I wanted to be able to examine my development log for rails deprecation warnings, and came up with this handy one-liner:

grep “^DEPRECATION WARNING:” development.log | awk ‘{print $3, $4, $5, “:”, $NF}’ | sort | uniq

This gives me output something like this:

@params is deprecated! : script/../config/../app/views/waiting_messages/prepare_reply.rhtml:9)

@request is deprecated! : ./script/../config/../app/controllers/account_controller.rb:10)

You called render(‘new_member_in_program’), : /opt/local/lib/ruby/gems/1.8/gems/actionpack-1.13.3/li […]

end_form_tag is deprecated : script/../config/../app/views/members/bulknew.rhtml:10)

find_all is deprecated : (irb):3)

start_form_tag is deprecated : script/../config/../app/views/members/bulknew.rhtml:2)

It’s not perfect; I’m missing some useful info from some of the lines (such as the ‘You called render…’) that I’ll have to go back and pick over. But in broad strokes, it gives me a fairly concise list of some things that need to be cleaned up.

However, that one-liner is fairly meaty. Who wants to remember that, or make an alias for it, or need to look it up? Yuck.

How about a rake task? I’ve never written one before, but everyone’s always raving about how simple it is, so I figured I’d go ahead. Hopefully this helps show how simple it is. While I’m at it, I’ll go ahead and include the full text of the warning (except for the redundant “DEPRECATION WARNING” at the beginning, since we already know we’re looking for that) instead of truncating it like I did in my awk-based one-liner.

Here it is:

namespace :utils do
  desc "List deprecation warnings in development log"
  task :find_deprecated do
    File.open('log/development.log') do |file|
      lines = file.select {|line| line =~ /^DEPRECATION WARNING:/}
      lines.sort.uniq.each {|line| puts line.split('DEPRECATION WARNING: ')[1]}
    end
  end
end

Put that in a file called utils.rake inside your lib/tasks directory, and call it by typing rake utils:find_deprecated, and you’ll get something like this (lines chomped for presentation purposes):

@params is deprecated! Call params.[] instead of @params.[]. Args: [:response_text]  See http://www. [...]
@request is deprecated! Call request.accepts instead of @request.accepts. Args: []  See http://www.r [...]
You called render('new_member_in_program'), which is a deprecated API call. Instead you use render : [...]
end_form_tag is deprecated and will be removed from Rails 2.0  See http://www.rubyonrails.org/deprec [...]
find_all is deprecated and will be removed from Rails 2.0 (use find(:all, ...))  See http://www.ruby [...]
start_form_tag is deprecated and will be removed from Rails 2.0 (use form_tag instead)  See http://w [...]

There are certainly improvements that could be made, such as adding the ability to search test.log and production.log as well, but this’ll do for now.

Hot on the heels of the release of Your Myspace Page, we at Band of None have now released yet another single, Hoffburger. Download the mp3 with the clicking action here, or use the fun thingy below to listen to it immediately:

Hoffburger is inspired, as you may imagine, by David Hasselhoff’s drunken hamburger-eating escapade, captured on video by his daughter and reported widely throughout all media. Band of None considers it an honor (and a duty) to take that feel-bad viral video of the late spring and turn it into the feel-good hit of the summer.

Sing it with me! Hoffburger with extra cheese!

After much hemming and hawing, the second single from Band of None is hereby foisted upon the world. It’s called Your Myspace Page, and you can download it here or listen to it with the following gadget:

This is a pretty big departure from the previous single. I don’t know what, if anything, this implies about Band of None’s “musical direction”, but time will tell. Meanwhile, comments are welcome!

Many of you have heard of web application deployment using the LAMP set of technologies that came into vogue a few years ago. Later, MARS was thrown about as a four-letter acronym to describe a Rails-centric deployment scheme, but some of the choices (Solaris? Apache? Please.) leave me cold.

So, without further ado, let me introduce you to RUMP:

• Rails
• Ubuntu
• Mongrel
• Postgresql

Why these choices? Well, Rails goes without saying (if you aren’t interested in Rails, then RUMP is not for you); Ubuntu because it offers a lightweight server config with a package system that is even better than Debian’s; Mongrel because it’s currently the best web server targetted at Ruby application deployment and is getting better all the time; and Postgresql because MySQL, despite all the good it’s done for the world, still falls behind on a number of features.

