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Linux show largest sized packages / Which Deb, RPM Linux installed package use most disk space and How to Free Space for critical system updates

Sunday, January 12th, 2020

linux-show-largest-sized-packages-which-deb-rpm-linux-package-use-most-disk-space-to-free-space-for-critical-system-updates

A very common problem that happens on both Linux installed servers and Desktop Linux is a starting to fill / (root partition). This problem could happen due to several reasons just to point few of them out of my experience low disk space (ending free space) could be due to:

– Improper initial partitioning / bad space planning / or OS install made in a hurry (due to time constrains)
– Linux installed on old laptop machine with low Hard Disk Drive capacity (e.g. 80 Giga / 160 GB)
– Custom user partitioning on install time aiming for a small root partition originally and changing space requirements in time
– Due to increasing space taken by Linux updates / user stored files etc / distribution OS Level upgrades dist-upgrades.
– Improperly assigned install time partitions cause of lack of knowledge to understand how partitioning is managed.
– Due to install being made in a hurry
– Linux OS installed on a Cloud based VPN (e.g. running) in a Cloud Instance that is hosted in Amazon EC2, Linode, Digital Ocean, Hostgator etc.

So here is a real time situation that happened me many times, you're launching an apt-get upgrade / apt-get dist-upgrade or yum upgrade the packages are about to start downloading or downloaded and suddenly you get a message of not enough disk space to apply OS package updates …
That's nasty stuff mostly irritating and here there are few approaches to take.

a. perhaps easiest you can ofcourse extend the partition (with a free spaced other Primary or Extended partition) with something like:

parted (the disk partitioning manipulator for Linux), gparted (in case if Desktop with GUI / XOrg server running)

b. if not enough space on the Hard Disk Drive or SSD (Solid State Drive) and you have a budget to buy and free laptop / PC slot to place another physical HDD to clone it to a larger sized HDD and use some kind of partition clone tool, such as:

or any of the other multiple clone tools available in Linux.

But what if you don't have the option for some reason to extend the paritiotn, how can you apply the Critical Security Errata Updates issued to patch security vulnerabilities reported by well known CVEs?
Well you can start with the obvious easy you can start removing unnecessery stuff from the system (if home is also stored on the / – root partiiton) to delete something from there, even delete the /usr/local/man pages if you don't plan to read it free some logs by archiving purging logs from /var/log/* …

But if this is not possible, a better approach is simply try to remove / purge any .deb / .rpm whatever distro package manager packages that are not necessery used and just hanging around, that is often the case especially on Linux installed on Notebooks for a personal home use, where with years you have installed a growing number of packages which you don't actively use but installed just to take a look, while hunting for Cool Linux games and you wanted to give a try to Battle of Wesnoth  / FreeCIV / AlienArena / SuperTux Kart / TuxRacer etc.  or some GUI heavy programs like Krita / Inskape / Audacity etc.

To select which package might be not needed and just takes space hence you need to to list all installed packages on the system ordered by their size this is different in Debian based Linuces e.g. – Debian GNU / Linux / Ubuntu / Mint etc. and RPM based ones Fedora / CentOS / OpenSuSE

 

1. List all RPM installed packages by Size on CentOS / SuSE
 

Finding how much space each of the installed rpm packages take on the HDD and displaying them in a sorted order is done with:

rpm -qa –queryformat '%10{size} – %-25{name} \t %{version}\n' | sort -n

From the command above,  the '%10{size}' option aligns the size of the package to the right with a padding of 10 characters. The '%-25{name} aligns the name of the package to the left, padded to 25 characters. The '%{version} indicates the version and 'sort -n' flag sorts the packages according to size from the smallest to the largest in bytes.

 

2. List all installed RPM packages sorted by size on Fedora

Fedora has introduced the dnf package manager instead of yum, to get how much size individual rpm package occupies on system:

dnf info samba
Available Packages
Name        : samba
Arch        : x86_64
Epoch       : 2
Version     : 4.1.20
Release     : 1.fc21
Size        : 558 k
Repo        : updates
Summary     : Server and Client software to interoperate with Windows machines
URL         : http://www.samba.org/
License     : GPLv3+ and LGPLv3+
Description : Samba is the standard Windows interoperability suite of programs
            : for Linux and Unix.

