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/Now

This is my /Now page, after Derek Sivers's proposal.

I've recently back in San Francisco after a few months on the east coast.

I'm doing a lot of generative art, some (but nowhere near all of which, yet) you see all over this site, as well as having a few pieces published as cover and internal illustrations for a not-for-profit poetry anthology published by UCSF's Poetic Medicine program at the MERI Center for Palliative Care at Mt Zion.

On the music front, for the last few months I've been practicing playing the lyre, as well as still regularly playing guitar, saxophone and clarinet. I have a 24-string lyre and expect to have a video or two posted in the reasonably near future.

Professionally, I'm working as an in-house FileMaker developer for an large educational nonprofit, as well as continuing with a…

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Workshop » Reference Section » Grimoires » IT » Applications » Web Browsers » CSS
Comprehensive List of CSS Units, A Reference For Web Developers
Posted inReference Info Posted in genresGeek StuffWeb DevelopmentGrody Technical Details

The Absolute Units: Comprehensive List of CSS Units, A Reference For Web Developers

Here’s a guide to all currently available CSS units, with explanations and common use notes. This includes all CSS units listed in MDN Web Docs as of 2025aug15.

Sections:

By Category Angle units
  • deg: Angle Degrees (360deg = full circle).
  • grad: Angle Gradians (400grad = full circle).
  • rad: Angle Radians (2πrad = full circle).
  • turn: Angle Turns (1turn = full circle).
    Used in transforms, gradients, and trigonometric functions.
          Frequency units
          • Hz: Hertz. Cycles per second (e.g., for aural/speech media).
          • kHz: Kilohertz (1000Hz). Rarely used in typical web CSS.
            Length Units: Absolute length units (fixed physical or device-referenced)
            • px: CSS pixel. The most common unit for on-screen layout. Scales with zoom; not a physical device pixel.
            • in: Inch (1in = 96px).
            • cm: Centimeter (1cm =…
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            Code & Algorithms » Web
            A Technological Solution to Disincentivize a Web Development “Concern Troll”
            Posted inCode & Algorithms Posted in genresWeb DevelopmentWordpress CodingGrody Technical Details

            Fun With A Purpose: A Technological Solution to Disincentivize a Web Development “Concern Troll”

            I had an interesting thing happen a few months ago where a troll in a chat room decided for some reason to run my site through the W3C's Nu HTML Validator and apparently was grievously wounded by the validation errors it had—and furthermore, had a big concern with the overall bandwidth consumption of the site, with all its images and heavy pages.

            Rather than simply solving the problem by not visiting my site, this person apparently felt some sort of imperative to berate me over these things and not. let. it. drop, making the chat room difficult to be in and necessitating action on my part.

            So, rather than try to verbally wrangle with a troll, I whipped up a technological solution. And, of course, the monkey in my soul decided to have a little fun with it.

            I. Lassoing the HTML Validator

            Nowadays, if…

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            Code & Algorithms » Demo & Live Tool Playground
            Web Demo: CSS Dynamic Point Light Source & Parallax Shadows
            Posted inCode & Algorithms Posted in genresCSSLive DemoWeb DevelopmentJavascript

            Let There Be More Light: Web Demo: CSS Dynamic Point Light Source & Parallax Shadows

            Click here to view this in a separate tab.

            This demonstrates a high-performance method of rendering dynamic CSS drop shadows from a simulated point light source.

            The note and sun light source elements have been made interactively user-draggable by the inclusion of an external draggability package.

            Until I have this documented, you can see the code on Codepen at https://codepen.io/kupietz/pen/LEpzJgL.

            Update, Feb 2026:

            This is not my work but it deserves a mention here. I've been completely outdone. Check this demo out. This guy designed an entire css system around physical lighting: https://ambientcss.vercel.app/ Github: https://github.com/kikkupico/ambientcss

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            Workshop » Reference Section » Grimoires » IT » Troubleshooting log » VMWare
            Posted inIT Grimoire

            VMWare VM unreachable via IP after reboot, even from host machine

            My VWWare VM lost internet connectivity after a reboot. Even the host machine could not access any service on it. Http/https got 523 errors.

            I powered down the VM, changed the networking to NAT, powered it back up, shut it down again, changed the networking back to Autodetect, booted it again, and everything seemed fine.