To help get you started, what follows is a reasonably accurate description of what I went through to get my RUMP in gear. I had occasion to do this a couple times within a few days a little while ago, and kept some reasonably complete notes as I went along. Hopefully this will help others experience the satisfaction of a nice, fit RUMP.

Wherever possible, I’ve tried to find the simplest configuration that works. Of course each component can be installed and configured in a variety of ways, and YMMV. For what it’s worth, the following is what seems to be working well for me.

Installation notes for RUMP deployment server (running ubuntu 6.10 “edgy eft”)

I started off with an empty image installed by my hosting company of choice. This was a bare-bones Ubuntu server install, containing a single root account with ssh enabled, and pretty much nothing else.

First, log in to your new system and use adduser to create a user named “deploy” with homedir /home/deploy, and then run visudo to let the “deploy” user run commands with sudo. Then log in as “deploy” and do the rest of this.

Start off with editing /etc/apt/sources.list to enable some packages:

deb http://se.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ edgy main restricted
deb-src http://se.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ edgy main restricted

## Major bug fix updates produced after the final release of the
## distribution.
deb http://se.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ edgy-updates main restricted
deb-src http://se.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ edgy-updates main restricted

## Uncomment the following two lines to add software from the 'universe'
## repository.
## N.B. software from this repository is ENTIRELY UNSUPPORTED by the Ubuntu
## team, and may not be under a free licence. Please satisfy yourself as to
## your rights to use the software. Also, please note that software in
## universe WILL NOT receive any review or updates from the Ubuntu security
## team.
 deb http://se.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ edgy universe
# deb-src http://se.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ edgy universe

## Uncomment the following two lines to add software from the 'backports'
## repository.
## N.B. software from this repository may not have been tested as
## extensively as that contained in the main release, although it includes
## newer versions of some applications which may provide useful features.
## Also, please note that software in backports WILL NOT receive any review
## or updates from the Ubuntu security team.
 deb http://se.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ edgy-backports main restricted universe multiverse
# deb-src http://se.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ edgy-backports main restricted universe multiverse


deb http://security.ubuntu.com/ubuntu edgy-security main restricted
deb-src http://security.ubuntu.com/ubuntu edgy-security main restricted
# deb http://security.ubuntu.com/ubuntu edgy-security universe
# deb-src http://security.ubuntu.com/ubuntu edgy-security universe

After that, run sudo apt-get update to get the latest package definitions, and then start installing:

Some common tools you will surely need at some point:

sudo apt-get install man curl wget

and some dev tools for later compilation steps

sudo aptitude install build-essential

Time for ruby:

sudo apt-get install ruby ri rdoc irb ri1.8 ruby1.8-dev libzlib-ruby zlib1g

and then postgres:

sudo apt-get install postgresql-8.2
sudo apt-get install postgres82-dev

Configuring Postgres

Now we’ll configure postgres for our purposes. Creating a role with the same name as the user we’re running with makes everything a little easier:

sudo -u postgres createdb NAME_OF_YOUR_APP_HERE_production
sudo -u postgres createuser -P
Enter name of role to add: deploy
Enter password for new role: 
Enter it again: 
Shall the new role be a superuser? (y/n) n
Shall the new role be allowed to create databases? (y/n) y
Shall the new role be allowed to create more new roles? (y/n) n

after that you should be able to do execute psql NAME_OF_YOUR_APP_HERE_production as the deploy user and get right in.

Pound this.

