So far the server is running smoothly without any problem except a particular instance. For the first few of days there was nearly no activity in the server. After two days, I got couple of alert mails from linode.

Linode Alert – disk io rate – tamilsweet (linode20561)
Your Linode, tamilsweet, has exceeded the notification threshold (300) for disk io rate by averaging 450.13 for the last 2 hours.

Linode Alert – CPU Usage – tamilsweet (linode20561)
Your Linode, tamilsweet, has exceeded the notification threshold (40) for CPU Usage by averaging 99.7% for the last 2 hours.

A little panic peeped in! And the fact that I haven’t setup any security, flashed a second. I logged into the server immediately and checked the last login details to see if someone else gained access to the server. I just used the unix command last. Everything looked fine and logs only from my system – All IPs from BSNL, my BroadBand provider. Then I scrolled back my thoughts and recalled what I did earlier.

I had installed e107 – content management system. I wrote a WordPress plugin and the client needed e107 plugin with same features. So, I downloaded the e107 and installed it and it took about 15 mins. I reviewed few of the existing e107 plugins. This happened couple of hours before I got those alert mails.

I checked the CPU usage using top and MySQL was consuming nearly 100% CPU.  Since, the server was idle with nearly no traffic, I just restarted the MySQL server and that brought down the CPU usage to normal. So, its obviously some issue with e107 script and I didn’t had much time or any purpose to find the issue with the script. I haven’t uninstalled the script yet and it still can be found @ http://www.tamilg.in/demo/e107/

Baring this small instance the server is running smoothly. This Linode VPS instance currently have two live sites, obviously this site – http://www.tamilg.in/ and a fresh blog of my friend Gayathri – http://www.gayathri-frenzy.com/

The traffic is not huge enough to really find the performance of the server. The maximum page view per day so far is little over 1600 recorded last Wednesday – 20 May. I hardly imagined 1000+ visits per day within just a month and that was mainly because of posts on DLF IPL 2009. The linode manager has performance graphs available for last 24 hrs, last 30 days and for each month.

Here is the graphs for the past 30 days. i.e from 23rd April – 22nd May.

Linode VPS Instance – CPU Usage graph – last 30 days

Linode VPS web hosting - CPU Usage for last 30 days

The CPU usage is nearly zero, except for the little spike caused by e107 as explained earlier in this post.

Linode VPS Instance – Traffic graph – last 30 days

Linode VPS web hosting - Server Traffic for last 30 days

The traffic was considerably increase last week crossing 1000 visits per day and hence the little peaks at the end of the month/graph.

Linode VPS Instance – I/O rate graph – last 30 days

Linode VPS web hosting - IO rate for last 30 days

The I/O rate very similar to traffic graph, just reflecting the traffic.

All in all – So far so good!

WordPress is a state-of-the-art publishing platform with a focus on aesthetics, web standards, and usability. WordPress is both free and priceless at the same time.

I downloaded the tar ball of latest version i.e. WordPress 2.7.1 from http://wordpress.org/latest.tar.gz

Extracted it to …./tamilg.in/public/

Then created database and user for WordPress in MySQL command line.

–Create database
CREATE DATABASE database_name;

–Create user  (Optional)
CREATE USER ‘username’ IDENTIFIED BY ‘password’;

–Grant permission to user on that database
GRANT ALL PRIVILEGES ON database_name.* TO ‘username’@'localhost’ IDENTIFIED BY ‘password’;

Then copied wp-config-sample.php to wp-config.php and updated DB_NAME, DB_USER, DB_PASSWORD, DB_HOST. Added some random characters to AUTH_KEY, SECURE_AUTH_KEY, LOGGED_IN_KEY and NONCE_KEY.

Now opened the page http://tamilg.in/ in the browser and it asked for the Blog Title and Email Id. Clicked on the Install WordPress button and got the admin password.

The first step I always follow is to login to the WordPress Dashboard and change the password to something easy to remember.

Now that the basic installtion is complete. Next step is to upload/activate necessary plugins for a standard blog. This includes All-in-One SEO, Google Analytics, XML-Sitemap and Share/Save Buttons. I’m yet to API key for Akismet – TODO task pending!!!

I downloaded the Fusion theme from WordPress Theme repository and extracted to the theme folder and activated it.

Last step??? Started blogging!!!

This site is now running from linode. Subscribed for their hosting plan Linode 360 yesterday (20April09).  I will be posting more details later, now little busy with projects

Between, I switched to Freelancing early this month.

I’m a Freelancer – Freelance Web developer now!!!

Also, I’m determined to blog regularly…… definitely more than just “Happy birthday” wishes to Bhavana

he he……