July 2013 - ☩ Walking in Light with Christ - Faith, Computing, Diary ☩ Walking in Light with Christ

Archive for July, 2013

Top Paying Google Adsense Keywords for 2013 – Increase blog earnings with high paying keywords

Wednesday, July 31st, 2013

Most-High-Paying-Google-AdSense-Keywords-for-year-2013-Increase-your-revenues-from-Google-with-these-keywords

Whether you're a blogger and you're trying to earn some extra cash for your daily living via blogging you already know how hard it is. It is not hard it is almost impossible to earn enough from Blog or personal website to make it your primary source of income. With the Crisis the CPC (Cost Per Click) rate of Advertisements and the number of people willing to pay big money for Cost per click dropped down drastically … This means also our earnings as bloggers decreased badly … However there is still a bit of hope to boost a bit Google Adsense Paying revenues, by trying to write articles including certain high payed keywords. Not surprisingly this high pay keywords vary seriously over years. You might be shocked to know that there are some keywords for which Google pays over 100$ per CLICK!!! OMG 100$ per click this sounds unrealistic but according to some rumors online its a fact. I've found on the internet a list of 70 keywords said to make your blog money per click from 179 dollars (highest clickable advertiser pay fee) to 51 bucks at minimum. Actually the reason to write this post was to test if this rumors with so high CPC are true. I will update the post later to tell you whether really top words work or its jus ta big fraud. Here is list of 70 top earning Google Adsense revenue keywords for 2013

Keywords	CPC
MESOTHELIOMA LAW FIRM	$179.01
DONATE CAR TO CHARITY CALIFORNIA	$130.25
DONATE CAR FOR TAX CREDIT	$126.65
DONATE CARS IN MA	$125.58
DONATE YOUR CAR SACRAMENTO	$118.20
HOW TO DONATE A CAR IN CALIFORNIA	$111.21
SELL ANNUITY PAYMENT	$107.46
DONATE YOUR CAR FOR KIDS	$106.01
ASBESTOS LAWYERS	$105.84
STRUCTURED ANNUITY SETTLEMENT	$100.8
ANNUITY SETTLEMENTS	$100.72
CAR INSURANCE QUOTES COLORADO	$100.93
NUNAVUT CULTURE	$99.52
DAYTON FREIGHT LINES	$99.39
HARDDRIVE DATA RECOVERY SERVICES	$98.59
DONATE A CAR IN MARYLAND	$98.51
MOTOR REPLACEMENTS	$98.43
CHEAP DOMAIN REGISTRATION HOSTING	$98.39
DONATING A CAR IN MARYLAND	$98.20
DONATE CARS ILLINOIS	$98.13
CRIMINAL DEFENSE ATTORNEYS FLORIDA	$98.07
BEST CRIMINAL LAWYER IN ARIZONA	$97.93
CAR INSURANCE QUOTES UTAH	$97.92
LIFE INSURANCE CO LINCOLN	$97.07
HOLLAND MICHIGAN COLLEGE	$95.74
ONLINE MOTOR INSURANCE QUOTES	$95.73
ONLINE COLLEDGES	$95.65
PAPERPORT PROMOTIONAL CODE	$95.13
ONLINECLASSES	$95.06
WORLD TRADE CENTER FOOTAGE	$95.02
MASSAGE SCHOOL DALLAS TEXAS	$94.90
PSYCHIC FOR FREE	$94.61
DONATE OLD CARS TO CHARITY	$94.55
LOW CREDIT LINE CREDIT CARDS	$94.49
DALLAS MESOTHELIOMA ATTORNEYS	$94.33
CAR INSURANCE QUOTES MN	$94.29
DONATE YOUR CAR FOR MONEY	$94.01
CHEAP AUTO INSURANCE IN VA	$93.84
MET AUTO	$93.70
FORENSICS ONLINE COURSE	$93.51
HOME PHONE INTERNET BUNDLE	$93.32
DONATING USED CARS TO CHARITY	$93.17
PHD IN COUNSELING EDUCATION	$92.99
NEUSON	$92.89
CAR INSURANCE QUOTES PA	$92.88
ROYALTY FREE IMAGES STOCK	$92.76
CAR INSURANCE IN SOUTH DAKOTA	$92.72
EMAIL BULK SERVICE	$92.55
WEBEX COSTS	$92.38
CHEAP CAR INSURANCE FOR LADIES	$92.23
CHEAP CAR INSURANCE IN VIRGINIA	$92.03
REGISTER FREE DOMAINS	$92.03
BETTER CONFERENCING CALLS	$91.44
FUTURISTIC ARCHITECTURE	$91.44
MORTGAGE ADVISER	$91.29
CAR DONATE	$88.26
VIRTUAL DATA ROOMS	$83.18
AUTOMOBILE ACCIDENT ATTORNEY	$76.57
AUTO ACCIDENT ATTORNEY	$75.64
CAR ACCIDENT LAWYERS	$75.17
DATA RECOVERY RAID	$73.22
MOTOR INSURANCE QUOTES	$68.61
PERSONAL INJURY LAWYER	$66.53
CAR INSURANCE QUOTES	$61.03
ASBESTOS LUNG CANCER	$60.96
INJURY LAWYERS	$60.79
PERSONAL INJURY LAW FIRM	$60.56
ONLINE CRIMINAL JUSTICE DEGREE	$60.4
CAR INSURANCE COMPANIES	$58.66
BUSINESS VOIP SOLUTIONS	$51.9