 

To get a list of all packages on system with their size

dnf info * | grep -i "Installed size" |sort -n

 

3. List all installed DEB packages on Debian / Ubuntu / Mint etc. with dpkg / aptitude / apt-get and wajig

 

The most simple way to get a list of largest packages is through dpkg

 

# dpkg-query -Wf '${Installed-Size}\t${Package}\n' | sort -n
        brscan4
6       default-jre
6       libpython-all-dev
6       libtinfo-dev
6       python-all
6       python-all-dev
6       task-cinnamon-desktop
6       task-cyrillic
6       task-desktop
6       task-english
6       task-gnome-desktop
6       task-laptop
6       task-lxde-desktop
6       task-mate-desktop
6       task-print-server
6       task-ssh-server
6       task-xfce-desktop
8       mysql-client
8       printer-driver-all
…
…
207766    libwine
215625    google-chrome-stable
221908    libwine
249401    frogatto-data
260717    linux-image-4.19.0-5-amd64
262512    linux-image-4.19.0-6-amd64
264899    mame
270589    fonts-noto-extra
278903    skypeforlinux
480126    metasploit-framework


above cmd displays packages in size order, largest package last, but the output will include also size of packages, that used to exist,
have been removed but was not purged. Thus if you find  a package that is shown as very large by size but further dpkg -l |grep -i package-name shows package as purged e.g. package state is not 'ii' but 'rc', the quickest work around is to purge all removed packages, that are still not purged and have some configuration remains and other chunks of data that just take space for nothing with:

# dpkg –list |grep "^rc" | cut -d " " -f 3 | xargs sudo dpkg –purge


Be cautious when you execute above command, because if for some reason you uninstalled a package with the idea to keep old configuration files only and in case if you decide to use it some time in future to reuse already custom made configs but do run above purge commands all such package saved kept configs will disappear.
For people who don't want to mess up with, uninstalled but present packages use this to filter out ready to be purged state packages.

# dpkg-query -Wf '${db:Status-Status} ${Installed-Size}\t${Package}\n' | sed -ne 's/^installed //p'|sort -n


aptitude – (high level ncurses interface like to package management) can also be easily used to list largest size packages eating up your hard drive in both interactive or cli mode, like so:

 

# aptitude search –sort '~installsize' –display-format '%p %I' '~i' | head
metasploit-framework 492 MB
skypeforlinux 286 MB
fonts-noto-extra 277 MB
mame 271 MB
linux-image-4.19.0-6-amd64 269 MB
linux-image-4.19.0-5-amd64 267 MB
frogatto-data 255 MB
libwine 227 MB
google-chrome-stable 221 MB
libwine:i386 213 MB

 

  • –sort is package sort order, and ~installsize specifies a package sort policy.
  • installsize means 'sort on (estimated) installed size', and the preceding ~ means sort descending (since default for all sort policies is ascending).
  • –display-format changes the <you guessed :->. The format string '%p %I' tells aptitude to output package name, then installed size.
  • '~i' tells aptitude to search only installed packages.

How much a certain .deb package removal will free up on the disk can be seen with apt-get as well to do so for the famous 3D acceleration Graphic Card (enabled) or not  test game extremetuxracer: 

# apt-get –assume-no –purge remove "texlive*" | grep "be freed" | 
   awk '{print $4, $5}'

Perhaps,  the easiest to remember and more human readable output biggest packages occupied space on disk is to install and use a little proggie called wajig to do so

 

# apt install –yes wajig

 

Here is how to pick up 10 biggest size packages.

root@jeremiah:/home/hipo# wajig large|tail -n 10
fonts-noto-cjk-extra               204,486      installed
google-chrome-stable               215,625      installed
libwine                            221,908      installed
frogatto-data                      249,401      installed
linux-image-4.19.0-5-amd64         260,717      installed
linux-image-4.19.0-6-amd64         262,512      installed
mame                               264,899      installed
fonts-noto-extra                   270,589      installed
skypeforlinux                      278,903      installed
metasploit-framework               480,126      installed


As above example lists a short package name and no description for those who want get more in depth knowledge on what exactly is the package bundle used for use:

# aptitude search –sort '~installsize' –display-format '%30p %I %r %60d' '~i' |head


%30p %I %r %60d display more information in your format string, or change field widths, enhanced format string

Meaning of parameters is:

  • %30p : package name in field width=30 char
  • %I : estimated install size
  • %r : 'reverse depends count': approximate number of other installed packages which depend upon this package
  • %60d : package's short description in field width=60 char

wajig is capable is a python written and idea is to easify Debian console package management (so you don't have to all time remember when and with which arguments to use apt-get / apt-cache etc.), below is list of commands it accepts.

 

