Bigger Aint Always Better

Recently I was troubleshooting some inefficiencies with the jobs systems locking and fetching queries at work. Like a good little boy I, originally, came up with one index which satisfied all the queries that I needed to run against this particular critical table.

 (`completed`,`heartbeat`,`priority`,`datacenter`,`worker`) 
-- datetime,datetime,tinyint,varchar(16),varchar(255)

the query looked like this:

SELECT `id`,GET_LOCK(CONCAT('foo_',`id`),0) as mylock FROM `foo_jobs` 
WHERE `completed` = '0000-00-00 00:00:00' AND `worker` = '' AND `dirty` = 0 
AND IS_FREE_LOCK(CONCAT('foo_',`id`)) = 1 AND `priority` = '0' LIMIT 1

This worked really well as long as the number of jobs in the table remained small.. But there was an event horizon of sorts… where after a certain number of rows (say 10k-25k) the query above took so long to get rows that the system could no longer catch up, but would fall invariably behind… Apparently, the problem was that there was too much data in the key. Because the requirements for these queries had changed slightly (due to other scaling improvements) I was able to simplify and break the indexes into parts which vastly outperform the previous index.

KEY `get_a_job` (`priority`,`workerpid`)
-- tinyint, int
KEY `janitor` (`completed`,`heartbeat`,`worker`,`dirty`)
-- datetime,datetime,varchar(255),tinyint

This works because workerpid is enough to tell us whether a job definition is in process (or was, and has not been cleaned yet.) and makes the following query run against a super small index…

SELECT `id`,GET_LOCK(CONCAT('foo_',`id`),0) as mylock FROM `foo_jobs`
WHERE `priority` = '0' AND `workerpid` IS NULL 
AND IS_FREE_LOCK(CONCAT('foo_,`id`)) = 1 LIMIT 1

If you’re interested in what dark monstrosity could possibly require queries like these (and are a brave PHP developer) I invite you to check out the jobs system


Posted on : Jun 15 2009
Posted under MySQL, PHP, Software Development |

Erlang… Starting to come together…

I’m finally starting to “get” erlang… just a little bit… I’ve managed to make several TCP daemons… an echo server, a reverse echo server, and a server which spits out an md5 values of the input given.

Yea… I know… Lame… but its one hump I’m finally over…


Posted on : Mar 30 2009
Posted under Erlang, Personal, Software Development |

Just because you build it, doesnt mean they will come

Here’s a small bit of advice for all you would-be “cloud storage providers.” Just because you have a buttload of disks doesn’t mean people will be falling over themselves to use your software. If I have to spend *any* of my time worrying about your load, storage, or other internal algorithms (or unnecessary limitations for that matter) then YOU . HAVE . FAILED.

If I have to take the time to shard my data into 4096 different containers because you couldn’t be bothered to think “hey what if a service with a lot of users that create a lot of stuff decides to use us as a store?” Then you’re obviously not in it to win it (so to speak.)

Give us ABSTRACTED storage. Non abstracted storage we can do on our own thank you.


Posted on : Mar 19 2009
Posted under API, Business, Random Thoughts, Software Development, Web Stuff |

Just what you need to know to write a CouchDB reduce function

Lets say you have the CouchDB classes (located here) all compiled together and included into your test.php script. Lets also say that you have created a database with the built-in web ui called “testing”. Finally let us say that your test.php has the following code in it, which would add a record to the db every time it is run. (i know that the data in the document serves no useful purpose… but really I just want to figure out this map/reduce thing so that I can make awesome views… so this suffices sufficiently.)

require_once dirname( dirname( __FILE__ ) ) . '/includes/couchdb.php';
$couchdb = new CouchDB('testing', 'localhost', 5984);
$key = microtime();
$result = $couchdb->send(
    '/'.md5($key),
    'put',
    json_encode(
        array(
            "_id" => md5($key),
            "time" => $key,
            'md5' => md5($key),
            'sha1' => sha1($key),
            'crc' => crc32($key)
        )
    )
);
print_r($result->getBody(true));

After running the code a bunch of times you would end up with a bunch of documents which look more or less like this:

picture-1(click for full size)

Now lets say you want to write a view that told you what the first characters of the _id were and how many documents share that first letter. This is analogous to the following in MySQL

