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Show HN: Dashku - a real-time dashboard app, built with SocketStream

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Re: Show HN: Dashku - a real-time dashboard app, built with SocketStream

#51

Post by nathanhammond »

Here is a little piece of a script I wrote to push the limits up on an Ubuntu box during setup (AWS).

    # Increase File Descriptor limits.
    export FILEMAX=`sysctl -n fs.file-max`
    sudo mv /etc/security/limits.conf /etc/security/limits.conf.bak
    sudo touch /etc/security/limits.conf
    sudo chmod 666 /etc/security/limits.conf
    echo "root soft nofile $FILEMAX" >> /etc/security/limits.conf
    echo "root hard nofile $FILEMAX" >> /etc/security/limits.conf
    echo "* soft nofile $FILEMAX" >> /etc/security/limits.conf
    echo "* hard nofile $FILEMAX" >> /etc/security/limits.conf
    sudo chmod 644 /etc/security/limits.conf

    touch /home/ubuntu/.bash_profile
    echo "ulimit -n $FILEMAX" >> /home/ubuntu/.bash_profile

    # Increase Ephemeral Ports.
    sudo chmod 666 /etc/sysctl.conf
    echo "net.ipv4.ip_local_port_range = 1024 65535" >> /etc/sysctl.conf
    sudo chmod 644 /etc/sysctl.conf

Re: Show HN: Dashku - a real-time dashboard app, built with SocketStream

#52

Post by jmandzik »

paulbjensen wrote: post #17

Hi everyone, My apologies, I didn't expect to end up Top of HN. I'll try and get it back up. In the meantime, here is the YouTube video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cxf8f9AQBgM&feature=plcp

I've been building a project that's very similar to this using AngularJS, socket.io, and the Highcharts/D3 graphing libraries. If you decide to open this project up, I'd happily throw some cycles at features & fixes. Great work!

Re: Show HN: Dashku - a real-time dashboard app, built with SocketStream

#53

Post by dedward »

nathanhammond wrote: post #51

Here is a little piece of a script I wrote to push the limits up on an Ubuntu box during setup (AWS). # Increase File Descriptor limits. export FILEMAX=`sysctl -n fs.file-max` sudo mv /etc/security/limits.conf /etc/security/limits.conf.bak sudo touch /etc/security/limits.conf sudo chmod 666 /etc/security/limits.conf echo "root soft nofile $FILEMAX" >> /etc/security/limits.conf echo "root hard nofile $FILEMAX" >> /etc…

You know it's odd. One one hand, the almost-greybeard in me wants people to stop screwing around with what I take to be standard unix concepts... what are the ephemeral ports, etc.

On the other hand, when I take a close look at something like what you just posted, the level of control is hard to argue with - nothing wrong with that.

The temptation is still to basically do what you did (thanks BTW) and just revert everything back to what it rightfully should be.... it served us just fine for ages.

Or I'll switch to FreeBSD ,unless they're doing the same thing.

Re: Show HN: Dashku - a real-time dashboard app, built with SocketStream

#54

Post by dedward »

KaoruAoiShiho wrote: post #42
jabo wrote: post #40

You shouldn't be serving your static landing pages and assets over node.js. Ideally you should have an nginx server reverse proxy dynamic requests to your node.js server. Nginx should serve the static assets before the requests hit the node server.

You have some data to back up this recommendation?

Indeed. I mean, it may very well be true, and without time to analyze, if you are highly confident in nginx and the rest of your server setup (it's not some other user definiable limit) you might as well.

That said - building websites to handle load has no magic bullet. Sure, nginx is good. Far-future expires headers and cache-busting schemes to go with it are good too. CDN's are good. Varnish is good. Clusters are great too, for capacity and redundancy, but you need to be aware of stuff in all these cases, and every layer you add is also something else to manage and something else to break..... so really it has to come from test-driven results regarldess, so you are spot on.

My beef with services like this (granted I haven't investigated fully) is I don't want hosted stuff. I get that's a huge market, but for confidentiality and other reasons, there is also a market for slightly more traditional stuff.

I'd love a toolkit to make it easy to build arbitrary animated control panel-y things a-la Quest Spotlight on for my apps... havent' found it yet, anyone know one?

