Benchmark the load time of a page with Javascript
<script Language="JavaScript">
var from_time = new Date();
from_time = from_time.getTime();
function benchmark_loading_time()
{
var to_time = new Date();
to_time = to_time.getTime();
var msecs = (to_time - from_time);
//submit the result
var req = null;
try { req = new XMLHttpRequest(); } catch(e) {}
if (!req) try { req = new ActiveXObject("Msxml2.XMLHTTP"); } catch(e) {}
if (!req) try { req = new ActiveXObject("Microsoft.XMLHTTP"); } catch(e) {}
req.open("GET", '/benchmark_loading_time/?msecs=' + msecs + '&url=' + location.href, false);
req.send(null);
}
</script>
<body onLoad="benchmark_loading_time()">
Oracle concat function
CREATE OR REPLACE FUNCTION Fnc_Concat_List (cur SYS_REFCURSOR, separator VARCHAR2) RETURN VARCHAR2 IS
ret VARCHAR2(32000);
tmp VARCHAR2(4000);
BEGIN
LOOP
FETCH cur INTO tmp;
EXIT WHEN cur%NOTFOUND;
ret := ret || separator || tmp;
END LOOP;
ret := SUBSTR(ret, LENGTH(separator) + 1);
RETURN ret;
END;
/
Example:
CREATE TABLE hallo (ID number(10) PRIMARY KEY, NAME varchar2(255)); INSERT INTO hallo (ID, NAME) VALUES (1, 'a'); INSERT INTO hallo (ID, NAME) VALUES (2, 'b'); INSERT INTO hallo (ID, NAME) VALUES (3, 'c'); COMMIT; SELECT fnc_concat_list(CURSOR(SELECT name from hallo), ', ') from dual;
Oracle pipelined function
CREATE TABLE hallo (ID number(10) PRIMARY KEY, NAME varchar2(255)); INSERT INTO hallo (ID, NAME) VALUES (1, 'a'); INSERT INTO hallo (ID, NAME) VALUES (2, 'b'); INSERT INTO hallo (ID, NAME) VALUES (3, 'c'); COMMIT;
CREATE OR REPLACE PACKAGE hoi IS
TYPE hallo_lines IS TABLE OF hallo%ROWTYPE;
FUNCTION h RETURN hallo_lines pipelined;
END;
CREATE OR REPLACE PACKAGE BODY hoi IS
FUNCTION h RETURN hallo_lines pipelined IS
r_hallo hallo%ROWTYPE;
BEGIN
FOR i IN (SELECT ID, NAME FROM hallo)
LOOP
r_hallo := i;
-- r_hallo.ID := i.ID;
-- r_hallo.NAME := i.NAME;
PIPE ROW(r_hallo);
END LOOP;
END;
END;
select * from table(hoi.h);
JBoss and SPNEGO authentication with GSS-API
Prerequisites
- A working KDC (Active Directory or something equivalent)
- JBoss (I used 5.0.1.GA)
- a keytab file
Configure JBoss
On a clean JBoss installation, open
server/default/conf/login-config.xml and add the following at the end (just before </policy>):
<application-policy name="com.sun.security.jgss.accept">
<authentication>
<login-module code="com.sun.security.auth.module.Krb5LoginModule" flag="required">
<module-option name="debug">true</module-option>
<module-option name="principal">HTTP/principal@REALM</module-option>
<module-option name="storeKey">true</module-option>
<module-option name="useKeyTab">true</module-option>
<module-option name="doNotPrompt">true</module-option>
<module-option name="keyTab">/path/to/keytabfile.keytab</module-option>
</login-module>
</authentication>
</application-policy>
and comment the whole
<application-policy name="Others"> section right above.Now we need to add some global VM parameters to Java: open
/bin/run.conf and addJAVA_OPTS="$JAVA_OPTS -Djavax.security.auth.useSubjectCredsOnly=false" JAVA_OPTS="$JAVA_OPTS -Djava.security.krb5.conf=/path/to/krb.conf"
/path/to/krb.conf looks like this[libdefaults]
default_realm = YOURREALM
[realms]
YOURREALM = {
kdc = your.kdc
}
and is the global Kerberos config file for your apps.