SELECT LEFT(md5, 1) AS `lchar`, count(md5) FROM `md5table` GROUP BY `lchar`

Your map function is easy, because you dont have any selection criteria, so we process all rows

function(doc){ emit(doc._id,doc); }

The reduce function is where the actual programming comes in… And it seems there aren’t many well explained examples of exactly how to do this (I just brute forced it by trial and error)

function(key, values, rereduce) { 
    var output = {};
    if ( rereduce ) { 
        // key is null, and values are values returned by previous calls
	//
	// see http://wiki.apache.org/couchdb/Introduction_to_CouchDB_views
	//
	// essentially we are taking the previously reduced view, and the 
	// reduced view for new records, and we are reducing those two things
	// together.  Summarizing two summaries, essentially
        for ( var i in values ) {
	    // here we have multiple prebuilt output objects and we're simply combining them
  	    // just like below we have an array with a numeric id and an output object
	    // 
	    // retrieve a summary
            var vals = values[i];
            for ( var key in vals ) {
		// debugging
                // log(key);
		// 
		// store in or increment our new output object 
                if ( output[key] == undefined )
                    output[key] = vals[key];
                else
                    output[key] = output[key] + vals[key];
            }
        }
    } else {
        // key is an array, which we dont care about, and values are the 
	// values returned by the map
	//
	// see http://wiki.apache.org/couchdb/Introduction_to_CouchDB_views
	//
	// we are taking each document and processing that, reducing it down
	// to a summary object (output) for each of the rows passed
        for ( var i in values ) {
	    // we have an array, values, with numeric ids and a document objects
	    //
	    // retrieve a document
            var doc = values[i];
	    // get what we want from it, the first char of the md5
            var key = doc._id.substr(0, 1);
	    // debugging
            // log( key + " :: " + doc._id );
	    //
	    // store or increment the output object
            if ( output[key] !== undefined )
                output[key] = output[key] + 1;
            else
                output[key] = 1;
        }
    }
    // done
    return output;
}

and in code, using a temporary view, ( if you used this view all the time you would want to make it permanent… but this is about how to lay out a reduce function, nothing more ) so request code that looks like this

$view = array(
    'map' => 'function(doc){ emit(doc._id,doc); }',
    'reduce' => '
        function(key, values, rereduce) { 
            var output = {};
            if ( rereduce ) { 
                // key is null, and values are values returned by previous calls
                for ( var i in values ) {
                    var vals = values[i];
                    for ( var key in vals ) {
                        // log(key);
                        if ( output[key] == undefined )
                            output[key] = vals[key];
                        else
                            output[key] = output[key] + vals[key];
                    }
                }
            } else {
                // key is an array, which we dont care about, and values are the values returneb by the map
                for ( var i in values ) {
                    var doc = values[i];
                    var key = doc._id.substr(0, 1);
                    // log( key + " :: " + doc._id );
                    if ( output[key] !== undefined )
                        output[key] = output[key] + 1;
                    else
                        output[key] = 1;
                }
            }
            return output;
        }
    '
    );
$result = $couchdb->send('/_temp_view', 'POST', json_encode($view) );
print_r($result->getBody(true));

would give you output that looks like this:

stdClass Object
(
    [rows] => Array
        (
            [0] => stdClass Object
                (
                    [key] => 
                    [value] => stdClass Object
                        (
                            [0] => 15
                            [1] => 17
                            [2] => 16
                            [3] => 13
                            [4] => 27
                            [5] => 18
                            [6] => 26
                            [7] => 15
                            [8] => 18
                            [9] => 21
                            [a] => 12
                            [b] => 23
                            [c] => 20
                            [d] => 27
                            [e] => 28
                            [f] => 26
                        )
 
                )
 
        )
 
)

I hope this helps somebody out.


Posted on : Feb 18 2009
Posted under API, Business, CLI, MySQL, PHP, Random Thoughts, Software Development, Web Stuff |

Debian Lenny, Avahi, AFP… Linux Fileserver for OSX Clients

If you’re like me you have an OSX computer or 3 at home, and a debian file server. If you’re like me you hate samba/nfs on principle and want your debian server to show up in finder.  If you’re like me you arent using debian 3 which is what most of the walkthroughs seem to expect…  This is how I did it… With Debian Lenny.

What we’re using, and why:

  • Avahi handles zeroconf (making it show up in finder) (most howtos involve howl which is no longer in apt)
  • netatalk has afpd
  • afpd is the fileserver

From: http://blog.damontimm.com/how-to-install-netatalk-afp-on-ubuntu-with-encrypted-authentication/

  • apt-get update
  • mkdir -p ~/src/netatalk
  • cd ~/src/netatalk
  • apt-get install cracklib2-dev libssl-dev
  • apt-get source netatalk
  • apt-get build-dep netatalk
  • cd netatalk-2.0.3

From: http://www.sharedknowhow.com/2008/05/installing-netatalk-under-centos-5-with-leopard-support/

  • vim bin/cnid/cnid_index.c ## replace “ret = db->stat(db, &sp, 0);” with “ret = db->stat(db, NULL, &sp, 0);” line 277
  • vim etc/cnid_dbd/dbif.c ## replace “ret = db->stat(db, &sp, 0);” with “ret = db->stat(db, NULL, &sp, 0);” line 517