Tags: bloggers, blogging, boost, list, make, money, post, primary, test, Top Paying Google Adsense Keywords
Posted in Curious Facts, Economy | 2 Comments »

A Hunting Accident Soviet Movie / Мой ласковый и нежный зверь – A notable Soviet Era Movie

Wednesday, July 31st, 2013

hunting-accident-moj-laskaviij-i-nejnij-zvery-russian-beautiful-lady-in-red-on-white-horse

A Hunting Accident is another one of those many Classic Soviet Movies. It is produced in 1978. As most Russian movies you have to be russian to understand it 🙂 The movie doesn't have a too special plot but has unique scenes very much reminding me of Gothism. Its really worthy to see the movie just for the sake of getting to know better Soviet Culture. White Horses beautiful ladies, elegant gentleman in white carrets this is the accident of the movie. The main actress is stunningly beautiful just like most Russian ladies 🙂
Movie is a great one for people who value Art movies.

Watch movie here http://youtu.be/IQhBo9Pz0rw

Here is what Wikipedia Says about the movie

A Hunting Accident (Russian: Мой ласковый и нежный зверь, translit. Moy laskovyy i nezhnyy zver, My Affectionate and Tender Beast) is a 1978 Soviet drama film directed by Emil Loteanu. It was entered into the 1978 Cannes Film Festival.[1] It is adapted from Anton Chekhov's "The Shooting Party."

For those understanding Russian here is some more information in Russian.
Сюжет[править] Дочь лесничего – Скворцова Ольга (Галина Беляева) — красивая девушка 19 лет. По первому впечатлению, естественна и легка, как «ангел во плоти», однако позже выясняется, что она по-житейски расчётлива и тщеславна. В Ольгу влюбляются трое мужчин: Урбенин (Леонид Марков), граф Карнеев (Кирилл Лавров) и судебный следователь Камышев (Олег Янковский). Ольга, желая избавиться от нищеты, без любви выходит замуж за управляющего имением — дворянина, 50-летнего вдовца Урбенина. В день своей свадьбы она признаётся в любви Камышеву, однако отказывается уехать с ним. Камышев — высокий, широкоплечий красивый мужчина около 40 лет, изысканно одевается. Ольга думает, что он богат, но скоро узнаёт, в каких непрезентабельных условиях он живёт. После этого она становится сожительницей графа Карнеева. Во время охоты её убивают. Подозревают и ссылают на каторгу её мужа Урбенина, где он через четыре года умирает. Однако истинным убийцей является Камышев.

Tags: Anton Chekhov, Cannes Film Festival, doesn, Emil Loteanu, Hunting Accident, plot, Russian, sake, Soviet Culture, White Horses
Posted in Entertainment, Movie Reviews, Various | No Comments »

Fix to (OOPS!!! there seems to be some problem while tweeting. Please try again.) – Solution: Why WordPress Tweet-Old-Post can’t authorize and Auto post to Twitter

Wednesday, July 31st, 2013

I've been happily using Tweet-Old-Post to auto tweet my old blog posts in Twitter to drive some extra traffic to increase a bit Traffic to this blog and henceforth it used to be working well just until recently. Suddenly it stopped mysteriously working! Until this very day I didn't have the time to investigate what is happening and why Tweet Old Post fails to Auto post in Twitter? with below miserable error:

OOPS!!! there seems to be some problem while tweeting. Please try again.

