Just a quick post to say that I have updated the OTRS package for OpenNMS. It no longer depends on the hard-to-find Perl SOAP::DateTime module and should therefore be a smoother install for new users. No new capabilities are added in this release so you can skip it if you’re already up and running. Thanks to Michiel Beijen of OTRS for the suggestion.
More details can be found in the OpenNMS wiki.
Just a short note that Ronny Trommer has modernized the OpenNMS VMWare Appliance.
There is a wiki page with details, and it can be downloaded from both the Virtual Appliance Marketplace as well as Sourceforge.
I just wanted to share a site we came across through a response to our survey (which is still open if you haven’t had a chance to check it out). It is called OpenNMS Patterns and Scripts and it is definitely worth a look. It’s subtitled “Implementing OpenNMS in an enterprise IT environment” and it consists of issues that one might face when deploying OpenNMS along with corresponding solutions. Hat tip to Doug Bakewell for making this happen, and I look forward to his future posts.
As I was checking out the OpenNMS iPhone app today, I noticed that it was published on September 1, 2010.
The OpenNMS Group opened for business on September 1, 2004, so happy anniversary to us. We’ve been so busy I almost forgot about it.
One of the traditional gifts for the sixth anniversary is iron, and I have been blessed to work with the best team one could ever hope to put together – they are Iron Men, every one.
For most people, seeing the business behind OpenNMS get another year older is a non-event. But if you had been a part of it, and had to listen to those “in the know” telling you time and time again how you can’t possibly run a business where you give the software away, that you can’t succeed without outside investment and you can’t possibly grow, each year we’re here is more proof that they are wrong.
I love my job, and I just want to thank everyone who makes that possible. Six years down and many more to go.
UPDATE: There have been some people reporting that it does not run on iOS 3. We are working on determining the issue, but it is confirmed to work on iOS 4 devices.
After nearly a year of work, the OpenNMS iPhone App is now available from iTunes.
It costs US$4.99 and folks with commercial OpenNMS support subscriptions should just drop me a note for a free voucher code.
As I know there will be a few questions about this, I’ve tried to anticipate a couple of them.
Q: Hey, OpenNMS is free software. Why you chargin’ me $5?
OpenNMS is 100% free and open source software, and the iPhone app is no exception. The code is hosted in our git repository and there are complete instructions for downloading and building it on your own.
But, it was not a painless or inexpensive process to get this app created. In fact, the main reason it got completed is that we sent Ben off to the Apple Worldwide Developers Conference and he learned what he needed to finish it (as well as to make it iPad compatible). That little junket cost us about $2000 – or nearly 575 copies of the app once Apple takes their cut.
So we decided to charge for the app but make sure than those who want to take the time have full access to the code.
Q: What about an Android app?
I would love to have an Android version of this app, but at the moment no one has stepped forward to own it. We do have a Nexus One at the office so the hope is that it will happen, and happen soon, but no promises.
So I ran into a really interesting issue in Java regular expression parsing while trying to work on an issue for a customer.
OpenNMS has the ability to listen for syslog messages, and turn them into OpenNMS events. To configure it, you specify a mapping of substring or regular expressions to UEIs (OpenNMS’s internal event identifiers).
