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Summer listening and reading

Another update on books.

I just finished Churchill: A Biography by Roy Jenkins on audiobook from Audible. That was forty hours or so of unabridged listening.

Laurence got me into Jasper Fforde – so far three down on that side.

There has been a lot more – but I’m trying hard to remember everything.

ZCM agent debugging

More how-to guides. This one is turning on ZCM agent-side debugging.

First set the zmd logging to be at debug level; there are two ‘true’ settings in the conf file:

%ZENWORKS_HOME%conflogger-zmd-conf.xml

<configuration>
<log4net>
    <!–Appender to log event to console–>
    <appender name=”ConsoleAppender” type=”log4net.Appender.ConsoleAppender”>
    <param name=”Threshold” value=”DEBUG” />
    <layout type=”Novell.Zenworks.Logger.SimpleLayout, Novell.Zenworks.Logger”></layout>
    </appender>

    <!–This section is used to enable or disable the above configured appenders –>
    <logger name=”ZEN_LOGGER” additivity = “true“>
        <level value=”DEBUG”/>
        <appender-ref ref=”ConsoleAppender” />
    </logger>

    <!– This section is used to Enable component Logging –>
<!–
        <logger name = “ZEN_LOGGER.TestLogger” additivity =”true”>
                   <level value=”DEBUG”/>
        </logger>
–>
</log4net>

<ZenworksMessageLogger>
    <!– This section is used to turn on/off the Global Debug Flag –>
    <param name=”FileDebug” type=”Boolean” value =”true” />
</ZenworksMessageLogger>
</configuration>

Next restart the ZENworks agent

net stop “novell zenworks agent service”

The Novell ZENworks Agent Service service is stopping.
The Novell ZENworks Agent Service service was stopped successfully.

net start “novell zenworks agent service”

The Novell ZENworks Agent Service service is starting..
The Novell ZENworks Agent Service service was started successfully.

The log file for the agent is in %ZENWORKS_HOME%logsLocalStorezmd-messages.log

The log rolls – so you might need to collect the zip as well.

MySQL tuning

I use mysql a lot. It is the underpinning of these blogs, my online photo albums, my new drupal sites – a lot.

I found this collection of great scripts to help even the seasoned mysql admin tweak some more.

I especially liked the tuning script:

SLOW QUERIES
Current long_query_time = 10 sec.
You have 9 out of 8370223 that take longer than 10 sec. to complete
The slow query log is NOT enabled.
Your long_query_time may be too high, I typically set this under 5 sec.

TABLE CACHE
Current table_cache value = 64 tables
You have a total of 288 tables
You have 64 open tables.
Current table_cache hit rate is 0%, while 100% of your table cache is in use
You should probably increase your table_cache

Very nice work. I’ll be working on squeezing that extra 1% out of mysql tomorrow.

Time for a break

It’s been a busy few months.

I’m taking some time off for a while to get back to normal.

No more logging bugs, testing fixes, writing docs, building demos, working in the superlab, answering questions, defending the decisions of others …

I’ll be back online in a week or so.

ENGL ZToolkit 5 beta

I’m building demos – and I’m using a pre-release (very restricted) version of the ENGL ZToolkit version 5.

It not only supports Vista – but also ZENworks Configuration Management.

I’ll get round to doing some screencams later.