Tag Archives: apache

Disable execution of script in a specific path within a vhost

Add this into your vhost (making sure to match the Directory directive with the correct path):

 

Which PHP script is eating my memory?

For mod_php, you can just add this to your Apache LogFormat:

%{mod_php_memory_usage}n

Might be best to add it right at the end, so as not to break any log parsing.
Credit: http://tech.superhappykittymeow.com/?p=220

For PHP-FPM (i.e. anyone with NginX or anyone with one of our optimised Magento setups.), put the following into your FPM pool config file, probably here:
– /etc/php-fpm.d/website.conf (RHEL/CentOS)
– /etc/php5-fpm/pools.d/website.conf (Ubuntu)

 
Notes:
• Permissions matter. Check that the User and/or Group (of THIS fpm pool) can write to /var/log/php-fpm (or /php5-fpm, whatever)
• %{HTTP_X_FORWARDED_FOR}e is there because I was behind a Load Balancer, Varnish and/or other reverse proxy.
• %{REQUEST_URI}e\ is there because this CMS (like most, now), rewrite everything to index.php. I want to know the original request, not just the script name.
• %{kilo}M %C – These are the kickers: Memory usage and CPU PerformanceOptimized usage per request. Ker-pow. Pick your favourite awk/sort one-liner to weed out the heavy hitters.

You can log pretty much anything: any arbitrary header, (like REQUEST_URI), and you should find all the options in the comments under the default “www.conf” packaged config file.
Given that this starts with the PID, it should also help track down any segfaults you see in /var/log/messages / kern.log.
Oh, and while you’re at it, PHP-FPM has a slow log you can enable.
Oh, and don’t forget your old friend logrotate.

Counting the average PHP-FPM process memory usage

Looking at the ‘ps’ output isn’t always accurate because of shared memory. Here’s a one-liner to count up my FPM pool, where “www” is in name of the FPM pool:

Thanks to Dan Farmer for his original Apache memory script, which made me think to do this.

Divide and conquer

Do make sure that multiple websites on the same server are using their own FPM pools, that way it should be much easier to see what’s what.

But you can also separate by URL. I’ve done this with the M-word, but the theory should stand for any CMS where the tasks performed under the admin section will be more intensive than normal front-end user traffic.
The following should work with WordPress, assuming the path is /wp-admin . Magento users can (and should) change their admin path from the default, so watch out for that (usually configured in local.xml)

Or anything really – maybe that “importvideo” script is especially memory-intensive and you don’t want to allow it to bloat up all your processes.

1. Set up a separate PHP-FPM pool.
– give it a different name, different log file names, and listen on a different socket/port.
– Perhaps with a much higher memory_limit
– Perhaps with many fewer pm.max_children (ask customer how many humans actually use the “backend”). You might only need 5 or so.
– Perhaps it needs a longer max_execution_time …. you get the idea.

2. Send your “admin” traffic there.
Here’s how you might go about it. These are excerpts and ideas, rather than solid copy-paste config.

Nginx: something like this:

… then in your ‘server{}’ bit, use the variable for fastcgi_pass:

fastcgi_pass $fcgi_pass;

Apache: something like this…

 

3. You can probably now LOWER the memory_limit for your “main” pool
– if the rest of the website doesn’t use much memory. Now bask in the memory you just saved for the whole application server.

4. Bonus: NewRelic app separation
Don’t let all that heavy Admin work interfere with your nice / renice appdex statistics – we know (and expect) your backend dashboard to be slower.
Put this in the FPM pool config:

 

Credits: https://willparsons.tech/

What to do with a down Magento site

1. Application level logs – First place to look.

If you are seeing the very-default-looking Magento page saying “There has been an error processing your request”, then look in here:

The stack trace will be in the latest file (there might be a lot), and should highlight what broke.
Maybe the error was in a database library, or a Redis library…see next step if that’s the case.

General errors, often non-fatal, are in <DOCROOT>/var/log/exception.log
Other module-specific logs will be in the same log/ directory, for example SagePay.

NB: check /tmp/magento/var/ .
If the directories in the DocumentRoot are not writable (or weren’t in the past), Magento will use /tmp/magento/var and you’ll find the logs/reports/cache in there.