root@jeremiah:/home/hipo## wajig commands
addcdrom           Add a Debian CD/DVD to APT's list of available sources
addrepo            Add a Launchpad PPA (Personal Package Archive) repository
aptlog             Display APT log file
autoalts           Mark the Alternative to be auto-set (using set priorities)
autoclean          Remove no-longer-downloadable .deb files from the download cache
autodownload       Do an update followed by a download of all updated packages
autoremove         Remove unused dependency packages
build              Get source packages, unpack them, and build binary packages from them.
builddeps          Install build-dependencies for given packages
changelog          Display Debian changelog of a package
clean              Remove all deb files from the download cache
contents           List the contents of a package file (.deb)
dailyupgrade       Perform an update then a dist-upgrade
dependents         Display packages which have some form of dependency on the given package
describe           Display one-line descriptions for the given packages
describenew        Display one-line descriptions of newly-available packages
distupgrade        Comprehensive system upgrade
download           Download one or more packages without installing them
editsources        Edit list of Debian repository locations for packages
extract            Extract the files from a package file to a directory
fixconfigure       Fix an interrupted install
fixinstall         Fix an install interrupted by broken dependencies
fixmissing         Fix and install even though there are missing dependencies
force              Install packages and ignore file overwrites and depends
hold               Place packages on hold (so they will not be upgraded)
info               List the information contained in a package file
init               Initialise or reset wajig archive files
install            Package installer
installsuggested   Install a package and its Suggests dependencies
integrity          Check the integrity of installed packages (through checksums)
large              List size of all large (>10MB) installed packages
lastupdate         Identify when an update was last performed
listall            List one line descriptions for all packages
listalternatives   List the objects that can have alternatives configured
listcache          List the contents of the download cache
listcommands       Display all wajig commands
listdaemons        List the daemons that wajig can start, stop, restart, or reload
listfiles          List the files that are supplied by the named package
listhold           List packages that are on hold (i.e. those that won't be upgraded)
listinstalled      List installed packages
listlog            Display wajig log file
listnames          List all known packages; optionally filter the list with a pattern
listpackages       List the status, version, and description of installed packages
listscripts        List the control scripts of the package of deb file
listsection        List packages that belong to a specific section
listsections       List all available sections
liststatus         Same as list but only prints first two columns, not truncated
localupgrade       Upgrade using only packages that are already downloaded
madison            Runs the madison command of apt-cache
move               Move packages in the download cache to a local Debian mirror
new                Display newly-available packages
newdetail          Display detailed descriptions of newly-available packages
news               Display the NEWS file of a given package
nonfree            List packages that don't meet the Debian Free Software Guidelines
orphans            List libraries not required by any installed package 
policy             From preferences file show priorities/policy (available)
purge              Remove one or more packages and their configuration files
purgeorphans       Purge orphaned libraries (not required by installed packages)
purgeremoved       Purge all packages marked as deinstall
rbuilddeps         Display the packages which build-depend on the given package
readme             Display the README file(s) of a given package
recdownload        Download a package and all its dependencies
recommended        Display packages installed as Recommends and have no dependents
reconfigure        Reconfigure package
reinstall          Reinstall the given packages
reload             Reload system daemons (see LIST-DAEMONS for available daemons)
remove             Remove packages (see also PURGE command)
removeorphans      Remove orphaned libraries
repackage          Generate a .deb file from an installed package
reportbug          Report a bug in a package using Debian BTS (Bug Tracking System)
restart            Restart system daemons (see LIST-DAEMONS for available daemons)
rpm2deb            Convert an .rpm file to a Debian .deb file
rpminstall         Install an .rpm package file
search             Search for package names containing the given pattern
searchapt          Find nearby Debian package repositories
show               Provide a detailed description of package
sizes              Display installed sizes of given packages
snapshot           Generates a list of package=version for all installed packages
source             Retrieve and unpack sources for the named packages
start              Start system daemons (see LIST-DAEMONS for available daemons)
status             Show the version and available versions of packages
statusmatch        Show the version and available versions of matching packages
stop               Stop system daemons (see LISTDAEMONS for available daemons)
tasksel            Run the task selector to install groups of packages
todo               Display the TODO file of a given package
toupgrade          List versions of upgradable packages
tutorial           Display wajig tutorial
unhold             Remove listed packages from hold so they are again upgradeable
unofficial         Search for an unofficial Debian package at apt-get.org
update             Update the list of new and updated packages
updatealternatives Update default alternative for things like x-window-manager
updatepciids       Updates the local list of PCI ids from the internet master list
updateusbids       Updates the local list of USB ids from the internet master list
upgrade            Conservative system upgrade
upgradesecurity    Do a security upgrade
verify             Check package's md5sum
versions           List version and distribution of given packages
whichpackage       Search for files matching a given pattern within packages

 

4. List installed packages order by size in Arch Linux

ArchLinux is using the funny named package manager – pacman (a nice prank for the good old arcade game).
What is distinctive of pacman uses libalpm (Arch Linux Package Management (ALPM) library) as a back-end to perform all the actions.

