Author: dale

My tech career started as an audio visual technician, setting up sound reinforcement and projection equipment at a convention facility, before I moved to electronics maintenance and repair at a community college. After obtaining a university degree in engineering, I designed integrated circuits for the first generation of 900 MHZ analog cellphones, the first generation of CA-code-phase tracking GPS receivers and digital pro-audio. I then progressed through a variety of leadership roles in product management, marketing, engineering product development and manufacturing, in fields such as industrial GPS-based positioning and navigation, pipeline integrity inspection and industrial process control.
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Use newsyslog to rotate Apache log file on FreeBSD

I recently needed to review the Apache httpd error log file on my server (/var/log/httpd-error.log), and had to scroll through 95,000 lines before getting to the part of interest. The server was rebooted only a month earlier, which shows how fast the Apache log file grows even on a server with relatively low demand.

To make Apache’s log files more manageable, I configured them to roll every week using the FreeBSD standard newsyslog utility, which is run from cron (see /etc/crontab).

Instead of editing the newsyslog config file (/etc/newsyslog.conf) directly, create a secondary configuration file specifically to rotate Apache logs. The end of the newsyslog master configuration file reads any secondary config files,

...
<include> /etc/newsyslog.conf.d/[!.]*.conf
<include> /usr/local/etc/newsyslog.conf.d/[!.]*.conf

and secondary configuration files will not be affected by upgrades to newsyslog.

First create a directory for the Apache newsyslog configuration file. Since Apache is third-party software, create the /usr/local/etc/newsyslog.conf.d directory.

% sudo mkdir -p /usr/local/etc/newsyslog.conf.d

and then create the config file:

% sudo vi /usr/local/etc/newsyslog.conf.d/apache.conf

# Apache
# [logfile name] [owner-group] [mode] [count] [size] [when] [flags] [path to pid file] [signal]
/var/log/httpd-access.log www:www 640 9 * $W1D4 J /var/run/httpd.pid 30
/var/log/httpd-error.log  www:www 640 9 * $W1D4 J /var/run/httpd.pid 30

The will roll the access and error log files every Monday at 4am (system time), a total of 9 weekly archives will be kept (providing up to 10 weeks of logs counting the current log), and log file archives will be compressed using bzip2. The file mode is consistent with other system logs, but could be made more restrictive if desired. A SIGUSR1 signal (30) is sent to Apache to perform a graceful restart after rolling the log file.

For more information, see the System Logging section of the FreeBSD Manual and man pages for newsyslog and newsyslog.conf.

To read a compressed log file, uncompress the file and pipe to less:

% sudo bzcat httpd-error.log.0.bz2 | less

or use the simpler:

% sudo bzless httpd-error.log.0.bz2

Cheers!

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5S Program

The efficiency of a plant or production facility is determined in part by the cleanliness and order of the facility. The 5S program was developed in Japan to educate employees and improve production plant order and cleanliness. The program has also been widely adopted in the west.

The components of the 5S program are:

  • Sort (Seiri)
  • Set In Order (Seiton)
  • Shine (Seiso)
  • Standardize (Seiketsu)
  • Sustain (Shitsuke)

One popular variation of the program uses six components by adding Safety (although In Order could easily be interpreted to include Safety), while another variation only uses four components by combining Set In Order and Shine.

Henry Ford’s CANDO program pre-dates 5S and includes Cleaning Up, Arranging, Neatness, Discipline and Ongoing Improvement, although the two are likely unrelated.

Now you can start your own 5S program!

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FreeBSD on a BBG

Here’s the situation after installing FreeBSD on my BBG (BeagleBone Green), using an image published by the raspBSD project. No custom configuration or installing additional software has been done, although I have updated the package database. There’s more information on the install in a previous post.

For background, a BeagleBone Green (BBG) has a TI Sitara AM335x (1GHz ARM Cortex-A8) with 512MB DDR3 and 4GB eMMC (primary boot device), a micro SD socket (alternate boot device and additional storage), two USB connectors (one client and one host), ethernet, two Grove 4-pin connectors and two 46-pin 2×23 0.100″ pin headers with GPIO, SPI, I2C and other signals. 

Identification & Disk Use

Active Processes

I have two remote ssh sessions open.

Memory use

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BeagleBone and FreeBSD

I recently purchased a BeagleBone Green (BBG) to experiment with FreeBSD on an embedded platform. The BBG has been available for a couple of years, and while I was tempted to get a BBG Wireless (BBGW), it would have meant ordering on-line and waiting for delivery. At least for initial development work I prefer a hard-wired connection, but also prefer to support local when possible.

BeagleBone Green

A BeagleBone Green (BBG) is a TI Sitara AM335x (1GHz ARM Cortex-A8 processor) with 512MB DDR3 and 4GB eMMC (which is the standard boot device), a micro SD socket (the alternate boot device and data storage memory), two USB connectors (one client and one host), ethernet, two Grove 4-pin connectors and two 46-pin 2×23 0.100″ pin headers. The original BeagleBoard emerged around 2010, and in 2013 was a winner in Embedded Computing Design’s “2013 Top Embedded Innovator award” in the Top Products Silicon category. The BeagleBone Black (BBB) was launched in 2013 as a lower-cost barebones BeagleBoard, and the BBG was launched in 2015 with two Grove connectors replacing the BBB’s HDMI connector.

Open-Source Hardware

A significant advantage of the BBG (and the other BeagleBoards and BeagleBones) for that the physical design (the schematics and pcb layout files) are provided under an open-source license. The BBG files are in a GitHub project using the MIT license. For someone designing a similar-but-different product, this can be a significant time saver.  The openness reportedly continues to other technical details of the design, such as the low-level details of power management.

FreeBSD

The RaspBSD project provides pre-built images for the BBG. The project originally provided FreeBSD images for the Raspberry Pi, but has expanded their scope to include the BBG (and BBGW). Once I sorted out how to select the alternate boot device (to boot from the micro SD card I had copied the RaspBSD image to) everything started falling into place.

The RaspBSD image is based on Head, which is new for me as I’m running 10.3-RELEASE on my web server. However, I’m looking forward to experiencing life on the edge.

I’m not sure if this is correct, but it seemed to work consistently. To boot from the micro SD card instead of eMMC, disconnect power then hold down the switch beside the micro SD slot, apply power and continue holding the switch for a count of three. After some testing (and being sure I could re-load the bundled Ubuntu-based system if I wanted), I used the script provided with RaspBSD to copy the FreeBSD image to the eMMC. This significantly improved boot time and also freed up the micro SD card for data storage.

Conclusion

For me, the BBG is the superior single-board unix computer for basing a new product design on. The openly provided design files and technical documentation, as well as easy access to GPIOs and other hardware resources on the two pin headers, provide a significant head start compared to having to start from scratch.