening skills as well.

So therefore I listen to Spanish songs regularly, and I try to follow the news on TVE, amongst other broadcasts. Last night in class we stumbled upon a nice 80’s song from a band everybody still remembers, but most people only know their biggest hit – Hijo De La Luna. However, they made quite a few nice songs, and the one I heard last night is called “Hoy No Me Puedo Levantar” – which translates as “Today I can’t get up”.

Basically it’s about a girl who had a rough weekend, drank too much, smoked too much etc etc.. Sounds a bit like me 😀
Anyway – it’s a nice one to end the work week with, or to start off the weekend with !

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Getting ready for the holidays !

by on Dec.03, 2012, under Personal

Well folks it’s almost there.. the end of the year 🙂 And if we’re a bit unlucky, it will be the end of the world. That’s supposed to happen on 21st December 2012, according to ancient Maya beliefs.

But let’s assume that won’t happen. It has been a moving year though – a year full of ups and downs, as well on professional as on personal level. I should have posted a lot more here, and I promise to start doing that again starting from 2013 😀

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