You should also increase the maximum HTTP header size permitted by the embedded Tomcat installation, since with Single-Sign-On HTTP headers may exceed the default of 4kb in complex Active Directory environments. Add a property
maxHttpHeaderSize="32768" to your HTTP connector configuration in server/default/deploy/jboss-web.deployer. If your HTTP headers become larger than this setting, Tomcat just discards the requests without any log output, which can cause a lot of trouble.Well, almost done. Now you are free to get the SPNEGO token from inside your app and do with it whatever you want (for ex. delegate the credentials to call some other service).
SPNEGO authentication and credential delegation with Java
Client[1] ---> WS[2] ---> more services[3]
Client calls WS, authenticates with his kerberos token, and WS can use that token to authenticate to more services on behalf of the Client.
I had to search the Web for a few hours to find out how SPNEGO and delegation works with Java, so here is a summary:
- The client sends a request to the server
- The server answers with
Status: 401 - Authorization Required WWW-Authenticate: Negotiate
- The client receives the 401 and sends the SPNEGO token to the server:
Authorization=Negotiate YIIGHwYGKwYBBQUCoIIGE[...]
- The server then has to decode and validate that token. If the token is forwardable then the server can use it to request a new token to authenticate to other services.
This is how to decode a SPNEGO token in Java:
byte[] token = null;
byte[] tokenForPeer = null;
byte[] tokenForEndpoint = new byte[0];
String endpointSPN = null;
GSSManager manager = GSSManager.getInstance();
GSSContext context = null;
GSSCredential clientCred = null;
GSSCredential myCred = null;
try {
//Oid krb5MechOid = new Oid("1.2.840.113554.1.2.2");
Oid spnegoMechOid = new Oid("1.3.6.1.5.5.2");
//first obtain it's own credentials...
myCred = manager.createCredential(null, GSSCredential.DEFAULT_LIFETIME, spnegoMechOid, GSSCredential.ACCEPT_ONLY);
//...and create a context for this credentials...
context = manager.createContext(myCred);
//...then use that context to authenticate the calling peer by reading his
//spnego token
System.out.println(authorization);
token = Base64.decode(authorization);
tokenForPeer = context.acceptSecContext(token, 0, token.length);
if (!context.isEstablished()) return false;
if (tokenForPeer != null) {
System.out.println("there is a token to send back to the peer, but I leave this out for now");
}
System.out.println("Context Established! ");
System.out.println("Client principal is " + context.getSrcName());
System.out.println("Server principal is " + context.getTargName());
} catch (WSSecurityException e) {
// TODO Auto-generated catch block
e.printStackTrace();
} catch (GSSException e) {
// TODO Auto-generated catch block
e.printStackTrace();
}
the authorization String contains the SPNEGO token from the request. Once we have established the context, we can check if the credentials can be delegated, and then request the new token:
//check if the credentials can be delegated
if (!context.getCredDelegState()) {
System.out.println("credentials can not be delegated!");
return false;
}
//get the delegated credentials from the calling peer...
clientCred = context.getDelegCred();
//now create the spnego token to send to the endpoint:
//create target server SPN
endpointSPN = "HTTP/spnegotestserver.domain.com@REALM.COM";
System.out.println("Endpoint: " + endpointSPN);
GSSName gssServerName = manager.createName(endpointSPN, GSSName.NT_USER_NAME);
//...and create a new context pretending to be the caller
clientContext = manager.createContext(gssServerName.canonicalize(spnegoMechOid), spnegoMechOid, clientCred, GSSContext.DEFAULT_LIFETIME);
//this should be an option: enable GSS credential delegation
clientContext.requestCredDeleg(true);
// create a SPNEGO token for the target server
tokenForEndpoint = clientContext.initSecContext(tokenForEndpoint, 0, tokenForEndpoint.length);
Done. Now we have a new tokenForEndpoint object that contains a valid SPNEGO token with the delegated credentials from the calling user. Insert it in the headers for the HTTP request to the next service in the chain like this
"Negotiate " + Base64.encode(tokenForEndpoint)
and you are good to go.