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            Workshop » Reference Section
            Start Here—What is the General Reference Library section?
            Posted inNews & Info Posted in genresMetaFAQs & Further Info

            What It Is: Start Here—What is the General Reference Library section?

            I have always been a dedicated archiver and curator of interesting information: trivia, facts, tidbits, how-tos, items of possible future interest. In the internet age, some of this it makes sense to keep as a public archive: IT troubleshooting information, links and general interest info I want to share with other people, etc.

            However, since this site is intended primarily as my creative showcase, this presented me with a conundrum. There are a lot of things I want to share online for various reasons, but which aren't my creative output. And it seemed silly to set up a whole separate website for that.

            Hence this "General Reference Library": information I want to make easily available under my own domain, but as a reference, not as my creative output. Eventually this section will just be a colossal brain dump of anything I felt for some reason I wanted to…

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            Writing » Topical Writing » Mikesplaining—My Answers to Infrequently Asked Questions
            Can the statement ‘I literally died laughing’ be true?
            Posted inWriting Posted in genresLanguageMikesplaining

            Infrequently Asked Questions: Can the statement ‘I literally died laughing’ be true?

            "'Literally' is one of the most misused words in the English language. Literally means: exactly as stated. 'I literally rode a horse to get here.' means you saddled a horse and rode it to your destination in real life. 'I literally died laughing' is untrue, because you're still alive." —Siana W., via internet

            That's not a question, but I'm going to do my best to answer it anyway.

            You're a couple of years behind the times. Dictionaries reflect common language, not the other way around—that's how the meanings of words change over time.

            Otherwise "nice" would still have its original English meaning of "foolish or ignorant" (from Latin "Nescire", to be ignorant, also the root of the current but uncommon English word nescience, "ignorance or unknowingness".)

            You're in good company, though—Jane Austen mocked the widespread incorrect use of 'nice' to describe things as pleasant in "Northanger…

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            Workshop » Reference Section » Grimoires » IT » Platforms » Linux » Packages » rsync & rsnapshot
            Posted inIT Grimoire

            Reducing rsnapshot or rsync resource usage

            I've had sporadic problems with clearing the WP cache causing the server to return 520 errors for a few minutes. Usually other sites on the same server are fine, it's specific to this vhost. Logging in via SSH, checking with htop, rsync is usually hogging most of the cpu. Restarting the fpm and then restarting Apache restores the website.

            According to https://www.claudiokuenzler.com/blog/361/rsnapshot-backup-reduce-high-load-with-ionice, the big bottleneck with rsync, which rsnaphot runs on, is i/o, not cpu, and rsync can actually tie up i/o such that a web server won't respond to http requests. This can be solved by making the rsnapshot command in crontab ionice -c 3 [rsnapshot command] instead of just the rsnapshot command, which tells rsync not to wait until the disk is idle before trying to access it. So I did. In fact, I made it nice -n 19 ionice -c 3 [rsnapshot command] although…

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            Workshop » Works In Progress » Code & Algo Works In Progress
            Posted inCode & Algorithms Posted in genresWork-In-ProgressGeek StuffTo-Dos

            Software Index Placeholder

            This is a placeholder page left here to remind me to set up a single-page index of links to all my various software projects.

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            Workshop » Reference Section » Grimoires » IT » Platforms » Linux » Packages » Git
            Posted inIT Grimoire

            Force Git to overwrite local changes if there is a branch conflict

            Use code you find here at your own risk! I am not responsible if you damage your data or system by following any instructions you find here.

            1. Navigate to your plugin's root directory:

              Bash

              cd /home/kupietzc/public_html/kartscode/wp-content/plugins/ktwp-draggable-elements

            2. Fetch the latest changes from GitHub:
              Bash

              git fetch origin

            3. Perform a hard reset to match GitHub's main branch (assuming main is your branch):

              Bash
              git reset --hard origin/main

              WARNING: This command is destructive. It will discard all local changes to tracked files and make your local repository exactly match your GitHub repository. Ensure you have a backup of any local modifications you wish to preserve that are NOT on GitHub before running this.

            4. Clean up any untracked files or directories (remnants from manual copying):
              …
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            Workshop » Reference Section » Grimoires » IT » Applications » Web Browsers » CSS
            Posted inIT Grimoire

            Getting Web Browsers Not To Blur Images on Retina Screens

            Unfortunately this must be set by site, but on retina screens on MacOS, many browsers blur small images, such as 88x31 buttons.