 

# pacman -Qi | awk '/^Name/{name=$3} /^Installed Size/{print $4$5, name}' | sort -hr | head -25
296.64MiB linux-firmware
144.20MiB python
105.43MiB gcc-libs
72.90MiB python2
66.91MiB linux
57.47MiB perl
45.49MiB glibc
35.33MiB icu
34.68MiB git
30.96MiB binutils
29.95MiB grub
18.96MiB systemd
13.94MiB glib2
13.79MiB coreutils
13.41MiB python2-boto
10.65MiB util-linux
9.50MiB gnupg
8.09MiB groff
8.05MiB gettext
7.99MiB texinfo
7.93MiB sqlite
7.15MiB bash
6.50MiB lvm2
6.43MiB openssl
6.33MiB db


There is another mean to list packages by size using a ArchLinux tool called pacgraph
 

 

# pacgraph -c | head -25

Autodetected Arch.
Loading package info
Total size: 1221MB
367MB linux
144MB pacgraph
98MB cloud-init
37MB grub
35MB icu
34MB git
31698kB binutils
19337kB pacman
11029kB man-db
8186kB texinfo
8073kB lvm2
7632kB nano
7131kB openssh
5735kB man-pages
3815kB xfsprogs
3110kB sudo
3022kB wget
2676kB tar
2626kB netctl
1924kB parted
1300kB procps-ng
1248kB diffutils

 

 

 

4. Debian Goodies

 

 

Most debian users perhaps never hear of debian-goodies package, but I thought it is worthy to mention it as sooner or later as a sysadmin or .deb based Desktop user it might help you somewhere.
 

Debian-goodies is sall toolbox-style utilities for Debian systems
 These programs are designed to integrate with standard shell tools,
 extending them to operate on the Debian packaging system.
 .
  dglob  – Generate a list of package names which match a pattern
           [dctrl-tools, apt*, apt-file*, perl*]
  dgrep  – Search all files in specified packages for a regex
           [dctrl-tools, apt-file (both via dglob)]
 .
 These are also included, because they are useful and don't justify
 their own packages:
 .
  check-enhancements
             – find packages which enhance installed packages [apt,
                dctrl-tools]
  checkrestart
             – Help to find and restart processes which are using old versions
               of upgraded files (such as libraries) [python3, procps, lsof*]
  debget     – Fetch a .deb for a package in APT's database [apt]
  debman     – Easily view man pages from a binary .deb without extracting
               [man, apt* (via debget)]
  debmany    – Select manpages of installed or uninstalled packages [man |
               sensible-utils, whiptail | dialog | zenity, apt*, konqueror*,
               libgnome2-bin*, xdg-utils*]
  dhomepage  – Open homepage of a package in a web browser [dctrl-tools,
               sensible-utils*, www-browser* | x-www-browser*]
  dman       – Fetch manpages from online manpages.debian.org service [curl,
               man, lsb-release*]
  dpigs      – Show which installed packages occupy the most space
               [dctrl-tools]
  find-dbgsym-packages
             – Get list of dbgsym packages from core dump or PID [dctrl-tools,
               elfutils, libfile-which-perl, libipc-system-simple-perl]
  popbugs    – Display a customized release-critical bug list based on
               packages you use (using popularity-contest data) [python3,
               popularity-contest]
  which-pkg-broke
             – find which package might have broken another [python3, apt]
  which-pkg-broke-build
             – find which package might have broken the build of another
               [python3 (via which-pkg-broke), apt]

Even simpler by that is to use dpigs shell script part of the debian-goodies package which will automatically print out the largest packages.

dpigs command output is exactly the same as 'dpkg-query -Wf '${Installed-Size}\t${Package}\n' | sort -nr | head', but is useful cause you don't have to remember that complex syntax.

 

5. Checking where your space is gone in a Spacesniffer like GUI manner with Baobab


In my prior article Must have software on a new installed Windows 2 of the  of the precious tools to set are Spacesniffer and WinDirStat.
Windows users will be highly delighted to know that SpaceSniffer equivallent is already present on Linux – say hello baobab.
Baobab is simple but useful Graphic disk usage overview program for those who don't want to mess to much with the console / terminal to find out which might be the possible directory candidate for removal. It is very simplistic but it does well what it is aimed for, to install it on a Debian or .deb based OS.

# apt install –yes baobab


baobab-entry-screen-debian-gnu-linux-screenshot

baobab Linux Hard Disk Usage Analyzer for GNOME. – It can easily scan either the whole filesystem or a specific user-requested branch (Iocal or remote)

 

baobab-entry-screen-debian-gnu-linux-directories-taking-most-space-pie-screenshot

Baobab / (root) directory statistics Rings Chart pie

 

baobab-entry-screen-debian-gnu-linux-disk-space-by-size-visualized-screenshot

baobab – Treemap Chart for directory usage sorted by size on disk 

!!! Note that before removing any files found as taking up too much space with baobab – make sure this files are not essential parts of a .deb package first, otherwise you might break up your system !!!

KDE (Plasma) QT library users could use Qdirstat instead of baobab 

qdirstat-on-gnu-linur checking what is the disk space bottleneck qdirstat KDE


6. Use ncdu or duper perl script tool to generate directory disk usage in ASCII chart bar

ncdu and duper are basicly the same except one is using ncurses and is interactive in a very simplistic interface with midnight commander.
 