The customer saw a huge drop in performance from 1.8.0 to 1.8.1. Basically the only change to the syslog daemon was a change to use Matcher.find() instead of Matcher.matches(). The problem was that they were making regular expressions like this:
foo0: .*load test (\\S+) on ((pts\\/\\d+)|(tty\\d+))
…which weren’t matching. So they changed it to put .* at the front, so matches() would get it:
.*foo0: .*load test (\\S+) on ((pts\\/\\d+)|(tty\\d+))
Upon upgrading to 1.8.1, they saw orders of magnitude slowdown. The reason is that when you haven’t specified an anchor, find has to figure out the “right” starting point for the match. In doing so, it spins a LOT, compared to matches() and its implicit anchors. It’s very expensive to scan all the way through the string, attempting to re-apply the regex, if it turns out there is no match. We figured this out this morning after I put together some benchmarks to show the differences:
—
regex = \s(19|20)\d\d([-/.])(0[1-9]|1[012])\2(0[1-9]|[12][0-9]|3[01])(\s+)(\S+)(\s)(\S.+)
input = 6>main: 2010-08-19 localhost foo23: load test 23 on tty1matches = false: total time: 167, number per second: 5988023.9521
find = true: total time: 1264, number per second: 791139.2405
matches (.* at beginning and end) = true: total time: 2598, number per second: 384911.4704
find (.* at beginning and end) = true: total time: 2572, number per second: 388802.4883
matches (^.* at beginning, .*$ at end) = true: total time: 2918, number per second: 342700.4798
find (^.* at beginning, .*$ at end) = true: total time: 2648, number per second: 377643.5045—
regex = \s(19|20)\d\d([-/.])(0[1-9]|1[012])\2(0[1-9]|[12][0-9]|3[01])(\s+)(\S+)(\s)(\S.+)
input = 6>main: 2010-08-01 localhost foo23: load test 23 on tty1matches = false: total time: 128, number per second: 7812500.0000
find = true: total time: 1199, number per second: 834028.3570
matches (.* at beginning and end) = true: total time: 2570, number per second: 389105.0584
find (.* at beginning and end) = true: total time: 2554, number per second: 391542.6782
matches (^.* at beginning, .*$ at end) = true: total time: 2630, number per second: 380228.1369
find (^.* at beginning, .*$ at end) = true: total time: 2595, number per second: 385356.4547—
regex = foo0: .*load test (\S+) on ((pts\/\d+)|(tty\d+))
input = 6>main: 2010-08-19 localhost foo23: load test 23 on tty1matches = false: total time: 87, number per second: 11494252.8736
find = false: total time: 193, number per second: 5181347.1503
matches (.* at beginning and end) = false: total time: 1242, number per second: 805152.9791
find (.* at beginning and end) = false: total time: 28631, number per second: 34927.1768
matches (^.* at beginning, .*$ at end) = false: total time: 1241, number per second: 805801.7728
find (^.* at beginning, .*$ at end) = false: total time: 1242, number per second: 805152.9791—
regex = foo23: .*load test (\S+) on ((pts\/\d+)|(tty\d+))
input = 6>main: 2010-08-19 localhost foo23: load test 23 on tty1matches = false: total time: 85, number per second: 11764705.8824
find = true: total time: 873, number per second: 1145475.3723
matches (.* at beginning and end) = true: total time: 1812, number per second: 551876.3797
find (.* at beginning and end) = true: total time: 1879, number per second: 532197.9776
matches (^.* at beginning, .*$ at end) = true: total time: 1874, number per second: 533617.9296
find (^.* at beginning, .*$ at end) = true: total time: 1865, number per second: 536193.0295—
regex = 1997
input = 6>main: 2010-08-19 localhost foo23: load test 23 on tty1matches = false: total time: 80, number per second: 12500000.0000
find = false: total time: 215, number per second: 4651162.7907
matches (.* at beginning and end) = false: total time: 1339, number per second: 746825.9895
find (.* at beginning and end) = false: total time: 37722, number per second: 26509.7291
matches (^.* at beginning, .*$ at end) = false: total time: 1350, number per second: 740740.7407
find (^.* at beginning, .*$ at end) = false: total time: 1351, number per second: 740192.4500
The moral of the story is, if you’re using Matcher.find(), use no anchors and no .*, but in all cases, you’ll get the most deterministic behavior from always anchoring your regular expressions properly.
As my car decided to take a longer break in the local Renault Dealership, I got time to wander around the place we stay in (with my in-laws).
I am hoping that my three readers will take the time to complete this short, 10 question survey on how they use OpenNMS. We are trying to get a better idea of our users so that we can tailor our work to more closely meet their needs.
It’s time for This Week in OpenNMS. Two announcements to start us off:
(1) We’re very excited to announce that, for the second year running, the OpenNMS project has received InfoWorld’s prestigious Bossie (Best of Open Source Software) award in the “networking software” category.
