May 01 2008

I’m sick of Mongrel

Published by Nerdmaster under Opinions, Ruby on Rails

I’ve been running my Rails apps (this blog as well as Bloodsport Colosseum) via mod_proxy and mongrel. Run a mongrel server at a given port, tell Apache to redirect a given virtual host to said port. Takes a lot more knowledge than a noob like me has, so even though it’s better than dealing with fastcgi + Apache or lighttpd, it’s still annoying.

Once I got it up and running, however, I figured it was good enough - everything worked, so all was well. Until I had apps that weren’t hit very often. Bloodsport Colosseum is hit pretty regularly, and this blog seems to get pinged by random sources all the time, so both worked well. But my now-deceased fanmail app (granted it was really far too simple to warrant the RoR framework, but that’s a whole different story) was hit maybe every few days.

Mongrel did not like this for some reason. It seems that any app that isn’t getting regular hits just dies after a while. I read somewhere that it was mysql’s fault, closing the socket or something like that. Interestingly, my PHP apps that use mysql don’t have that problem, and on my last server (privately hosted by a friend and using fastcgi), my Rails apps didn’t have that problem.

Okay, fanmail app was kind of unnecessary anyway - I can just put my smart and not at all fat fan’s letters of praise on the main site, run via PHP, and that’ll be good enough.

Then I for once blogged a popular topic - the Network Solutions “scandal”. I was actually #3 on google for the search “network solutions domain name front running” for a little while. But the next day when I checked how things were going, I noticed that mongrel was “running”, but not responding, much like what I saw when an app wasn’t hit regularly. The process list would show a mongrel process using almost no memory (very atypical of a Rails app), and Apache would give an error that the proxying couldn’t happen. So the one time I’m really getting visitors (About 100x normal traffic levels for my shitty blog), within about an hour mongrel had decided it had enough.

I don’t believe mongrel can’t handle large traffic loads, I just think my lack of skills combined with mongrel’s funky behavior problems caused issues.

All in all, I’m tired of that - Mongrel keeps misbehaving, and I’m DONE. Time for something new. I’m trying out Phusion Passenger tonight and we’ll see how it goes.

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Apr 25 2008

If you’re not smart enough to program, don’t write a programming guide

Published by Nerdmaster under Bad Programmer!, Opinions, Programming

I can’t believe this. Simply amazing.

I really can’t.

I’m not even sure this is good enough to fall under my usual “Awesome Software Discovery” banner.

So I work at a place where we use Ruby and Perl a lot, right? The above site is supposedly a “conversion” of O’Rielly’s Perl Cookbook into Ruby. Good idea. But here’s the thing - if you don’t know your ass from a hole in the ground, maybe you shouldn’t be writing a programming guide. Maybe. I don’t know. Am I being too harsh?

The introduction shows this example:

# $defout (or its synonym '$>') is the destination of output
# for Kernel#print, Kernel#puts, and family functions
logfile = File.new("log.txt", "w")
old = $defout
$defout = logfile                 # switch to logfile for output
puts "Countdown initiated ..."
$defout = old                     # return to original output
puts "You have 30 seconds to reach minimum safety distance."

There is no fucking excuse for this kind of programming style. Even a total noob should look at this and say, “What the fuck?”

  1. Yes, sometimes you need to redirect output or errors to a file… but the introduction doesn’t explain that this is an exception rather than a rule.
  2. Redirecting $defout is very dangerous if the developer doesn’t fully understand 100% of what they’re writing, and the libraries they’re using. (And if they need a perl-to-ruby cookbook, chances are they don’t understand 100% of what they’re writing)
  3. Maybe I’m misreading something, but isn’t it significantly safer in an app more than 3 lines long to call .dup on $stdout / $defout when saving the old value? (The answer is “yes,” for my less astute readers)

In any case, here’s how you write to a file in Ruby without making the guy who reviews your code cringe and then stab you in the fucking eye (note that it’s not only safer, but also easier to read and generally doesn’t make you look like a moron):

# $defout, $stdout, and other magic variables are NOT TOUCHED!
logfile = File.new("log.txt", "w")
logfile.puts "Countdown initiated..."
puts "You have 30 seconds blah blah I'm a monkey licker."

Neat!

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Apr 24 2008

AutoIt fans rejoice! New version of myAutToExe available!

Published by Nerdmaster under Programming, Security

As I previously mentioned, I like AutoIT a great deal, but I like decompiling other people’s stuff even better. Just a couple days ago, the genius who brought us the only 3.2.6 decompiler released a new version, 2.2. I haven’t kept up like I should, but if cw2k ever gives me the okay, I’d gladly keep up a mirror as he releases new versions. For now, at least, I’ll just try to remember to check back regularly and grab the latest versions.

So if you want my local copy of myAutToExe 2.2, it’s here. If you want to get it from the source, check out either the main forum thread or the actual angelfire site.

Enjoy!