            You can overcome this, at least for the images on your site, by adding this CSS to your site:

            img, div {
            image-rendering: optimizeSpeed;
            image-rendering: -moz-crisp-edges;
            image-rendering: -webkit-optimize-contrast;
            image-rendering: optimize-contrast;
            image-rendering: pixelated;
            -ms-interpolation-mode: nearest-neighbor;
            }

            You should add any element that might have a CSS background image property to that selector. In this case I have added

            because I have many divs with background images on this site.

            This tip is from https://stackoverflow.com/questions/31908444/fix-for-blurry-images-on-browsers-used-by-a-mac-retina

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            Workshop » Reference Section » Grimoires » IT » Platforms » MacOS » Apps
            Posted inIT Grimoire

            How to fix if the “Save” button is grayed out in Photoshop CC 2017 save and export dialogs

            I don't know if this affects other versions of Photoshop, but on MacOS Photoshop CC 2017 frequently starts unexpectedly graying out all save buttons when you have made changes to your file and should be able to save.

            The secret is to resize and move around the dialog. Drag the lower right corner to make it bigger and smaller a few times, and try dragging the whole dialog to the upper left corner of the screen and making it small.

            This fixes it for me.

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            Visual Art » "Petit Art": Odds & Ends
            Web Assets Archive — Buttons, Logos, and Other Website Graphics
            Posted inImage Gallery Posted in genresGeek StuffWebsite Images

            Covering My Assets: Web Assets Archive — Buttons, Logos, and Other Website Graphics

            .cellimglink > .mk-cell-img {border-radius:0 !important;} Buttons Kupietz Arts+Code buttons "Built During An Indieweb Meetup" buttons

            I strongly suggest, if you use these buttons, that you use an [code][/code] tag to link them to https://events.indieweb.org.

            Site Graphics "Life In A Mikeycosm" logo versions, https://mikeycosm.org, circa 2003-2007

            Self-portrait for "About Me" page, circe 2003

            Curl-Up Bug for "Ode To A Curl-Up Bug", circa 2003

            "100% Truth" Logos and article-end dingbat, 2003

            For a while I had this idea that my website would be scrupulously, meticulously honest. Despite that, it was actually still pretty fun.
            …

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            Home, News & Info » Policies & Legalese
            Posted inNews & Info Posted in genresArtificial IntelligenceMetaLegaleseGrody Technical Details

            AI Policy

            A. Overall Philosophy

            I recognize the abuses of the companies currently producing the major AI tools, which I agree often crosses the line into plagiarism, and absolutely takes unfair advantage of existing manual content creators; but I also recognize the validity of an enormous number of art forms that rely on repurposing or mechanically reproducing existing content and/or stochastic generative processes: collage (in both the visual and aural forms), Musique Concrete, readymades in the visual arts, "plunderphonics", pastiche, to a certain extent turntablism, even arguably photography, as well as music compositional concepts used in the fields of algorithmic composition and aleatorical music, such from composers like John Cage, Pierre Boulez, and even the very foundation of modern electronic music with Pierre Schaeffer's…

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            Visual Art » Generative Illustrations » Requests & Contest Submissions
            #SaturdayMonsterChallenge—”Too Hot To Handle Monsters”, Uncensored
            Posted inImage Gallery Posted in genresContest & Challenge SubmissionsFantasy IllustrationMonstersAI Generative Illustration

            But It's A Dry Heat: #SaturdayMonsterChallenge—”Too Hot To Handle Monsters”, Uncensored

            The LinkedIn Saturday Monster Challenge for July 5, 2025 was '"Too Hot To Handle" Monsters'.

            After consideration, I decided not to post this gallery on LinkedIn.

            The idea of a "monster"-themes art challenge on a professional site has always been a funny one, and while most people (including myself) usually create work-safe images, the fact is, as a kid raised on horror movies—I was babysat by channel 11's "Chiller Theatre" from the age of 6—occasionally I wind up, just by following my muse, doing something a little more unflinching.

            Sometimes some of the images are... well, they're never terribly offensive, but sometimes I feel like they're just a little strong or perhaps a hair darker than I want to post in front of unsuspecting professional networkers or prospective employers.

            That happened in this case.