(2) Here at OpenNMS Group, we’re trying to find out more about the OpenNMS user community. If you’re an OpenNMS user, could you take a couple of minutes and answer the ten questions on this survey? You can answer anonymously if you like; we’re just interested in finding out more about the settings in which folks are using OpenNMS. (Thanks!)
As always, if there’s anything you’d like me to talk about in a future TWiO, or you just have a comment or criticism that you’d like to share, don’t hesitate to say hi.
(And again – we sure would appreciate it if you could spare a couple of minutes to take that user survey.)
uhm, well. I’m afraid I could not get along with the style of Nolde, so after two attempts I reverted to what I like better ;)
Jonas did a road, in the end
but..we had fun ;-)
One of the more important trading posts of the vikings was located in Haithabu, south of today’s city of Schleswig. I went to school in Schleswig and have visited the museum a few times already – it’s interesting to come back though.
The vikings were known to be raiding countries, but they made a living as well of trading.
The trade brought goods as far as from Turkey, and talk is that the vikings went over to America in their little dragon boats as well.
Those are pearls made of glass, which was shown hands-on in the museum as well:
This last part of the Museum, added in 2006, consists of reconstructed housing. Based on what was found in the mud, the houses were reconstructed with ancient tools (or the lack of).
(All this is approx. 800 ad)
These houses were used for 4-5 years, typically.
And the boats..there is a canoe as well, which has been made the same way the native americans built canoes. Very funny to see the same style of craftmanship a few thousand miles away, again ;)
Those were however unique to the vikings.
As if I don’t have enough blogs…. ;)
But I wanted to write about non-techie things, and I kept putting it off, because it felt kind of weird posting them to a blog that is obviously mostly about my tech adventures. So, I’ve set up a new blog…
If you feel like following it, go for it, if not, don’t. 
Also, I’ve gone ahead and completely reworked my blog, and *cough* replaced it with WordPress, something I thought I’d never do. While WP has a somewhat sordid history and does require the upgrade train more often, it is easier to keep up-to-date, and appears to have a better track record more recently. I’d let the old blog software stagnate and found myself resisting messing with it more and more.
Let me know if you run into any issues. I think some old links will be busted, but google sitemap should pick up the new stuff pretty quickly, I hope.
In Wöhrden (Dithmarschen): Wir waren im Oldenwöhrden essen, Bismarck war auch schon da. Klassisch norddeutsche Einrichtung, wirklich angenehm und gemütlich ohne plüschig zu sein.
Das hier ist einer der ältesten Höfe (wenn nicht der) in Wöhrden.
Am nächsten Tag ging’s dann an die Ostsee, erst nach Kappeln und dann nach Drecht an den Strand. Vorher haben wir noch Fischbrötchen geholt und dann am Strand quasi Abendbrot im Abendrot gegessen.
For the second year in a row, we are humbled to have been recognized by InfoWorld with a Bossie Award.
OpenNMS was a winner in their “Best of Networking Software” category.
What I also thought was cool was that of the ten other projects honored in the category, OpenNMS integrates with three of them: Hyperic HQ, RANCID and OTRS, and it is a honor to be in the company of all the other projects who also won.
Last year the focus was on OpenNMS 1.6, and this year it is for OpenNMS 1.8.
They also mention the upcoming iPhone app. For those who have been waiting, version 1.0.0 has been submitted to the App Store for approval, and a big thank you to Ben Reed for working on this. We should know something about it within the next week.
So geht’s!
Erstmal wird man natürlich Mitglied bei XING. Weil der Auftrag vom Boss kommt und einem XING eigentlich am Popo vorbeigeht, sieht das Profil so aus:
Positiv: Es stehen keine übertriebenen Karrieredaten im Profil.
Negativ: Es steht auch sonst nichts (nichts!) im Profil.
