Atholl Road Labs

Web based file watcher

admin — Thu, 20 Dec 2012 13:34:28 +0000

We needed to check a file was being written to a remote server at least every 15 minutes or so. This bash script, run as a cron job, uses curl to get the HTTP headers and then sed to extract “Last Modified” time. The actual log file is not downloaded.

#!/bin/bash
START=$(/bin/date +%s)
LASTMOD=` /usr/bin/curl -Is http://www.example.com/logs/log.txt | /bin/sed -n 's/^Last-Modified: *\([^ ]*\) */\1/p' `
LASTTIME=$(/bin/date +%s -d "$LASTMOD")
DIFF=$(($START - $LASTTIME ))
if [ "$DIFF" -gt "900" ]
then
MAIL_TXT="Subject: Log file not updating\nFrom: info@example.com\nTo: info@example.com\n\nAge is $DIFF"
echo -e $MAIL_TXT | /usr/sbin/sendmail -t
fi

Cron entry is

*/15 * * * * /home/robin/checkweblastmod.sh

Blog once, Twit and Facebook

admin — Wed, 19 Dec 2012 16:36:12 +0000

Testing out another mailchimp plugin. This time to broadcast your blog post to Twitter and Facebook. See http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/social Tip: Remember to select “Broadcast Post”

Mailchimp wordpress integration

admin — Wed, 19 Dec 2012 08:54:35 +0000

Mailchimp has a wordpress plugin. This is a post to test email sending!

I used instructions at http://www.stuffedweb.com/automatically-email-latest-post to set up an rss automated campaign. The list is subscribed to via the Mail Chimp List plugin widget.

Link

anna — Wed, 31 Oct 2012 21:23:33 +0000

This is a link style post.

2 new WordPress websites

anna — Wed, 31 Oct 2012 21:22:51 +0000

We have set up 2 new WordPress blog websites. This is part of a new initiative to provide quick, cost effective blog websites for a diverse group of businesses.

Bluelighthost, iCloud or BBS Commerce Ltd

admin — Wed, 31 Oct 2012 12:37:42 +0000

Bluelighthost are doing a free 7 day trial (http://www.bluelighthost.com/our-services). It look great so I gave it a spin. 1/2 day later I had Ubuntu, Nginx, MySQL running a WordPress mu. Brilliant! You get a medium VM for £15 ex vat so, after checking my vm would stay alive I signed up. Next day my vm was gone Apparently I didn’t choose an upgrade. They couldn’t restore it and I got passed from pillar to post (the number on the support ticket was iCloud not Bluelighthost). When I eventually got through to Bluelighthost they told me to send an email! They did answer the email quickly but by that time I had restored an image of my server to a home machine and was slightly annoyed. They refunded my money without question.

Conclusion: Probably a good service but some organisational teething problems. Always keep backups and triple check when upgrading that your vps will survive.

Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (Amazon EC2)

admin — Wed, 31 Oct 2012 12:22:43 +0000

I’ve just come to the end of my free Amazon EC2 Micro Instance (see http://aws.amazon.com/free). After 1 month of paying I’m over $15 for a tiny site with all the OS updating turned off! Imagine what would happen if you got hit by … Continue reading →