Automating svn delete and svn add
Patrick asked me on Friday if I could somehow make
svn move file
svn delete file
and
svn add file
somehow transparent to his not-so-computer-savy secretary. He is using svn to centrally store documents and files other people in his company edit and create, so the people can comment on changes, and work on the files while offline.
We thought a bit about it, and this is what came out:
#!/bin/bash
#this depends on inotify-tools
#folder to watch
FOLDER=~/tmp/svn_test/repo
###############################
inotifywait -m --format '%e %w %f' -r $FOLDER -e move -e create -e delete --exclude .svn 2>/dev/null|
while read EVENT
do
EV=`echo $EVENT|cut -d' ' -f1|cut -d',' -f1`
FOLDER=`echo $EVENT|cut -d' ' -f2`
FILE=`echo $EVENT|cut -d' ' -f3`
echo event $EVENT
#continue
if [ "$EV" == "CREATE" ] || [ "$EV" == "MOVED_TO" ]; then
svn add --force "$FOLDER/$FILE"
elif [ "$EV" == "DELETE" ] || [ "$EV" == "MOVED_FROM" ]; then
svn delete "$FOLDER/$FILE"
fi
done
This way, if Ms. Secretary works on files on her working copy of the svn repository, and this script is running, for every file creation, move or delete the corresponding svn command is executed.
This of course works while offline too, so when Ms. Secretary is back in the office, she can just execute the svn update && svn commit command and everything is back in sync.
Consume SSL protected Web Services with soap4r
I had the need to call a .NET Web Service over https with mutual authentication and basic authentication.
First of all I installed the soap4r gem, then the httpclient gem (because that one supports basic authentication).
Then I made a folder called “certs” with all the certificates and key files I had:
- ca.cer – the certificate of the certification authority that signed the server certificate
- server.cer – the certificate of the server (signed by the guys who own ca.cer)
- client.cer – the client certificate I need to send along the request to get the content
- client.key – the key file for the client certificate
That’s all the certs and key files I needed.
Now it was time to try to get the wsdl:
require 'http-access2'
url = 'https://secure.example.com/web_service/wsdl'
client = HTTPAccess2::Client.new()
client.ssl_config.set_client_cert_file('certs/client.cer', 'certs/client.key')
client.ssl_config.set_trust_ca('certs/ca.cer')
client.set_basic_auth(url, 'username', 'password')
puts client.get(url).content
This worked.
Time to try soap4r:
require 'rubygems' #if you installed httpclient with rubygems you need this
require 'soap/wsdlDriver'
#this validates the server certificate
#so you can be sure that the server you are
#sending data to is the server you have the
#certificate of in certs/server.cer
def validate_certificate(is_ok, ctx)
cert = ctx.current_cert
unless (cert.subject.to_s == cert.issuer.to_s) #check the server certificate only
is_ok &&= File.open('certs/server.cer').read == ctx.current_cert.to_pem
end
is_ok
end
wsdl = 'https://secure.example.com/web_service/wsdl'
driver = SOAP::WSDLDriverFactory.new(wsdl).create_rpc_driver
#driver.wiredump_dev = STDOUT
driver.options['protocol.http.ssl_config.verify_callback'] = method(:validate_certificate)
results = driver.web_service_method(arg1, arg2)
p results
To tell soap4r that you want basic authentication and where the certificate files are, you need to create a soap/property file with the following content:
client.protocol.http.basic_auth.1.url = https://secure.example.com/web_service/wsdl client.protocol.http.basic_auth.1.userid = username client.protocol.http.basic_auth.1.password = password client.protocol.http.ssl_config.client_cert = certs/client.cer client.protocol.http.ssl_config.client_key = certs/client.key client.protocol.http.ssl_config.ca_file = certs/ca.cer client.protocol.http.ssl_config.verify_mode = OpenSSL::SSL::VERIFY_PEER client.protocol.http.ssl_config.ciphers = ALL client.protocol.http.ssl_config.verify_depth = 1
This file is loaded at startup (you can find other options in soap/lib/soap/httpconfigloader.rb), and configures the ssl and basic auth stuff for soap4r.
