As we said on a previous article, we were waiting for the last chapters on tunning our LiteSpeed webserver. Finnaly, yui-life.com's webmaster has published in two articles the steps to get a custom PHP5 with eAccelerator and some tips on tunning the webserver.
I have tested his solution and I can say I’m quite happy with it, indeed I was also sharing a FastCGI + APC accelerator for two other domains and at the end I have migrated all of them (five) to the LiteSpeed solution.
You can read the articles at the following links:
Litespeed on Dreamhost PS: Final Optimizations for Stability and Lowest Cost
Compiling PHP5 and eAccelerator for Litespeed on Dreamhost PS
I have only one problem using LiteSpeed Standard proxied behind Apache, and it’s related to some web applications (like WordPress 3.3.4) use the header $_SERVER['REMOTE_ADDR'] to get the visitors IP instead of $_SERVER['HTTP_X_FORWARDED_FOR'], so the recorded IP it’s your own VPS IP, as it’s the one who sent you the request. Remember, Apache’s mod_proxy has been previously configured to send you the traffic to a running port of your LiteSpeed server.
Continue reading 'Next steps on getting more performance with LiteSpeed webserver'
Published on February 14, 2008
in Tools.
As I had to stop vpsadjust development due this unforeseen event, I started to prepare two new tools which I think could be useful for any Dreamhost PS owner. Right now I only have the ideas and expected features, with the time we'll see the final result. The tools are the following:
- vpsguardian. This tool will replace in some way the job done by vpsadjust, as right now it's not possible to have automatic resources configuration, this tool will provide information and trigger actions to help you maintain stable your CPU and memory settings. The different behaviours will be configurable. Main features:
- When memory is running out will disable crawlers access in all the domains by replacing or updating robots.txt to all denied. As soon the resources are spare again previous robots.txt file will be restored.
- When memory is running out and CPU is too high, some of the previously configured domains will be set to a redirected custom webpage. This action it's to lower load average and memory usage to let high priority domains have spare resources (i.e. e-commerce websites). The custom webpage could have a standard message saying something like "We are having a heavy usage spike. Please come back later". As soon the resources are spare again, redirection would be disabled. Continue reading 'Two new tools in the forge'
Published on February 14, 2008
in Tutorial.
Sounds interesting isn't it?
Just reading the title of this post you get the idea of how interesting must be the tutorial, and I can tell you it works, as this website and other domains on this PS are running now with LiteSpeed, and thanks to the tips of Yui-Life's webmaster.
You may read the whole article at this link: Optimizing Dreamhost PS CPU and Memory Usage by Installing Litespeed Web Server and it's the first chapter, as it's webmaster has told me he's planning to write a second chapter explaining PHP5.2.5 compile instructions and the eAccelerator opcode binary.
Continue reading 'Optimizing Dreamhost PS CPU and Memory Usage by Installing Litespeed Web Server'
Published on February 14, 2008
in Tools.
Today, Dreamhost decided to add a captcha system at the server usage web page, so no more automated adjustment of CPU/Memory settings is possible.
It's quite obvious that Dreamhost noticed there were some tools around there using smart decisions on server usage, and that wasn't helping their incomes, and adding this human-detection system was the easiest way to stop those tools. In my opinion, there are other solutions, like avoiding changing settings with certain frecuency, or even offering an API to use Vserver calls funcionality.
Continue reading 'Bye bye vpsadjust'
Published on January 27, 2008
in Tools.
From the original site:
vpsinfo is a Linux server monitoring script, written in PHP, that provides web access to system status information. It gathers the output from several common Linux commands into one web page, providing a quick overview of the system's current state.
This script coded by Doubles T. Robbins was coded for VPS (Virtual Private Servers) based on Virtuozzo and OpenVZ systems, and for that reason does not work properly on VServer systems, used by Dreamhost PS.I have made a few patches on the original script (version 2.3.2) to enable all those features that were not working on our PS and I'm sharing this patched version.Clicking in the following picture you may see an example of the look and feel of vpsinfo under a Dreamhost PS:
To enable mysql reports, you need to configure these variables at the vpsinfo.php file: Continue reading 'vpsinfo: your PS status in a browser'
Any website usually has its own forums, so here they are:
http://dreamhostpstools.com/forums
So post there whatever you want to share with us, your suggestions, ideas, questions, or even your problems related with Dreamhost's Private Servers. Maybe we could find a solution for you.
Indeed a short post.
I coded another tool, vpsadjust, this one is saving myself some bucks already and providing a dynamic amount of CPU and memory resources.
This script basically does monitoring on the free resources at your PS, if there are some amounts of “wasted” resources, i.e. 300Mb of free memory, it logs at Dreamhost’s control panel and reduces the CPU/Memory to a lower level. And in the other side, if your PS is already swapping memory, the script logs at the control panel and raises your resources to reduce the swapping.
So, at the end, I only pay for the resources I need and when I’m not using them, they are returned to Dreamhost reducing my monthly bill.
Continue reading 'Saving cash at your Dreamhost PS'
It’s not the first time I find that my PS it’s not working properly due it’s has lost NFS mounts, or it went out of memory due a sudden peek of traffic or maybe because a few zombie processes are hanging around produced by my not-so-good programming skill 
Usually the quick and dirty workaround it’s to reboot the PS, but you only can do it manually at Dreamhost’s control panel.
As there is no way I could be checking my PS status all the time, and I’m not going to double the amount I’m paying already to avoid any chance of high rare peeks of traffic, I submitted a ticket to Dreamhost support asking by any way to automate reboots:
Hi,
Is there any chance I could automate reboots on my Dreamhost PS?
For example, if the number of zombie process is above 5 -> reboot PS
The hard way it's coding the Perl LWP script that logs in this panel and does the same thing at your form, but that's too crappy and I'd prefer to not take that path
Best regards.
Antonio.
And the answer:
Continue reading 'First post'
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