            They're not that objectionable, but some of the images were…

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            Writing » Topical Writing
            Using Per-Website Emails & Passwords to Protect Against Data Breaches
            Posted inWriting Posted in genresCybersecurityITMikesplaining

            Security Through Obscurity: Using Per-Website Emails & Passwords to Protect Against Data Breaches

            I got into a conversation today with some web developers, talking about recent articles about a major password breach.

            This got me to thinking—with some prompting from shadowy web standards advocate and staunch info-sharing supporter Tantek Çelik—that this would be useful to document.

            Unique email addresses and passwords for every website

            The basic idea is this: every single website signup gets a unique email address and unique password. This way, if a website is breached and the passwords are leaked, no other accounts are compromised, just that website's.

            The trick is to do it in a way that I can remember, or easily derive the usernames and passwords per site, so I don't have to rely on a pain-in-the-posterior password manager, and can log in from anywhere easily.

            Obviously I'm not going to give away details of how I specifically do things, but I can…

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            Visual Art » Generative Illustrations » Requests & Contest Submissions
            #SaturdayMonsterChallenge – 2025jun29, “Deleted Scenes Monsters” – Casablanca Uncut
            Posted inImage Gallery Posted in genresContest & Challenge SubmissionsFantasy IllustrationMonstersAI Generative IllustrationFun

            Slay It Again, Sam: #SaturdayMonsterChallenge – 2025jun29, “Deleted Scenes Monsters” – Casablanca Uncut

            This week's LinkedIn Saturday Monster Challenge generative art theme was "Deleted Scene Monsters": show the monsters that ended up on the cutting room floor.

            And so, I am pleased to present these rare stills from the original cut of "Casablanca" (1942)—starring Humphrey Bogart and Ingrid Bergman as star-crossed former lovers in a classic tale of wartime romance set against a background of mind-bending supernatural horrors, when a mysterious event causes the gates of Hell to yawn wide and the inhabitants to amble forth across the living earth. (Original tagline: "From Hell... to Casablanca... to YOUR Town!")

            Unfortunately, test audiences didn't respond well, and studio executives said the macabre elements were "distracting" and ordered it recut to emphasize more of the drama and romance, and less of the shrieking souls of the long dead.

            The bowdlerized re-cut became the familiar excellent but sadly not-at-all-terrifying non-monster film…

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            Home, News & Info » Site & Author Info
            Posted inNews & Info Posted in genresMetaExternal linksFAQs & Further Info

            Links — Mike’s Other Sites, Pages, & Online Mentions

            More Kupietz for you? Links to Mike's Other Sites & Pages Site Article Syndication & Social Media Feeds

            A good part of the articles on this site get syndicated to Mastodon on https://mastodon.social/@michaelkupietz.com@michaelkupietz.com and to BlueSky on https://bsky.app/profile/michaelkupietz.com.web.brid.gy. You can also follow me on those, in addition to the overall site RSS feed at https://michaelkupietz.com/feed, which you'll need to put into an RSS reader to follow. The site is also marked up with h-feed (info) for following in your favorite h-feed reader (recommended: Artemis or Monocle, with more listed on Indieweb's wiki.

            Music & Sounds:

            GuitaristInProgress on YouTube - my old YouTube channel, mostly me playing sloppy covers on guitar. Once upon a time, some people liked this! I actually got fan mail a couple of times.
            Read More

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            Home, News & Info » Site & Author Info
            Contact Information
            Posted inNews & Info Posted in genresMetaFAQs & Further Info

            Touch Me, Babe: Contact Information

            If you have any questions or concerns, I'm absolutely here to help. To get in touch, come to San Francisco and walk down each street shouting my name. Here's a map.

            Kidding.

            Your best bet to reach me about my creative work or issues about this site is email.

            Michael Kupietz
            Creative Productions, Arrangements, & Operations in Arts, Technology, and Entertainment
            Email: website@michaelkupietz.com (but **read the warning below)
            Web: https://michaelkupietz.com
            Phone: as a minimal disincentive to people calling me, please click over to me consulting business site to get my phone number.
            Download vCard Business Contacts

            If you want to talk to me about work, check my consulting business site for fuller info.