# apt install –yes ncdu
# ncdu /root


ncdu-gnu-linux-debian-screenshot

 

# apt-get install –yes durep
# durep -td 1 /usr
[ /usr    14.4G (0 files, 11 dirs) ]
   6.6G [#############                 ]  45.54% lib/
   5.5G [###########                   ]  38.23% share/
   1.1G [##                            ]   7.94% bin/
 552.0M [#                             ]   3.74% local/
 269.2M [                              ]   1.83% games/
 210.4M [                              ]   1.43% src/
  88.9M [                              ]   0.60% libexec/
  51.3M [                              ]   0.35% sbin/
  41.2M [                              ]   0.28% include/
   8.3M [                              ]   0.06% lib32/
 193.8K [                              ]   0.00% lib64/
 

 

Conclusion


In this article, I've shortly explained the few approach you can take to handle low disk space preventing you to update a regular security updates on Linux.
The easiest one is to clone your drive to a bigger (larger) sized SATA HDD or SDD Drive or using a free space left on a hard drive to exnted the current filling up the root partition. 

Further, I looked through the common reasons for endind with a disk being low spaced and a quick work around to free disk space through listing and purging larges sized package, this is made differently in different Linux distributions, because different Linux has different package managers. As I'm primary using Debian, I explained thoroughfully on how this is achieved with apt-get / dpkg-query / dpkg / aptitude and the little known debian-goodies .deb package manager helper pack. For GUI Desktop users there is baobab / qdirstat. ASCII lovers could enjoy durep and ncdu.

That's all folks hope you enjoyed and learned something new. If you know of other cool tools or things this article is missing please share.

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Posted in Linux, Linux on Laptops, Various | 1 Comment »

Helpful Hints For Starting A Small WordPress Website or Ecomerce Business

Wednesday, August 14th, 2019

hints-for-starting-wordpress-site

Wordpress is the web application collection of PHP program behind thirty four percent (43%) of the internet’s websites, and fifteen percent (50%) of the top one hundred websites in the world, so if you’re considering it for your website then you’re perhaps thinking in the right direction. Small start-up projects a community website or even a small personal owned blog or mid to even large business presentation site  can benefit greatly from setting up their Web Platrform or Ecommerce shops on a WordPress website platform (that of itself depends just on a small number of technologies such as a Linux server with a Web Server installed on it to serve PHP as well as some kind of Linux host installed Database  backend engine such as MYSQL / PostgreSQL etc. …

But if you really want to create a successful ecommerce website on WordPress, that can seem a little intimidating at first as the general complexity to start up with WordPress looks very scary in the beginning. However in this article I’ll point to fewhelpful hints should get you off on the right foot, and make your entry into the world of Wodpress / WP Ecommerce a little easier and less scary.

This article is to be less technical than expected and in that will contrast slightly with many of the articles on this blog, the target audience is more of Web Marketing Manager or a Start-up Search Engine Optimization person at a small personal project or employed in the big bad corporate world.This is no something new that is going to be outlined in this article but a general rules that are known for the professional SEO Gurus but is most likely to be helpful for the starting persons.

If you happen to be one of these you should know you have to follow a set of well known rules on the website structure text, descriptions, text, orientation, ordering of menus and data etc. in order to have the WordPress based website running at full speed attracting more visitors to your site.
 

Photos
 

 

Importance of Photos on a Webiste
Although the text for your website is very important – more on that later – when a user first opens up your website in their browser, their eyes are going to be caught by the images that you have laid out on your website. Not using images is a big mistake, since it bores users’ eyes and makes your website seem amateur and basic, but using low quality images or irrelevant images can also harm your chances of appearing authentic to a user (yes here on this blog there are some of this low quality pictures but this is due to fact this website is more of information blog and not ecommerce. Thus at best case always make sure that you find the best, high-quality images for your website – make sure that you have the correct rights to use the images as well (as copyright infrignmenets) could cause you even a law suits ending in hundred or thousand dollar fines or even if this doesn't happen any publicity of such would reduce your website indexing rating. The images placed should always be relevant to your website. If you find a breath-taking sunset or tech-gadget picture, that’s great, but maybe not for your healthy food ecommerce store, but for your personal ranting or describing a personal experience.

 

Product Photos


Assuming that sooner or later even if you have a community website you will want to monerize it to bring back to yourself in material form at least part of the many years effort to bring the site to the web rank gained.
Leading on from that point, you’re going to be selling or advertise items – that’s the whole point of ecommerce. But users often find ads / online shopping frustrating due to not being able to properly see and understand what they’re buying before they make their purchase. This can lead to ‘buyer’s remorse’, and, consequently, refunds galore, which is not what you want. Make sure that images of your products are always available and of a high quality – investing in a fairly high quality camera might be a good idea – and consider many pictures for different angles or even rotating images so that the user can decide for themself which angle they want to look at.