Re: Show HN: Dashku - a real-time dashboard app, built with SocketStream

#55

Post by dedward »

wavephorm wrote: post #32
anemic wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I hope the /root/ refers to the site's root directory and not root user's home directory. At least this confirms that it's actually running socketstream...

Probably not a good idea to run NodeJS as root.

Why not... It's an age-old concept, one I've enforced over decades, but seriously..... nowadays, once you are in, you are in, and systems (at least the ones I've put together in recent yeras, I can only assume the same of others) are very regularly refreshed from scratch from servers that can't be reached from the public facing stuff. (so even if you manage to find that one old php server and find some bug and drop some php thingy on it, it's going to get squished in 30 seconds, give or take, as regular housekeeping takes place. If you managed to actually focus on the attack and go deeper, it might take longer -but root or no root, the damage you can do is the same either way, and limited hte same either way.

EDIT: For the record - I still follow this practice, I'm just debating it's relevance these days. Things change, right?

Re: Show HN: Dashku - a real-time dashboard app, built with SocketStream

#56

Post by dedward »

paulbjensen wrote: post #44
ffk wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Did you set the limit on the CLI or within your limits.conf file? limits.conf is how you persist the value between reboots.

CLI (facepalm). Thanks for the tip.

so, no disrespect, innovate innovate innovate, keep on going, looks great.

but.

In general terms - what does a potential user of this service conclude if the server appears to be hosted on a single machine and the admin staff doesn't seem to know how ulimit works?

(Yes, I realize this is ycombinator and about ideas and VC and all that.... just throwing the concept out there.)

Great product, but total lack of either understanding or preparedness on the lower levels.

Re: Show HN: Dashku - a real-time dashboard app, built with SocketStream

#58

Post by paulbjensen »

dedward wrote: post #56
paulbjensen wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

CLI (facepalm). Thanks for the tip.

so, no disrespect, innovate innovate innovate, keep on going, looks great. but. In general terms - what does a potential user of this service conclude if the server appears to be hosted on a single machine and the admin staff doesn't seem to know how ulimit works? (Yes, I realize this is ycombinator and about ideas and VC and all that.... just throwing the concept out there.) Great product, but total lack of either u…

Hi,

It was unfortunate that this ulimit issue occurred and I apologise for that.

I knew about ulimit from 2 sources (a LinkedIn article on Node.js practices) and a 2nd source from a hosting service's documentation.

The fault (and it was mine) was that I didn't realise that in order to persist the ulimit setting between reboots, you had to set it in a configuration file.

Originally, the application was hosted across multiple instances and proxied, but due to the nature of the WebSocket library and it's use of transports with the proxy library, the connection was intermittent, so I reverted to a single instance. Since resolving the ulimit issue, this application has stayed up.

As for admin staff, you may be surprised to learn there is no company with multiple devs, designers, product people and sysadmin behind all this. This is all my work, all 2 and a bit months of it.

Re: Show HN: Dashku - a real-time dashboard app, built with SocketStream

#59

Post by paulbjensen »

godDLL wrote: post #38
paulbjensen wrote: post #17

Hi everyone, My apologies, I didn't expect to end up Top of HN. I'll try and get it back up. In the meantime, here is the YouTube video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cxf8f9AQBgM&feature=plcp

What's your next step? Open-source the code, set up billing, improve the app (maybe move it off to a naturally-scaling cloud service)? I mean, it's neat (understatement of the week) and all; but where do you plan on going from here?

Hi,

Thanks. At this point, I need to go and find some work as my bank balance doesn't look great.

I'm going to continue working on it in some capacity, and I will investigate turning it into a SaaS.

There are some components of the app which would be worth open-sourcing, in order to assist others with building SocketStream applications.

Thanks again.

Re: Show HN: Dashku - a real-time dashboard app, built with SocketStream

#60

Post by paulbjensen »

silverlight wrote: post #2

Is this always going to be free? Because there are other competitors in this space currently with premium solutions...

Hi,

For the beta, yes, which should last a couple of months. I will investigate turning it into a SaaS, but for now I will go and find some work.

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