lsof stands for “list open files”. So actually it shows all files used by some processes of a system. That command exist on most of and on different Linuxes and Unixes.
It bases on architecture of a kernel which causes evety procces to hold it used files in /proc – (a virtual file-system).  A typical hierarchy wold look like:

/proc/process id/fd/file descriptor

In the absence of any options, lsof lists all open files belonging to all active processes of a system. But that is to much for most cases, because many of cases are networkrelated. An if you consider that sockets are files in linux we can use lsof to search fo them.

Examples lsof sockets

The interesting option here is the -i option and it should be followed by the Internet address which is specified in the following form:

[46][protocol][@hostname|hostaddr][:service|port]

4 and 6 stand for ip protocol versions, the rest should be self expanded. So now i think is best time to provide some examples. Here they are:

Show all open connections

 lsof -i

Show all open TCP connections

lsof -i TCP 

Show open TCP connection on on secure ldap port 636, http 80 and UDP protocol range

            lsof -i TCP:636
            lsof -i TCP:80
            lsof -i UDP:3000-3025
         

Show LDAP incoming connections

lsof -i TCP@192.168.0.1:636 ()
#java  890 root  18u  IPv6 8332031
#TCP myserver.com:42936 myserver.com:ldaps (ESTABLISHED)

Who use SMTP?

         lsof -i :25
         #COMMAND  PID USER   FD   TYPE        DEVICE SIZE/OFF NODE NAME
         #sendmail 401 root    5u  IPv4 0x300023cc141      0t0  TCP *:smtp (LISTEN)
         #sendmail 401 root    6u  IPv6 0x3000243c200      0t0  TCP *:smtp (LISTEN)

Further useful Examples of lsof

-c option allows to see what files are open by a particular command.

lsof -c mysq
lsof -c ruby

See what files are open by a particular device or a file

lsof /dev/cdrom
lsof /tmp/obscure.lock

See what files are opened by a user shuron

lsof –u shuron
#vi   5200 shuron txt REG 3,1   242601 245773 /bin/vi

Additional info

And at last use -r option for monitoring. Here is example of periodically (every 10 seconds) refresh of connection status for a concrete application started as php.

lsof -r 10 -c php -a -i :1521

It gives periodically all 1521 port connections. 1521 is typical Oracle DB connection port, so that example may serve you as base for script that monitors connection growing of your PHP applications.

So the last on is interesting also it uses the -t parameter which causes lsof return only a Processor id of a file using application. So following command allows you to kill all application that are using provided file.

kill -9 `lsof -t /tmp/obscure.lock`

References: Lsof Man

However this is not one post which should bring JIRA near to you. But if you know that you need it, now is best time to get it, because Atlassian started their “Get Startet” Price, which now allows you to by full functional JIRA for 10$ for ever even with one year support. All you need is a little bit of free CPU time, root access, 10$ and if you buy it outside of USA, you will need a credit card.

I installed it  for my private purposes and it works fine! I just followed Atlassian documentation (Read it carefully). Maybe, the easiest way is to install the “all in one” solution which comes with Apache Tomcat. I choosed that one. But don’t forget to switch to serious database before you start really using it. Take MySQL for example like I did.

I will not provide here step by step how to do it, because Simon has already described some of the important configurations moments as he heard about new pricing and as already mentioned the Atlassian installation guide is good and really answered all my questions.

Nevertheless feel free to ask questions here, about installation and configuration to.

Also i would like to discuss other Atlassian developer tools which also available for 10$. Is here outside someone experienced in bamboo?

However the copy procces of  Magento shop has following main steps

• duplication of database schema
• duplication of core sources
• duplication of downloader sources

Database

First, let me say say, that it is good idea to not install two Magento instances to the same database. Magento in  version 1.1.8 s has 198 database tables. Most of them are of type  InnoDB and they are  related with each other by checked foreign key constraints. That is background information.

So new database for every  Magento instance save you from having headaches  and this not only because having just two magento installation i one DB leads too approx. 400 tables in one database but more to avoid possible problems or side effects with constraints and Co. (e.g. ) .  .

The easiest way to export the database is to use phpMyAdmin. Go to export dialog of original database, select “zipped” option, select tabbles, let other options on their defaults (See screen 1) and get zipped download. Switch to new database and  upload the downloaded  there in the import dialog.

Sound as a piece of cake, but sometimes the import of the SQL files will not work. I have already seen many different exceptions bu trying. Beginning with “SQL Syntax..” and ending with “constraint violation…”.  In my opinion the purpose of problems is size of some tables and therefore of whole backup. There are few MyISAM tables that are full with (useless) log data. And the amount of this data makes problems to the import routine. Don’t export them first at time! they don’t have any constraint to other tables so you can import them on second or third turn. Alternative  you can export only the DDL-Statement of this table not the data itself.