Mine

  • ./configure –prefix=/usr/local/netatalk
  • make
  • make install
  • vim /etc/rc.local ## add “/usr/local/netatalk/sbin/afpd”
  • /usr/local/netatalk/sbin/afpd

From: http://www.disgruntled-dutch.com/2007/general/how-to-get-your-linux-based-afp-server-to-show-up-correctly-in-leopards-new-finder

  • apt-get install avahi-daemon
  • vim /etc/nsswitch.conf ## make the hosts line read “hosts: files dns mdns4″
  • cd /etc/avahi/services
  • wget http://www.disgruntled-dutch.com/media/afpd.service
  • /etc/init.d/avahi-daemon restart

in case that file drops off the face of the net, this is its contents (except “< ?” is “<?” and “< !” is “<!”) :

< ?xml version="1.0" standalone='no'?><!--*-nxml-*-->
< !DOCTYPE service-group SYSTEM "avahi-service.dtd">
<service -group>
<name replace-wildcards="yes">%h</name>
</service><service>
<type>_afpovertcp._tcp</type>
<port>548</port>
</service>

At this point your server should show up under the network in your finder… and you should be able to connect with any system username/pw combo


Posted on : Feb 12 2009
Posted under Apple, CLI, Linux, Personal, Random Thoughts, Software Development |

making munin-graph take advantage of multiple cpus/cores

I do a lot of things for Automattic, and many of the things I do are quite esoteric (for a php developer anyways.) Perl is not my language of choice, but I’ve never balked at a challenge…. just… did it have to be perl? Anyways. We have more than a thousand machines that we track with munin… which means a TON of graphs. munin-update is efficient, taking advantage of all cpus and getting done in the fastest time possible, but munin-graph started taking so long as to be useless (and munin-cgi-graph takes almost a minute to fully render the servers day/week summary page which is completely unacceptable when we’re trying to troubleshoot a sudden, urgent, problem.) So I got to dive in and make it faster…

Step 1: add in this function (which i borrowed from somewhere else)

sub afork (\@$&) {
  my ($data, $max, $code) = @_;
  my $c = 0;
  foreach my $data (@$data) {
    wait unless ++ $c < = $max;
    die "Fork failed: $!\n" unless defined (my $pid = fork);
    exit $code -> ($data) unless $pid;
  }
  1 until -1 == wait;
}

Step 2: replace this

for my $service (@$work_array) {
    process_service ($service);
}

with this

afork(@$work_array, 16, \&process_service);

I also have munin-html and munin-graph running side-by-side

( [ -x /usr/local/munin/lib/munin-graph  ] &&
    nice /usr/local/munin/lib/munin-graph --cron $@ 2>&1 |
    fgrep -v "*** attempt to put segment in horiz list twice" )& $waitgraph=$!
( [ -x /usr/local/munin/lib/munin-html   ] && nice /usr/local/munin/lib/munin-html $@; )& $waithtml=$!
wait $waitgraph
wait $waithtml

I did several other, more complicated hacks as well. Such as not generating month and year graphs via cron, letting those render on-demand with munin-cgi-graph

All said we’re doing in under 2.5 minutes what was taking 7 or 8 minutes previously


Posted on : Jan 23 2009
Posted under Business, CLI, Linux, Software Development |

Using wait, $!, and () for threading in bash

This is a simplistic use of the pattern that I wrote about in my last post to wait on multiple commands in bash. In essence I have a script which runs a command (like uptime or restarting a daemon) on a whole bunch of servers (think pssh). Anyways… this is how I modified the script to run the command on multiple hosts in parallel. This is a bit simplistic as it runs, say, 10 parallel ssh commands and then waits for all 10 to complete. I’m very confident that someone could easily adapt this to run at a constant concurrency level of $threads… but I didn’t need it just then so I didn’t go that far… As a side note, this is possibly the first time I’ve ever *needed* an array in a bash script… hah…

# $1 is the commandto run on the remote hosts
# $2 is used for something not important for this script
# $3 is the (optional) number of concurrent connections to use
 
if [ ! "$3" == "" ]
then
    threads=$3
else
    threads=1
fi
 
cthreads=0;
stack=()
for s in $servers
  do
    if [ $cthreads -eq $threads ]; then
        for job in ${stack[@]}; do
              wait $job
        done
        stack=()
        cthreads=0
    fi
    (
        for i in $(ssh root@$s "$1" )
            do
                echo -e "$s:\t$i"
        done
    )& stack[$cthreads]=$!
    let cthreads=$cthreads+1
done
for job in ${stack[@]}; do
    wait $job
done

Posted on : Dec 11 2008
Posted under Bash, Business, CLI, Linux, Random Thoughts, Software Development, Web Stuff |

bash – collecting the return value of backgrounded processes

You know that you can run something in the background in a bash script with ( command )&, but a coworker recently wanted to run multiple commands, wait for all of them to complete, collect and decide what to do based on their return values… this proved much trickier. Luckily there is an answer

