This is going to be a short post.  I am working on altering a script so that postgres will store it's log in /var/postgres/931 instead of /var/postgres/931/data. When you set up SMF so that postgres may be started as a service, the log directory does not allow full paths. Clearly the only solution to this was to usea symbolic link. Ok... so if I plan on using this script for future version of postgres how do I get the data dir path for postgres. That solution was fun to work on as it taught me more than I really wanted to know about sed (stream editor). The command is as follows:

root@mymachine:~# ps auxw | grep postgres |  sed -r 's/.* (-D) (.*) ?(-i)/\2/' | head -n1
/var/postgres/84/data
 

There isn't much to this, just a regex that gets everything in between -D and -i after output from ps has been piped in showing the paths that postgres was started with.

Enjoy!

CGI in an AOLServer World

After a day and a half of attempting to install awstats, a free log analysis tool in aolserver I came across a forum post that seemed promising, however the link mentioned by the poster was  dead.  Awstats must be installed in the cgi-bin, a somewhat antiquated installation method that truthfully I must admit I have never before attempted. However, a short skip and a jump through archive.org later and I had a cached version of the quoted weblink. This website while not altogether different from others I had found on google, gave me the push I needed to reorganize the code in my nsd.tcl file corresponding to cgi-bin setup. Here is the solution I found to enabling cgi-bin scripts usage in aolserver.

Some assumptions, if you are hoping to get the same results I did

• You are running at least version 4.5.1 of Aolserver
• Running at least postgres 9.3.1
• Have perl installed

ns_section "ns/server/${server}/module/nscgi"

       ns_param  Map "GET  /cgi-bin ${serverroot}/cgi-bin"

       ns_param  Map "POST /cgi-bin ${serverroot}/cgi-bin"

       ns_param  Interps CGIinterps

ns_section "ns/interps/CGIinterps"

       ns_param .pl "/usr/bin/perl"

You will also want to ensure that the following line is uncommented in your nsd.tcl file:

    ns_param   nscgi              ${bindir}/nscgi.so

It is very important that you:

•  capitalize the word "Map" in the "ns_param Map" section 
• that the cgi-bin mapping whatever you decide to call it, not have a trailing '/'.

If you still have problems getting it to work, try changing the path from a dynamic path like 
"${serverroot}/cgi-bin" to a static path.

This solved my problems, and awstats has been working great, feel free to shoot me a comment if you feel this posting is incomplete.