Technical Drool #1: How To Setup The Server

I have made several missteps already that may have affected the sanity of my users, for which I will atone for in code.

June 9. Start of the Enlistment. 700 users immediately use the service within the first 10 minutes. Next twenty minutes sloooowwwwwdddoooowwwwnnnn. I can imagine my irate users. My GAIM starts to popup. One contact. Then two. Then three. Then another just added me as a contact followed by a former student and then another contact. Before I knew it, my GAIM is one big conference room with everybody throwing something at you. It’s freaking 12:30 in the morningwhy are you people still up! [DevilMe: You're still up! Wait...you're not a person...snicker]

I begin to palpitate and then DevilMe says: What are you thumping for? Let ‘em blabber till they shrivel and d**!

Better get to the bottom of this before it get’s worse. First place to go to: Web Server configuration…But wait…I already maxed out the web server configuration this summer, that seemed to solve the problem back then. What’s wrong now?

Text messages. Vibrating phone.

I check processing logs: password verification : 10531.34 ms (or something like that). OMG. What’s slowing you down X? (I’m temporarily naming the SystemOne server X).

Another TExt message. Unknown number.

Try a restart [ AngelMe : "Within 30 minutes of reboot? " ]. It’s always fast after restart. [AngelMe: "Are you gonna restart forever?"]. Good point.

“Sir, nawala systemone, what’s up ?”. My cholesterol.

“Sir Server Down, when will it be back?” Let’s toss a coin. If it’s heads it’s not back yet,tails it’s not back yet.

I research more stuff on Apache Web Server configuration and do some changes. It seemd to work a little. Time to look at the other parts. The only solution left for me that is undoable at the moment is to recompile the web server to accept more than 256 connections at a time. Arrgg..

On the background my inbox begins to fill up. Better read some of those. Email about recommended courses being wrong. Email about someone’s recommended courses being wrong. Email about getting help on enlisting on a subject because he/she is graduating. Email about someone’s recommended courses being wrong….isn’t that the same person? WT. I realize I’m sugar high. Those two small bottles of mountain dew seemed to be 10 cups of coffee.

Cellphone rings. Miss call. Unread messages again. Students. Answer some.

Web Service server configuration. Already maxed out. Any changes I do to it will not do much.

Then it hit. Oh yeah! I loaded new data and I didn’t INDEX my database tables. Loginpasswordaccessdatabasetypetypetypetypetypetypetype. Done. Chomp on the burger I haven’t touch in two hours. The pasta and the onion rings would be rotting by now.

Wait check logs. The numbers went down a bit. That seem to work. Note To Self: Always INDEX after database data loading.

“SIR how can I enroll in PE 2? It doesn’t seem to be working!” I checked. It wasn’t. I reply that I will solve the problem within the day, for the mean time don’t touch them PEs.

“SIR can the subject I took last time be substituted to my GE so it won’t become an extra subject?” Errr, isn’t that somebody else’s job?

I post messages on the SystemOne home page. I realize now it’s looking like a chat log of me talking to nobody.

I check the auth log. The usual dictionary-attacker logs. Don’t they ever stop?

More messages on my GAIM. I answered some and then one student say asked if the server went down.

WT*?

I check logs: get recommended courses 290453.34 ms. Huh? 1002344 ms. HUh? 30 seconds. HUH?

“Sir I can’t login, did you change my password?”

“Sir my slots disappeared!”

Vibrating phone.

“SIR! WHAT’s HAPPENING!”

“SIR! WHAT ARE YOU DOING!!!”

Uh-oh. I want my mommy.

Better check again. And then I remembered: DATABASE SERVER SETUP!

Ouch, it was using the default low-resource setting. Didn’t I use the larger configurations this summer? I think I did. Perhaps it reverted during upgrade?

Googlegoooglegoooglegooogle. ReadreadreadreadfastfastfastfastAhhhthereitisalttabtypetypetypetypebackup originalcopynewconfigurationfile.

Now let’s try you out. Ahhhh…smaller numbers…that’s good.

Then my former student asks if we will be reverting to the manual way, to which I replied, if we do that because of one (or two) server crash [ sic because of my stupidity], we’re all a bunch of losers. Would I be driving myself sleepless crazy just to go back to pen-and-paper-walk-around-the campus-way?

I wonder why it’s smaller now…maybe my users got so mad, they’d be outside my office with pickaxes tomorrow…..

2.45 ms. 45 ms. 69 ms. Hmmm…. Heaven…. X breathing smoothly…
Maybe…or maybe these last minute reconfigurations that I didn’t have to do if I thought of them before I even did this, worked. I’ll see tomorrow.

I get a brief reprieve from my worries. This may yet be the last thing that I write >:). I will look into the mirror when and if I get home and assess myself if I need psychiatric help.

POSTSCRIPT.

I remember how I woke up this morning, funny I did not remember falling asleep. I was woken up by Mam Jo who came in my room to tell me that the new Registrar, Mam Myrna C, was outside knocking. The last time I checked the clock conscious it was 6:45. Now my system clock says a little past 8. I sleept a good one hour. It may have been the sugar high but I felt I slept longer than one hour. I let the new registrar in. It was too late to notice I hadn’t trashed the half eaten burger and the pasta I failed to eat because my gracious housemate didn’t take out plastic utensils with the food. Sir Jimmy, Assistant to the CAS College Secretary and colleague also arrived.

We talked some stuff on things to do and while talking I wondered if what I did four hours ago is still working.

Time to check logs.

Verify student 100000000ms.

I was too light headed to react. What now?

Restart.

Talk some more strategies. And stuff. Sir Jimmy buys me coffee and breakfast. Wow. I hadn’t eaten anything substantial yesterday and still I only crave coffee today.

I was thinking what did I miss? I check memory usage. This server has 2GB memory and its using only over a half. What did I miss? It slowed down while I slept.

More messages on my GAIM messenger. PE 2 complaints come in. Ok will resolve that first. Tita Cecil reminds me that PE 2 options are contained in the Checklist data. Ok so I said to myself, I will create a Java program to get the……..Java………….ringing a bell……….

I smiled secretly while the two higherups in my office are talking.

What is the one thing I thought I was best working in and yet I forget its most important features? Java. One big slap to my face.

The Java Virtual Machine runs programs in a sandboxed environment. It only uses a preset memory size (heap). I check the logs for memory related errors. And then the I see the culprit. The Web server that handles web services for SystemOne is essentially a Java program.

The answer that eluded me was: Runtime options. I needed to increase the memory allocation for the server. I did it before in another project why did I not do it here?

Silent cry.

Restart. And all throughout the day it never registered those large processing times. A little bliss. We live.

I go back to writing that PE 2 farming program.

Students, grduate and undergrads, started to arrive, the graduate school seemed to have workday on a Saturday. Might as well decrease the people who want to kill me.