Here are tables you can  omit in first step:

• log_url
• log_url_info
• log_visitor
• log_visitor_info

Don’t forget to change configured URL of origin shop to the  URLs of new shop in the table core_config_data. You can also use Search-Tool of phpMyAdmin and identify every record where old URL is used – but outside of core_config_data table  they are not so important and could be changed later in the Shop interface.

Core Sources

That is most easiest part. Just copy the source of magento to the new location, but don’t copy the following:

• downloader dir
• any content of dirs inside of var but .htacces file.
• media/tmp dir

If you use another DB for new Magento installation don’t forget to change DB setting in app/etc/local.xml file. Var directory hold any temporary content like sessions, caches and error-logs. Downloader is used by Magento connect module, before copy must do some preparations.

Magento Downloader

Warning! do not copy unchanged downloader to new location on the same server it may break your origin magento installation!

Now I got your attention The problem is that downloder stores serverpath in many many configuration files. And if you don’t change the serverpath  and  starts updates on  new shop copy, you will update the origin shop and not the new copy of it!

The server path of origin magento shop is stored in many many files in the downloader directory, you can’t change all of them manually. But you can do it automatically. If you have SSH access to your web-space  following command will help you:

Update: The described way to handle downloader sometimes causes problems by doing upgrade. Especially pear.ini shold be treatet carefully. Check also a workaround proposed by Enno Julian.

//shows all files with OLD_PATH element

find  . -type f -exec grep -q "OLD_PATH" '{}' \; -print

//Replaces OLD_PATH string in all occurrences in every file to NEW_PATH

find . -type f -print | xargs sed -i -e ’s/OLD_PATH/NEW_PATH/g’

If you have only ftp access, then you can use [Alt+F7]-search in Total Commander. Then open each file with Notepad++ and then use “Search and Replace” functionality of Notepad++ on each file. Whole replacement willtake you max. 5 minutes.

After replacing old path you can upload downloader to the new instance of Magento.

Now everything including “Magento Connect” should work properly and independent form each othen on thow instances. The last thing my be useful   is to clear all caches in admin back-end of new instance. Good luck!

Open Question

This article describes how to double the Magento instance once. The next question which i didn’t answered for me yet is how to make permanent  mirroring of data from production environment to the test installation. Maybe someone has cool ideas?

Disclaimer

Please consider that I can’t guarantee that everything described here will work in your environment as it worked for me. Please use this tutorial as incitement and adopt my methods to your own situation. Be sure that you don’t peril origin Magento installation or other data. Do regular backup befor you begin!

It differs from other “Related posts”-plug-ins, which are based on automatic content analysis. What ever the content analysis algorithms are and how ever the configuration options used,  resulting related post lists are mostly just a bullsh$%.  That’s is understandably, then these plug-ins have same problem like search engines and other content analysis tools . In the reality of our age (It is 2009 A.D.) – computers cannnot understand any semantic of human written articles.

So what is the solution for an good Related Post Plugin? Of cause simple to do it manually!

You say it much work?  No!, with Micrkid’s Related posts Plugin, which  provides very comfortable AJAX driven interface, it becomes fun! It’s becomes so easy and quick as providing tags. You decide what is related to the actual post by creating meaningful related post list.  Try it out!

It is interesting to know how much (own) Website is worth. There are several tools on the Internet which can help you to estimate the worth of your page in money ($) but also some tools which does provide some sort of score are interesting to. I’ll will share some interesting tools that can measure the potential of your site or a blog.

Glurk.com

Interesting Web-page worth calculation witch is based on basic SEO-parameters like: Google page-rank, count of back-links, listing in Yahoo directory and so on. You can also say provide some additional or even subjective information, so e.g. count of competitors.
If you like, see saved result for my site.

Snscoop.com

Here you only need to provide your domain name. And other information will be collected and present to you automatically. Nice and handy but do not work well with sub-domains

Websitevalued.com

This Service is truly nice one. Good Information Presentation and the possibility to provide some data (not to much) manually, which leads to more realistic results. Definitely is worth to try it out!

Seitwert.de

Seitwert is an very cool German service. You have to understand basic German to make the information they provide about your site make useful for you. There are six Rating:
Google Rating, Alexa rating, Social bookmarks presence, technical details, Yahoo rating, an other factors.
It show you the problems of your site.

