Nov 16-20 was a busy week on the blog, with Open Source Expo impressions, new tools, plugins and hardware and a visit from new clients from abroad.
To start, Bernd reported back from the Open Source Expo in Karlsruhe where he represented Icinga. He gave us a peek into the concurrent International PHP Conference with a presentation by Zend developer Ralph Schindler on “PHP in a Cloud”.
William followed with yet another plug-in release – check_sepsesam to monitor SEP’s back up system, Sesam. The plugin can be queried via SSH and NRPE, filters recent backup task by hosts and tasks for analysis, and enables hosts and task lists to be specified such as timeframe restrictions in configuring multi-line outputs. Check it out and download at www.netways.org and www.monitoringexchange.org.
On the topic of development, we looked at Myterm for the querying, filtering and charting MySQL data, while Martin K introduced his latest handy hardware. The HWG-STE network thermometer by the HW group monitors temperature and humidity for server rooms and data centre racks. With email alerts, SNMP functionality and an easy to use web frontend for configuration, Martin recommended it as an environmental monitoring base, tipping off a demo site for those interested to test.
Moving onto Hosting & Managed Services, Stefan G introduced himself and his work. As our System Engineer responsible for the mammoth StayFriends system, his highlights range from server migration of the 3 digit calibre to large scale VoIP and firewall construction for the ever growing social networking platform.
From the same sphere, Peter thanked Sidmach Technologies for their recent visit- our newest Hosting & Managed Services client. Mike Olajide, Chijioke Eke and Lawal Mudashir came to inspect the data centre and see their new server in action, which we host for their student registration portal. With lesser guarantee of stable infrastructure or reliable broadband speeds in their company base of Nigeria, Sidmach made the decision to ensure high availability by outsourcing to us in Germany. Tech talk aside, Peter also introduced Mike, Chijioke and Lawal to classic franconian fare in form of “Schäufele”, making for a great visit all in all. Now we’re already looking forward to the next.
NETWAYS Blog
MySQL command console – Myterm
We’ve found a new project that was launched just this month called Myterm. An extensible command line client with pipe chaining, Myterm is an alternative tool for querying, filtering and graphical representation of MySQL data.
A clean and simple model, a Myterm command chain starts with a command (normally a query) which returns with a set of results that is sent through a chain of bash filters eg. awk, grep, sort. Myterm then uses libchart to generate graphics of the final data, which are sent to a destination such as a file or browser.
Myterm’s structure is based largely on a plugin concept, where for example, it uses shell exec for browser integration. In this sense it can act as a kind of nucleus where multiple tools can be connected for backup, data transfer, monitoring and more.
Myterm is definitely worth a look, for developers interested in good ideas and administrators who want a quick overview of their database without digging into deep MySQL knowledge.
By applying Unix commands to MySQL, Myterm approaches database querying from a totally different perspective – and that’s why we like it.
Check out the project on Launchpad at https://launchpad.net/myterm.