Today I have some free time at work and was wondering what to do, so decided to try some close examination. I red plenty of posts online from people complaining to have the same problems on both current latest WordPress 3.5.1 and older Releases of WordPress. Some claimed this errors are because of WordPress version incompitability others said it is due to fact that some other plugins like (FD FeedBurner) are creating conflicts with Tweet-Old-Post. I use FD Feedburner Plugin myself so I tried disabling it for a while and see if this fix it with no luck.

Some other suggested solutions was to check whether
Settings -> General -> (Blog hostname)
is properly configured.
Some even suggested "hacking" manually into plugin code changing stuff in top-admin.php claiming the reason for issues is rooted in some looping mod_rewrite redirect rules.

As a logical step to solve it I moreover tried the good old Windows Philosophy (Restart it and it will magically work again).
Thus from WordPress main menu
Tweet Old Post -> (clicked on) Reset Settings

to nullify any custom settings that might have been messing it.
Though reset worked fine trying to do a test Tweet with Tweet Now (button) failed once again with the shitty error msg:

OOPS!!! there seems to be some problem while tweeting. Please try again.

As a next logical step I tried to enable Tweet-Old-Post logging by ticking on
Enable Log (Saves log in log folder)
In log log.txt (located in my case in /var/www/blog/wp-content/plugins/tweet-old-post/log.txt) I've noticed following error msg:

1375196010 ..CURLOPT_FOLLOWLOCATION is ON
1375196010 ..CURL returned a status code of 200
1375196011 do get request returned status code of 400 for url – http://api.twitter.com/1.1/users/show.json?id=126915073

Obviously something was wrong with curl PHP use, however as I was lazy and not a great PHP Programmer I decided not to took the time to further debug PHP curl function but instead. Try to use some kind of Alternative Post-To-Twitter plugin.

It turned out there are at least two more WP plugins that are auto posting to twitter:

tweetily-tweet-wordpress-posts-automatically
evergreen-post-tweeter

I tried to manually download and install both of them with wget in wp-content/plugins set proper readable for apache permissions i.e. (chown -R www-data:www-data /var/www/blog/wp-content/plugins/tweetily-tweet-wordpress-posts-automatically; chown -R www-data:www-data /var/www/blog/wp-cotent/plugins/evergreen-post-tweeter).

Further on tried to enable them one by one and then tried using Authorizing Auto Tweeting to Tweeter App, both failed to Authorize Auto Post to Twitter just like in Tweet-Old-Post 4.0.7. As using another plugin was not a solution, then I tried going another direction and followed some ppl suggestion to downgrade Tweet-Old-Post and try with older version again. I used following link to try with old Tweet-Old-Post versions

Old version didn't worked as well, so finally I felt totally stucked .. unable to fix it for a while and then the lamp bulbed, had the brilliant idea to check curl settings in php.ini (/etc/php5/apache2/php.ini). I looked in config for anything related to curl, until I got what is causing it!!!! A security setting disabling curl use from PHP.INI

Below is paste from php.ini with line making the whole OOPS!!! there seems to be some problem while tweeting. Please try again

disable_functions =exec,passthru,shell_exec,system,proc_open,popen,curl_exec,curl_multi_exec,parse_ini_file,show_source,eval

I've included above disable functions to strengthen security and prevent crackers to download scripts if a security breach happens.

Henceforth to solve I simply removed from disable_functions
curl_exec and curl_multi_exec, so after changes machine PHP disabled functions for security reasons looked like so

disable_functions =exec,passthru,shell_exec,system,proc_open,popen,parse_ini_file,show_source,eval
To make new php.ini settings load finally did the usual Apache restart:

pcfreak:~# /etc/init.d/apache2 restart ...

Well that's all now the error is solved. I hope my little article will shed up some light on problem and will help thousands of users to get back the joy of working Tweet-Old-Posts 😉

Tags: auto post, conflicts, custom settings, error msg, free time, hostname, logical step, old windows, philosophy, suggested solutions, traffic, tweet, twitter
Posted in Various, Web and CMS, Wordpress | No Comments »

10 must know and extremely useful Linux commands that every sys admin should know

Tuesday, July 30th, 2013

There are plenty of precious command line stuff every admin should be aware on Linux. In this article I just decided to place some I use often and are interesting to know. Below commands are nothing special and probably many of experienced sys admins already know them. However I'm pretty sure novice admins and start-up Linux enthusiasts will find it useful. I know there much more to be said on the topic. So anyone is mostly welcome to share his used cmds.

