We recently started deploying servers with Areca RAID controllers (we had been a long time 3ware purchaser, but recently the cards and the support of them seems to have taken a turn for the worse).

Areca provides a handful of tools for managing their RAID controllers, but leave it to you to deploy and install on your servers how you see fit; that might be fine for a handful of servers, but any more than that and you are going to need some sort of package that is easily installable across your network.

Enter the areca-tools RPM I built for CentOS Linux : areca-tools-1.8-1.el5.sonic.src.rpm .

With this Source RPM you can build the areca-tools RPM for whatever hardware architecture and Red Hat based Linux OS you want. Hopefully this will save you some time if you need to deploy Arecas in the servers you maintain.

Note : if you want to monitor your Areca’s RAID status from mon, check out the raid.monitor I wrote.

WordPress has a page on “Writing a Plugin” that you can refer to for all the gory details; this post is a quick demonstration of how you too can notify people of updates to your Blog via Twitter.

Add your handlers:

add_action('edit_form_advanced','notify_customers_checkbox');
add_action('save_post','notify_customers');

Add some check boxes to the “Write Post” interface:

function notify_customers_checkbox()
{
?>
<fieldset id="notify_customers" class="dbx-box">
<h3 class="dbx-handle">Notify Customers:</h3>
<div class="dbx-content">
<input type="checkbox" name="send_to_twitter" id="send_to_twitter" checked="checked" /> twitter
<input type="checkbox" name="send_to_list" id="send_to_list" checked="checked" /> email
<input type="checkbox" name="send_to_nntp" id="send_to_nntp" checked="checked" /> nntp
</div>
</fieldset>
<?php
}

Check the status of those check boxes:

function notify_customers($post_id)
{
if ( isset ( $_POST['send_to_twitter'] ) )
{ send_to_twitter($post_id); }

if (isset ( $_POST['send_to_list'] ) )
{ send_to_list($post_id); }

if (isset ( $_POST['send_to_nntp'] ) )
{ send_to_nntp($post_id); }
}

Write a method to take your post, clean it up a bit and send it off to Twitter:

function send_to_twitter($post_id)
{
$twitter_user = 'sonicnet_status';
$twitter_pass = '';

$post_url     = get_permalink($post_id);
$post_title    = stripslashes($_POST['post_title']);
$post_title    = html_entity_decode($post_title);
$post_content    = stripslashes($_POST['post_content']);
$post_content    = strip_tags($post_content);
$post_content    = html_entity_decode($post_content);

$twitter_message = "$post_title: $post_content";

// We only care about published posts.
// If it's an old post being updated prepend "Update" to the post.

if ( $_POST['prev_status'] == 'draft' ) //new post.
{
if($_POST['publish'] == 'Publish')
{
$xrl = file_get_contents("http://metamark.net/api/rest/simple?long_url=$post_url");

$twitter_message = substr($twitter_message , 0 , 117);
$twitter_message = "$twitter_message... $xrl";
$twitter_message = urlencode($twitter_message);

$url = 'http://twitter.com/statuses/update.xml';
$curl_handle = curl_init();
curl_setopt($curl_handle, CURLOPT_URL, "$url");
curl_setopt($curl_handle, CURLOPT_CONNECTTIMEOUT, 2);
curl_setopt($curl_handle, CURLOPT_RETURNTRANSFER, 1);
curl_setopt($curl_handle, CURLOPT_POST, 1);
curl_setopt($curl_handle, CURLOPT_POSTFIELDS, "status=$twitter_message");
curl_setopt($curl_handle, CURLOPT_USERPWD, "$twitter_user:$twitter_pass");
$buffer = curl_exec($curl_handle);
curl_close($curl_handle);
}
}
}

And there you have it; you’ve just told all your Twitter followers about your latest Blog post.

You’ll note we do some other cool stuff to keep our customers in the loop; like send them E-Mail and post to Usenet, but that’s another Blog post.

IMG_5573

Originally uploaded by Augie Schwer.

I finally got around to uploading the photos and videos from Davis’ second Birthday shindig.

The full set, including videos, is here:

http://flickr.com/photos/augie/sets/72157607792750337/

Lillian

Originally uploaded by Augie Schwer.

Lillian Angeline Schwer born 15 Aug. 2008 – 5:53pm – 6lb. 7oz. – 18.5in long – 33.5cm head circumference.

Everyone is doing well; labor was not easy, but it was fast; Davis is taking to her quite well so far.

More photos will show up here as they come:

http://flickr.com/photos/augie/sets/72157606785942759/

Press Democrat photo for article: “What are you doing?”

Originally uploaded by Augie Schwer.

I am quoted in a recent Press Democrat article about Twitter and along with it came a photo that showed up on the front page of the business section.

Original article here:

http://www.pressdemocrat.com/article/20080616/NEWS07/806160307/1036/BUSINESS01&title=What_are_you_doing_#

The follow up I wrote for the Sonic.net Insider blog is here:

http://corp.sonic.net/insider/2008/06/16/what-are-we-doing/