SARG - Squid Analysis Report Generator

SARG - Squid Analysis Report Generator is a tool that allow you to view "where" your users are going to on the Internet.

Its very useful tool which generates graphical and tabular report from your access.log file in a web browser.







You can get sarg from http://sarg.sourceforge.net/sarg.php
Extract it to your src folder, configure it and install it.

The configuration file is sarg.conf. You really don't need to change that file as most of the option can be passed through command line parameters. One thing you must make sure is that the output directory is your web accessible directory. The configuration file is pretty simple. Also make sure that it gets your right access.log file.

Google Analytics for you blog

Google Analytics can help you track uses of your site and plan for the future. You must already be knowing about this. I am posting this because adding this to your blog can be a little tricky.

Many users are trying to add the Google analytics code the classical way which works only on classic templates. If you try it for new template you will get the following error.

We were unable to save your template
Please correct the error below, and submit your template again.
Your template could not be parsed as it is not well-formed. Please make sure all XML elements are closed properly.
XML error message: The content of elements must consist of well-formed character data or markup

So to successfully set up try the following way.
Click Template
Click Page Elements
Click Add
Click HTML/JavaScript
Put your code their.
Do not write anything more not even the title. If you do so, it will appear on the homepage.
Check you Google analytics account

Your wife's future

If you are a computer guy then one day you sure will find your wife like in the picture below

Password protect a web page

Password protect your web pages in apache server in a very simple way. This is however not that secure and is not recommended. Just use this for simple thing and when other authentication cant be used.

First create a file which holds username and password.
For this you can use htpasswd program.

/usr/local/httpd/bin/htpasswd -c /usr/local/httpd/passwordfile username

The -c option here creates new file. So if the file already exists or you are just modifying or adding a new user omit -c option. Not doing that will make a new file resulting in loss of old username and password.

The file must be somewhere your webserver can find but not other place. Though the password is encrypted its better to keep it off from human eye.

Now edit you httpd.conf file to include the follwoing line in whichever websites that you require authentication

AuthType Basic
AuthName "By Invitation Only"
AuthUserFile /usr/local/apache/passwd/passwords
Require user rbowen sungo

Restart apache and you're done.

Additional reading: http://httpd.apache.org/docs/1.3/howto/auth.html#basic

A wall paper all you people should have.

MRTG for SQUID

MRTG for SQUID gives you a detail idea of what is happening behind the scene. In this tutorial I'll make sure that you will successfully set up one like below.


First thing is to make sure that you have given --enable-snmp option while compiling your squid. If you have not done so then its time to do so. Compile your squid with --enable-snmp and then 'make clean', 'make', and 'make install'

Edit you squid.conf file so that
snmp_port 3401
acl snmppublic snmp_community public
snmp_access allow snmppublic localhost
snmp_access deny all

The first line defines the port SNMP is listening on squid.
Second line defines public as the community string or lets say password.
Third line defines that from localhost snmp query can be made to squid.
Fourth line denies query from all.(except localhost)

Now you need a web server to serve the graphs.

Download apache from http://www.reverse.net/pub/apache/httpd/httpd-2.2.6.tar.bz2
mv ./httpd-2.2.6.tar.bz2 /usr/local/src
cd /usr/local/src
bunzip2 -c /usr/local/src/httpd-2.2.6.tar.bz2 | tar xvf -
rm httpd-2.2.6.tar.bz2
mv httpd-* httpd
cd httpd
./configure --enable-prefix=/usr/local/httpd
make
make install

Now you need to configure apache. Lets just host it in a simple way.

mkdir -p /usr/local/www/mrtg
vi /us/local/httpd/conf/httpd.conf
Change DocumentRoot to "/usr/local/www/mrtg"
save and exit
run /usr/local/httpd/bin/apachectl -k start

Now its time for setting MRTG server. Download the following programs:

http://www.gzip.org/zlib (gzip
http://www.libpng.org/pub/png/libpng.html (libpng)
http://www.libgd.org/ (gd)
http://oss.oetiker.ch/mrtg/pub (mrtg)

Copy zlib to /usr/local/src
gunzip -c zlib-*.tar.gz | tar xvf -
rm zlib-*.tar.gz
mv zlib-* zlib
cd zlib
./configure
make
cd ..