Apache mod_ssl mutual authentication
Certificates are usually used to authenticate the server only: you connect to your banks site, and you know that it’s the bank you connected to, because the certificate they send to your browser is valid and signed by a Certification Authority you (or your browser) trust. But you can use Certificates to authenticate the user too, and that is called mutual authentication. How does it work?
First of all we need to generate a CA certificate, that we then are going to use to sign the server and the client cert:
#generate the key openssl genrsa -out ./CA/freshCA.key 1024 #generate a certificate request openssl req -new -key ./CA/freshCA.key -out ./CA/freshCA.csr #self-sign the request openssl x509 -req -days 3650 -in ./CA/freshCA.csr \ -out ./CA/freshCA.crt -signkey ./CA/freshCA.key
now we have a valid, self-signed CA certificate.
Next we are going to generate a certificate for the web server, but first we need to change some defaults in
/etc/ssl/openssl.cnfand create some initial files:
vi /etc/ssl/openssl.cnf #and change demoCA to CA mkdir -p CA/newcerts touch CA/index.txt echo '100001' >CA/serial #this is the first serial number of the certificate you are going to generate
Next, generate the server certificate:
openssl genrsa -out ./server/keys/fresh.key 1024 openssl req -new -key ./server/keys/fresh.key -out ./server/requests/new_server.csr openssl ca -days 3650 -in server/requests/new_server.csr -cert \ ./CA/freshCA.crt -keyfile ./CA/freshCA.key \ -out ./server/certificates/new_server.crt
We can use this certificate in our apache config file right away:
ServerName new_server:443 SSLEngine on SSLCertificateFile conf/certs/server/certificates/new_server.crt SSLCertificateKeyFile conf/certs/server/keys/new_server.key SSLCACertificateFile conf/certs/CA/freshCA.crt
Now we have apache listening on 443 for requests, using the new_server.crt certificate that is signed by freshCA.crt.
Now we can generate a client certificate for a user:
#first generate a key openssl genrsa –des3 –out ./user/keys/simon.key 1024 #then the request openssl req –new –key ./user/keys/simon.key –out ./user/requests/simon.csr #then sign it openssl ca -in ./user/requests/simon.csr \ –cert ./CA/freshCA.crt –keyfile ./CA/freshCA.key \ –out ./user/certificates/simon.crt #convert it to p12 openssl pkcs12 -export -in ./user/certificates/simon.crt -inkey ./user/keys/simon.key -out simon.p12
This generates a new, signed certificate that can be installed in the browser. Just put it somewhere on your server for the user to download.
Once the client certificate is installed on the browser side, we have to instruct apache to check it. Just add
SSLVerifyClient require SSLVerifyDepth 2
to your config file, and nobody without a valid client certificate will be able to connect on 443 of your server. You may want to forward the email field, or the Common Name of the client certificate to your web application to be able to know who the user is:
#Forward Client certificate CN
RequestHeader set X_SSL_CLIENT_DN_Email "%{SSL_CLIENT_S_DN_Email}s"
RequestHeader set X_SSL_CLIENT_DN_CN "%{SSL_CLIENT_S_DN_CN}s"
This makes those fields available in the request headers for your app to consume.
