Performance Zen

Category: Uncategorized

  • GrabPERF Upgrade: cURL

    The GrabPERF system has been upgraded to cURL 7.12.3.

    Let me know if you see any weird behaviour.

  • Stupidity at two levels

    Ok, I did two very stupid things yesterday.

    1. Left the power supply for my laptop at home
    2. Dropped a Unique Index on my database log table and ended up with a huge number of dupes in the table. Spent two hours teaching myself how to rebuild the table without the dupes.

    Ok, so I know a lot more about indices and how they work now.

  • InnoDB Retired; Back to MyISAM

    I have moved my logging and GrabPERF databases back to the MyISAM type; I was not seeing a massive performance increase, and I don’t do a lot — any? — of transactions, besides inserts and selects.

    I also get a lot of RAM back when I do this.

  • Zend Optimizer Running on Server

    Thanks to a suggestion from the Blog Herald, I put the Zend Optimizer on my Web server to see if I can squeeze anymore performance out of that already creaky box.

    Let me know if you see/feel anything weird or freaky with the WebPerformance system.

  • Why I am not an A-list Blogger

    • I have never used OSX or owned a Powerbook
    • I don’t own a tablet PC
    • I don’t own a sexy cell phone
    • I have never owned/started a company
    • I have never had my own column/tv show
    • I haven’t had to hide my true identity to protect my job/family/unnamed federal agency
    • I have never written my own Internet Standard or protocol
    • I have only been quoted by the mainstream media once
    • I have not written a book
    • I only go on one business trip every 2-3 months
    • I have never had comment spam

    I am sure there are more reasons; I will add them as they come to mind.


    Addendum

    • I am not in a band
    • I think podcasting is vain and useless
    • I don’t own an iPod/Zen Micro/Digital Player
    • My digital camera is worth $60
    • I have never mixed my own music
    • I have never written a desktop application

  • Scammers everywhere

    I stumbled across this URL last night.

    http://www.canadianredcross.ca/

    This is a scam URL — the real URL for the Canadian Red Cross is http://www.redcross.ca/

    Damn I hate people like this. Where’s WIPO when you need it?

  • Give Tsunami Aid to the Canadian Red Cross

    Why should you donate to the Canadian Red Cross?

    1. The Canadian Federal Government is matching all private donations dollar for dollar
    2. Your US dollar is worth $1.24 (CDN)

    Go Canada!

  • MySQL and PHP 5 woes

    Discovered some things tonight.

    1. When you upgrade a local MySQL database on a system with PHP 5, you have to recompile PHP or else you get some sort of weird libmysqlclient error
    2. ‘url’ is a reserved word in PHP 5 using the MySQL 4.1.x MySQL clients
    3. Running two InnoDB Databases on the same machine == bad.

    My Apache log database is now running on the Web server itself, while the GrabPERF Database is on a stand-alone machine. That should prevent some of the locking problems that I was seeing at log insertion time.

    Oh, and my log flushing script was not being run. I was calling the wrong filename in the crontab. <DOH!>

  • Problems with Browser Percentage Graphs

    I had a small issue with the rollove to the new year. Seems that the PHPlot package that I use requires strict date precedence…year first. Once I figured that out, I was able to get the graphs back up and running.

    I hate surprises like that on the first day of the new year.

  • Database Update — InnoDB

    I updated my two largest database tables — my raw server logs and the GrabPERF data table — to InnoDB tonight to try and improve performance. I have noticed some sever performance degradations lately, but that may be because I am using it more and expecting more of it.

    I will monitor this change and rollback if no real improvement is seen.