#dev - Page 8 of 8 - David Sword

Get TOP Status’s into PHP/HTML

I used the following below to create a widget in Panic’s Status Board.

SSH Setup

To start, we’ll need to configure top to show more than one core. To setup top to reveal all CPU’s by default, login w/ ssh to your server and run the following:

1 reveals all cores. shift+W saves the current screen as default. Exit top once complete w/ $ cntl+C.

Next we’ll add a cronjob to make top output to a text file every minute. Launch the crontab editor

add at the bottom:

Where ‘/…/’ is a real path to somewhere on your server. I recommend keeping it 1-below your public /httpdocs/ directory so the world can access it but your scripts can. Then to save changes: ZZ. You can double check that it’s installed with crontab -l

should show your new addition. That’s it. Now every minute top will write to your top.txt file.

Now on to scripting.

We need to use some PHP to import and parse the top output data, and jQuery to reload the import/parse portions of the page for a continual update.

Make a php file, and add the following JS to the head:

Where http://…/this_file.php is the URI of your current file.

Where /var/www/…/top.txt is the path to your top output, and 16 is the number of cores you have on your server (if unsure, count them in the top.txt output). The “load time %” is a percentage out of 5 seconds. 0% being 0 load time, 100% being 5 second load time.

Once this is setup, done, and working you’ll now have a file that continually refreshes your servers output. From there you can use tools like gauge.js to animate some gauges, or create your own.

Increase WordPress Memory Limit

Nothings worse then getting an email about someone being unable to upload a 6mb .PDF because it “exceeds the upload file size limit”

Here’s the fix – but important note: raising postmaxsize increases the possibility of DoS attacks on your server:

In functions.php add:

If that doesn’t work, it could be a apache restriction, in .htaccess add:

If you’re still unable to it could be a php restriction, in php.ini add:

Obviously change the 32mb/32000kb as needed.

Update:

The above worked for me 99% of the time, but I had once instance where I need to add the following into functions.php as well:

Responsive Height, Maintain Ratio

Say you have an element #banner with a background-image. On a responsive design that’s width:100%; you’ll notice your image will be auto croped by the viewport change. The solution is simple: background-size: cover; but a pain that follows is the height of the element will not scale down or up with the width change, leaving this weird empty vertical gap or a very cropped image.

Here’s a fix to figure out and change the height end_h based on the current window width, keeping background-image ratio making it responsive/scalable:

This resize happens when your script is loaded, as well as on any browser resize event.

date_default_timezone_set() Not Working

This is a silly amateur hour error that I’m positive lots of people miss. datedefaulttimezone_set() needs to be called within functions, it isn’t a global function.

The script below will demonstrate the how datedefaulttimezone_set() affects date() (and time()).

Will output:

// Eastern
// Server‘s Time
// Central
// Eastern

WordPress Simple Cronjobs

WordPress makes it super simple to run cronjobs.. To add one, just place the following code in your functions.php file and change the function/action prefix’s to your relevant plugin name/functions.

A little break down for those unfamiliar: the first action runs mypluginschedulecron() on each load. If your cronjob (myplugincronjob) is not registered, it‘s scheduled into WordPress’s cron and becomes a hook. Once it’s registered/schedualed with WordPress, the second action myplugincronjob is usable and runs your cronjob function (myplugincronfunction).

If you want your cronjob to occur less frequent than ‘daily‘, you need to add a additional timespan. Since what I’m writting this for has dynamic timespans, I’ve added several intervals for weekly, monthly, quaterly, biyearly, and yearly cronjobs:

If you’re uncertain if your cron function is working and want to test it, you can uncomment the third action and refresh the page (to run what WordPress cronjob will run on it’s intervals). If you’re uncertain if your cronjob is actually scheduled you can install Cron View, a plugin that displays the available schedules and the scheduled tasks.