 

Engaging Descriptions


“I can guarantee that you can’t remember the last five product descriptions you read – not even word-for-word, but the general ideas and vocabulary used will have been tossed into your short-term memory and forgotten in an instant. This is where your website can shine, and become better than ninety percent of those lingering on the internet,” Matthew Kelly, a project manager at WriteMyX and NextCoursework, suggests, “since putting effort into writing your product descriptions and making them lively and engaging will make your website memorable, and your subscribers will turn helpfully soon loyal customers will be more likely to come back time and time again and become repeat business, as well as mention you to their friends (social mounth to mouth marketing) and that way working as free advertising for you and making your website incredibly effective.”

 

Mobile-Friendly

 

Which device is most used to check email Laptop / PC or Mobile statistics as of year 2019

These days with the bloom of Mobile Devices that are currently overrunning the user of normal Desktop PCs, Laptops and Tablets and this trend is likely to stay and even increase, “If your website isn’t mobile-friendly in this day and age, then you won’t get anywhere with it.” Anne Baker, a marketer at BritStudent and Australia2Write, states. “Most people use their phones when they access websites, especially when they go shopping on the internet.

Statistics on user stay (secs / mins) stay on a website from Desktop PC and Mobile devices

On WordPress, this means finding a more recent theme – an older theme, maybe four-five years old, will probably not support mobile, and you just can’t afford to lose out on the mobile market.” In short, find yourself a mobile-friendly theme or install the right WordPress Pluguin that will enable you to have a Mobile Friendly theme in case if blog is accessed from a Mobile Dev or many of your customers will become frustrated with the badly formatted ‘mobile’ version of your website that they end up using, which might be for instance meant for a much larger screen. It can also ruin the atmosphere (experience) created at the accessed user site and have negative impact on your audience opion of your site or business. This is even more the case  if your website or webapp is targetting to be modern and keeping with the times – or especially if it deals with IT and electronics (where the competition is huge)!

 

Registration

 

Registration Ecommerce website

Registration form (Sign Up) on a website and the overall business cycle idea behind web product or business is of critical importance as this is the point that will guarantee intimidation with the customer, failing to have the person be engaged will quickly make your website rank lower and your producs less wanted. The general rule here is to make your registration be an easy (to orientate for the user) and be present on a very visible place on the site.

Registration steps should be as less as possible as this might piss off the user and repel him out of the site before the registration is completed. Showing oportunity to register with a Pop-Up window (while the user clicks on a place showing interest for the produce might be useful in some cases but generally might also push the user back so if you decide to implement it do it with a lot of care (beware of too much aggressive marketing on our site).

An example


The registration process should be as intimidating as possible to leave joy in the user that might later return and log in to your site or ecommerce platform, e.g. be interested to stay for a longer time. The marketing tactic aiming to make the user stay for a longer time on the website (dragging his attention / interest to stuff)  is nothing new by the way as it is well known marketing rule integrated in every supermarket you buy groceries, where all is made to keep you in the shop for as longer as possible. Research has shown that spending longer time within the supermarket makes the user buy more.

 

Returning customers can be intimidated with membership or a free gift (be it even virtual picture gift – free email whatever) or information store place could be given or if products are sold, registration will be obligatory to make them use their payment method or delivery address on next login to easify the buy out process. But if registration is convoluted and forced (e.g. user is somehow forced to become meber) then many customers will turn away and find another website for their shopping needs. Using a method like Quora’s ‘login to see more’ in that case might be a good idea even though for me this is also a very irritating and irritating – this method however should never be used if you run a ecommerce selling platform, on ecommerce site gatekeeping will only frustrate customers. Login is good to be implmeneted as a popup option (and not taking too much of the screen). Sign up and Login should be simplistic and self-explanatory – always not required but optioned and user should get the understanding of the advantage to be a member of the website if possible before the sign up procedure. Then, customers are more likely to sign up and won’t feel like they’ve been pushed into the decision – or pushed away, as the case may be.

Katrina Hatchett works as a lifestyle blogger at both Academic Brits and Assignment Help, due to a love of literature and writing, which she has had since youth. Throughout her career, she has become involved with many projects, such as writing for the PhD Kingdom blog.

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Posted in Educational, Everyday Life, Marketing, Wordpress | No Comments »

Fix staled NFS on server with dmesg error log nfs: server nfs-server not responding, still trying

Saturday, March 16th, 2019

NFS_Filesystem-fix-staled-NFS-System-dmesg-error-nfs-server-not-responding-still-trying

