Enter Syslog.

Syslog is a local and network logging service that has been around since the 1980s. Most *nix systems come preloaded with Syslog and fortunately for us Drupal has a Syslog module included with the 6.x and 7.x cores. Here’s how to set it up:

1) Install & configure the Syslog module

Go to your module install page, /admin/build/modules and install the Syslog module. Then go to the Syslog settings page, /admin/settings/logging/syslog, and select which Syslog level to attach to the log messages. Choose one that is not in use by Syslog

2) Configure Syslog

Edit /etc/syslog.conf and add:

local0.* /var/log/drupal.log

Then, restart Syslog

3) Disable Watchdog database logging

This will require us to edit the Drupal core (oh noes)
Edit drupal/modules/dblog/dblog.module and comment out the contents of dblog_watchdog() (Around line 132)

Original:

function dblog_watchdog($log = array()) {
  $current_db = db_set_active();
  db_query("INSERT INTO {watchdog}
    (uid, type, message, variables, severity, link, location, referer, hostname, timestamp)
    VALUES
    (%d, '%s', '%s', '%s', %d, '%s', '%s', '%s', '%s', %d)",
    $log['user']->uid,
    $log['type'],
    $log['message'],
    serialize($log['variables']),
    $log['severity'],
    $log['link'],
    $log['request_uri'],
    $log['referer'],
    $log['ip'],
    $log['timestamp']);
 
  if ($current_db) {
    db_set_active($current_db);
  }
}

Change to:

function dblog_watchdog($log = array()) {
/*
  $current_db = db_set_active();
  db_query("INSERT INTO {watchdog}
    (uid, type, message, variables, severity, link, location, referer, hostname, timestamp)
    VALUES
    (%d, '%s', '%s', '%s', %d, '%s', '%s', '%s', '%s', %d)",
    $log['user']->uid,
    $log['type'],
    $log['message'],
    serialize($log['variables']),
    $log['severity'],
    $log['link'],
    $log['request_uri'],
    $log['referer'],
    $log['ip'],
    $log['timestamp']);
 
  if ($current_db) {
    db_set_active($current_db);
  }
*/
}

And you’re done.

for SITE in `ls /path/to/drupal/sites | grep "\."`;
do
/path/to/drush --uri=$SITE --root=/path/to/drupal --yes updatedb
done

[root@localhost ~]# yum install memcached
Loaded plugins: fastestmirror
Loading mirror speeds from cached hostfile
* rpmforge: apt.sw.be
rpmforge | 1.1 kB 00:00
rpmforge/primary | 2.2 MB 00:01
rpmforge 10361/10361
Setting up Install Process
Resolving Dependencies
--> Running transaction check
---> Package memcached.i386 0:1.4.5-1.el5.rf set to be updated
--> Processing Dependency: perl(AnyEvent) for package: memcached
--> Processing Dependency: perl(AnyEvent::Socket) for package: memcached
--> Processing Dependency: perl(AnyEvent::Handle) for package: memcached
--> Processing Dependency: libevent-1.1a.so.1 for package: memcached
--> Processing Dependency: perl(YAML) for package: memcached
--> Processing Dependency: perl(Term::ReadKey) for package: memcached
--> Running transaction check
---> Package compat-libevent-11a.i386 0:3.2.1-1.el5.rf set to be updated
---> Package perl-AnyEvent.noarch 0:5.240-1.el5.rf set to be updated
--> Processing Dependency: perl(JSON::XS) >= 2.2 for package: perl-AnyEvent
--> Processing Dependency: perl(JSON) >= 2.09 for package: perl-AnyEvent
--> Processing Dependency: perl(EV) >= 3.05 for package: perl-AnyEvent
--> Processing Dependency: perl(Guard) >= 1.02 for package: perl-AnyEvent
--> Processing Dependency: perl(Net::SSLeay) >= 1.33 for package: perl-AnyEvent
---> Package perl-TermReadKey.i386 0:2.30-3.el5.rf set to be updated
---> Package perl-YAML.noarch 0:0.71-1.el5.rf set to be updated
--> Running transaction check
---> Package perl-AnyEvent.noarch 0:5.240-1.el5.rf set to be updated
--> Processing Dependency: perl(Net::SSLeay) >= 1.33 for package: perl-AnyEvent
---> Package perl-EV.i386 0:3.9-1.el5.rf set to be updated
--> Processing Dependency: perl(common::sense) for package: perl-EV
---> Package perl-Guard.i386 0:1.021-1.el5.rf set to be updated
---> Package perl-JSON.noarch 0:2.17-1.el5.rf set to be updated
---> Package perl-JSON-XS.i386 0:2.27-1.el5.rf set to be updated
--> Running transaction check
---> Package perl-AnyEvent.noarch 0:5.240-1.el5.rf set to be updated
--> Processing Dependency: perl(Net::SSLeay) >= 1.33 for package: perl-AnyEvent
---> Package perl-common-sense.i386 0:3.0-1.el5.rf set to be updated
--> Finished Dependency Resolution
perl-AnyEvent-5.240-1.el5.rf.noarch from rpmforge has depsolving problems
--> Missing Dependency: perl(Net::SSLeay) >= 1.33 is needed by package perl-AnyEvent-5.240-1.el5.rf.noarch (rpmforge)
Error: Missing Dependency: perl(Net::SSLeay) >= 1.33 is needed by package perl-AnyEvent-5.240-1.el5.rf.noarch (rpmforge)
You could try using --skip-broken to work around the problem
You could try running: package-cleanup --problems
package-cleanup --dupes
rpm -Va --nofiles --nodigest
The program package-cleanup is found in the yum-utils package.