Copy libppng to /usr/local/src
gunzip -c libpng-*.tar.gz |tar xvf -
rm libpng-*.tar.gz
mv libpng-* libpng
cd libpng
make -f scripts/makefile.std CC=gcc ZLIBLIB=../zlib ZLIBINC=../zlib
rm *.so.* *.so
cd ..

The \ in the following line means that they are same line.

Copy gd to /usr/local/src
gunzip -c gd-2.0.11.tar.gz |tar xf -
mv gd-2.0.11 gd
cd gd
env CPPFLAGS="-I../zlib -I../libpng" LDFLAGS="-L../zlib -L../libpng" \
./configure --disable-shared --without-freetype --without-jpeg
make
cp .libs/* .
cd ..

Copy mrtg to /usr/local/src
gunzip -c mrtg-2.15.2.tar.gz | tar xvf -
cd mrtg-2.15.2
./configure --prefix=/usr/local/mrtg-2 \
--with-gd=/usr/local/src/gd \
--with-z=/usr/local/src/zlib \
--with-png=/usr/local/src/libpng
make
make install
mkdir -p /usr/localmrtg-2/cfg

Now lets make graph for squid.

Download the following two files

mrtg-squid.cfg
squid.mib
Copy them to /usr/local/mrtg-2/cfg/
edit mrtg-squid.cfg and do as the file says. Put working dir as /var/www/mrtg

Lets make graph
/usr/local/mrtg-2/bin/mrtg /usr/local/mrtg-2/cfg/mrtg-squid.cfg
Run this for three times. Its OK for now to see few errors.

Lets make index page
/usr/locl/mrtg-2/bin/indexmaker --title="OSR" --show=day --section=title --output=/var/www/mrtg/index.html /usr/local/mrtg-2/cfg/mrtg-squid.cfg

Fire your browser and you should see the graph

For continous monitoring
crontab -e
*/5 * * * * /usr/local/mrtg-2/bin/mrtg /usr/local/mrtg-2/cfg/mrtg-squid.cfg --logging=/var/log/mrtg.log

Additional reading: http://wiki.squid-cache.org/SquidFaq/SquidSnmp

Winter Darkness / Geminids Meteor Shower

The deepening darkness of winter has arrived and with it the beautiful winter skies. The earliest sunset has already passed, but the longest night is yet to come on Friday December 20th when we will experience over 14 hours of twilight and darkness from sunset to sunrise. This date is known as the Winter Solstice and it marks the day when the sun appears to be at its lowest point in the sky (at noon) compared to every other day of the year. From our latitude in San Francisco, this means that the sun will only appear approximately 30 degrees above the southern horizon at noon on December 20th - very low indeed!

December also brings the annual Geminid Meteor Shower. If you spend enough time looking up at the sky on any night of the year you will likely see a few meteors streak across the sky. However, a meteor shower is a special time in which a much higher number of meteors are visible. December 13-15 is a time when the Earth passes through a part of the Solar System which contains a particularly high concentration of dust and particles which enter the atmosphere and burn up, creating the beautiful "shooting stars" that we have come to know. This year the Geminid Meteor Shower comes at a time when moonlight will not interfere with seeing and the weather prospects are good (at least as of the time of this writing). The meteor shower is called the Gemenids because the meteors in the shower all seem to emanate from the same part of the sky in the constellation Gemini.

To see the Geminids, you need to look east in the evening after 9:00 pm, or straight up around midnight, or due west in the pre-dawn skies in the morning. The twin stars of Gemini (Castor and Pollux) are a bright pair and brilliant orange Mars is nearby. These stars and planet mark the spot where the meteors will appear to come from. It's rumored that the early morning hours of Friday 14th should bring some of the finest viewing to us on the west coast. Bundle up in a very warm jacket and hat and take a look. There's no need for a telescope or binoculars. You should see at least a few meteors even in the bright city skies of the Bay Area.