Slackware 11.0 Release Candidate 5 is here. Lots of updates to existing packages. Not many packages were upgraded. Patrick is giving the scouts honor that this will be the last RC before 11.0 final.
Head on over to the Slackware Blog to have a look at the full changelog entry. Hopefully we will see Slackware 11.0 released sometime next week or maybe even by the end of the week since we’ve seen such a long RC cycle. I don’t think we’ve seen anything greater than RC2 since Slackware 9.0 or so. It’s been a while since we’ve seen this many release candidates.
Notice the new Site Status link at the top of this page? That page shows the current response time of this site and site availability over the last 7 days. It’s really a very simple page. Nothing on it except for an iframe that grabs the site status from the Site24x7 servers.
Previously, Site24x7 only had the option to “Make Public” an entire group of sites being monitored by a given user. Now they’ve added the ability to “Make Public” individual sites within a users profile. So, instead of getting the status for a list of 5 or 6 sites, I can now display the status of this site and this site alone on this page.
I had requested a “Make Public” option on an individual site basis a couple weeks ago. I think they pretty much jumped right on it, I wasn’t expecting to see this feature ready to go so quickly. Nice work guys. :) I’ve also submitted a couple other suggestions to them, which they seemed to like very much. Hopefully I’ll see those implemented too.
Since we’re on the topic of site monitoring, I came across another option besides Site24x7 today. It’s called Mon.itor.us. It looks really nice, but is sort of difficult to use. It’s interface isn’t very straight forward and feels really cluttered. They do have some nice features though such as reporting and a high level of customization.
I’ll be sticking with Site24x7. It’s cleaner, quicker, and they’ve used some of my suggestions. :)
UPDATE: I should have mentioned this before. Creating a “Site Status” page like mine is only possible if your theme will allow it. Some themes are simply too narrow for an effective status page to be created.
The issues I spoke about in Poor Site Performance probably aren’t related to any content within this site, as I had previously thought. It’s more likely related to the shabby state of Dreamhosts network.
I am now blaming the Dreamhost network for the poor performance of this site for the following reasons.
1. Intermittence: This one is simple. Sometimes single posts will load in a snap. Other times they take up to 30 seconds to display. Same with the index page, archives, about, and contact pages. The contact and about pages are relatively void of content. There’s really no reason for slowness or lag when loading those pages, there’s not much info to display there.
2. Other Pages: Other pages at the longren.org domain also load slow at times. Take Mint for example. The Mint dashboard fails to load or loads very slowly when this blog is also responding very slowly. It takes up to a minute to refresh some very basic peppers from within Mint.
3. MySQL Is Usually OK: If I’m not mistaken, Dreamhost has it’s MySQL databases on separate servers. In other words, a machine that serves http requests doesn’t server MySQL data at the same time, another entirely separate box would handle the MySQL responses. My thought here is that Dreamhost might have their MySQL serving machines on a different network entirely, one that might not be having issues the rest of their network is experiencing. I could be way off here though, entirely speculation.
The Dreamhost Status site has been unavailable for most of the day. There’s normally a blog hosted there. Currently, there’s simply a few paragraphs of text explaining the current situation:
Network downtime Monday Night (09/11)
Monday night, we will upgrading our core networking equipment, which will result in some downtime of all services lasting approximately 30-45 minutes.
We’re expecting this to put an end to the network problems that were created by the power outages about a month ago..
- Sep. 8, 2006 3:30 p.m.
Oops! Temporary Status Site
We had a little goof and this will be our status site until the other machine can be resuscitated.
- Sep. 8, 2006 11:40 a.m.
So, as you can see, they’re relating this to the downtime experienced a month or so back when a generator caught fire. Hopefully the work they do on this coming Monday will fix the issues we’ve been having. It’s getting real old, real quick. Couldn’t happen at a worse time too, this site is starting to grow by great leaps and bounds. Hopefully growth won’t be affected by this poor performance.
UPDATE: This site was unreachable for about 12 hours lastnight/this morning. Here’s some new items that have been posted to dreamhoststatus.com:
Wilmington Failed Over
Wilmingtons second network card, which carries internet traffic, decided to give up the ghost. The server is on shiny new hardware now and websites are already starting to serve again. Our apologies for the downtime.
- Sep. 9, 2006 1:24 p.m.
Web Control Panel Issue Resolved
The network issues causing slowness for the web control panel for the web control panel have now been resolved. The network overall is more responsive and we will continue to make minor changes to keep everything working as well as possible. The major maintenance on Monday night will be essentially a complete replacement and upgrade of one of our core routers. In the meantime, we have been re-routing as much of our network traffic as possible through our other core router to improve overall performance.
- Sep. 9, 2006 2:48 a.m.
Web Control Panel Slowness
The network issues are also causing problems with the Web Control Panel for several users. We are looking into this and hope to have everything restored shortly.
- Sep. 8, 2006 8:56 p.m.
Network Problems Today
We have been experiencing Network Problems today. These problems are the same problems that have actually been happening since we first reported problems with our network. Unfortunately these problems have gotten worse today and are causing a majority of the downtime and slowness issues you are reporting today. These problems, and our attempts at fixing them, have been an ongoing effort. The maintenance Monday Night will be a big step towards resolving these problems completely. We are currently working on the network and all servers having problems and hope to improve the situation soon. Sorry about the downtime, we hope to have this all resolved soon.
- Sep. 8, 2006 5:45 p.m.
SafePasswd is awesome. Most random password generators simply generate random combinations of numbers and letters. Those passwords are often very difficult to remember, making it difficult for users to actually put these passwords into use anywhere. That’s where SafePasswd comes into play.
The default “type” of password generated by SafePasswd is an “Easy To Remember” password. These passwords include a pseudo-word, or words comprised of combinations of letters and numbers that resemble actual words found in the English language. It’s pretty neat, and works very well. I could actually memorize a large number of the passwords generated without much trouble. Definitely much easier than remembering 8 or 10 random numbers and letters.
SafePasswd lets you choose how many characters you want your password to be. The longer the better. You can also choose several different “types” of passwords, the default being “Easy To Remember”. The other types of passwords are “Letters (A-Z)”, “Numbers (0-9)”, “Letters & Numbers (A-Z,0-9)”, “All Characters (most secure)”, and finally, “Hex (0-9, A-F)”.
Most of them are lured by misleading advertisement, and flashy banners. They end up paying $3-$30 for a completely free application. In the best case they receive a couple of links to bittorrent search engines, and a bittorrent client. Support e-mails are simply ignored.
Pretty lame, but I’d imagine it’s a pretty successful method for bringing in quick cash. On the defensive, Bittorrent Inc. has launched an advertisement campaign warning users not to pay for BitTorrent. It reads “The Official BitTorrent is entirely free. Spell it with 2 Ts and 2 Rs”.
Ernesto, the guy that runs TorrentFreak, has noticed some of these “pay for bittorrent” ads showing up on his site. He’s managed to blacklist a number of them but they just keep popping up. And his blacklist is full, so he can’t add anymore. Google should take aim at these advertisers since they’re obviously making money off a free program.
But just remember, don’t pay for BitTorrent, ever. There’s a plethora of free clients out there. Don’t pay for access to sites purporting to give access to bittorrent movies and music, they’re most likely a scam. And besides that, almost any torrent can be found on a number of BitTorrent search engines and public trackers. Bottom line is you shouldn’t have to pay a penny to use BitTorrent to it’s fullest extent. It’s all free people.
Head over to TorrentFreak for more details. Ernesto has an image of one of the Bittorrent Inc. advertisements that are currently running to warn people not to pay for BitTorrent.