Das wird nicht besser, wenn man sich anmeldet:
So zeigt man schon von vorneherein, dass es einem nicht um Kontakte oder sonstwas geht, sondern wirklich nur um professionelles Networking. Also..professionell im Sinne von “hier will ich $Geld oder $Reputation verdienen oder mache das weil mein $Boss das will”. Sicher, man muß da nicht seine Lebensgeschichte ausbreiten, aber etwas Informationen wären ja nicht schlecht.
Beeindruckend auch die Zahl der Kontakte: 36. Und – ganz professionell – die kann jeder sehen.
Dann macht man sich auf die Suche nach seiner Zielgruppe:
Die Powersearch bei mir zeigt dann an:
PR Guy: Premium Member
$Coolname PR-Network GmbH: Search for organizations, “haves”, previous title, title
Ich habe einen der Jobtitel in meinem Profil, die über die CxO-Suchen gefunden werden. Das ist einfach, denn schließlich wissen wir ja alle was ein CxO macht (Firmengrösse und Skills spielen im C-Level ja keine Rolle mehr, das wissen wir alle).
Dann bekommen die Opfer, err, die Zielgruppe eine Nachricht:
From: PR Guy
To: Me
Date: 24 Aug 2010, 12:33 am
Subject: Invitation to the group “CleanEnergy-Project”
PR Guy would like you to join a group
Hello Mr. me
ich möchte Sie gerne in das $Marketing Project einladen, eines der größten Netzwerke für erneuerbare Energien und Umwelt.
Mehr als 20.000 interessierte Mitglieder haben sich dem Netzwerk angeschlossen. Wir betreiben ein Online Magazin, um mit täglichen Beiträgen über Energie- und Umweltthemen zu informieren, organisieren Events und begleiten ökologisch sinnvolle Projekte.
Über Ihre Teilnahme würden wir uns sehr freuen
Herzliche Grüße
$Marketing Project Team
Oh, PR-Guy hat also 20.000 Mitglieder in seiner Gruppe versammeln können? Wow. Und das auf der Basis von 36 Kontakten? Beeindruckend. Sexy finde ich auch “Hello”. Und dass es dann auf Deutsch weitergeht, aber das sind sprachliche Animositäten, meinerseits.
Wirklich interessant an der Einladung ist aber, dass sie weder mit mir persönlich, noch mit meinem Job, noch mit irgendeinem Merkmal meines XING-Profiles irgendwas zu tun hat. Da macht das ja richtig Sinn, dass ich Mitglied Nummer 20.001 werde :-o
Übrigens – das ist nicht die einzige sinnlose Kontaktaufnahme in Xing, aber sie sticht durch ihre beeindruckende Schlichtheit wirklich hervor.
It’s time for This Week in OpenNMS.
As always, if there’s anything you’d like me to talk about in a future TWiO, or you just have a comment or criticism that you’d like to share, don’t hesitate to say hi.
It’s not an official, but the head of the german police workers union who suggested that “it’s not entirely clear if a virtual patrol is possible”.
Well.
I am not very fond of camping, absolutely not. I had my fair share, that’s what I normally answer when someone asks me. And it’s true, I had the ultimate week of camping in an extraordinary campground in December 1994. But as it was my son’s birthday I relented, bought a tent (wow, technology has advanced), sleeping bags (wow, techn..) and off we went on the bike, southwards.
Just one night, but for starters!
Our target was Serres. And on Thursday we took off to get home. Starting at 10h30 we made it home around 20h30, which makes 10 solid hours on the bike..you bet we slept well that night ;)
The alps are terriffic though, south or north.
To be able to actually ride we tried to stay off the main tourist roads, but we succeeded only partially.
But where we did, it was just great.
This, btw, is a full restaurant. They had no place for us to eat anymore. Strange. So if you ever make it to the area of Turriers and look for a place to eat – don’t go to the Hotel Roche Cline or their restaurant. They’re full. Further down the road, if you make it to the lakes, there are plenty of restaurants which are not full and even don’t bother to set a table for you. The reason why that’s nagging me is that I just learned a bit more about why some (american) tourists think that the french are arrogant and unwelcoming. I do absolutely not agree to that. This (above) was the first strange or unwelcoming experience I had since I know France (which is many more years than the nine we live here).
