Notes on ScopePort

New ScopePort feature: Notification method debugging

Lennart — Sun, 12 Jul 2009 20:57:46 +0000

ScopePort can now help you find out why a XMPP or SMTP notification did not reach you. You can enable a debug mode in the settings of the specific notification method:

All logged conversations can be investigated in the “Notification method debugging” section:

These commits by Lennart added the new features:

How ScopePort helps you find your own programming errors

Lennart — Sun, 12 Jul 2009 18:22:44 +0000

I followed a strange behaviour of the latest HEAD version of ScopePort a few minutes ago: The services failed one after another with the SERVICE_INTERR status. This means that there has been an internal ScopePort error while checking the service. I took a look at the “Vitals” section in the ScopePort web interface and found out that I must have forgotten a mysql_close() somewhere in my last changes:

Well, I also found a Typo…

How to add sound/audio to a video on Linux

Lennart — Sat, 20 Jun 2009 19:29:07 +0000

I am planning to create a ScopePort screencast soon. I had no experience with screencasts when I started to work on that topic. This is why I encountered two main problems:

How do I create the video?
How do I add sound to that video?

The first problem was solved easily. I tried a few screen recorders and decided to use recordmydesktop. The main advantage of recordmydesktop is that it captures everything in a raw mode and encodes it when you stop recording. That makes it possible to record your screen without bigger speed problems. Everything looks pretty smooth and is usable for a screencast.

The second problem cost me a lot of Google searching. How can I add sound to that video? Here is the way I finally used:

First step: Capture the video

No Problem. I started recordmydesktop with the following parameters to capture only the first screen, with a fake cursor (the original one from KDE4 caused some problems) and with no sound. The sleep 3 before the execution of recordmydesktop gives me some time to close the shell and get ready to record.

sleep 3 && recordmydesktop -width 1680 -height 1050 -dummy-cursor black --no-sound

Second step: Convert the captured video to AVI

The file recordmydesktop creates is in a OGG format. That is usually fine but we require an AVI file to add the sound. I converted the OGG file to AVI with mencoder (Usually available in your favorite repository):

mencoder -idx screencast.ogg -ovc lavc -oac mp3lame -o screencast.avi

Third and last step: Add the audio

Now we can edit the video file with avidemux (also usually available in your repositories). Select “Audio” -> “Main Track”.

Now select a AC3, MP3 or WAV file that should be added as the main audio track. Press okay, select “File” -> “Save” -> “Save video” and you are done. That’s it.

First ScopePort sighting in the wild

Lennart — Tue, 16 Jun 2009 13:33:58 +0000

Sven Kinne – who has been involved in a lot of alpha testing – just sent me an account for his ScopePort installation. He monitors around 50 services on different hosts. Here is a screenshot:

We are always happy about screnshots of your ScopePort installations! Send them to lennart@scopeport.org.

ScopePort client now available via Rubygems

Lennart — Mon, 15 Jun 2009 13:34:05 +0000

You can now install the latest version of the ScopePort client via Rubygems. The gem is hosted at GitHub so you have to add GitHub as a repository first:

root@sundaysister# gem sources -a http://gems.github.com

You can now install the ScopePort client:

root@sundaysister# gem install lennartkoopmann-scopeport-client-ruby

Just start the client with “scopeport-client” if the gem binaries are in your $PATH.

Note that the current client version can only connect to a ScopePort server. It does not send real sensor data yet.

ScopePort sample client written in Ruby

Lennart — Fri, 12 Jun 2009 21:50:15 +0000

I just pushed a first ScopePort sample client to our repositories. It is written in Ruby, connects to a ScopePort server, logs in and sends a sample sensor data package.

See the source code here: http://github.com/lennartkoopmann/scopeport-client-ruby/blob/665e4d69a93c73fd8055511aae55e88afcfb42c2/scopeport-client.rb

The ScopePort protocol for logging in and sending sensor data is described here: http://scopeport.org/docs/host_communications

Hey, by the way: ScopePort is now on Twitter!

RailsConf 2009 review video

Lennart — Wed, 10 Jun 2009 10:57:39 +0000

Greg Pollack created a 34 minutes video that shows the RailsConf 2009 speakers.

New and shiny blog

Lennart — Mon, 08 Jun 2009 21:25:19 +0000

I just relaunched the whole blog. There is a new layout, a lot of fixes and a completely updated WordPress including all plugins.

Meanwhile the ScopePort development is proceeding in big steps. I am currently hacking on a cluster model and a refactoring of the host monitoring parts. Ernesto is doing great work on the web interface. So stay tuned – We are going towards the first packaged release!

VPN connection in Ubuntu Intrepid fails?

Lennart — Thu, 19 Mar 2009 10:39:11 +0000

I had this problem for a longer time now: When I established a VPN connection on Ubuntu Intrepid it just failed after a few seconds or minutes. This did not happen in the earlier Ubuntu versions.

The error in the syslog was: “nm-pptp-service-9656 warn[decaps_gre:pptp_gre.c:331]: short read (-1): Message too long”

There is a very simple solution for that: Just set the MTU of your VPN connection to 1412 and the connection should stay alive! (sudo ifconfig ppp0 mtu 1412)

The new ScopePort website is online!

Lennart — Sat, 07 Feb 2009 22:27:28 +0000

I recently released the new ScopePort website! Check it out: http://www.scopeport.org/

Please let me know what you think about it.