On a server today I've found to have found a number of NFS mounts mounted through /etc/fstab file definitions that were hanging;
 

nfs-server:~# df -hT
…


 command kept hanging as well as any attempt to access the mounted NFS directory was not possible.
The server with the hanged Network File System is running SLES (SuSE Enterprise Linux 12 SP3) a short investigation in the kernel logs (dmesg) as well as /var/log/messages reveales following errors:
 

nfs-server:~# dmesg
[3117414.856995] nfs: server nfs-server OK
[3117595.104058] nfs: server nfs-server not responding, still trying
[3117625.032864] nfs: server nfs-server OK
[3117805.280036] nfs: server nfs-server not responding, still trying
[3117835.209110] nfs: server nfs-server OK
[3118015.456045] nfs: server nfs-server not responding, still trying
[3118045.384930] nfs: server nfs-server OK
[3118225.568029] nfs: server nfs-server not responding, still trying
[3118255.560536] nfs: server nfs-server OK
[3118435.808035] nfs: server nfs-server not responding, still trying
[3118465.736463] nfs: server nfs-server OK
[3118645.984057] nfs: server nfs-server not responding, still trying
[3118675.912595] nfs: server nfs-server OK
[3118886.098614] nfs: server nfs-server OK
[3119066.336035] nfs: server nfs-server not responding, still trying
[3119096.274493] nfs: server nfs-server OK
[3119276.512033] nfs: server nfs-server not responding, still trying
[3119306.440455] nfs: server nfs-server OK
[3119486.688029] nfs: server nfs-server not responding, still trying
[3119516.616622] nfs: server nfs-server OK
[3119696.864032] nfs: server nfs-server not responding, still trying
[3119726.792650] nfs: server nfs-server OK
[3119907.040037] nfs: server nfs-server not responding, still trying
[3119936.968691] nfs: server nfs-server OK
[3120117.216053] nfs: server nfs-server not responding, still trying
[3120147.144476] nfs: server nfs-server OK
[3120328.352037] nfs: server nfs-server not responding, still trying
[3120567.496808] nfs: server nfs-server OK
[3121370.592040] nfs: server nfs-server not responding, still trying
[3121400.520779] nfs: server nfs-server OK
[3121400.520866] nfs: server nfs-server OK


It took me a short while to investigate and check the NetApp remote NFS storage filesystem and investigate the Virtual Machine that is running on top of OpenXen Hypervisor system.
The NFS storage permissions of the exported file permissions were checked and they were in a good shape, also a reexport of the NFS mount share was re-exported and on the Linux
mount host the following commands ran to remount the hanged Filesystems:

 

nfs-server:~# umount -f /mnt/nfs_share
nfs-server:~# umount -l /mnt/nfs_share
nfs-server:~# umount -lf /mnt/nfs_share1
nfs-server:~# umount -lf /mnt/nfs_share2
nfs-server:~# mount -t nfs -o remount /mnt/nfs_share


that fixed one of the hanged mount, but as I didn't wanted to manually remount each of the NFS FS-es, I've remounted them all with:

nfs-server:~# mount -a -t nfs


This solved it but, the fix seemed unpermanent as in a time while the issue started reoccuring and I've spend some time
in further investigation on the weird NFS hanging problem has led me to the following blog post where the same problem was described and it was pointed the root cause of it lays
in parameter for MTU which seems to be quite high MTU 9000 and this over the years has prooven to cause problems with NFS especially due to network router (switches) configurations
which seem to have a filters for MTU and are passing only packets with low MTU levels and using rsize / wzise custom mount NFS values in /etc/fstab could lead to this strange NFS hangs.

Below is a list of Maximum Transmission  Unit (MTU) for Media Transport excerpt taken from wikipedia as of time of writting this article.

https://pc-freak.net/images/Maximum-Transmission-Unit-for-Media-Transport-diagram-3.png

In my further research on the issue I've come across this very interesting article which explains a lot on "Large Internet" and Internet Performance

I've used tracepath command which is doing basicly the same as traceroute but could be run without root user and discovers hops (network routers) and shows MTU between path -> destionation.

Below is a sample example

nfs-server:~# tracepath bergon.net
 1?: [LOCALHOST]                      pmtu 1500
 1:  192.168.6.1                                           0.909ms
 1:  192.168.6.1                                           0.966ms
 2:  192.168.222.1                                         0.859ms
 3:  6.192.104.109.bergon.net                              1.138ms reached
     Resume: pmtu 1500 hops 3 back 3

 

Optiomal pmtu for this connection is to be 1500 .traceroute in some cases might return hops with 'no reply' if there is a router UDP  packet filtering implemented on it.

The high MTU value for the Storage network connection interface on eth1 was evident with a simple:

 

 nfs-server:~# /sbin/ifconfig |grep -i eth -A 2
eth0      Link encap:Ethernet  HWaddr 00:16:3E:5C:65:74
          inet addr:100.127.108.56  Bcast:100.127.109.255  Mask:255.255.254.0
          UP BROADCAST RUNNING MULTICAST  MTU:1500  Metric:1
—
eth1      Link encap:Ethernet  HWaddr 00:16:3E:5C:65:76
          inet addr:100.96.80.94  Bcast:100.96.83.255  Mask:255.255.252.0
          UP BROADCAST RUNNING MULTICAST  MTU:9000  Metric:1


The fix was as simple to lower MTU value for eth1 Ethernet interface to 1500 which is the value which most network routers are configured too.