One piece of the puzzle that didn’t quite make it into the RUMP moniker is pound, a handy reverse-DNS and load-balancer that fronts for our multiple mongrels. Install it thusly:

sudo apt-get install pound

sudo vi /etc/default/pound

setting startup=1 in there, and then:

sudo vi /etc/pound/pound.cfg

making it something like this:

## Minimal sample pound.cfg
##
## see pound(8) for details


######################################################################
## global options:

User            "www-data"
Group           "www-data"
#RootJail        /chroot/pound

## allow PUT and DELETE also (by default only GET, POST and HEAD)?:
#ExtendedHTTP    0

#WebDAV          0

## Logging: (goes to syslog by default)
##      0       no logging
##      1       normal
##      2       extended
##      3       Apache-style (common log format)
LogLevel        1

## check backend every X secs:
Alive           30

## use hardware-accelleration card supported by openssl(1):
#SSLEngine       <hw>


######################################################################
## listen, redirect and ... to:

## redirect all requests on port 8888 ("ListenHTTP") to the local webserver see "UrlGroup" below):
#ListenHTTP 127.0.0.1,8080

##
#UrlGroup ".*"
#BackEnd 127.0.0.1,80,1
#EndGroup

ListenHTTP
  Address 0.0.0.0
  Port    80
  Service
    BackEnd
      Address 127.0.0.1
      Port    8000
    End
    BackEnd
      Address 127.0.0.1
      Port    8001
    End
    BackEnd
      Address 127.0.0.1
      Port    8002
    End
    Session
      Type COOKIE
      TTL 900
      ID "_myappname_session_id"
    End
  End
End

That sets us up with pound listening on port 80, transferring the request to one of our three mongrel instances (see Mongrel section). Note the Session section, which may help keep things sorted out for some Rails session schemes.

Now start pound, like this:

sudo /etc/init.d/pound start

Try to connect to the site with a browser. you should get a 503 error, and something like this in /var/log/syslog:

Mar 15 23:51:31 ubuntu pound: backend 127.0.0.1:8000 connect: Connection refused

Mar 15 23:51:31 ubuntu pound: backend 127.0.0.1:8001 connect: Connection refused

Mar 15 23:51:31 ubuntu pound: backend 127.0.0.1:8002 connect: Connection refused

Mar 15 23:51:31 ubuntu pound: no back-end “GET / HTTP/1.1” from 123.123.123.123

Mar 15 23:51:31 ubuntu pound: no back-end “GET /favicon.ico HTTP/1.1” from 123.123.123.123

Subversion

If you want to run subversion on this server, here’s how to do it. If you are running subversion elsewhere and don’t want to move it, skip this section.

sudo apt-get install subversion xinetd

Create a user that will own the repositories:

sudo adduser —system —no-create-home —home /var/svn —group —disabled-login svn

Create the directory that will hold the repositories:

sudo mkdir /var/svn

sudo chown svn:svn /var/svn

Create file /etc/xinetd.d/svnserve with the following content, to autolaunch svn when it’s called upon:

service svn
{
       port = 3690
       socket_type = stream
       protocol = tcp
       wait = no
       user = svn
       server = /usr/bin/svnserve
       server_args = -i -r /var/svn
}

Restart xinetd so that svn will work

sudo /etc/init.d/xinetd restart

Create a test repository:

sudo -u svn svnadmin create /var/svn/testrepo

It should be possible to check out the repository and work on it:

svn co svn://localhost/testrepo

Assuming that worked, create the real repository for your project:

sudo -u svn svnadmin create /var/svn/myproject

Add a little security:

cd /var/svn/myproject/conf
sudo vi svnserve.conf

Set up like this:

    anon-access = none
    auth-access = write
    password-db = passwd

Create users for your remote username(s), and the local deploy user. This simplifies login for everyone, and makes it easier to spot changes that were committed from the production server! sudo vi passwd, making it look about like this:

    # create a user/pw or two
    joe_user = superseekrit
    deploy = soopersecret

Now try to check out, it should demand a valid username/password:

svn co svn://localhost/myproject

Assuming you have an existing repository you’d like to bring over, go to the old server and do this:

svnadmin dump /path/to/repos > my_repos.dump
gzip my_repos.dump
scp my_repos.dump.gz deploy@my_ubuntu_host:/home/deploy

Then, on the new machine:

cd /home/deploy
gunzip my_repos.dump.gz
cd /var/svn
sudo -u svn svnadmin load myproject < /home/deploy/my_repos.dump 