Seomoz.org

Seomoz seemed to be fine SEO company, at least they have very nice free SEO tools. One of them – Trifecta measures so called “Page strength” of your site.
You have to be registered user.

Technorrati based -Blog worth

And of cause the known Blog worth. This rank is based on technorati rank. So you can only apply it on blogs listed on technorati.

Mywebsiteworth.com

Just enter your URL and you will get worth in $ with not much expression. However the worth is realistic one. Where Blog Worth (See above) gets 1000$ here could be worth 50$.

Seekbot.de

Another useful site is german Seekbot. Its not ranking and rating service . But I like to listing it here because it something useful it check your page on the fly like Seitwert.de and gives you hint, how bots do see on your site, what is bad and what is good.

^(.*)$ http://alexander.holbreich.org/$1 [R=301,L]

to the old domain to preserve some humble SEO result of this page. But for some weeks new Blog had no page-rank. Now he is here and the effect of Permanent redirect on google is proved!

There is just one drawback of this method. Uploaded images become automatically description, which say that that picture where uploaded by Folder Monitr (with a link) and a tag “FolderMonitr”. So I don’t like stuff like this. Unfortunately mass edit (or delete i my case) of tags and description is not so comfortable in flickr as it could be.

However I will use FolderMonitr further maybe the description and tag problem cannot outbalance the use of that tool.

P.S. If anybody knows the working way haw too upload pictures to flickr direct out of Lightroom in the version 2.0 is welcome to give me a hint thanks!

The Problem

Every time on  the installation of Magento i saw following  exception.

Error in file: ".... app/code/core/Mage/Core/sql/core_setup/mysql4-install-0.8.0.php" - SQLSTATE[HY000]: General error: 1005 Can't create table './db203484_1/#sql-1dd4_17baf.frm' (errno: 121)
Trace:
#0 .../app/code/core/Mage/Core/Model/Resource/Setup.php(286): Mage::exception('Mage_Core', 'Error in file: ...')
#1 ...app/code/core/Mage/Core/Model/Resource/Setup.php(166): Mage_Core_Model_Resource_Setup->_modifyResourceDb('install', '', '0.8.11')
#2 .../app/code/core/Mage/Core/Model/Resource/Setup.php(154): Mage_Core_Model_Resource_Setup->_installResourceDb('0.8.11')
#3 .../app/code/core/Mage/Core/Model/Resource/Setup.php(120): Mage_Core_Model_Resource_Setup->applyUpdates()
#4 .../app/code/core/Mage/Core/Model/Config.php(215): Mage_Core_Model_Resource_Setup::applyAllUpdates()
#5 .../app/code/core/Mage/Core/Model/App.php(236): Mage_Core_Model_Config->init(Array)
#6 .../app/Mage.php(424): Mage_Core_Model_App->init('', 'store', Array)
#7 .../app/Mage.php(443): Mage::app('', 'store', Array)
#8 .../index.php(52): Mage::run()
#9 {main}

I tried installation with version 1.1.3, 1.1.4, 1.1.6 and 1.1.8 nothing helped…

You can find many threads on Magentocommere Forum to this issue. Some hints may help you once but do not solve the problem. I guess I don’t have solved problem globally. But I found the cause of the problem so everybody can solve it on his own way.

Cause of the exception

During the installation routine  many DB-Tables should be created in your Database. We talk here about MySQL Database.  So Magento begins with SQL-Statement that are holded in the mysql4-install-0.8.0.php. This file is also pintet in the Exception message as the causes of the problem.

I analysed the Statement and this came out..

Before any CREATE-Statement – Magento executes this:

SET SQL_MODE=''
SET @OLD_FOREIGN_KEY_CHECKS=@@
FOREIGN_KEY_CHECKS, FOREIGN_KEY_CHECKS=0
SET @OLD_SQL_MODE=@@SQL_MODE, SQL_MODE='NO_AUTO_VALUE_ON_ZERO'

Then, after all tables and indexes  defined in  mysql4-install-0.8.0.php are created, magento executes following Statement.:

SET SQL_MODE=IFNULL(@OLD_SQL_MODE,'')
SET FOREIGN_KEY_CHECKS=IFNULL(@OLD_FOREIGN_KEY_CHECKS,0)

An the last row causes #1231 – Variable ‘foreign_key_checks’ can’t be set to the value of ‘0’ Exception which is finely identified by me as  the cause of such installation problems!

Solution

I did’n spend much time to find out why the Varibale SET FOREIGN_KEY_CHECKS can’t be set to ’0′, because it looks like MySQL bug.

However, it’s maybe not the finest solution but it helps. If you can drop the whole the database and create new one, then the installation works. It seems to set all the before settings back and installtion works fine on “vergin-Databases”.