CentOS’s yum repository doesn’t have the latest perl-Net-SSLeay and perl-IO-Socket-SSL packages that are required by memcached. I did some Googling to find that others were experiencing a similar problem without resolution. Here’s the simple fix:

First, remove the old perl modules. Then download and install the newer versions that memcached requires.

rpm-e perl-Net-SSLeay-1.30-4.fc6
rpm -e perl-IO-Socket-SSL-1.01-1.fc6
wget http://packages.sw.be/perl-Net-SSLeay/perl-Net-SSLeay-1.36-1.el5.rfx.i386.rpm
wget http://packages.sw.be/perl-Net-SSLeay/perl-Net-SSLeay-1.36-1.el5.rfx.x86_64.rpm
wget http://packages.sw.be/perl-IO-Socket-SSL/perl-IO-Socket-SSL-1.34-1.el5.rfx.noarch.rpm
rpm -i perl-Net-SSLeay-1.36-1.el5.rfx.x86_64.rpm
rpm -i perl-Net-SSLeay-1.36-1.el5.rfx.i386.rpm
rpm -i perl-IO-Socket-SSL-1.34-1.el5.rfx.noarch.rpm

Now you should be able to install memcached without error.

yum -y install memcached

If you experience an error removing either of the packages then you can try greping to see if you have other versions installed.

rpm -qa | grep perl-Net-SSLeay

and

rpm -qa | grep perl-IO-Socket-SSL

rm -r ~/Library/Caches/com.apple.Safari

The major change for this version is a switch to Facebook’s mobile pages for easier parsing. You can include this script into all sorts of wacky things.

Usage example:
perl facebook-status-2.1.pl

Sending... Done!

For those unfamiliar with the Apple Double problem, it is an old bug that exists from the early days of Mac OS X. Here’s the explanation from the Apple Knowledge Base:

Before Mac OS X, the Mac OS used ‘forked’ files, which have two components: a data fork and a resource fork. The Mac OS Standard (HFS) and Mac OS Extended (HFS Plus) disk formats support forked files. When you move these types of files to other disk formats, the resource fork can be lost.

With Mac OS X, there is a mechanism called “Apple Double” that allows the system to work with disk formats that do not have a forked file feature, such as remote NFS, SMB, WebDAV directories, or local UFS volumes. Apple Double does this by converting the file into two separate files. The first new file keeps the original name and contains the data fork of the original file. The second new file has the name of the original file prefixed by a “._ ” and contains the resource fork of the original file. If you see both files, the ._ file can be safely ignored. Sometimes when deleting a file, the ._ component will not be deleted. If this occurs you can safely delete the ._ file.

Essentially, when you’re working on files located on a network share you end up with duplicates of the file with a “._” prefix. The files are empty and are quite the annoyance. They are removed when the network share is unmounted. However, I leave my share mounted for long periods of time and the files make a mess of my Subversion status reports.

You can run the following command to clean the files up.

find . -name '._*' -exec rm '{}' ';'

You could also make this into a launchctl or cron task. Happy hacking!

I first create a PHP script that bootstraps Drupal. Here is an example of a script that will rebuild the menu router tables.

// Bootstrap
require_once('includes/bootstrap.inc');
require_once('includes/common.inc');
drupal_bootstrap(DRUPAL_BOOTSTRAP_FULL);
 
// Rebuild menus
menu_rebuild();
print 'Menu rebuild complete\n';

I name this script rebuild_menus.php and upload it to my Drupal directory. Then, I create a text file on my desktop that contains a list of all the Drupal websites. This is an abbreviated example:

http://example1.com
http://example2.com
http://example3.com
http://example4.com

Finally, I execute the script on all the sites by running the following command:

for url in `cat list.txt`; do echo "Running script on $url"; curl $url/rebuild_menus.php; echo; done