Then make sure you can check it out:

cd /home/deploy
# delete the myproject directory if it's there, then:
svn co svn://localhost/myproject

Wrapping it up

Finally it’s time to install rails etc. I’ve installed them with rubygems:

curl -O http://rubyforge.org/frs/download.php/17190/rubygems-0.9.2.tgz
tar xzf rubygems-0.9.2.tgz ; cd rubygems-0.9.2
sudo ruby setup.rb
sudo gem update

sudo gem install rails --include-dependencies
sudo gem install postgres-pr
sudo gem install mongrel

(ignore warnings about not being able to compile fastthread stuff, it’s optional)

sudo gem install mongrel_cluster

If you’re using BackgroundRb, you’ll want these:

sudo gem install slave
sudo gem install daemons

Very soon we’ll have our app up and running. Create the database schema:

cd ~/myproject
rake db:schema:load

Configure a little mongrel cluster:

cd ~/myproject
mongrel_rails cluster::configure -p 8000 -N 3

As of this writing (May 2007), there’s a small bug that will bite you if you’re using both postgres and BackgroundRb. This is fixed in edge rails, but not yet in the released version. If you fall into this category, patch this file, as shown in <a href="http://dev.rubyonrails.org/attachment/ticket/7727/postgres_async_patch.diff">http://dev.rubyonrails.org/attachment/ticket/7727/postgres_async_patch.diff</a>:

sudo vi /usr/lib/ruby/gems/1.8/gems/activerecord-1.15.2/lib/active_record/connection_adapters/postgresql_adapter.rb 

Make sure you’re always running in production on this machine by putting the following line into your .bashrc:

export RAILS_ENV=production

If you’re using BackgroundRb, start the background processes:

cd ~/myproject
script/backgroundrb start

Tail log/backgroundrb.log to make sure it looks OK. Something like:

	20070316-13:56:35 (12680) Starting WorkerLogger
	20070316-13:56:35 (12681) In ResultsWorker
	...

At long last, start the mongrel cluster:

cd ~/myproject
mongrel_rails cluster::start

At this point you should be able to smack your RUMP on port 80 and watch it wiggle!

In no particular order, here are some of the sites where I found information to put this all together:

http://wiki.rubyonrails.org/rails/pages/PostgreSQL/

http://happycodr.com/blog/view/13-putting-a-ruby-on-rails-application-into-production

http://mongrel.rubyforge.org/docs/pound.html

http://www.die.net/doc/linux/man/man8/pound.8.html

http://kurup.org/blog/tag/pound

http://ubuntuguide.org/wiki/Ubuntu_Edgy#How_to_install_Subversion_version_control_server_.28svnserve.29

http://blog.tupleshop.com/2006/7/8/deploying-rails-with-pound-in-front-of-mongrel-lighttpd-and-apache

That’s it, I guess. I hope this proves helpful to someone. Feel free to leave feedback in the comments below!

This “nigeria letter” (aka advance fee fraud) arrived in my inbox today:

From Mr. Abibe Yala


Dear Friend,


Very Urgent & Confidential


I know you do not know me before, I am Mr. Abibe Yala, younger brother to
Mr. Kumba Yala the Ex-President of Guinea-Bissau. I got your contact
information during my private search for a reliable and trustworthy person
to carry out this urgent transaction with.


In view of the political crisis happening in my country today, I
discovered that my brother Mr. Kumba is just trying to impose himself as a
leader on his people who are not proud and satisfied with his past
administration.


My brother sent me on a mission to South Africa to purchase fire arms
which he intend to use in fighting a political war against his opponent so
he can become the President again. I am not in support of his intensions
but I do not have any other options than to do what he asked me. He
provided the sum of US$22,100,000.00 (Twenty Two Million, One Hundred
Thousand United States Dollars), which we brought into South Africa
through diplomatic means. On getting to South Africa, I found out that the
person (Mr. Jacob Zuma Ex- Vice President of South Africa) whom he
instructed me to meet for the operation was under government probation for
related crime and never want to get himself involved in such deals
anymore. Since I have never been in support of my brother’s intentions, I
made up my mind never to go back to my country (Guinea-Bissau). I want to
relocate immediately to a better country especially in the Europe or Asia,
where I can have good investment with this money since I cannot stay here
in Africa.