2. Backend services – Magento fails hard if something is inaccessible

First, find the local.xml. It should be under <DOCROOT>/app/etc/local.xml or possibly a subdirectory like <DOCROOT>/store/app/etc/local.xml

From that, take note of the database credentials, the <session_save>, and the <cache><backend>. If there’s no <cache> section, then you are using filesystem so it won’t be memcache or redis.

– Can you connect to that database from this server? authenticate? or is it at max-connections?
– To test memcache, “telnet host 11211” and type “STATS“.
– To test Redis, “telnet host 6379” and type “INFO”.
You could also use:

 

If you can’t connect to those from the web server, check that the relevant services are started, pay close attention to the port numbers, and make sure any firewalls allow the connection.
If the memcache/redis info shows evictions > 0, then it’s probably filled up at some point and restarting that service might get you out of the water.

3. Check the normal places – sometimes it’s nothing to do with Magento!

  • – PHP-FPM logs – good place for PHP fatal errors. usually in var/log/php[5]-fpm/

– Apache or nginx logs
– Is Apache just at MaxClients?
– PHP-FPM max_children?

– Is your error really just a timeout, because the server’s too busy?
– Did OOM-killer break something?

– Has a developer been caught out by apc.stat=0 (or opcache.validate_timestamp=0) ?

 

Credits: https://willparsons.tech/

Fail2ban notes

General notes about Fail2ban

How to “SSH” brute force

If you want to make safer your remote server, it is good practise to use a good combination of sshd setup and fail2ban.

Firstly, you should setup your server to allow only key auth, and no passwords. This will drastically reduce the risk. This means anyway that you need to keep your ssh key safe and you won’t be able to access your server unless you have this key. Most of the time is something possible 🙂

For this reason, I’m explaining here how I configured my server.

SSHD

/etc/ssh/sshd_config

Have these settings in the config file (NOTE: the verbosity is for Fail2ban)

(restart sshd)

/etc/fail2ban/jail.local

/etc/fail2ban/filter.d/sshd.conf

Add a custom section after the ddos one:

This line matches whoever tries to connect without a proper ssh key.

Add this line to include custom to the sshd-aggressive setup:

 

Apache ProxyPass for WordPress master-slave setup

Simple way

Ensure certain traffic goes to a certain server (master), you can use this:

 


For a better setup with Variables, just follow the… following steps 🙂

Step One: Configure Environment

We need to setup some environment variables to get this to work correctly.
Add the following to your environment on the slave server(s):

RHEL/CentOS: /etc/sysconfig/httpdi

Ubuntu: /etc/apache2/envvars

Step Two: Configure your VirtualHost

In your VirtualHost configuration do something like the following.

 

Block UserAgent libwww-perl and test

If you want to apply this globally, edit /etc/httpd/conf/httpd.conf (Centos). Otherwise, just modify the related vhost config file, adding the following:

How to test:

Check if the site responds:

 

Check if the agent libwww-perl is allowed or forbidden:

 

Check if using Mozilla as agent works or not:

 

How to bypass Varnish

Test loading speed ignoring Varnish

>> adding “Cookie: NO_CACHE=1” will make Varnish to pass the request directly to Apache

 

Source IP in Apache logs

If your server is under a load balancer, you might see HTTP requests coming from the Load Balancer’s IP instead of the actual visitor. Generally, load balancers are “recording” the original source IP in the X-Forwarded-For header. This means that this is the header that we need to log in our Apache logs to get the information that we want.

Here how to make this happen:

 

Source: https://community.rackspace.com/products/f/25/t/211

Apache Rewrite rules

Rewrite rules examples:

This can be added in vhost configuration OR in .htaccess file

How to rewrite all web request on my site without www to www.domain.com

 

How to redirect all web requests on port 80 (or HTTP) to port 443 (HTTPS)

 

How to disable TRACE and TRACK methods on Apache

 

How to exclude mod_status from being rewritten by existing rules (placed before the problem rule)

 

How do I redirect all web requests on www.mysite.net/web to www.mysite.net/sect1/web

 

Rewrite all non-www to www

 

Force all URLs to be lowercase

 

Apache 2.2 + PHP-FPM on Centos

WITHOUT disabling MOD_PHP in Apache