1. Delete all files in directory except files with certain file extension

It is good trick to delete all files in directory except certain file formats, to do so:

root@linux:~# rm !(*.c|*.py|*.txt|*.mp3)

2. Write command output to multiple files (tee)

The normal way to write to file is by using redirect (to overwrite file) ">" or (to append to file) ">>";. However when you need to write output to multiple files there is a command called tee, i.e.:

root@linux:~# ps axuwwf | tee file1 file2 file3

3. Search for text in plain text file printing number of lines after match

Whether you need to print all number of lines after match of "search_text" use:

root@linux:~# grep -A 5 -i "search_text" text_file.txt

4. Show all files where text string is matched with GREP (Search for text recursively)

Searching for text match is extremely helpful for system administration. I use grep recursive (capability) almost on daily basis:

root@websrv:/etc/dovecot# grep -rli text *
conf.d/10-auth.conf
conf.d/10-mail.conf
dovecot.conf

-l (instructs to only print file names matching string), -r (stands for recursive search), and -i flag (instructs grep to print all matches inogoring case-sensitivity ( look for text nomatter if with capital or small letters)

5. Finding files and running command on each file type matched

In Linux with find command it is possible to search for files and run command on each file matched.
Lets say you we want to look in current directory for all files .swp (temporary) files produced so often by VIM and wipe them out:

root@linux:~# find . -iname '*.swp*' -exec rm -f {} \;
6. Convert DOS end of file (EOF) to UNIX with sed

If it happens you not have dos2unix command installed on Linux shell and you need to translate DOS end of file (\r\n – return carriage, new line) to UNIX's (\r – return carriage)), do it with sed:

root@linux:~# sed 's/.$//' filename

7. Remove file duplicate lines with awk:

cat test.txt test test test duplicate The brown fox jump over ... Richard Stallman rox

root@linux:~# awk '!($0 in array) { array[$0]; print }' test.txt test test duplicate The brown fox jump over ... Richard Stallman rox

To remove duplicate text from all files in directory same can be easily scripped with bash for loop:

root@linux:~# for i in *; do awk '!($0 in array) { array[$0]; print }' $i; done

8. Print only selected columns from text file

To print text only in 1st and 7th column in plain text file with awk:

root@linux:~# awk '{print $1,$6;}' filename.txt ...
To print only all existing users on Linux with their respective set shell type:

root@linux:~# cat /etc/passwd|sed -e 's#:# #g'|awk '{print $1,$6;}'

9. Open file with VIM text editor starting from line

I use only vim for console text processing, and I often had to edit and fix file which fail to compile on certain line number. Thus use vim to open file for writing from necessary line num. To open file and set cursor to line 35 root@linux:~# vim +35 /home/hipo/current.c

10. Run last command with "!!" bash shorcut

Lets say last command you run is uname -a:

root@websrv:/home/student# uname -a Linux websrv 3.2.0-4-686-pae #1 SMP Debian 3.2.46-1 i686 GNU/Linux

To re-run it simply type "!!":

root@websrv:/home/student# !! uname -a Linux websrv 3.2.0-4-686-pae #1 SMP Debian 3.2.46-1 i686 GNU/Linux root@websrv:/home/student#

Tags: case sensitivity, cmds, daily basis, file extension, file formats, file names, file txt, file1 file2, Linux, linux commands, linux enthusiasts, mail, match, multiple files, nomatter, novice, printing number, recursive search, sys admin, system administration, text string
Posted in Everyday Life, Linux, System Administration, Various | 1 Comment »

Tracking multiple log files in real time in Linux console / terminal (MultiTail)

Monday, July 29th, 2013

Multitail multiple tail Debian GNU Linux viewing Apache access and error log in shared screen
Whether you have to administer Apache, Nginx or Lighttpd, or whatever other kind of daemon which interactively logs user requests or errors you probably already know well of tail command (tail -f /var/log/apache2/access.log) is something Webserver Linux admin can't live without. Sometimes however you have number of Virtualhost (domains) each configured to log site activity in separate log file. One solution to the problem is to use GNU Screen (screen – terminal emulator) to launch multiple screen session and launch separate tail -f /var/log/apache2/domain1/access.log , tail -f /var/log/apache2/domain2/access.log etc. This however is a bit of hack and except configuring screen to show multiple windows on one Virtual Terminal (tty or vty in gnome), you can't really see output simultaneously in one separated window.

Here is where multitail comes handy. MultiTail is tool to visualize in real time log records output of multiple logs (tails) in one shared terminal Window. MultiTail is written to use ncurses library used by a bunch of other useful tools like Midnight Command so output is colorful and very nice looking.