My reason of contacting you is that, I want you to support me as my
foreign partner to move the funds and myself out of Africa as soon as
possible. Presently, the funds are deposited as consignment with a
depository company in Johannesburg South Africa for safekeeping. Why I am
presently residing in West Africa for security reasons. I am willing to
offer you 40% of the whole money for the inconveniences this will cost you
and for your support in this transaction, while the remaining 60% will be
for me to setup a profitable investment in your country through your
guidance and directions.


As a matter of urgency, please do let me know if you can assist me in
handling this transaction and the investment involve.


I anticipate your quick response.


Best Regards.
Mr. Abibe Yala

The funny thing about this is how the story he tells to gain our sympathies is basically about how he wants to steal his brother’s money and move to Europe. (See the bold bits above) Nice guy! Here’s my response:

OK, I’m not stupid, I recognize a so-called “Nigeria letter” when I see one. You’re obviously a con-man, and if that’s what works for you, fine. I just hope you don’t hurt anybody.


But anyway: You really need to work on your story. The way you describe it, it sounds like you’re basically trying to steal $22 million from your brother. It makes you sound like a thief. Even with the part about your brother trying to become a dictator, etc. He’s supposed to be your BROTHER for god’s sake. He TRUSTED you with the money, right? And you respond with BETRAYAL? No one will sympathize with you about that.


Instead, you need to first make it seem that HE betrayed YOU. Say that your brother decided to kill you, and you’re fleeing from his paramilitary death squads. Then maybe someone will say, “Wow, that poor Mr Yala, he needs my help”. With the story you sent me, anyone too stupid too realize you’re a con-man will probably just think, “This Abibe seems like a real asshole, trying to steal his brother’s money”.


—
// jack
// http://www.nuthole.com

OK, i haven’t posted in ages, but what can I say, life is keeping me busy. Recovering from a bit of minor surgery, followed by a long Easter break, followed by stomach flu, consumed the past few weeks.

But, more importantly than all that, I changed jobs at the end of January, and am now spending most of my work time (not to mention free time) programming with Ruby on Rails!

Ah, ruby. I’ve used python for a variety of side projects over the past few years, and I’ve long held the opinion that the two languages are largely equal, but in the short time since I started using ruby full-time, I’ll admit that I’ve started acquiring a definite ruby bias. Things like ruby’s block syntax, for instance, don’t really have a corresponding language feature in python (at least, not anything quite as succinct).

Above all though, I’m mainly happy to be back in the world of dynamic languages. At my last job, I spent two years using C++, which taught me a lot: mainly that I don’t like C++. In fact, I’ve started to get the feeling that using C++ at all, when other options are available, is in many cases a textbook example of premature optimization. You end up consuming lots more programmer-hours (which means greater expense, and later releases) chasing the chimera of an end-product which “runs faster” than a similar program written in a dynamic language would run. I put “runs faster” in quotes because in reality, most software is I/O-bound most of the time (either waiting for user input, or waiting for disk or network traffic), so the amount of time that your particular program is actually running is probably pretty small (and getting smaller as CPU speeds increase), no matter what language it’s written in.

In London on business this week, first time in England. Here are some observations:

• This whole cars-driving-on-the-wrong-side-of-the-road thing is really disconcerting. I thought it would be easy to deal with! Notions about traffic, and which way cars will be coming from, seem to be more ingrained than I thought.
• Hyde Park is really bloody dark at night. And the gates are closed. I believe these two facts are related.
• England has some great chips (which I’ll not yet call ‘crisps’), such as the “Walkers Sensations Vintage Cheddar & Red Onion Chutney flavour crisps” I’m eating right now.
• My fellow Americans are just as conspicuous in England as they are in Sweden, with the loud talking and whatnot.
• I feel nervous sitting in a pub by myself for any length of time, for fear of being that conspicuous. I keep to myself, consume my consumables, and leave quickly.
• Shops are open until 7! or 8! Marvellous! (<- note olde englyshe spelling)
• It’s tempting, when I see the small numbers (compared to Swedish currency) on price-tags in shops, to think I’m looking at dollar amounts. If only.
• English taxis are much bigger on the inside than you’d think just by looking at them. I think this is the true origin of the Tardis.
• Whoever’s doing up my hotel room wants me cold. Last night before going to bed it was just 20 degrees C in here. I cranked it up to 23 but was cold all night. Coming back from work today, I found that the heat was off, the window was open, and it was down to 16. Brrr.
• The curse of “reality TV” seems to afflict England at least as much as Sweden. Based on casual channel-flipping a few times the past few nights, it seems like at least 2 of the 5 channels on the hotel TV are showing some sort of “reality TV” at any given time.
• A surprising number of bathroom sinks here feature double faucets, one for hot and one for cold. This invariably leads to comically waving hands back and forth, Mr-Bean-style, to get the right mix of temperatures.
• I miss my family. This is the first time I’ve been away from my kids longer than, say, a long workday followed by an evening out! Dang.

I’m going to resist the urge to blog about the iPhone by instead blogging about a man named Jonathan Coulton, who could just as well be me in an alternate universe. Jonathan has a burgeoning career as an internet troubadour going on, with an impressive online song catalog, most of which turned up during a one-year period from September 2005 to September 2006, in which time he recorded a song a week, every week. Some people sure do have spare time!

I just heard about JoCo (as his fans call him) from my old friend and collaborator Paul Hagstrom about a week ago, and I have to tell you that the nuthole household has been revolutionized by the power of JoCo’s music. Finally, music that both my children, my wife, and I all think is entertaining, catchy, and rewarding to listen to! JoCo’s songs wander across all sorts of genres, and many of them are obvious homages to one well-known group or another; most of them are also very, very funny. Some of my personal faves:

• Code Monkey


• Tom Cruise Crazy


• Soft Rocked By Me


• Curl


• Chiron Beta Prime


• Shop Vac


• The Town Crotch


• Skullcrusher Mountain


• Ikea


• Millionaire Girlfriend


• First of May


• A Laptop Like You

And those are just the best 50% or so of what I’ve listened to SO FAR! I’m sure by the time I’ve listened to all the songs, I’ll have over 30 “faves”. Oh well.

So, why do I think that JoCo is actually an alternate version of myself? For one thing, similar dashing good looks:

Then, there are the startling similarities in our musical histories. A little background info is in order. Consider this narrative, which I did not write but which pretty well describes a chunk of my teen years:

I played quad drums in the high school marching band, which was fun, but did not attract any girls (even when I played my tender quad arrangement of “Flight of the Bumblebee”). I switched to guitar and wrote a series of sweet and sad songs about being a teenager and having a vague feeling of overwhelming sadness and sweetness. This worked only marginally better.

Now consider this direct quote from Jonathan’s bio page:

I played snare drum in the high school marching band, which was fun, but did not attract any girls (even when I played my tender snare drum arrangement of “You’ve Got a Friend”). I switched to guitar and wrote a series of sweet and sad songs about being a teenager and having a vague feeling of overwhelming sadness and sweetness. This worked only marginally better.

The discerning reader may notice a number of similarities between these two life stories.

In any case, I hereby declare Jonathon Coulton an honorary Nuthole Boltmaster (the first ever!) and send the rest of you off on your way to pay tribute.

OK, obligatory bloggage about yesterday’s big product announcement. I’ll just say that iWant an iPhone. That’s all I have to say about that for now.

Some people, upon hearing Darksided, wonder what the hell the lyrics are all about, and who the crazy screaming woman is. Though it’s already mentioned on the Band of None website, for the sake of completion here I’ll tell you to go here for a full exposition.

To my continual surprise, I find that I’m involved in the first teetering baby-steps of a new band. Early days, but we do have a name (“Band of None”), a website, and a first single: “Darksided”.

I don’t know how to categorize our music so far. Industrial? Techno? Rock? Somewhere around there. Please poke around the website, have a listen, and let us know what you think.

[UPDATE: added inline music player]