Linux Admin Steps Into Management

Exporting MediaWiki sites to Google sites

yonitg — Fri, 03 Feb 2012 15:08:57 +0000

In the last post I’ve talked about moving files from SharePoint to Google Site,
what about a Mediawiki site?
how to export it and upload it?
I’ve already covered the uploading files to Google sites via the Google sites API,
you can use java or python to write a script to mass upload all your files and htmls to your new google site,
but first you need to export everything out of the Mediawiki site.

here is a working method to export your site, these are the steps:

install python
download the mw2html script
export the mediawiki site

so lets start :

Installing python

If you are working from a linux distro with yum its as easy as typing:
yum install python

for windows – you will need to download and install from the python site:
the main python download page for windows
or you can just grab the latest version for September 4 2011 Python 3.2.2
Download and install the msi package.

next step is to add the installation to the computer’s path,
in windows 7 open the start panel and type in the search panel:
“view advance system settings”

press the “Environment Variables”

in the System Variables section search for the “Path” line and choose edit:

now to the end of the line add the path of where you have installed the python,
for example I have installed it to C:\Python27 , and so i will add at the end of the Path line this:
;C:\Python27
notice the “;” - this separates between the items on the Path line.

Now if you will type “python -V” on your command line it will run the python binary and will show you your version

now that we have the python working lets move to the next step:

Download the mw2html script

you can find it here:

from Connelly Barnes blog

this script will crawl all over your media wiki site and will grab all the html files and all the attachments there.

Exporting the mediawiki site

usage:
url – URL of mediawiki page to convert to static HTML.
outdir – Output directory.

-f, –force – Overwrite existing files in outdir.
–no-flatten – Do not flatten directory structure.
–no-lower – Retain original case for output filenames and dirs.
–no-clean – Do not clean up filenames (clean replaces
non-alphanumeric chars with _, renames math thumbs).
–no-hack-skin – Do not modify skin CSS and HTML for looks.
–no-made-by – Suppress “generated by” comment in HTML source.
–no-move-href – Disable tag. [1]
–no-remove-png – Retain external link PNG icons.
–no-remove-history – Retain image history and links to information.
-l, –left=a.html – Paste HTML fragment file into left sidebar.
-t, –top=a.html – Paste HTML fragment file into top horiz bar.
-b, –bottom=a.html – Paste HTML fragment file into footer horiz bar.
-i, –index=filename – Move given filename in outdir to index.html.

Example Usage:
mw2html http://127.0.0.1/mywiki/ out -f -i main_page.html -l sidebar.html

Important note:

this script will crawl all over your wiki site, but it does ignore all the files that do not have a link to them,
all the ”orphan” pages, to solve this issue, instead of pointing to the main page, you can run the mw2html script while pointing to the orphans page,
it will get all the regular files from your site and the Orphan pages.
the link looks like:

http://yourwikisite/wiki/index.php?title=Special:Lonelypages&limit=500&offset=0

now that you have a folder with all your wiki page, you can edit the content of the folder,
remove all the files staring with the word “image_”
remove all the un-needed js files,
and do internal changes in the html files like change the links pointing to the original wiki site and point them to the new Google site URL.

now you can use the Google sites API to upload all your html to your new site.

Technorati Tags: export, Google sites, Google sites API, mw2html, wikimedia

SharePoint to Google sites – how to move your files

yonitg — Thu, 02 Feb 2012 16:00:30 +0000

Many organisations now move to use the Google office suite for their day-to-day office needs,
this includes the Google sites service which allows you to easily create internal portals for the different
organisation’s departments.

This move allows for a department to share an internal web site that has easy access from home as well with the regular office google account,
it also allows for better collaboration with other branches of the same company located far away – as it saves the need for an office VPN, or the need to connect to a server that is located in a branch in another country,
instead – everybody just connect to Google.

But what do we do if our files are already on the office internal SharePoint?

apparently – the migration processes from SharePoint to Google sites is not as hard ,
here are two working options.

Exporting from SharePoint

Connect to the SharePoint and browse to where you keep the files you wish to move,
choose ”Actions –> Open with windows explorer”

you will get and explorer folder listing all the shared files there,
at this point you can select all the folders and copy them locally to your desktop or to a network share – if the size of the files is too large.

The only folder not to copy over is the “forms” folder – as it is a system folder and you do not need to move it too.

Uploading files to Google Sites

Here we have 2 options:

Use native Google Sites files upload option

This option works well only if you have a very small number of files and folder to upload
Use Google Sites API

The Google sites API will allow you to upload multiple files and folders,
it support now two languages -

Java
Pythonand you can read some more about in the Official Google Enterprise Blog .
The API allows you to:
create new sites
retrieve , create , change and delete pages
upload and download attachments and files
change sharing settings
and manage templates

Technorati Tags: Google sites, Google sites API, SharePoint

Adding JMX support to your java app

yonitg — Tue, 31 Jan 2012 16:55:15 +0000

Lets start with the basics -

what is JMX?