#!/bin/bash
 
(sleep 3; exit 1)& p1=$!
(sleep 2; exit 2)& p2=$!
(sleep 1; exit 3)& p3=$!
 
wait "$p1"; r1=$?
wait "$p2"; r2=$?
wait "$p3"; r3=$?
 
echo "$p1:$r1 $p2:$r2 $p3:$r3"

Posted on : Dec 05 2008
Posted under Bash, Business, CLI, Linux, Random Thoughts, Software Development |

a dumbed down version of wpdb for sqlite

I’ve been working, gradually, on a project using an sqlite3 database (for its convenience) and found myself missing the clean elegance of wpdb… so I implemented it. It was actually really easy to do, and I figured I would throw it up here for anyone else wishing to use it. The functionality that I build this around is obtainable here: http://php-sqlite3.sourceforge.net/pmwiki/pmwiki.php (don’t freak… its in apt…)

With this I can focus on the sql, which is different enough, and not fumble over function names and such… $db = new sqlite_wpdb($dbfile, 3); var_dump($db->get_results(”SELECT * FROM `mytable` LIMIT 5″));

the code is below… and hopefully not too mangled…

< ?php
 
class sqlite_wpdb {
 
        var $version = null;
        var $db = null;
        var $result = null;
        var $error = null;
 
        function sqwpdb($file, $version=3) { 
                return $this->__construct($file, $version); 
        }
 
        function __construct($file, $version=3) {
                $function = "sqlite{$version}_open";
                if ( !function_exists($function) )
                        return false;
                if ( !file_exists($file) )
                        return false;
                if ( !$this->db = @$function($file) )
                        return false;
                $this->version = $version;
                $this->fquery = "sqlite{$this->version}_query";
                $this->ferror = "sqlite{$this->version}_error";
                $this->farray = "sqlite{$this->version}_fetch_array";
                return $this;
        }
 
        function escape($string) {
                return str_replace("'", "''", $string);
        }
 
        function query($query) {
                if ( $this->result = call_user_func($this->fquery, $this->db, $query) )
                        return $this->result;
                $this->error = call_user_func($this->ferror, $this->db);
                return false;
        }
 
        function array_to_object($array) {
                if ( ! is_array($array) )
                        return $array;
 
                $object = new stdClass();
                foreach ( $array as $idx => $val ) {
                        $object->$idx = $val;
                }
                return $object;
        }
 
        function get_results($query) {
                if ( !$this->query($query) )
                        return false;
                $rval = array();
                while ( $row = $this->array_to_object(call_user_func($this->farray, $this->result)) ) {
                        $rval[] = $row;
                }
                return $rval;
        }
 
        function get_row($query) {
                if ( ! $results = $this->get_results($query) )
                        return false;
                return array_shift($results);
        }
 
        function get_var($query) {
                return $this->get_val($query);
        }
 
        function get_val($query) {
                if ( !$row = $this->get_row($query) )
                        return false;
                $row = get_object_vars($row);
                if ( !count($row) )
                        return false;
                return array_shift($row);
        }
 
        function get_col($query) {
                if ( !$results = $this->get_results($query) )
                        return false;
                $column = array();
                foreach ( $results as $row ) {
                        $row = get_object_vars($row);
                        if ( !count($row) )
                                continue;
                        $column[] = array_shift($row);
                }
                return $column;
        }
 
}
 
?>

Posted on : Nov 18 2008
Posted under API, Business, CLI, Linux, MySQL, PHP, Personal, Random Thoughts, Software Development, Web Stuff |

Postfix, DKIMproxy, Spamc

If you’re running any moderately busy mail server you’re probably using spamassassins spamc/spamd to check for spam because its tons more efficient than piping the mail through the spamassassin cli. Assuming that you do, and that you plan on adding DKIM proxy to the mix to verify  and sign emails you need to put things in the right order, to save you some headache here’s what I did:

  1. smtp|smtps => -o smtpd_proxy_filter=127.0.0.1:10035 # outgoing dkim verify port
  2. 127.0.0.1:10036 => -o content_filter=spamassassin
  3. spamassassin =>  pipe user=nobody argv=/usr/bin/spamc -f -e /usr/sbin/sendmail -oi -f ${sender} ${recipient} # this delivers to the “pickup” service
  4. pickup => -o content_filter=dksign:127.0.0.1:10037 # outgoing dkim signing port
  5. 127.0.0.1:10038 => -o content_filter= # the buck stops here

If you arent careful with these (which I wasnt) you’ll end up causing an infinite loop between your filters (which I did).  Thus concludes our public service announcement.


Posted on : Nov 14 2008
Posted under Business, CLI, Funny Stuff, Linux, Security, Software Development, Web Stuff |