            Warning: Before you email

            **Warning If you email me at the above address: As an anti-spam measure, you're going to have…

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            Workshop » Works In Progress » Code & Algo Works In Progress
            Draggable Elements WordPress Plugin
            Posted inCode & Algorithms Posted in genresWork-In-ProgressLive DemoWeb DevelopmentWordpress Coding

            Nothin' But A Drag: Draggable Elements WordPress Plugin

            First, the demo

            This is a brief demo page for my KupieTools Draggable Elements WordPress plugin, which dynamically adds interactive draggability to any page element, based on CSS class names (or, really, any CSS selector).

            Here's some boxes:

            Drag Me Horizontally Drag Me Vertically Drag Me Anywhere Drag Me To Corners

            If you select "View Page Source" on this page in your browser, you will see that the above four DIV elements, as defined in the page HTML, are just ordinary DIV elements with a single classname, an ID, and some visual styling. The KupieTools Draggable Elements plugin adds draggability to any arbitrary page element, by simply specifying a class name or other CSS selector for it in the plugin. (If you use your browser's Inspector instead of View Page Source, you'll see the current state of those elements, with any changes or additions the plugin created…

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            Workshop » Reference Section » Grimoires » IT » Applications » Web Browsers » Addons

            Filtering LinkedIn Posts, Notifications, and Comments by keyword with uBlock Origin

            I use the uBlock Origin browser plugin to filter my LinkedIn Posts, Notifications, and Comments to hide anything containing objectionable topics. uBlock Origin allows you to add custom rules to block web content.

            How to use and setup uBlock Origin is beyond the scope of this post. It's not hard, figure it out and then come back. What you want to know how to do is add your own custom rules.

            Let's say, for purposes of these example, I want to block all mentions of someone named Grump.

            The simplest version: block a single word

            The following three rules hide Posts, Comments, and Notifications, respectively, that contain the word "grump", whether as a separate word, or as part of other words, such as "grumpier".

            Posts: www.linkedin.com##div:has( > .ember-view.occludable-update:has(div.fie-impression-container:has-text(/grump/i)))
            Comments: www.linkedin.com##.comments-replies-list > .comments-thread-entity > .comments-thread-item > .comments-comment-entity--reply.comments-comment-entity:has-text(/grump/i)
            Notifications: www.linkedin.com##div[data-finite-scroll-hotkey-item]:has-text(/grump/i)

            That's the basics. But…

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            Visual Art » Generative Illustrations » Requests & Contest Submissions
            #SaturdayMonsterChallenge—”Rising Monsters”
            Posted inImage Gallery Posted in genresContest & Challenge SubmissionsFantasy IllustrationMonstersAI Generative Illustration

            By the time I get there, she'll be rising: #SaturdayMonsterChallenge—”Rising Monsters”

            The Saturday Monster Challenge on LinkedIn for June 21 2025 was "Eternal Rise Monsters". I took the theme and decided to do Phoenixes (Phoenices? Phoenixen?), as in "rising from the ashes."

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            Workshop » Reference Section » Grimoires » IT » Troubleshooting log » WordPress
            Posted inIT Grimoire

            Deactivating, deleting, and completely removing a plugin that WordPress won’t let you deactivate

            I installed the WordPress plugin LWS Optimize, which turned out to be unusably broken (which is the reason I'm not linking to it) and made my site unusable. To make matters worse, when I tried to deactivate it, it told me it deactivated... and was still active. I went in through FTP and deleted the plugin folder entirely, and then WordPress said it had been deactivated because it couldn't be found... and it still showed as present and activated in the plugin list.

            So I added this to my theme's functions.php file:

            add_action('admin_init', function() {
            $active_plugins = get_option('active_plugins');
            $plugin_to_remove = 'lws-optimize/lws-optimize.php';

            if (($key = array_search($plugin_to_remove, $active_plugins)) !== false) {
            unset($active_plugins[$key]);
            update_option('active_plugins', array_values($active_plugins));
            }
            });

            I then reloaded an admin page and removed that. That deactivated the plugin in the plugins list, but then when I hit the "delete" link, it said it…

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            Workshop » Reference Section » Grimoires » IT » Troubleshooting log
            Posted inIT Grimoire

            Website returns 503 server errors, but no errors in logs

            Had a weird one today. Last one website of the several of on this server suddenly started returning 503 (service unavailable) errors. There was nothing in the PHP error log or Apache error log. All server configs are already thoroughly optimized for performance. Other websites on the same server were functioning normally.