If you  feel experienced in MYSQL and has an Idea how to overcome this problem without creating new Databases please make your comment !

That is because their URL are stored as absolute path by WP which are currently refer to old domain.  Can anyone write an SQL (MySQL) procedure that looks through all post, searching for some URL lieke http://holbreich.de and then changes them to http://alexander.holbreich.org?

Can anyone of the readers do somethng like this? Is there maybeeven some kind of plug-In which doe simmilar job?

Furthermore I took a dessision to be independet of Alex King Populatiry Contest Plugin, therefore my next Plugin version will use own DB tables. As you maybe noitice my Popular List has changed, that is because of using new tables which means drop of old popularity statistic
Finaly, i consider to maintan all of my Worpdpress and similar stuff includig wPopularity on other Blog with some friend of my. Of cause I tell you about it, when it’s done.

Nevertheless I have some ideas on improvement of W-Popularity Plug-in. I think we should give up compatibility of DB-Tables with Popularity Contest Plug in. As i think that should eliminate all possible inter-operation problems with the Plug-in of Alex King, including those activation problems, some of you have report in the comments to my ???????? ????? ????????.

I started already work on version 0.9.4 but i will release it after I’m back again.

I have fixed this problem now. Please use newest version of W-Popularity Note: There is a file embedded within this post, please visit this post to download the file.

No other functionality was changed in this release.

Google is kindly enough to try contact you i such case, when they about to throw your site out of the index because your site is malware infected or even is a malware distributor. In such one unlucky case you get the Malware Notification. Normaly this Notification goes to following addresses of your domain.

• abuse@
• admin@
• administrator@
• contact@
• info@
• postmaster@
• support@
• webmaster@

Therefore you are good advised to listen to at least one of them on your own domain.

The Malware Notification Mail points you to some affected URL’s (In my case there where two). Alterantive the same information could be found in Google Webmaster Tools

As next, you have to investigate the cause of this notification and clean your site. In best case you should find and fix the bug which was used for infiltration.

As you maybe remember my side was already attacked in the past, so I do not wander as much that such thing happen. Also in my case i did found the modifications on some post, where commented iframe with a linked to a bad site with and .php script was included. Maybe just some tracking or something like that. I wonder if such construct works still in any modern browser, but I’m not expert in such.

However as I think I also have found the source of the problem. I do not exactly understand how could it work in my case. But i seems to be the bad Trojan (By Antivir): HTML/Crypted.Gen.

Dancho Danchev describes a similar case. Maybe someone can tell me how exactly it worked in my case.

However. Now I have the newest version of WordPress, newest Version of Plug-Ins and clean posts. I have notify Google through Google Webmaster Tools to check my site again. Hope they’ll do it in the nearest time.

Ok , I know I begin with the introducing of the My wife’s Blog. It’s about books, travel and geography, because my darling do study at the Faculty of Geography. You might find it also interesting even when you will not find there many articles about IT However her English is much better than my

Back to this blog. As you know WordPress 2.5 is out. And somehow there are no security updates at that time. How it comes? Did the WordPress guys didn’t their work really good this time?   Seems to be. So I consider to upgrade in the next time.

There are only few bugs remained in that late version, even if I was still able to find some of them. Furthermore Magento-people have really speed their System up, which was enormously important to my eyes. So now it seems that Magento becomes really competitive E Commerce Platform and that is just great! If the development goes so further on. None of the competing Systems will survive.

However one need much time to get familiar with Magento. That platform brings very much functionality and configuration options, so configuring Magento can become a new Profession! Unfortunately Configuration Options are just sparse documented at that point, so there is bunch of try and error till one can get his first Online-Shop of dreams.

On the other side Magento has growing online Community, which is effect more worth as full documentation.

DIGG Effect

Eric Enge has wrote very good article about succes on digg. Some of details he presents my be not true at the moment, because DIGG evolves and changes internal algorithms. However some facts are really interesting.

As he says, stories that where able to reach the digg home page receive an average of 129 links, and more than 10,000 visitors in an hour. Some stories have brought even more than 1,000 links and 100,000 visitors. This shows how important DIGG is and why there are so many legend and so much attention from SEOs. So it has happened many times that stories which have made the home page, have brought the server of the story site can’t handle the traffic load. This is well known phenomena is known as the “Digg Effect”.

Of cause the quality of this kind of visitors is “bad”. Don’t expect that they will by your products and click Ads. Do not expect big growth in comments, DIGG users often comment regarding a site on digg itself instead of on the dugg website. Digg users comes to see only that what they would inspect in the story description on DIGG itself.