If you ever need to revoke a cert, the steps are:
openssl ca –revoke ./user/certificates/simon.crt #generate the certifacate revocation list openssl ca –gencrl –out ./CA/freshCA.crl
and tell apache to check the revocation list with this line in your config file:
SSLCARevocationFile conf/certs/CA/freshCA.crl
Other random stuff:
- Strip the passphrase from a key file:
openssl rsa -in key.pem -out newkey.pem
- Convert a pfx file to a key and a crt file:
openssl pkcs12 -in filename.p12 -nocerts -out privatekey.key openssl pkcs12 -in filename.p12 -clcerts -nokeys -out sslcert.crt
- Convert a pem file to a pkcs12 file:
openssl pkcs12 -export -in cert.pem -inkey key.pem -out cred.p12
- Generate a self-signed certificate
openssl req -new -newkey rsa:1024 -days 365 -nodes -x509 -keyout www.example.com.pem -out www.example.com.pem
Benchmarking mod_rails against mongrel
I’d like to use mod_rails instead of the apache->haproxy->mongrel configuration, but before I do I wanted to make sure I don’t lose to much speed, so I decided to benchmark mod_rails against mongrel. mod_rails was already benchmarked, but I don’t believe it if I don’t see it :)
To benchmark it I created a new rails application with a single controller and a hello.html.erb view with only ‘Hello World’ in it.
For the test I took a very low end machine, because the virtual server I rent for the production site is not much better anyway:
s2@fresh:~$ cat /proc/cpuinfo processor : 0 vendor_id : CentaurHauls cpu family : 6 model : 9 model name : VIA Nehemiah stepping : 8 cpu MHz : 532.000 cache size : 64 KB fdiv_bug : no hlt_bug : no f00f_bug : no coma_bug : no fpu : yes fpu_exception : yes cpuid level : 1 wp : yes flags : fpu vme de pse tsc msr cx8 sep mtrr pge cmov pat mmx fxsr sse rng rng_en ace ace_en bogomips : 1067.72 clflush size : 32
with 483608 bytes of RAM on Ubuntu 7.10 and ruby 1.8.6.
The mongrel setup consists of 3 mongrels running in production mode behind haproxy balancing the requests coming from apache.
This is the apache config:
<VirtualHost *:80> ServerName benchmark.fresh ProxyRequests Off ProxyPass / http://127.0.0.1:8010/ ProxyPassReverse / http://127.0.0.1:8010/ </VirtualHost>
I keep things simple because I want to test the speed of the app running with mongrel against mod_rails. I don’t care about static stuff, url rewriting and other things in this test.
haproxy is configured like this:
... listen rails :8010 server rails-1 localhost:8011 maxconn 1 server rails-2 localhost:8012 maxconn 1 server rails-3 localhost:8013 maxconn 1
I left the sessions active, and the configured database is a postrges connection. As this will be the same in the two setups, I hope this will not make any difference.
Now I get the mongrels running and start the benchmark (after a dry run of 1000 requests):
$ ab -n 1000 -c 100 http://benchmark.fresh/hello/hello
This is ApacheBench, Version 2.0.40-dev <$Revision: 1.146 $> apache-2.0
Copyright 1996 Adam Twiss, Zeus Technology Ltd, http://www.zeustech.net/
Copyright 2006 The Apache Software Foundation, http://www.apache.org/
Benchmarking benchmark.fresh (be patient)
Completed 100 requests
Completed 200 requests
Completed 300 requests
Completed 400 requests
Completed 500 requests
Completed 600 requests
Completed 700 requests
Completed 800 requests
Completed 900 requests
Finished 1000 requests
Server Software: Mongrel
Server Hostname: benchmark.fresh
Server Port: 80
Document Path: /hello/hello
Document Length: 12 bytes
Concurrency Level: 100
Time taken for tests: 25.184929 seconds
Complete requests: 1000
Failed requests: 0
Write errors: 0
Total transferred: 480000 bytes
HTML transferred: 12000 bytes
Requests per second: 39.71 [#/sec] (mean)
Time per request: 2518.493 [ms] (mean)
Time per request: 25.185 [ms] (mean, across all concurrent requests)
Transfer rate: 18.58 [Kbytes/sec] received
Connection Times (ms)
min mean[+/-sd] median max
Connect: 0 107 375.1 0 1874
Processing: 47 2272 771.9 2414 11236
Waiting: 5 2264 740.8 2413 11236
Total: 483 2380 711.4 2415 13110
Percentage of the requests served within a certain time (ms)
50% 2415
66% 2456
75% 2484
80% 2562
90% 2793
95% 2863
98% 3291
99% 4396
100% 13110 (longest request)
Now it’s time for mod_rails. I stopped the mongrels and haproxy to free up some precious RAM.