Here is MultiTail package description on Debian Linux:

linux:~# apt-cache show multitail|grep -i description -A 1
Description-en: view multiple logfiles windowed on console
multitail lets you view one or multiple files like the original tail
—
Description-md5: 5e2f688efb214b063bdc418a705860a1
Tag: interface::text-mode, role::program, scope::utility, uitoolkit::ncurses,
root@noah:/home/hipo# apt-cache show multitail|grep -i description -A 1
Description-en: view multiple logfiles windowed on console
multitail lets you view one or multiple files like the original tail
—
Description-md5: 5e2f688efb214b063bdc418a705860a1
Tag: interface::text-mode, role::program, scope::utility, uitoolkit::ncurses,

Multiple Tail is available across most Linux distributions to install on Debian / Ubuntu / Mint etc. Linux:

debian:~# apt-get install --yes multitail ...

On recent Fedora / RHEL / CentOS etc. RPM based Linuces to install:

[root@centos ~]# yum -y install multitail ...

On FreeBSD multitail is available to install from ports:

freebsd# cd /usr/ports/sysutils/multitail freebsd# make install clean ...

Once installed to display records in multiple files lets say Apache domain name access.log and error.log

debian:~# multitail -f /var/log/apache2/access.log /var/log/apache2/error.log
…

It has very extensive help invoked by simply pressing h while running

multtail-viewing-in-gnome-shared-screen-debian-2-log-files-screenshot

Even better multitail is written to already have integrated color schemes for most popular Linux services log files

multitail multiple tail debian gnu linux logformat different color schemes screenshot
List of supported MulLog Color schemes as of time of writting article is:

acctail, acpitail, apache, apache_error, argus, asterisk, audit, bind, boinc, boinctail ,checkpoint, clamav, cscriptexample, dhcpd, errrpt, exim, httping, ii, inn, kerberos, lambamoo, liniptfw, log4j, mailscanner, motion, mpstat, mysql, nagtail, netscapeldap, netstat, nttpcache, ntpd, oracle, p0f, portsentry, postfix, pptpd, procmail, qmt-clamd, qmt-send, qmt-smtpd, qmt-sophie, qmt-spamassassin, rsstail, samba, sendmail, smartd, snort spamassassin, squid, ssh, strace, syslog, tcpdump, vmstat, vnetbr, websphere, wtmptail

To tell it what kind of log Color scheme to use from cmd line use:

debian:~# multitail -Csapache /var/log/apache2/access.log /var/log/apache2/error.log

Useful feature is to run command display in separate Windows while still following log output, i.e.:

[root@centos:~]# multitail /var/log/httpd.log -l "netstat -nat" ...

Multitail can also merge output from files in one Window, while in second window some other log or command output is displayed. To merge output from Apache access.log and error.log:

debian:~# multitail /var/log/apache2/access.log -I /var/log/apache2/error.log

When merging two log files output to show in one Window it is useful to display each file output in different color for the sake of readability

For example:

debian:~# multitail -ci green /var/log/apache/access.log -ci red -I /var/log/apache/error.log
multitail merged Apache access and error log on Debian Linux

To display output from 3 log files in 3 separate shared Windows in console use:

linux:~# multitail -s 2 /var/log/syslog /var/log/apache2/access.log /var/log/apache2/error.log

For some more useful examples, check out MultiTail's official page examples
There is plenty of other useful things to do with multitail, for more RTFM 🙂

Tags: configured, daemon, Gnome, gnu screen, hack, lighttpd, logs, multiple files, nginx, package description, screen session, terminal emulator, terminal window, time log, useful tools, Virtualhost
Posted in Everyday Life, FreeBSD, Linux, System Administration | No Comments »

How to Block Facebook access on Microsoft Windows XP / Vista / 7 and 8

Friday, July 26th, 2013

In Office home network, there is a Windows XP computer which is spending all his official work time in facebook.
Hanging in facebook makes this social network freak work quite inefficient so something had to be done immediately … and guess who had to do it …

Usually I do facebook filtering via iptables rules directly from Linux NAT router, but filtering facebook https (port 443 traffic) is real pain in the ass and moreover facebook has a bunch of hosts so filtering from Linux i-net router is not always best solution. In this specific case the Linux router deliving internet to the Win host was also having complete routing so filtering with iptables wasn't so easy.
To save myself from loosing few hours trying to discover why I can't manage to filter facebook from Linux router, checked online if it possible to filter facebook using standard Windows method.
It turns out on Windows computer it is possible filter facebook by simply mapping all Facebook main hosts to localhost (127.0.0.1) using hosts map file. In my case Win computer was running Windows XP, however on All Windows XP / Vista / 7 and 8, default location of hosts file is in:

C:\WINDOWS\system32\drivers\etc\hosts

$Microsoft Windows c:\system32\drivers\etc\hosts file Windows explorer screenshot$

Therefore I used Windows Explorer, navigated to C:\WINDOWS\system32\drivers\etc\ copied hosts file to Desktop, edited with Notepad and placed at the end of it following lines:

# Block Facebook 127.0.0.1 api.facebook.com 127.0.0.1 connect.facebook.net 127.0.0.1 facebook.com 127.0.0.1 www.facebook.com 127.0.0.1 graph.facebook.com 127.0.0.1 profile-b.xx.fbcdn.net 127.0.0.1 s-static.ak.facebook.com 127.0.0.1 static.ak.connect.facebook.com 127.0.0.1 static.ak.facebook.com 127.0.0.1 static.ak.fbcdn.net 127.0.0.1 www.fbcdn.com 127.0.0.1 static.facebook.com 127.0.0.1 www.static.ak.connect.facebook.com 127.0.0.1 www.login.facebook.com 127.0.0.1 login.facebook.com

Then copied the new modified hosts files from Desktop back to C:\WINDOWS\system32\drivers\etc
Following same logic, its possible to disable access to any host on the Internet. There are even some software like SpyBot which does by default change Windows default hosts file with pre-mapped well known spammer / spyware / malware hosts to prevent viruses and spyware to download more of themselves.

Finally to make Windows re-read new hosts file I had to restart the PC, and Voila! Facebook access was cut 🙂

Tags: default location, facebook, freak, inet, linux router, local network, nat router, network ip, notepad, organization network, pain in the ass, windows explorer, windows features, windows hosts file, work time
Posted in Everyday Life, System Administration, Various, Windows | No Comments »

Checking I/O Hard Disk (Overhead) Read / Write operations on Microsoft Windows 7 – Resource Monitor

Friday, July 26th, 2013

I mainly have to deal with Linux servers. Today however I had to check for problems Microsoft Windows 7 server. The machine looked Okay but was reading from hard drive all the time. Hence I needed to check what is the Hard disk approximate read / write speed per second. I know on lInux tracking i/o hard disk server bottlenecks is done with iostat or dstat.

However I never did that on Windows, so I had to learn it by experience. Its actually pretty easy and you don't even need to install external program to see read / write hdd speed operations. Windows 7 is bundled with a Program called Resource Manager. Running Resource Manager's easiest method is from Windows Task Manager, i.e.:

Press Ctrl + Alt + Del (Choose Start Task Manager) and from Task Manager click on Resource Monitor Button.
Immediately resource Monitor pops up and selecting the Disk tab priovides information on HDD Read / Write speed per sec. Using Resource Monitor, you can quickly also see which process is creating the most HDD overhead for server.

Though I'm not Microsoft fan, I should admit Resource Manager does a great job.

Tags: check, deal, hard disk, hard drive, hdd, iostat, reading, Resource Monitor Button, Running Resource Manager, server bottlenecks, speed, Using Resource Monitor
Posted in System Administration, Windows | No Comments »

Linux: Generating Web statistics from Old Apache logs with Webalizer

Thursday, July 25th, 2013

Often it happens, that some old hosted websites were created in a way so no Web Statistics are available. Almost all modern created websites nowadays are already set to use Google Analytics. Anyhow every now and then I stumble on hosting clients whose websites creator didn't thought on how to track how many hits or unique visitors site gets in a month / year etc.
Thanksfully this is solvable by good "uncle" admin with help with of Webalizer (with custom configuration) and a little bit of shell scripting.

The idea is simple, we take the old website logs located in lets say
/var/log/apache2/www.website-access.log*, move files to some custom created new directory lets say /root/www.website-access-logs/ and then configure webalizer to read and generate statistics based on log in there.

For the purpose, we have to have webalizer installed on Linux system. In my case this is Debian GNU / Linux.

For those who hear of Webalizer for first time here is short package description:

debian:~# apt-cache show webalizer|grep -i description -A 2

Description-en: web server log analysis program
The Webalizer was designed to scan web server log files in various formats
and produce usage statistics in HTML format for viewing through a browser.
—

If webalizer is not installed still install it with:

debian:~# apt-get install --yes webalizer ... .....