I don’t wanna be a Digger

So after reading several articles about how to success on DIGG i realized that it would take very very very much time. So as every body know time is money, but moreover time is life! In my opinion the truly success on DIGG starting from null will deserve much to much time in comparison to the revenue.
Personally I don’t have much time and will not spend it to fullish site like DIGG, voting for silly topics of US tanagers So at the moment and I think also in the future will not spend much time on DIGG or other communities.

I mean isn’t it better to spend time to create wonderful content? It would give you personal much more satisfaction than any DIGG effect. But however good content have in any case good chance to achieve one DIGG effect after another!
So by by DIGG, may others vote for my content, I will not spend my life for Digging

P.S. It doesn’t mean i will not continue submitting my articles to it

Currently I’m the number 49 of top users of the Russian DIGG sister called news2.ru, therefore I think to have some experience and some kind of instinctive feeling for mechanisms we have on that page. News2.ru is a typical example of social news-driven page and is quite similar to DIGG. Therefore my experience can be useful also for DIGG users and other similar Web2.0 sites.

Success factors of digging

As I think there a only two main factors your success (success of your submissions) depends on. That are the quality of your stories and friendship. Yes only them two and some sub issues its quite simple. Such an statement my appear as vague for you, therefore I’ll try to be more concrete.

High quality stories

High quality stories are known as:

• unique
• unusual
• very actual
• interesting for everybody

That are primary properties on successful story. Now you may think that the appreciation of these attributes is highly subjective, that is partly true. However everyone can achieve good objectivity by analysing the actuality of post. E.g. U.S. President election is quite actual at the moment, Cold War maybe not. However with some experience thee appraisal of these properties will get better and better. I can say I began to feel what kind of stories can reach the TOP.

To be actual and have many stories to choose, it is recommended to subscribe to RSS feeds of news portal of your wish or several of them. If your social-community portal presents websites statistic , you are well advised to study it and chose some with the best success rate.

So what to do? How to begin? The answer is clear too, you just have to star and play a bit around. If you are non completely new in the field of social news community, then you just can’t leave this step out. However as already mentioned the success factor of your news will grow with experience.

It is difficult to provide some examples of good or bad news, because it’s highly depends on the time context and also other things like presentation! Presentation is one of the sub factors I wanna say some words about:

• Always use pictures! Choose them with care.
• Use headlines that magnify attention (Compare: “Microsoft considers to by some Yahoo shares” vs. “Microsoft takes over Yahoo!”)
• But use headlines that are precisely express what is in the content behind them. Otherwise your messages can be considered as spam or inaccurate.
• Be aware of duplicates
• The content at it self should be good presented and layout carefully. Don’t write to much, but try to make your link sexy. Don’t lie.
• Use the right category!

Doing so you will create solid and high potential submissions, and you has learned this, the second factor comes to a play which helps enormously to use the potential of your submissions.

Friendship

If in the beginning of your “career” maybe non of your messages reach the top, at a master level the rate of your positive submissions can rise up to 50-99 percent (depending on social service and other factors). But this success is only possible with a active circle of friends!

How to get friends on social communities? You should be able to answer this question at your-self, because it is not much different as in the real life. Friendship grounds on mutuality and deserve much time. Decide for yourself whether you are ready for it. However gaining new friends is in any case new experience and enrichment for everyone.

Maybe it’s not so much for a professional blogger but it’s OK for an amateur blogger like me. Important is the overal trend which is positiv.

Compared to last month there where 610 visitors. Why that peak at end of January, I before.

However if we do compare February statistic to December of last year, 730 visitors is quite a good result. In December I had only 158 visitors, of cause my blog was extremely raw at this time.

Most of the users in January and February came from USA, Germany and Russian Federation.

Most popular post in Februar

1. Post about – WordPress popularity plugin with enabled “Most popular Widget” which you can see e.g. on my sidebar.
2. Considering about
3. And my from December of the last year.

May be you are wondering why my adventures has not become part three. The answer is simple I just had no time to write it down, now it’s too late

Goals for March

First I would say, that 730 visitors is just a beginning so March should result in at least 1000 visitors. I think this is realistic if I find few hours to write good articles, which are already in my head. Maybe a can offer you new series of articles about mobile computing or maybe about Workflows Systems or even one of both. We’ll see.

Furthermore my wish is to adapt the current template of my blog. I would like to make it more comfortable for navigation, reading and more SEO friendly. If you have some hints for me, your comments are welcome!

At last I think it’s time to offer my rss feed through the feedburner, which will help me to have statistic about my feed readers.