Back to nice things:
That’s the village of Ventavon which seemed to be competely void except for two kids. The village is nice to look at and worth a brief stop.
Fun starts when trucks are forbidden to pass ;-)
The GPZ is now 14y old. On the trip we passed the 99’000 km (I bought it at 45’000).
The cable stuff is the intercom. I could not imagine to ride 10h without it – still, I almost forgot to take it with me.. it was this “sit back and relax, go through the journey and ask yourself what you forgot or which gadget you could take with you”-thing ;)
Going up to ..
Amazing landscape, difficult driving – but fun. And I always again enjoy the air at high altitudes.
Almost home, well, another 2h of riding from here :-)
The city of Duisburg, place in which 20 people died during this year’s Loveparade, tries to suppress publishing of documents which give background information about the happenings.
The documents in question are annexes to a report made to (and paid by) the city to shine light onto the circumstances. A german weblog had published them and received a cease & desist order to stop the publishing from the city today.
Even if the weblog in question does bow into the cease & desist, the attempt to stop the documents form leaking is futile – “the internet” has already reacted and created multiple copies of the files all over the possible filesharing sites..and yet again old-style management of public knowledge and the reality of a truly connected society clash :)
The full story (in german) as well as the links to the documents can be found here.
The thing I really like about wordpress is that it’s cleanly written – at least from my understanding. I sat down to create a new website on sunday. Starting off with the standard twentyten theme, I modified the CSS to look like a book.
I’m still amazed at how easy the changes were. You absolutely need the firebug extension (uhm, T, you *do* use it, do you?) to get into the css, but then things were just bliss.
To top it off I installed the “YAK” (Yet Another Kart) plugin to have a simple shopping functionality. YAK interprets eacht post as a possible product and handles the checkout things. I could even integrate online payment or use the cart itself (which I currently did not activate).
Google has a static maps API which permits to integrate the map into the webpage without handling any SOAP or Java Script.
The french translation of WordPress is ok’ish, but the theme will need some polishing by someone who writes better french than me.
It’s time for This Week in OpenNMS… though I must admit, it’s awfully tempting to grab a couple of beers, activate the emergency slide and drive straight home.
As always, if there’s anything you’d like me to talk about in a future TWiO, or you just have a comment, criticism, or personal emergency escape plan that you’d like to share, don’t hesitate to say hi.
It’s time for This Week in OpenNMS. We’re sweltering through a very warm and humid August in North Carolina, but it’s nothing compared to the record heat some of our friends in Europe and Asia are experiencing. Wherever you are in the Northern Hemisphere, stay hydrated and keep cool! (Those of you in the Southern Hemisphere should feel free to stay warm and drink hot chocolate, as required.)
Project Updates
As always, if there’s anything you’d like me to talk about in a future TWiO, or you just have a comment, criticism, or weather report that you’d like to share, don’t hesitate to say hi.
Today my small server was not responding for some time due to overload; I tried to see where the load came from and bestguessed some robot doing a dos attack (probably unintentional, the server is not very performant).
To limit the number of connections from a bot I decided to do rate limiting. The required to install mod_rpaf first (which makes sure apache understands the X-Forwarded-For header that nginx is sending), then mod_evasive to apply the rate limiting.
A quick test shows that it’s working fine:
/usr/share/doc/libapache2-mod-evasive/examples# ./test.pl
HTTP/1.1 200 OK
HTTP/1.1 200 OK
HTTP/1.1 200 OK
HTTP/1.1 200 OK
HTTP/1.1 200 OK
HTTP/1.1 200 OK
HTTP/1.1 200 OK
HTTP/1.1 200 OK
HTTP/1.1 403 Forbidden
HTTP/1.1 403 Forbidden
Caveat: I might have tuned it so tightly that even “normal” users get blocked. If you see a 403, please tell me and I’ll open up the pipe a bit more.
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September 02, 2010 08:40 PM
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