No packages found, suidperl slow

[Ivan Kohler]

On Thu, Apr 01, 1999 at 11:18:24PM -0800, Perry J. Blalock wrote:
> First let me say nice proggy and thank you for building it  My install went
> kinda bad the first time, then I figured out that I had to install the
> package as user "freeside."  Once I did that and followed the instructions
> *exactly*  all *appears* to be working except....  I'll get to the *except*
> in a sec, but first a recommendation...for us uninformed and uninitiated,
> you should add the following instruction to your install procedures, right
> **before** it reads "Unpack the tarball: "   The step before "Unpack the
> tarball: " should read "su - freeside".  This will make the install much
> smoother, at least on the RedHat 5.2 distribution (Linux kernel 2.0.36), and
> cut down on alot of the silly posts on your mailing list.

Can you be more specific about what you found should be owned by the
freeside user that wasn't explicit in the documentation?  I'd rather
correct that than put a blanket "su - freeside" in there.  Thanks.

> Now for my first problem;  I can add services and packages to the database
> and see they are added, but when I try to browse those packages, I get the
> follow error in the browser:
> 
> 	"Error processing your request
> 	Your request could not be processed because of the following error:
> 	No packages found
> 
> 	Hit the Back button in your web browser, correct this mistake, and try
> again"
> 
> And in the Apache access_log I get:
> 
> 	"207.113.50.6 - freeside [01/Apr/1999:22:29:15 -0800] "GET
> /freeside/search/cust_pkg.cgi?pkgnum HTTP/1.1" 200 380"
> 
> **nothing shows in the apache error_log, or the system's syslog"

The packages and services you add in the `Administration' section of the
main menu are the definitions or templates for the packages (and services)
you order for customers.  I changed the main menu to read `package
definitions' and `service definitions' instead of `packages' and
`services'. 

> If I try to add a package to a customer, no packages are displayed in the
> browser, only the "order" button.  When I click the order button, I am
> returned back to the customer's page.

>From `View/Edit agent types' in the `Administration' section, allow the
agent type to purchase the appropriate package definitions.

In a small ISP setup, there will be one agent, one agent type, and this
one agent type will be allowed to purchase all package definitions.

> I'm using freeside v1.1.6 and it does *not* matter whether is use Netscape
> or MSIE and I have applied your path to "Record.pm" this fixed the
> county/state/country problem.
> 
> One last item, in one of the maillist threads I recall reading how slow the
> suidperl was.

Please, suidperl specifically has nothing to do with the performance
issue. The performance problems are mostly due to CGI overhead, though
there are some places the Freeside code could be improved as well. 

If you're unhappy with the performance please look into mod_perl
(http://perl.apache.org/), which the current CVS tree (and upcoming 1.2
release) support.

>  Well, let me tell ya..I'm connected to the freeside server
> through a 10Meg switch on the same segment and it is reeeeeeeel sloooooow.
> With only one customer in the database (just started testing), it is way too
> slow.  It takes up to 5 seconds for each little task and yes, top shows my
> perl sucks up nearly all the cpu time for a flashing moment.  How is the
> performance when the database is quite full?  I have other databases running
> on the mySQL server and they are reeeel fast (not using suid of course).

Since the slowness isn't from the database engine, I don't expect that it
would get appriciably slower when you add many customers.

> Back to my original package problem...can you tell me what's broken?

See above, HTH!

-- 
Ivan Kohler <ivan at sisd.com> - finger for PGP key - <moc.dsis at navi> Relhok Navi
Open-source billing and administration for ISPs - http://www.sisd.com/freeside
20 4,16 * * * saytime # please don't be surprised if you find me dreaming too