JMX is a technology that lets you add management interfaces for Java applications

the jmx interface on your java application will let you monitor and publish graphs for:

heap memory
threads and their stack trace
CPU
classes
memory pools

and it will also expose the java Mbeans tree which you can browse

with the jconsole app included with any java distribution:

you can either browse and read these attributes,

and in some cases edit them and change the application status.

Enabling JMX in Tomcat

to enable JMX in tomcat,

edit the wrapper.conf file , and add these lines:

wrapper.java.additional.1=-Dcom.sun.management.jmxremote

wrapper.java.additional.2=-Dcom.sun.management.jmxremote.port=

wrapper.java.additional.3=-Dcom.sun.management.jmxremote.ssl=false

wrapper.java.additional.4=-Dcom.sun.management.jmxremote.authenticate=false

wrapper.java.additional.5=-Djava.rmi.server.hostname=<ServerName>

Things to verify before usage:

the numbers after the “wrapper.java.additional.” part are in increasing order – make sure to continue from where the last config line showed, and make sure there are no gaps in the counting.
change to the port number you wish to expose
these settings will enable password-less connection to you JMX server, if you wish to add authentication and SSL you will need to change these settings.
change <ServerName> to your server name – this setting is needed – without it the server will only allow localhost connections and wont allow remote.

Technorati Tags: java, jmx, tomcat

What Supply Chain Management has to do with IT in SaaS Companies – part 1

yonitg — Thu, 26 May 2011 15:08:29 +0000

Working in the Production IT of SaaS companies for some years now,
I have come to realize that there is a strong connection between managing the IT and Supply Chain Management,
In a former post I’ve added the links to a Video introduction to Supply Chain Management course,
Created by the Arizona State University – which I strongly recommend watching - it’s a total 1 hour and worth your time.

I went through each module and I will try to explain how IT in a SaaS Company should be managed like a Supply Chain.

Module 2 – Buy it: Managing Supply

Like in making a cake – the ingredients used to create the SaaS infrastructure will determined the quality of the service:

Hardware – which company will you sign with to supply your needed hardware ?
you will need some if not all of:
- Servers – in different configurations to support different functions like web, DB, Propriety applications
- Switches
- Routers
- Storage
- networking hardware
- racks to hold all the servers
you will probably also consider more than one hardware supplier as each company has other supplies to offer
for each supplier you will need to consider:
- quality of hardware
- delivery speed – and if you work for a Global organization this means different delivery times to different locations
- supplier flexibility – in delivery time, site, support
- and of course – cost issues

Men power – SaaS companies need production personal to run and manage all the servers in the production Farms,
these are talented, experienced people with the right know how in each field and the will power to invest the time and effort needed to manage support and support a 24×7 Global servers farm who need to be up and available 100% of the time.
Some of the needed functions are:
- Sys admins – for various Operation systems
- Networking gurus
- Security experts
- DB Admins
- 24X7 Network Operation Center
- Support
  etc …

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zYbtZ0x9_SA

Questions, comments or suggestions are very welcome – post below and I’ll get back to you.

Technorati Tags: saas, Supply Chain Management

HBR – Harvard Business Review Magazine

yonitg — Thu, 19 May 2011 10:44:51 +0000

Lately I’m reading a lot of articles from the Harvard Business Review Magazine,
which publishes Articles and blog posts and case studies that were created to improve the practice of management and its impact in a changing world.

Most of the blog posts are free to read and some of the Articles from the magazine too,
but the most are sold for a price.

The site focuses on topics like:

Change management
Information technology
Leadership
Operations management
Strategy
Systems theory

or on Management Skills as:

Becoming a manager
Career planning
Coaching
Decision making
Delegation
Developing employees
Improving performance
Interpersonal skills
Interviewing
Leading teams
Managing people
Managing yourself
Team building

And many other topic, all fascinating and important to read for any new or seasoned manager alike.

I warmly recommend reading everything you can read from there, since you can find a case study or an article that discusses almost all the managerial dilemma that you might face through your working years.

And for those who cannot afford buying each article,
in a former post I’ve showed how to find most of them as pdf files available to download in Google.

Technorati Tags: google, Harvard Business Review, hbr, leadership, Management, Online Tools

Oracle CEO Larry Ellison makes fun of “Cloud Computing”

yonitg — Tue, 10 May 2011 20:59:10 +0000

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UOEFXaWHppE&feature=share

This is a nice bit from Larry Ellison the CEO of Oracle,
He talks about Cloud Computing term as a new name for the same internet everyone has used for years.

Wiki calls it:

The term “cloud” is used as a metaphor for the Internet, based on the cloud drawing used in the past to represent the telephone network, and later to depict the Internet in computer network diagrams as an abstraction of the underlying infrastructure it represents.

He objects to the absurdity of the term cloud – since it is the same server-based service that was always there and is connected to the internet – the same OS, service, Database etc…

I agree heartily with him – ever since anyone of us joined the first web-based email service or web hosting,
we all have used the cloud.

What do you think?
do we have now a different cloud computing then we had ever since the internet started working?
Please post your thoughts in the comments …

Technorati Tags: Cloud Computing, Internet, interviews, Solaris