Apache config:
<VirtualHost *:80> ServerName benchmark.fresh DocumentRoot /home/s2/tmp/benchmark/public/ </VirtualHost> LoadModule passenger_module /usr/lib/ruby/gems/1.8/gems/passenger-1.0.1/ext/apache2/mod_passenger.so RailsSpawnServer /usr/lib/ruby/gems/1.8/gems/passenger-1.0.1/bin/passenger-spawn-server RailsRuby /usr/bin/ruby1.8 RailsEnv production
and after a dry run of 1000 requests:
$ ab -n 1000 -c 100 http://benchmark.fresh/hello/hello
This is ApacheBench, Version 2.0.40-dev <$Revision: 1.146 $> apache-2.0
Copyright 1996 Adam Twiss, Zeus Technology Ltd, http://www.zeustech.net/
Copyright 2006 The Apache Software Foundation, http://www.apache.org/
Benchmarking benchmark.fresh (be patient)
Completed 100 requests
Completed 200 requests
Completed 300 requests
Completed 400 requests
Completed 500 requests
Completed 600 requests
Completed 700 requests
Completed 800 requests
Completed 900 requests
Finished 1000 requests
Server Software: Apache/2.2.4
Server Hostname: benchmark.fresh
Server Port: 80
Document Path: /hello/hello
Document Length: 12 bytes
Concurrency Level: 100
Time taken for tests: 22.329544 seconds
Complete requests: 1000
Failed requests: 0
Write errors: 0
Total transferred: 514001 bytes
HTML transferred: 12000 bytes
Requests per second: 44.78 [#/sec] (mean)
Time per request: 2232.954 [ms] (mean)
Time per request: 22.330 [ms] (mean, across all concurrent requests)
Transfer rate: 22.44 [Kbytes/sec] received
Connection Times (ms)
min mean[+/-sd] median max
Connect: 0 2 4.9 0 41
Processing: 48 2069 2922.9 1445 22101
Waiting: 45 2064 2922.5 1443 22101
Total: 61 2071 2922.8 1445 22114
Percentage of the requests served within a certain time (ms)
50% 1445
66% 1589
75% 1735
80% 1808
90% 2339
95% 3249
98% 17180
99% 19692
100% 22114 (longest request)
A pretty graph (because every serious benchmark has at least one):

mod_rails can handle 44,78 req/sec, and mongrel 39,71. I think I can ditch the complicated mongrel setup after I make sure mod_rails is as stable as the mongrels are.
Update: Dan and Sean pointed out in the comments that a
RailsMaxPoolSize 3
for mod_rails would be more appropriate. Here you go:
$ ab -n 1000 -c 100 http://benchmark.fresh/hello/hello
...
Concurrency Level: 100
Time taken for tests: 20.94626 seconds
Complete requests: 1000
Failed requests: 0
Write errors: 0
Total transferred: 514000 bytes
HTML transferred: 12000 bytes
Requests per second: 49.76 [#/sec] (mean)
Time per request: 2009.463 [ms] (mean)
Time per request: 20.095 [ms] (mean, across all concurrent requests)
Transfer rate: 24.93 [Kbytes/sec] received
Connection Times (ms)
min mean[+/-sd] median max
Connect: 0 8 28.1 0 113
Processing: 131 1902 1518.9 1240 6861
Waiting: 127 1900 1518.9 1238 6860
Total: 149 1910 1515.4 1253 6861
Percentage of the requests served within a certain time (ms)
50% 1253
66% 2038
75% 3334
80% 3656
90% 4322
95% 4644
98% 5431
99% 5696
100% 6861 (longest request)
49.76. It’s actually quicker?! I could not believe this, so I repeated the test twice, with and without RailsMaxPoolSize 3.
With: 46.92, 46.51
Without: 10.22, 22.32
Ok. Without RailsMaxPoolSize set to 3 the box started to swap, that’s why it was slower.