To apply the new MTU to the eth1 interface without restarting the SuSE SLES networking , I first used ifconfig one time with:

 

 nfs-server:~# /sbin/ifconfig eth1 mtu 1500
 nfs-server:~# ip addr show
 …


To make the setting permanent on next  SuSE boot:

I had to set the MTU=1500 value in

 

nfs-server:~#/etc/sysconfig/network/ifcfg-eth1
nfs-server:~#  ip address show eth1
3: eth1: <BROADCAST,MULTICAST,UP,LOWER_UP> mtu 1500 qdisc pfifo_fast state UP group default qlen 1000
    link/ether 8c:89:a5:f2:e8:d8 brd ff:ff:ff:ff:ff:ff
    inet 192.168.0.1/24 brd 192.168.0.255 scope global eth1
       valid_lft forever preferred_lft forever
 


Then to remount the NFS mounted hanged filesystems once again ran:
 

nfs-server:~# mount -a -t nfs


Many network routers keeps the MTU to low as 1500 also because a higher values causes IP packet fragmentation when using NFS over UDP where IP packet fragmentation and packet
reassembly requires significant amount of CPU at both ends of the network connection.
Packet fragmentation also exposes network traffic to greater unreliability, since a complete RPC request must be retransmitted if a UDP packet fragment is dropped for any reason.
Any increase of RPC retransmissions, along with the possibility of increased timeouts, are the single worst impediment to performance for NFS over UDP.
This and many more is very well explained in Optimizing NFS Performance page (which is a must reading) for any sys admin that plans to use NFS frequently.

Even though lowering MTU (Maximum Transmission Union) value does solved my problem at some cases especially in a modern local LANs with Jumbo Frames, allowing and increasing the MTU to 9000 bytes
might be a good idea as this will increase the amount of packet size.and will raise network performance, however as always on distant networks with many router hops keeping MTU value as low as 1492 / 5000 is always a good idea.

 

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Posted in Linux, Linux and FreeBSD Desktop, Networking, SuSE Linux, Various | No Comments »

Putty load as default session another session – Save other Putty session configuration to default howto

Thursday, November 29th, 2018

putty-load-button-screenshot

Recently I had to use PuTTY which I haven't used for years to open a number of SSH Pernanent Tunnels necessery for my daily work as a SAP Consultant.

I've saved them under a certain new profile and saved the set SSH Tunnel configuration not in the default Session but in separate named one, therefore had to press Load button every time after clicking over my Putty shortcut icon. 

That was annoying and took few seconds out of my life every next morning for about a week, so finally I found osme time to google it and it seemed it is pretty easy to have any Putty sessoin loaded you like.

Here is how:

1. Create a new Putty Shortcut

putty-screenshot1

putty-shortcut-screenshot-windows

Click over Putty icon while holding CTRL + SHIFT (Control SHIFT keys simultaneously ) and move the mouse somewhere on the desktop to create the shortcut.
 

2. Right click on Putty Shortcut

putty-target-screenshot-windows1

putty-target-screenshot-windows2

 

"C:\Program Files\PuTTY\putty.exe" -load "your_saved_session" "username@your_server_address" -pw "your_password"


fill out "target" field of shortcut using above code (alter to your own properties).
click Apply button.

If you need to pass a user and password from Shortcut itself (which is a bad practice for security but sometimes useful, for not so important Tunnels – for example a tunnel to an Open Proxy), do it by typing in the target field like so:
 

"C:\Program Files\PuTTY\putty.exe" -load "your_saved_session" "username@your_server_address" -pw "your_password"

 

And Hooray !!! After that when you click on PuTTy shortcut it loads your session automatically using given username and password.

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Posted in Everyday Life, Windows | No Comments »

Fix 503 AUTH first (#5.5.1) mail receive errors in Qmail

Friday, September 2nd, 2011

I have one qmail rocks install based on Thibbs Qmalrocks tutorial

I had to do some changes, to:
/etc/service/qmail-smtpd/run and /etc/service/qmail-smtpdssl/run init scripts.

After a qmail restart suddenly qmail stopped receiving any mail messages and my sent messages was returned with an error:

Connected to xx.xxx.xx.xx but sender was rejected.
Remote host said: 503 AUTH first (#5.5.1)

After investigating the issue I finally found, that one value I’ve changed in /etc/service/qmail-smtpd/run and /etc/service/qmail-smtpdssl was causing the whole mess:

The problematic variable was:

REQUIRE_AUTH=1

To solve the issue I had to disable the value which it seems, I have enabled by mistake.

Below is a quote from http://qmail.jms1.net which explains what REQUIRE_AUTH shell variable does:

Setting REQUIRE_AUTH=1 will make the service not accept ANY mail unless the client has sent a valid AUTH command. This also prevents incoming mail from being accepted for your own domains, so do not use this setting if the service is accepting “normal” mail from the outside world.
Restarting via qmailctl restart and qmail started receiving messages normal 😉

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Posted in Linux, Qmail, System Administration, Various | 3 Comments »