            I didn't notice this at the time, but my uptime monitor didn't report an outage. When I used redirect-checker.com to check the status code, it returned 200, which should have been a clue, also.

            Next time, before doing all sorts of arcane troubleshooting:
            1. Try with a different browser
            2. Is there a CDN? Try bypassing it.
            3. Are you using a VPN? Try selecting a different endpoint (VPN server) if it will let you, or turning it off.

            I use the NordVPN plugin in Firefox, and quic.cloud is my…

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            Workshop » Reference Section » Grimoires » IT » Applications » FileMaker Pro
            Posted inIT Grimoire

            Get names of all input fields in a FileMaker Pro table

            ExecuteSQL ( "SELECT FieldName FROM FileMaker_Fields WHERE TableName='[TABLE NAME]' AND FieldClass='Normal'",",","¶")

            | Permanent URL: https://michaelkupietz.com?p=29760  |  Share this  |  Embed link  |  Webmentions are: off
            Workshop » Reference Section » Grimoires » IT » Platforms » Linux » Packages » PHP
            Posted inIT Grimoire

            How to monitor RAM for tuning pm.max_children

            How to monitor RAM usage:

            1. free -h:

              • This command shows your system's total, used, and free memory in a human-readable format.
              • Key metrics:
                • total: Total RAM.
                • used: RAM currently in use.
                • free: Unused RAM.
                • buff/cache: RAM used for file system buffers and page cache. This is good; Linux uses free RAM for this and frees it when applications need it.
                • available: The most important metric. This estimates how much memory is available for starting new applications without swapping.
              • Run it before and after: Run free -h before you increase max_children and then after your server has been running for a while under typical load with the new settings. Compare the available memory.

            2. htop (recommended if installed):

              • htop (you might need to sudo…
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            Workshop » Reference Section » Grimoires » IT » Platforms » Linux » Packages » cron
            Posted inIT Grimoire

            Add sar logging for CPU, RAM, and disk I/O

            Add or change /etc/cron.d/sysstat to this. This creates a cron jobe to write file /tmp/outage_resource_log.txt that keeps minute-by-minute stats, sometimes useful in troubleshooting slowdowns. However, it's not a great way to do things, it create a small, constant resource drag, so disable it when done troubleshooting.

            # The first element of the path is a directory where the debian-sa1
            # script is located
            PATH=/usr/lib/sysstat:/usr/sbin:/usr/sbin:/usr/bin:/sbin:/bin

            # Activity reports every 10 minutes everyday
            #ORIGINAL DEFAULT WAS 5-55/10 * * * * root command -v debian-sa1 > /dev/null && debian-sa1 1 1
            #uncomment above line and comment out /tmp/outage_resource_log.txt lines to restore original functionality
            * * * * * root date +"%Y-%m-%d %H:%M:%S" >> /tmp/outage_resource_log.txt
            * * * * * root sar -u 1 1 >> /tmp/outage_resource_log.txt 2>&1
            * * * * * root sar -r 1 1 >> /tmp/outage_resource_log.txt 2>&1
            * * *…

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            Workshop » Reference Section » Grimoires » IT » Platforms » Linux » Packages » Apache
            Posted inIT Grimoire

            Add /fpm-status page to Apache virtual host

            Add this to virtual host file in /etc/apache2/sites-available/, right below DocumentRoot, in both :80 and :443 sections



            SetHandler "proxy:unix:/var/php-fpm/170027027353667.sock|fcgi://127.0.0.1"
            Require all granted

            May need in /etc/php/8.2/fpm/pool.d/www.conf, not sure:
            pm.status_path = /fpm-status

            May need at very start of .htaccess to prevent wordpress from intercepting the URL, not sure:
            RewriteRule ^fpm-status$ - [L]

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            Workshop » Reference Section » Grimoires » IT » Platforms » Linux » Packages » Apache
            Posted inIT Grimoire

            View last 200 lines of all access logs on apache server

            find [path/to/access/logs/folder] -name "*_access_log" -exec sh -c 'tail -200 "$1" | grep -v "HetrixTools\|ok\.txt\|canary" | sed "s/$/ [$(basename "$1" _access_log)]/"' _ {} \; | sort -k4,4

            The grep -v "HetrixTools\|ok\.txt\|canary" filters out hits from my uptime monitor.

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