Then make backup copy of original / default webalizer.conf (very important step especially if server is already processing Apache log files with some custom webalizer configuration:

debian:~# cp -rpf /etc/webalizer/webalizer.conf /etc/webalizer/webalizer.conf.orig

Next step is to copy webalizer.conf with a name reminding of website of which logs will be processed, e.g.:

debian:~# cp -rpf /etc/webalizer/webalizer.conf /etc/webalizer/www.website-webalizer.conf

In www.website-webalizer.conf config file its necessary to edit at least 4 variables:

LogFile /var/log/apache2/access.log OutputDir /var/www #Incremental no ReportTitle Usage statistics for

Make sure after modifying 3 vars read something like:
LogFile /root/www.website/access_log_merged_1.log OutputDir /var/www/www.website Incremental yes ReportTitle Usage statistics for Your-Website-Host-Name.com

Next create /root/www.website and /var/www/www.website, then copy all files you need to process from /var/log/apache2/www.website* to /root/www.website:

debian:~# mkdir -p /root/www.website debian:~# cp -rpf /var/log/apache2/www.website* /root/www.website

On Debian Apache uses logrotate to archive old log files, so all logs except www.website-access.log and wwww.website-access.log.1 are gzipped:

debian:~# cd /root/www.website debian:~# ls www.website-access.log.10.gz www.website-access.log.11.gz www.website-access.log.12.gz www.website-access.log.13.gz www.website-access.log.14.gz www.website-access.log.15.gz www.website-access.log.16.gz www.website-access.log.17.gz www.website-access.log.18.gz www.website-access.log.19.gz www.website-access.log.20.gz ...

Then we have to un-gzip zipped logs and create one merged file from all of them ready to be red later by Webalizer. To do so I use a tiny shell script like so:

for n in {52..1}; do gzip -d www.dobrudzhatour.net-access.log.$n.gz; done for n in {52..1}; do cat www.dobrudzhatour.net-access.log.$n >> access_log_merged_1.log; done

First look de-gzips and second one does create a merged file from all with name access_merged_1.log The range of log files in my case is from www.website-access.log.1 to www.website-access.log.52, thus I have in loop back number counting from 52 to 1.

Once access_log_merged_1.log is ready we can run webalizer to process file (Incremental) and generate all time statistics for www.website:

debian:~# webalizer -c /etc/webalizer/webalizer-www.website-webalizer.conf

Webalizer V2.01-10 (Linux 2.6.32-27-server) locale: en_US.UTF-8
Using logfile /root/www.website/access_log_merged_1.log (clf)
Using default GeoIP database Creating output in /var/www/webalizer-www.website
Hostname for reports is 'debian'
Reading history file… webalizer.hist
Reading previous run data.. webalizer.current
333474 records (333474 ignored) in 37.50 seconds, 8892/sec

To check out just generated statistics open in browser:

http://yourserverhost/webalizer-www.website/

http://IP_Address/webalizer-www.website

You should see statistics pop-up, below is screenshot with my currently generated stats:

Webalizer website access statistics screenshot Debian GNU Linux

Tags: custom configuration, debian gnu, google, Linux, little bit, move files, package description, server log files, shell scripting, unique visitors, usage statistics, web server log, web statistics, webalizer
Posted in Linux, Skype on Linux, Various, Web and CMS | 2 Comments »

Change Windows 8 Start menu look like in Windows 7 or How to get back good old start menu back in Win 8

Tuesday, July 23rd, 2013

Whether you just installed to try Win 8 or received an office work notebook configured to work with Microsoft Windows 8, you certainly are already annoyed by changed Mobile phone like interface. First time I saw Windows 8 interface I was in shock what kind of mess this interface is. I understand Microsoft's desire to make Windows Mobile ready, but maybe it was wise idea to allow the user with option to revert back to old Windows XP / Vista /7 interface for the sake of some compitability and user friendliness. Even for young people who already worked with computers this "chopped" interface is surely horrible. I even can't imagine how hard it is for older people to get used to this weird interface.

Today in my work place, the husband of our Second Executive, brought to me a relatively new Sony VAIO notebook bought with pre-installed Win 8.
Just like any normal person, he was in shock with Windows 8 weird interface and he asked me to explain him the interface. Well I will immediately after someone explain me the interface 🙂
He so much didn't like Win 8 that he even asked to re-install computer with Windows 7. I'm a lazy person plus I like saving my time. So looked quickly online if it is possible to make Windows 8 interface with Start button similar to older Windows releases. Actually there are plenty of ways to do it via both, Free and paid Software.
I'm a Free Software supporter, so I didn't even considered checking non-free or freeware ones. And I sticked directly to Open Source – Classic Shell.

What Classic Shell does is it turns interface of Internet Explorer to look like IE 9, adds a Start Menu button With Programs etc. to left Win corner (of course it doesn't place Windows Start button as this one is patented and forbidden to use in Free Soft).

Unlike most Start menu replacements, Classic Shell has been around for 4 years already. Its first version came out in November 2009, long before Windows 8 was even close to public. At the time, it was meant to fix interface annoyances in Windows Vista. That was version 0.9 (the first publicly available version).

Here is main list of current Classic Shell features:

Highly customizable start menu with multiple styles and skins
Start button for Windows 7 and Windows 8
Toolbar and status bar for Windows Explorer
Caption and status bar for Internet Explorer

Program is in very active development (last beta released is from 2 days ago) meaning it is very popular among Windows users. As of time of writting its stable release is at ver. 3.6.8. It has even translations in in 18 languages including (my native Bulgarian)

There are plenty of things to configure on how Classic Shell behaves;

I was a little bit scared it might break up Win 8 first time I installed it, but installation went quite smoothly and even there was no need for restart for new Win start menu to appear.
Classic Shell, Search option works fine too and is quite fast (dunno if it is due to Windows indexing) or it use some custom acceleration. It has also a number of Skins to choose from to change appearance of Start Menu button.

To sum it up Classic Shell does well what it is meant for, I guess in any future Windows install it will be the first program to install and save myself those terrible Windows 8 UI!

Tags: change windows, interface, Microsoft, microsoft windows, mobile phone, place windows, shock, sony vaio notebook, start button, start menu, user friendliness, win 8, wise idea, work notebook
Posted in Everyday Life, Various, Windows | No Comments »

Windows add to startUP / Make MS Windows XP / Vista / 7 and 8 to start program automatically on start-up

Monday, July 22nd, 2013

On Linux, it is quite easy to run programs on OS boot via /etc/rc.local.
For Linux admins like me who are not much into Windows, it is interesting How it is possible to make Application run on Windows boot?

Running Program auto on boot is precious, especially for running small custom written .BAT (batch scripts)
On Windows XP there is a Startup Folder. Anything placed in Startup folder launches whenever Windows start.

Click on Start button -> All Programs, right mouse click on Startup folder -> Open.
Open Folder location that contains Program want to make start-up on Windows start.
Right-click Program and then click Create Shortcut. Newly created shortcut appears in same location as the original item.
Drag with Mouse new shortcut into the Startup folder.

Alternative way to reach Windows Start-Up (on Windows XP) is via C:\Users\Documents and Settings\All Users\Start Menu\Programs

To remove already, scheduled program to start, just remove it from Startup Folder or run in command prompt Start -> run (cmd.exe) ->

msconfig
And from StartUp tab, remove tick from Program you'd like to disable:

On Windows Vista / 7 Add / Remove Program on Start-up is done also from:
Control Panel -> Program -> Change Startup Programs

On Windows 8 to add / remove Programs to Startup (press Ctrl+C) in Run box that appears run:

%APPDATA%\Microsoft\Windows\Start Menu\Programs\Startup

Then just like on XP, create shortcut and Paste Shortcut linked to program to run on Win Start

That's all you have to do on Next Windows Startup-up Program will automatically run.
Following same logic it is possible to make Word DOC / .TXT / PDF / Mp3 / Movie run automatically on Windows boot. Enjoy 🙂

P.S. Dear Windows Admin Gurus, I'm sorry if this article was too boring, please accept my kind apologies if so:)

Tags: Admins, change startup programs, Linux, logic, mouse click, ms windows, os boot, scripts, start button, startup folder, windows boot, windows xp, word doc
Posted in System Administration, Various, Windows | 1 Comment »

☩ Walking in Light with Christ – Faith, Computing, Diary

Archive for July, 2013

A Hunting Accident Soviet Movie / Мой ласковый и нежный зверь – A notable Soviet Era Movie

Fix to (OOPS!!! there seems to be some problem while tweeting. Please try again.) – Solution: Why WordPress Tweet-Old-Post can’t authorize and Auto post to Twitter

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How to Block Facebook access on Microsoft Windows XP / Vista / 7 and 8

Checking I/O Hard Disk (Overhead) Read / Write operations on Microsoft Windows 7 – Resource Monitor

Change Windows 8 Start menu look like in Windows 7 or How to get back good old start menu back in Win 8

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